A journey

I'd be safe and warm
if I was in LA
California dreamin'
on such a winter's day

If I have my way, these last weeks of the year would go like this:

I get into Los Angeles the week before Christmas and see as many of my friends as I can. Maybe do last minute shopping with them. Maybe even do some cook-ahead Christmas dishes for them.

I will drive to Santa Barbara on Christmas eve, and check into my favourite hotel - the Fess Parker Doubletree Hotel.

Maybe I will have my best girlfriend with me. Maybe not. I really just want to be by myself, do my own thing in my own way at my pace. Just chill. I do not want to have anybody with me whom I have to take feelings into consideration. My best girlfriend will let me be like that. Yeah, I probably will have her with me. That is if she wants to.

Get into one of my favourite malls. Into one of my favourite shops. Catch the mood of last minute desperate frenzied shopping. Watch clueless husbands buy useless lingerie that wives will return the morning after Christmas.

I will have room service for Christmas eve dinner. And watch old movies after.

Christmas day will be on the beach. Roller-blading. Playing with other people's dogs. Christmas night dinner at the hotel restaurant - whatever is on their menu is alright by me.

Day after Christmas is my turn to shop. With a vengeance. I swoop up anything that catches my eye, tickles my fancy. I stop when I am spent (emotionally and near financially) or when the shops close, whichever comes first.

I want to take the next few days at a leisurely pace. Visit the Santa Barbara Mission. Drive into the St Inez mountains. Stroll State Street all over again. Pet every dog I meet. Then get on the byways and highways of Greater Los Angeles. Stopping wherever I find interesting enough to stop for.

On New Year's eve, I will get into Pasadena. Finally to do this one thing I have always wanted to do once in my life while I am still able-bodied - be at the Rose Parade on New Year morning.

It will not matter what I do the rest of New Year's Day.

I only know that the next day, I will finally be ready to drive back to Bakersfield, to a storage unit I have maintained all these years. A repository for ghosts - promises broken, dreams unrealised, the many things that just didn't work out. Somewhere in there are also pieces of memory that I am now willing to live with.

I will perform the exorcism to rid the physical and emotional baggage I no longer need to hold on to. I will salvage the memories that will see me through the years ahead.

And then, finally, I am ready to come back to my life here and now.

If I didn't tell her
I could leave today
California dreamin'
on such a winter's day