Perhaps I write this blog using too many television analogies, but if the literary world is loosing its hold on recognized allusions, then who am I to be a Sisyphus?

 The LOST premiere was last week, and in the opening episodes, the audience was told by one Daniel Faraday that the LOST island was lost in time. It was skipping like a record, pulling the castaways all through the years but getting them nowhere. Even though they’d been stuck on that small, measurable landscape for four seasons, they continued to find themselves in unknown territory without ever leaving. 

And that’s how I felt–acutely–this weekend as an Angeleno. I was turned and twisted around in a way that shouldn’t be normal for someone that’s lived in Los Angeles and its greater areas for a really long time. 

Here’s what happened: It started with an opera. The Magic Flute was playing at the LA Music Center in Downtown, and I really really wanted to go. A few years back, I’d seen the Ingmar Bergman version on DVD. And last year, longtime readers will recall that I re-fell in love with the whole art form when Tosca decided to take that plunge off the fort walls. The show was a Sunday matinee. I left in good time. I drove down the 5 freeway like I always do, planning to merge onto the 170, to get Downtown. But the 170 never came. 

I found myself in unfamiliar but familiar territory. I knew that I’d driven this stretch of the 5 Freeway before, but not in a way that I was crystal clear on where I was. I’d pass my junction and now I had to figure out how to get Downtown via this new route.

It’s a LA sixth sense–navigating the freeways. You need to have an intuitive grasp on how the entirety of the city is connected through these concrete arteries. This way if traffic is congested on the 10 E, you can still take the 110 N to the 101 junction that goes through Downtown to get into Hollywood. Or you could drive up the 405, merge onto the 10E, then exit off on La Brea, drive the side streets until you hit your Hollywood destination. 

I once had a foreign friend wow over the fact that she never had to plan her life and schedule around roads or freeways. Well, this is Los Angeles. 

Fortunately, I have an acquaintance who works Downtown and can read the even-more-than-usual-confusing roads like a fortuneteller over a palm. If I skipped the 170, then I had to take the 110 S, merge onto the 101 S/10W onramp and take the Grand or Temple exit. When I passed Filipino Town, I knew I’d gone to far despite directions. So I got off the freeway, merged back on and then made it to the Music Center with time to spare. 

The opera was great. It was fantastic! It was Mozart. 

But then, I was lost again after the performance. My companions and I wanted to go somewhere to eat, but Downtown on a Sunday with its crazier-than-the-rest-of-LA streets?  And stores are not in walking distance, especially in the shoes I was wearing. This meant that it wasn’t a good idea to eat there. Then where? 

My  companions and I have all lived in or around Los Angeles for years. But here was the bottom line: None of us had ever lived in or near Downtown. We had no idea where to even start looking for restaurant areas. And, because none of us had never had to get to other desirable locations from Downtown, we had no idea how to get to our suggestions from where we currently were. Just like how my world was turned into unknown territory just by skipping my regular junction, we stood dumbly in the emptying opera house wondering how to feed ourselves. 

If I had been with certain people, if I had been with a smaller group, if and if and if, then maybe I would have tapped deeply into my LA sixth sense and found a place that would have been lovely. Instead, we stuck to the beaten path and ascertained that at 6 PM on a Sunday traffic was great and Santa Monica was only 15 minutes away instead of 2 hours. We ended our evening in a creperia on Third Street, laughing over reheated fries and bready paninis. 

And when I left to go home? I did it again! Almost. I almost took the wrong onramp onto the freeway, thinking that I was heading north instead of south? Or was it south instead of north? Or was it because the northern onramp is usually on the second to farthest right lane except for this one time?I don’t know.

All I know is that it was highly undignified to be so lost.