The day after our return...

The day after…
Soon enough I’ll post all about my actual time overseas with the group, and what a wonderful time it was. For now though, I would like to devote a few lines about the day after our return and how Los Angeles seemed, felt, and smelled in contrast to our three weeks in China and Taiwan, for Los Angeles was no longer the place I had left. The few hours I did mange to sleep after our return were a mixture of memory and dreams, of feasts that were consumed with chop sticks on round tables till our bellies were plump and exhausted of how well we were treated, and of unbelievable sights of ancient walls and temples, that I had long known in history textbooks of my youth, and of a splendid people redefining and celebrating tradition aboard the bullet train of change and movement and building on a grand scale as they have been for thousands of years, and of highly informative guided tours and lectures focusing on the micro as well as the macro and all the blurring grey in between and on the mainland seeking evidence of the communist state only to be entertained on the streets by a hyper-capitalist system full of cart and shop venders exchanging every possible good, and yes the old red propagandist party was still present in fading posters of the Chairman which with patience and a firm voice could be purchased “three for ten,” and of that island bastion maintaining the status quo in the face of overwhelming odds in the hopes of better days. A morning drive through downtown Los Angeles that Saturday morning after our return revealed how devoid of building cranes our Angelino skyline is, say for the one lone crane that did its business with steel, and stranger yet were the relatively empty streets – where were the massive hurrying crowds moving in every which direction in this world renown place, and for a city with the second worse air quality in the nation, the skies were surprisingly blue and the breakfast severed with friends at Dona Inez’ could have gone on record for the smallest ever presented to a group of guests. The day after our return, Los Angeles had seized to be that colossal on the fast track on the West Coast, and instead had some how managed to transform itself in my three week absence, into a quiet, dormant, and unmoving city.