Home from Los Angeles.  In 5 days I traversed Santa Monica, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Sunset, West Hollywood, Palos Verdes, Redondo, Manhattan Beach, and paid a visit to Lacma,where I was uplifted and moved by the Archibald Motley jazz age exhibit. The city is my roots, I was made and birthed there, and though I prefer the unrelenting intellect of New York or DC, or even Iowa City--LA is interested in exercise and space and showbusiness, over ideas and literature and the world at large--I still like it.  It's a place that is eternally itself, not so malleable, it's still this.