"How do I go back to california?...

How do I leave the green fields here?"- Emerson Hart

BYU does not have a Spring Break. I see this as a tragedy, but at the same time can follow their line of logic. Supposedly, there are statistically significantly more deaths over Spring Break than there are during the Thanksgiving and Winter breaks combined. Yet, I think there are many students who are willing to play the gamble of a higher probability of death than stay in the homework laden dreariness of school for a week in the middle of the term. Most of them would probably utilize that time to catch up on their homework and episodes of some random television program, like Azu Manga Daio. Not that I know how to spell that one, anyway...

So, like any rational human being (I'm going to buy an orange. I'm going to buy another orange. I'm going to buy another orange....), I gave myself my own little 'spring break'. That's right, I went to California for the weekend. Thursday through Sunday. What's more, I was able to get my very own Sam to accompany me. I think everyone should get a Sam. It would probably also help with the homework stresses, as well as having a relief driver. & I'm very glad that he did come, as it got me to look at my growing up geographical and socioeconomic area with a different lens...

Sam is from Wisconsin. The Green Bay area, if I'm not mistaken. I've never been there, but I'd love to go someday. Also, I'm pretty sure that their cheese is better, but I'll never know until I try it. Perhaps cows derive the same utility from snow that I do, which would make the "Happy Cows from CA" commercials a bit more unrealistic. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that Green Bay and Claremont are two very different spheres, or, rather, cities... For starters, in WI they call them "bubblers" instead of "water/drinking fountains". I must admit that I rather like bubblers more than the other options... And a bunch of other random things and mannerisms that I was able to observe from my pirate comrade in arms, but this isn't a post about Sam. I'd have to do much more homework for that. This is a post about CA.

California was my home for about... 20 years. Give or take. While I love it, I know that my time as a Californian, or at least my time for living in CA, is drawing to a close. Every time I return, that feeling comes over me. In a sense it's sad, but for me it also means that I have somewhere else to go in the world. Where? I'm really not that sure, but I'd like to think that it'll be somewhere around Michigan or Wisconsin or Minnesota. Who knows, maybe I'm going to relocate to Green Bay; become a Packers fan and wear cheese on my head while grinning in the frigid, frozen snow. Actually, that doesn't sound too bad... & I keep digressing. California... Los Angeles-Long Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area... The 909 as it touches upon the 626 and others... Home... The growing up place, at least...

There is a part of "home" that I'll always love, and that's the undeveloped wilderness in the foothills near my house... the tide pools, away from the eyesight of the un-sightly tourists in bathing suits that are two sizes too small... The way the freeway makes me think of a waterfall at night... & of course, Patty's burritos and falafel from Saca's-- those will always be super delicious, even if I'm not supposed to eat spicy food anymore. I hope those things always stay the same. I visited a few places that I used to frequent while I was growing up, like Ramona Middle School, CHS, and downtown La Verne, where I used to work at a place called Podge's that no longer exists in that location. Now it's The Local Deli. I worked there until November, and even that has changed! The place that I used to watch the BYU football games during last season doesn't even feel familiar to me anymore... how sad! I noticed this all as I was driving and dragging Sam to whichever place popped into my mind at the time and seemed plausible enough to travel to. Like the Circle K (strange things are afoot there, or so I've been told). I don't know if Sam caught up on this, but I felt as though I was chasing down something that I used to know, feeling into the dark in the hopes of grasping something that made me think, "yes! This is CA, this is my home, this is me", but each time I pulled my hand out to inspect I came up with only shadows of the past, already moving into a completely different direction than my own. Big wheel keeps on turnin', CA keeps on burnin'... er, doing stuff...

I would recommend a random road trip to CA to anyone with the desire to experience something new. Maybe you'll get something different out of it if you actually go to LA or the beach, or San Diego (Saint Doug, as I like to call it), and especially if it's up to the San Fransisco Bay Area... I wouldn't mind CA if it was just for visiting, but there's just something inside of me that knows that I could never really live there again. I could reside there, maybe, if I had to, but I wouldn't really be living... The beautiful thing about life, though, is that it's living-- it's always changing, ever moving into the shadows of our understanding until we learn enough about it and us that we can see the tip of it's nose, before it plunges even further into the unknown...