Why I go to California
I’ve tried to move to California many times
Something about that place
Speaks to me
The ugliness of modern life
Can be found most anywhere
And this is no exception
So when in California I ponder it or
Squint my eyes to screen it out
Focus on the beauty instead
The banality doesn’t dissuade me, nor the horror
Los Angeles doesn’t rebuff me
With its whole ‘natural’ thing, nor its freeways and ‘car-be-cues’
It is urban after all, yes
More like 100 cities
Crammed into a valley
But it’s surrounded by mountains
And the sea
Even the worst neighborhoods have that
Can remember that
I don’t figure into it though
Los Angeles doesn’t focus on me
It’s fair to say
It barely notices me
Which is part of the problem
Why I haven’t stuck yet
And part of why I go there
I have no real reason to be there
(Unless love of the sea is a reason, or seaweed, or film)
No job in California to say
‘You have to be here on Monday
And take care of this’
No-
On Monday I’ll be elsewhere
Doing other things
Good things worth doing
Just this year I realized
That if I had insisted to go there
When I was shoved out the door
And told ‘Go anywhere (that has a university) and do well – do your best’
I would have done better in California
Instead
I went to Chicago
So cold
So morbid
(For me it was – I became the living dead – the outpatient; I was cut up and tested)
This wouldn’t have happened by the sea, near the mountains
A bitter northern lake was the perfect setting for that
The problems I brought there would have dispersed
On the beach or the crest
Of a canyon hike
I think those that loved me
Wanted to keep me closer
While pushing me away
But either way meant boarding an airplane
To get home in a few hours
So what was the big deal?
They said ‘No’
And I needed to get away
Not take the greyhound for a secret weekend in Baltimore (which was too close – a mere 700 miles)
Indulging my white-faced passion
For a friend that literally stabbed me
Suffering from the drama of abandonment
Which was the opposite of what was taking place
I had a friend from California at the time
Who was sleeping with this friend in Baltimore
I could have taken his place (as he did mine)
In his home state
A swap negotiation that would have meant freedom
For me
He was from Ramona
‘Which is nowhere – up in the desert hills of San Diego’
Once much later on one of my trips to California
(This time the excuse was a conference)
I was invited to spend an afternoon there
By a buddy I had made – he was a paramedic – we said hi to his father,
and went to the Barona reservation casino for dinner with him
He ate standing up at a counter
It might have been a corn dog
Did we go up there for dinner? Was that the overt reason?
I left hungry but got what I came for-
to walk through an average neighborhood, probably past the former house of an old friend
who I’d dreamt of pounding to death with my fists
And seen
That it was just a place
A nowhere place up in the high desert
Not without beauty
A guy sawing plywood in his driveway
Desert scrub invaded by wan suburbs
I haven’t been to the far north of California, but I’ve driven around
More than just a few spots
Tried different environments
As I pretended
That I had the power
To be there
The place where I hadn’t wadded up a bunch of chances like tissues
And infected them with snot-like cancer
I can’t decide which is more beautiful
The Pacific shaped rocks on a pebble strewn beach
Or the sound they make as the water washes through them
To climb once again into the powerful surf
The flora / the fauna , of course attenuated by the clumsy violent history of our people
Who cleared it, settled it, made it what it is today
A collection of bad architecture, simple rotten boxes or gaudy faux appropriations
Some masterpieces
Like the Getty museum
Which could pass for the aerie
Of robed Vulcan hidden masters
Or the cottages on the Venice canals
Whose simple gardens invite
Elegant solutions
But most of the housing stock and interior design- hideous
I of course say this as an ambivalent alienated wanderer
Leering from the outside
A home is a home though
A design scheme or simplicity can make it work
I’ve seen it happen
What’s so great about a brick row house in Philadelphia by the way?
Or a restored farmhouse in Maryland?
Except that that’s what I grew up with
I screen out whatever ugliness is there effortlessly
Which as I said I can do in California
Sometimes this is as easy as gazing
Over a rich buffoon’s golf course
On the edge of a bluff
To see the mists of Catalina catch the light
Ever so enchantingly
I said goodbye to that today
My life set on the path where I’m not quite there yet
And I could have done better
But that’s just mist that will burn off
In an hour’s time
Or grow into fog
Or wed itself to pollution
And become smog
And the whole thing will fall into the ocean
One day (soon)
While bursting into flames
The ocean, however
Will remain
And I’ll take a boat to get there
If I have to
and return again
Looking for a place
Somewhere to start
A lease on a clean and focused heart
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