L.A. (again)

If there's one big problem with L.A. (aside from the giant mothership of brown smog hovering over the city, obscuring the mountains in the distance) it's that you need a car to navigate around. Otherwise, you find yourself stuck in a Best Western a scant 50 feet off the 405 exit ramp to Sherman Oaks, watching Craig Ferguson clips on YouTube in prep for the interview tomorrow while slugging AquaFina mixed with fizzy Target-brand 'immunity supplement.' You can't walk anywhere. There's a mythical creature called a bus that, legend has it, makes an appearance at certain intersections if the right words are recited, but that's not exactly an option.

You have high-speed Internet. You compulsively visit the Presidential polling sites, and the numbers for Pennsylvania and Ohio haven't shifted in the last five minutes. You check your email, but nothing's coming in. You watch another YouTube clip, and realize 30 seconds in that you've seen it before. You wonder where the closest In-and-Out Burger is, and if you can reach it on foot.

Meh-hik-oh

Southern Mexico, late night, a couple of weeks ago: Sheets of rain blasting from the lightning-ripped heavens, burning tires belching greasy black smoke in the road, half-finished high-rises looming from the Veracruz roadside. And then south, through winding green valleys into the greenest of them all: a lake in the bowl of an extinct volcano, teeming with fishermen, the black soil so rich in nutrients that you can plant a stick in it and – pop – up grows a tree.