The pine tree and the bear

In California for a work trip. The drive out here took me through the endless length of Nebraska (sadly, the fastest route through the state is also the most boring, plus it's an eternity), vast spaces of Wyoming, where I saw clouds stacked beautifully in a blue sky, Utah, of which I saw little (being asleep for most of it), Nevada, where I witnessed the weird neon of casinos at three in the morning, and finally California, with the scrubby mountains of pine trees turning into the industry of Sacramento and finally the skyline of San Francisco and the bay leading me around to the charm of Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

I've taken a ton of photos out of a truck window. Most of them are not very good, but they are good for my memory. And some of them tickle me.

lives I might have lived

Frequently when I travel, I end up wondering what paths my life might have taken me down if these new places had been formative parts of my life. It was especially hard not to do that while wandering around the campus of Stanford U. It's big, beautiful, full of confident young girls and guys on bikes (and the quarter hasn't even started yet), sun gleaming off of buff stone buildings and peeking between the spears of palm trees lining avenues. I'd have to have been a different person to go to school there, and I'd be even more different after I came out, I'm sure.

I also wandered through nearby neighborhoods, as I am wont to do, and snapped a bunch of photos and even took a few short videos. It feels a bit like Manila to me, but I don't know how or why exactly. I mean, I know there are a ton of Filipinos in the area - my cousins are among them - so am I extrapolating? It can't be the weather, because even though it was warm today, it was hardly like Manila's overwhelming heat. It's not the houses themselves. It's probably the exuberant plant life: palms and spiky shrubs, thick gnarled trees, hedges of flowers, trees with giant blossoms or hanging with fruit, the colors of green and pink and red and orange and white.

I'm such a sucker for new places. They make me want to reinvent myself and my entire life.