Location: Los Angeles, CA
Date: August 28, 2009

After three years of floating around the continent, drifting between small towns, national forests, and now.here places, I find myself sucked into an urban landscape like no other.

It was upon me in no time. I drove into the surrounding suburbs like any other vagabond, but before I knew it, I had been sucked into a nightmare of twisted and endless freeways. They pulled me into the jam-packed twelve lanes of traffic and I held on for dear life. This was no pristine and preserved landscape, this was no uninhabited desert highway, this was no of the world from which I had come.

My knuckles clench tighter, gripping the steering wheel for dear life. Around me trucks, cars and motorcycles swerve in and out of traffic the drivers apparently gifted with extrasensory faculties. I feel like a slug, a turtle, or the slowest moving mammal on earth.

It's tricky, the faster I drive, the deeper the realization of my van's weight and my inability to stop even if I wanted to. The images a clear in my mindseye, the attempt at brakes as I slam into and obliterate the vehicle in front of me, as all of my worldly belongings including the dog fly through the front windshield. However to no keep up with the flow feels as though it would also result in death. The only thing I can do is hold on and hope my unknown destination will reveal itself to me before it's too late.

...

After dropping Moses in dog day care, I slept in airport long term parking that first night curled up in the fetal position. It gave my ears space to adjust to the urban drone and my lungs time to adjust to the air. After being here for some time I've concluded I may just be allergic to this place. I can't get over the notion that with every breath I'm sucking back poison. It makes me think of John Nichols' book The Sky's the Limit where he talks about how even though the air is clear and transparent, it's still filled with dirt. The only difference is that in LA you can see that almost ever-present layer of smog floating overhead.

The next morning I was ripped from my steel womb and onto an airplane destined for the wide open prairies of Alberta and the Peigan Reservation. While in Peigan, L.A. hummed, a dull ache in the back of my cerebral cortex. I would have to go back, I would have to face those freeways again, I couldn't stay here forever, I still had work to do.

peace,
d