Sometimes my time in Los Angeles feels like a dream. My childhood was in the shadows of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's plantations. The past hangs thick in the humid air. The Appalachian mountains, the world's oldest range, is cloaked in vegetation reminiscent of the Amazon's depths. The old boys of the hollows seem to have grown with the mountains from their inception

I had a core feeling of roots, of beloning on this ancient land

And then came Los Angeles, a virtually history-less post-urban apocolypse of eleven million people all seemingly in their cars at rush hour. The dry desert inhalation shows no relation to its sticky green counterpart in the south. Small towns are so non-existent that they are recreated as shopping centers of glitz. Old Appalachian folk contrast with fashioned up aspiring stars and the armies of mentally ill homeless.

I now find myself wearing turbans and medieval white dresses in contrast to camouflage hats and khakis of yore. It is said that the electro-magnetic field is particularly heavy in the south, and it is virtually non-existent in LA.

I sometimes feel like I may wake up, arriving back in Charlottesville Virginia in late April as the flowers are blooming and the school is gearing up for party season. This time in California, of yogic discipline in the nightmare of Moloch, is not bad, but it is not home. Perhaps the work I have done has unhinged me from my attachment to that area, but it remains imbedded in my soul.

SDS