So, after spending about a week on a farm in the middle of the desert with the Children of Light and 2 weeks on a farm with the Twelve Tribes, it was on to some cities to visit family and friends.
I’m not a fan of cities, in fact I don’t think cities should exist. My definition of a city is any landbase that has too many people on it that it requires the importation of goods for it to continue to exist. When a place requires things to be imported, it has outreached its land base and is not sustainable. Therefore, cities shouldn’t exist because they are not sustainable. The reality is that they do exist, so changes need to be made or the changes will just come with time in the form of starvation and probably war. Oh, and feel free to consider me a hypocrite at any time, because I am one. I’m trying to be less of one, so if you could help me with that, I’d appreciate it.
Anyway, I have some friends and family that live in cities, so I figured I stop by and spend some time with them. San Diego was very relaxing. After working so hard and not getting a lot of rest at the Morning Star Ranch, it was nice to rest for a while. We stayed at Lynn’s place for 3 or 4 days I think. Lynn is around my parents age and I don’t know her all that well, but I’ve gotten to know her better within the last several years. I spent a weekend with her in the summer of 2005 while I was working for BP in Los Angeles. And now I’ve spent another several days with her. When we first arrived in San Diego, we went straight to the beach, Ocean Beach I think. I really like the ocean, its power and vastness and beauty are captivating. The beaches of southern california are particularly nice because its almost always sunny and warm. There is a reason why so many people live there, but it still doesn’t make total sense to me. Anyway, we spent a while at the beach and then went to Lynn’s place. She was very hospitable and we talked a lot. We got caught up on whats happened during the last couple years and we talked a lot about the road trip and then talked some philosophies and things and current issues and such, it was good. It was just getting to the end of the citrus season and she had two tangerine trees in her yard so she was getting a little tired of them so Emily and I ate a lot of tangerines. Thanks, Lynn. If I seem like I’m bouncing around, its because I am, I sort of like to do that and because this is my blog I can do whatever I want, yay. We didn’t do a lot while we stayed in San Diego, mostly because we were tired and just wanted to hang out and relax. We did do laundry and hung our clothes out to dry on pretty much everything we could outside in her back yard. We also went to La Jolla cove and checked out the tide pools and the seals. One of the seals was supposed to give birth sometime soon, so we hung out for a while to see if we could catch that, but we didn’t have the patience to wait it out. I think that’s about it. On to Los Angeles.
We probably would have just passed through Los Angeles, but one of my really good friends from college, Gabe Sjoberg just moved there, so I really wanted to stop and see her. A couple of days before we got to LA I found a Borders gift card in my wallet, so while Gabe was busy, we went to Borders in LA. I went in and got a couple of things. Follow Me to Freedom, by Shane Claiborne and something else that I can’t remember right now. The new book by Shane is really good, you should read it and anything else that he’s written. He’s a very good writer and reading about the way that he is and the way that he lives will definitely challenge you. We were only in Borders for like 1o minutes and when we got back to the car I had a parking ticket, $60, thanks LAPD. Hanging out with Gabe was good and her friends were pretty cool, too. Gabe loves nature too, so we all decided to go to Joshua Tree National Park together.
Joshua tree was a pretty cool place, but by this point we were mostly getting tired of seeing desert. Joshua trees aren’t actually trees. They are yuccas, big yuccas. Yuccas are all over the place in the deserts in the US, but most of them are small. They look like mini palm trees, except the palm part of them is much smaller than an actual palm. Palm fronds spread out pretty far from the trunk of the tree whereas on a yucca, there is just a little poof of palmness at the top. Joshua trees have lots of little arms that come out from the main part of the plant and then make all sorts of curves and stuff and then there are those little palm looking poofs at the ends of the arms. We did some driving around in the park, some hiking, some climbing around on big rocks and we camped. We did “primitive” camping, which means its free and its far away from anything. We walked about a mile off of the road and then set up camp in the middle of the desert. It was the most quiet night of camping that I’d ever experienced. No wind, no animal noises, no car noises, nothing, it was really nice. And then back to LA for a few more days.
We spent a couple more days hanging out with Gabe in LA, we went to Venice Beach, home to where Baywatch used to be filmed and home to a lot of interesting vagabonds. The strip of tourist shops along the beach also now has a bunch of medicinal marijuana places. People were standing outside with signs saying, “The doctor is in.” Apparently most people qualify and can get a prescription so they can smoke weed, california is pretty weird. We didn’t hit that up at all though, I don’t smoke. I found something really sweet while walking on the beach, though. A Leatherman Skeletool, really good condition, I was pretty excited about that. They retail for somewhere around $70. I guess that made up for the parking ticket. Too bad a couple days later I got another ticket for $50, thanks again, LAPD. That about does it for LA.
Next stop: Oakland, CA.
My search for a life that makes sense 