Happy New Year

California is calling again.  Her eternal majesty.  San Diego, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, Del Mar.  I think about the orange hills of Carlsbad, the dry wind that blows off the Pacific and how everything is just orange.  Tinted orange; the trees, the sky, the sand, everything.  Santa Monica, Venice Beach.  I think about the big sky above the pale basin of the San Fernando Valley and the hazy hills around Burbank.  I remember that little trailer that I stayed in just off interstate 5 on Palm Ave in Burbank and how I could have stayed there forever, showering under a hose in the morning under that unexplainable California sun.   I choke on the thought of all of that sunshine, all of that land, all of that faded sky.  It is paralyzing just to know that way out there the air is warm and the ocean is welcoming.   Anaheim, Pomona, West Hollywood, the way it is all packed together, it is waiting for me. I think about the streets I wandered in West Hollywood and the Barney’s where I played pool.  I travel up the coast.  Santa Barbara, San Louis Obispo, Big Sur- famous for the moon, just a blip on the map.  I want to know everything about that blip, I want to eat and breath that blip, see the moon from behind my closed eyelids underneath a sky of stars.  Monterey, Santa Cruz, the names are so pleasing to say- as warm as I imagine them to be.  Warm, and ancient.  Then to San Jose, and finally The Bay area: San Francisco, the end of the line.  The Old Frisco bay.  The bay city just waiting for the big one to come along and break it off into the Pacific where it will float away so coolly, no worries man.  I think about being born in the wrong place, 3 thousand miles from where I want to be.