The immensely available broad light of Los Angeles, even as the days have become short -- it's one of the things I like about Los Angeles. And it's something few people have in NYC as I was reminded today, reading my friend Miranda McLeod's beautiful, sometimes angry, blog, My Brother Is Dead. The most recent entry: "The little things: We stole our air conditioner." The subtitle of My Brother is "I'm grieving, you're a voyeur. We're a match made in hell," which is only half true because Miranda's writing is so smart and full of feeling. One line, from Nov. 4: "Do you ever feel .... Like your brain is a white room with nothing - not even you - in it?" (My answer: Yes, but I didn't know it.) Friday:

...one fine day, what feels like years after you've forgotten that you live above ground, you step outside to find the scaffolding [in front of your apartment building] gone, and it's like God lifted the roof off of the sky. The sun kisses your skin....

Miranda's brother, Kyle McLeod, was killed this summer in a freak train accident. He was 22, one semester away from finishing college. He was planning a motorcycle trip through South America. There's an Echo Park connection -- beyond the fact that My Brother is being read on an Echo Park laptop. Kyle and Miranda spent their earliest years here, on Morton Ave., before they moved to Eagle Rock. Not to mention that Kyle's death just after July 4 has darkened the view from my house ever since. I have known him and felt close to him since he was eight. His dad is my daughter's godfather. And I'm awed by Miranda's ability to write meanginfully about the loss of her brother -- in such a way that, for me, goes beyond voyeurism and personal connection.