Greetings from a very rainy LA everyone,
Yep, the palm trees are hanging their heads today, ladies and gentlemen, and if L. Ron Hubbard were still alive he just might start collecting all the humanoids two by two, relieved their man bodies of thetans, brought them of a status of "clear" and put them on an arc and sailed them away from Planet Earth and to Tom Cruise's personal planet, spinning around somewhere in Andromeda. But, hey come on, Tom doesn't really own it, does he? He's just a caretaker, kinda, right?
In short its raining in LA and its hard to shake the weak but patient chill thats come with the precipitation. So, I figured I'd blog about my trip down the coast. So here goes....
I left Seattle last Friday, somewhat prepared for the 22 hour trip down to Frisco. I say "somewhat" because you can NEVER prepare for a bus trip. Just when you got it figured out, there's always delays, or a new smell that's yet to inhabit your nostrils, a drunk that cancels out any formula for safe, quiet bus travel, or a new definition of "bat shit insane" that comes on to the bus and is magnetically attracted to the seat next to you, and needs to tell his life story, then put plastic bag on his head and unzip his pants. You know, stuff like that. Gee, I'm so self involved, I thought I was the only one not wearing any underwear on the bus.
Portland is a very pretty town, as is all the Northwest, and I have to say when we headed out south, out of Portland, I started to feel a bit down. I'm a big Lewis and Clark guy, and I thought about their little jaunt out west often while traversing the Nortwest Passage. When we were heading out of the region, I felt that there was nothing more to discover. I thought, "well, my journey is done, I will now head back, I guess." But then we reached Eugene, and plastic bag man boarded, and I once again knew nothing about the universe. I rolled into San Francisco, into the downtown area with its liquor stores and late night massage parlors, checked into a hostel and bunked with some Europeans who, guess what, aren't into underwear either. From there I walked, walked and walked some more. I don't know what that was about necessarily, but I just really wanted to walk and be alone. I walked clear out to the coast line where a sunset happened to me, and yet again, conceptions about anything were eliminated...I was a newborn, gasping, "what the..."
I guess thats it. Just when I think I know anything about anything, the universe, says, "whoa, slugger, not so fast..." The frontier ran out of land, and is now in our spirits. That need to discover, to go where we've never been, to meet new people, resounds in America's collective psyche, but it gets shouted over by dreams of owning homes and cars and laptops and the music filling our brains through earbuds as people in our lives come and go and the sun rises and falls. But in the quiet, when we unplug all the plugs and kill the engines, we can hear the undiscovered country calling us, yearning for us to find it, to be part of it. I'm typing all this from my laptop, and I've even blogged a time or two from my smartphone. Hey, I say its ok to surrender to the times, just don't worship them. I do know that the journey back east will be a journey I've yet to take. There's people I haven't meant and places are always new again if we don't see them from the angle of the past.
San Fran to LA is filled with high grassy hills, tree topped mountains, vinyards, cattle and signs all down the interstate that read "Stop the Congress Created Water Shortage", or, "Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl." Its pretty, but a kind of pretty that comes with a cost. The sunshine makes LA look real pretty, and its hard to believe a bad neigborhood is a bad neighborhood here until the sun gets a little low, and the night picks up its paintbrush and mixes in the shade of urban darkness. But the whole of LA is getting a bath today, a complete scrub down, even behind the ears, as I type. The sirens are abound in the bathwater of Hollywood, some kind of emergency seems to be taking place...well, it is slippery out there.
Talk to you soon from somewhere I've never been, even if I have...
Todd
No comments:
Post a Comment