Ballona

2008-11-11-1600

I stayed in the spot Mike told me about (near Marina del Rey) all of Sunday. Hardly moved. Monday, walked up Ballona Creek bike trail, went up by west LA College (another good camp spot), then walked quickly crosstown/north to meet Taylor, another friend from the spring origin skills gathering and previous editor of LA permaculture email newsletter. Much of that day I was still, reading _Magic Mountain_.

Spent Monday night at Taylor's, now I'm in the Santa Monica Mountains, above Will Rogers State Park, near where there once was a Nazi camp that got shut down just after Pearl Harbor, Taylor said.

Currently sitting in an old carob and olive orchard eating too spicy garbanzos, rice, celery, beet greens (scavenged), sweet potatoes, potatoes, bit of turnip, rutabega, parsnip. Some eye (/all orifice) flies are here.

Been pondering what Mike's message for me may be.

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Don't know.

Ethan Hughes (Haul of Justice, etc.) comes to mind. Also does another guy who went to live among Amazonian indians and has stayed.

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Well, I've been learning LA. Doesn't seem to be something to be afraid of. It's beginning to appear to have many advantages over San Diego.

It's creeks all appear to be culverted/cemented in. . . but they all appear to have bike trails along their length (nothing comparable in SD), along which it is a different world: water flows, people are not in cars. Even saw a family go by on bikes, somewhat professional looking, with an extra-long trailer carting four of those large Rubbermaid bins with a pushbroom laid on top.

Once one accepts the flow of cars--possible perhaps because the exhaust isn't so bad or is blowing the other way--they almost seem just another part of the world, no more obnoxious than anything else. The world of the walkers and bikers is a separate one--sparsely populated in much of LA. We outside the cars inhabit a sort of limbo/lymphatic system, as cars rush by, confined to arteries.

It does seem somewhat easy to get away from them and I tend to hang out in places where traffic is often only a distant presence.

Especially when I take whole days to stay still, to not move, to not encounter them, to read.

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Actually sat near a highway off-ramp for an hour waiting for Taylor, and found peace there, and watched an old mango and coconut seller, and wounded vets walk the rows of cars stopped at the light as the sun set over the walls of the highway. Wilshire and Sepulveda, SE corner.

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Did not get far pondering Mike. Being with his family at a mealtime, understand his verbal charisma, maybe how it got helped to develop. Non-stop high-volume verbal play.

I'm about as competent speaking as I've heard the US president to be, if that. . .

Mind slow as molasses?

Unless we're talking about something I've thought about?

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That's it. May hike north over hills to ride a 'Metroliner' into town. May just sit here and read. I like to see where the trains go. And here it costs half of in SD (sort of).

Mike says it's never oppressively smoggy.

Peace,