I may be wrong on the whole, but in my own experience, people don't do a lot of moving from Los Angeles to New York. Or vice versa. Sure it happens here and there. People do move from one coast to another. I met a few in school. But aside from students looking to get wholly away from where they began, or dreamers looking for a new world in the same country they live in, it doesn't happen much. For the most part, New Yorkers are New Yorkers. And California people don't like it in New York. I've met a few who came to live in NY. I've seen many of them return after a few years. Just not their bag. That "thing" they loved about the West coast was not to be found in New York. I can't speak for the California experience. The only time I've spent there, aside from a summer in 2000 or so (was it 2000?) was when I was a child.

So we very often stick to our own sides. I was transplanted. For the most part, my father (like many other Mexican Americans) stayed out West. But me, I was taken on a ride to many places. There was Maryland suburbia, rural New York, urban Miami Beach. Many other places. Yet, most of my life has been on the East Coast. And you hardly even hear about California on TV when you live in New York. It may as well be Beirut. New York watches New York TV, and before I moved to the West Coast, I had no idea that wildfires tore across the midwest and West with the frequency, intensity, and consistency that they do.

It was always a bit of a strange experience, telling people where I had been born. In many places, the questions are set up in such a way that there is a presupposition of having stayed in one place all your life. People would say, "Where you from?" And I earnestly had no idea how to answer this for a year or two. I would end up countering with "Where was I born? Where did I grow up? Or where do I live now?" Which was always a mistake, as people would then claim all three! But in the end, it was almost always an oddity. "Los Angeles, hunh?" Then we'd talk about the other states I've lived in. Sooner or later we'd get to the question of whether or not I was a "Military Brat" (no).

The idea of California remained a seemingly inexorable tug in the back of my mostly East Coast existence. I knew, always knew, that one day I'd have to go back. Back to California. I found the LL Cool Jay tune, the Zeppelin tune, the Baez tune, the Mamas and the Papa's tune, the Chili Peppers tune. All my life I've felt her waiting for me, empty fotos, rooms waiting to be filled, walked through, lived in, laughed in. Sun streaming through windows forever on the sunny side. A memory soaked in golds and oranges and browns and greens, like a photo from the 70s. Sand under my feet. A distant obligation of a great sojourn, the road back to Califas. Maybe the one that lured men to their gold and their dreams and later, their death. For me, it means turning around to face the place from which I had begun on this Earth...and to the place I've long known has borne my name. Her welcoming memory, her rivers and valleys. It was always a comfort in my life. Knowing about the San Joaquín Valley, and the San Joaquín River. See? I'm not a freak! There's a land where my name is normal and not only do people know how to pronounce it, the very land itself knows me...

I never said that. That was my feeling.

California. When I got older, and my friends were of the age that they would watch Cheech and Chong, I heard the jokes. When I told someone I was born in Los Angeles, they would do the Cheech and Chong bit. "Oh, yeah? Born...in East LA! You know, the whole ese walk and all. And wouldnt you know, I really had no idea what they were talking about.

It all kept adding up. And then one day the town I was living in seemed all wrong. Change swept through my life like a tsunami. And before you knew it, I was finally headed West. Now I'm in Oregon. I'm so close, I can feel it tugging at me. Califas, land of sun, the Dream, and the White Heron. Regreso. Voy hogar.

Perhaps with the Spring.