The Los Angeles of my young man's imagination - when I first arrived in this country I was twenty-one - was formed by movies, not surprisingly. In "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", I'd seen the police cars chasing the colored lights along a nighttime hill side overlooking a vast plane criss-crossed with a perfect grid of lights - the small squares of residential streets outlined in street lamps, and the larger grids formed by major roads with cars streaming along them - lights receding into a twinkling warm horizon. (2008 note: when I've since seen the movie, I've realized it wasn't at all set in a Los Angeles suburb, but somewhere in the Mid West.)

Many years later, I'm flying into LAX on Friday night for my umpteenth visit, but there's still a magical promise to the grid of lights beneath us. Come Saturday morning, though, driving up La Cienega to visit John Paul in West Hollywood, the beaded lights have resolved themselves into billboards, and strip malls - block after block of it. Albeit a sophisticated strip mall; the occasional funky cafe or thrift store, and the sidewalks populated by a knowing melange of blacks, whites, asians, hispanics, walking slowly along in the heat.

Los Angeles is still a city I don't understand, even though I've been here many times. At a basic level, I don't understand the city structure - is Hollywood a separate city or is it part of Los Angeles City? Is there a Los Angeles City - is Downtown Los Angeles a city? But more than that, I don't understand the way of life - it's so different from anything I grew up with. Like with New York, I feel a silly respect for people who live here - that they've made such a cosmopolitan, mixed-up, massive place their home. Naively, I find myself thinking that they're superior to me since they're at home here.

San Francisco, in contrast, feels like a gorgeous, perfect, happy little jewel. Like I did in London, I walk the streets knowing I've made it my home. And I'm sure that some visitors to San Francisco feel as intimidated by the city as I do by Los Angeles. Yet when I'm in LA, I make do - I speak familiarly of "Santa Monica" (meaning Santa Monica Boulevard) and "the Valley", not letting on that I'm just a little bit out of place.

The trip out here this time was a mess; I was flying Southwest Airlines out of Oakland, and had to contend with BART (the long-distance subway system in the Bay Area), AirBart (the shuttle from the BART station to the airport), and the crush of Southwest's boarding system, with first-come-first served seating. If you check in early enough, you get a boarding card with an early number on it, and get to board first - with your choice of seat. Check in too late, though, and your boarding number is way down in the sixties or worse, and by the time you board, all the choice seats are gone. The whole experience, particularly on the Friday before Labor Day, was far removed the usual luxury I travel in as an American Airlines frequent-flier. But I was happy, nonetheless. I can rough it when I need to :)

Southwest is different in other ways too. For one thing, the flights usually leave on time - somehow. For another, the flight attendants are on a mission to amuse you. Take this flight, for example: as the airplane taxied for take-off, the flight attendant whispered loudly through the intercom: "You're feeling very, very sleepy - you don't like peanuts". Of course, there was a screaming child in my row, and as we landed, she exceeded this by having a major toilet accident in her chair and screaming even louder.

Visits to LA are becoming increasingly complex for me, since, for one reason or another, I've come into contact with so many people down here, and I feel a little bit like I'm being pulled in too many directions. But this time, I wanted to mainly spend time with John Paul, who was my first true friend in California.

We spent most of Saturday and Sunday together. We didn't even do anything special - we hung out in the Abbey, an outdoor cafe in West Hollywood - and gabbed all afternoon. We went to dinner at Off Vine and gabbed some more. You get the idea. Our friendship is based on conversation. John Paul can TALK! But he has such an active intelligence: we can talk together for hours without getting tired of it. And he has a real sentimental streak. Over the phone, I'd been telling him about the times I'd spent in England recently with my parents; how much my Dad still loves my Mam; how they walked along together, hand-in-hand - and John Paul was almost in tears at the telling of it - he's such a big softie at heart, despite his street-wise, masculine exterior. And he has a great friendship with his own parents, and the most tender love and respect for them.

So that was my weekend - Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles. Long, relaxing and filled with conversation.

P.s. I had set aside some time during the weekend to meet up with a couple of other people I'd gotten to know in Los Angeles by email. You know who you are, and I won't embarrass you by naming you :) But it was a delight to meet you!