Coffee Don't Lie

Trains coming out of the pavement under my sneakers. Logos I don't recognize. Make Art Not War. I still love you.

LOVE ME TILL MY HEART STOPS.

I miss graffiti.

Why is it that the second I step a foot out of Los Angeles I fall in love with every other city? I'm like a teenage boy with an indiscriminate travel boner. I'm sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco (with FREE internet!!!!) and all I can think about is how get out of LA and back to a Real City. I'm thinking about my old coffeeshop in Boston, my coffeeshop friends, my coffeeshop attitude. I walked here thinking about New York and Boston and Philly, haunted and dreaming.

Maybe I remember things with rose glasses, and I'm never happy where I am. I hated Boston by the time I left. Still, I doubt I will remember my time in LA with any great longing. I haven't made it mine, I doubt I could. It tricks people that way, this vast beast challenging you tame it. All this time it just tamed me, in traffic and artifice.

I have to move as soon as I can, I know it. I am not this jaded. I am not this depressed. I am not this creatively constipated. I recently told my boyfriend that I am over palm trees and I think they are stupid. He said I didn't really think that. He was right, probably more right than he knew when he said it, because when he said that I didn't think palm trees are stupid, he was really saying:

"Carol. You don't think any trees are stupid."

Everyone is coffeeshop looks familiar. Not from TV or movies, not from magazines, but from my life. I know all of these people. I've served them coffee and discussed music with them. I'm curious and they are curious. I have to get back here.