East of Los Angeles

When an expanse of sands comes into view you’ll see sparsely dotted weeds lying flat on the ground. For soil is sterile and weather is harsh the weeds are not only unable to grow tall but struggle to survive by laying flat on the ground. Of this wilderness, though no vestige of civilization, a straight lined thin and lonely unclear yet somewhat clear trail lies in the sands like the trace of a snail. That trail may be the trail that the Native Americans who were driven by the white men crossed with bitter tears, or the fortune hunters lured by gold passed pulling mules loaded with shovels, mattocks, and wild dreams, or a lonely wanderer passing with sighs carrying a knapsack packed with lots of sad stories. When the trail merges into the gorge along side of a dried river bed and become mixed with sand by the rocks it takes the shape of a hill surrounded by greens though the color is simple but not affected, and this green expands endlessly to the sunny side meadows to cloud hanging rides to steep mountaintops swaying in a high wind. And if you keep walking with the mountain you’ll come to level land on other side, and in this flat the waters and roads like circuits on the microchip board, looks enmeshed with one another, actually, run all directions in good order, and houses, yards with green grasses comes into sight. While looking down the name of a gigantic city, where all kinds of differently shaped and colored motorcars speed as the symbol of civilization, the flying machine descends, folding its huge wings. As all big cities are, L. A. is also enclosed in the network of highways and roads radiate in all directions from the heart of city to its outskirts. On both sides of these streets, the tall street lamps stretching long arms over the way, enjoying siesta under the warmth of the beams of the sun. The spectacle scenery of the street is the palm trees measuring height of rolling sun with length of its shadow. And because of my preconception, that L. A. is situated along a shoreline, I, a stranger to this city, while standing on a roadside watching sundown behind palm tree, even felt that I was in a small and beautiful island somewhere in the South Pacific. I, now, standing in a corner of L. A. the city neither yours nor mine, watching a piece of lonely cloud drifting in a darkening eastern sky where my affection and sentiment dwell.