kerouac says

things i am looking forward to about LA include:

• camping. we've already made a pact to go before school starts. one of nastiest things about new york is how you just can't get out, for the most part, for under a few hundred bucks. it's car rental, it's train fare, it's motel sixes in the catskills. you can't just motor yourself to a state park and pitch a tent in car you already have. it puts the kibosh on spontaneity. maybe i'm overestimating how much spontaneity i'll be able to handle while Ph.D.ing, but any camping at all is better than the status quo.
  
• the ocean. the one i remember.
  
• burritos.
• seeing the sky.
  
• trees. even palms, which i never really considered trees until i moved somewhere where there aren't any.
  
• grilling food outside.
• shoe diversity. in manhattan, the only shoes i can wear out of the house are ones i know i can walk a mile in, which means i wear the same shoes every day. literally. all those nice shoes that are not ouchy but also not built for heavy walking? they've been sitting in my closet lo these four years. i know, congested city may mean the parking-to-destination distances may be greater than i anticipate. still.
• a change in commute frustration. right now, while rush hour is no picnic, the getting-home that really makes me want to stab myself is waiting twenty minutes on a platform at 1:30 for a train that will go local all the way to the heights. i'm sure there will be more than plenty of times traffic will induce psychosis in LA, but that lonely early morning platform wait will not be one of them. in fact, if we can work the housing right, i'm willing to be there will be at least some times that getting home takes less than 45 minutes.
  
• granted, i have only been there once, but on that trip i encountered no part of los angeles that smelled like pee. i'm sure those parts exist, but they will almost certainly be more avoidable. i know i sound like a prig. whatever: less pee.
  
• no more time zone follies between me and the loved ones on the west coast. somehow i think it's easier when you're the earlier party.
  
• more vegetarian food.
• fat fricking tire.
• wineries you can drive to. (please do not evoke long island. the last bottle of long island wine i tried i couldn't finish, and that is truly saying something. plus: see above, re: driving.)
• pas de humidity. at least, not like here.
• space. i'm used to not being able to walk on the sidewalk without being touched by other people. frankly, i am ready to go back to expecting my bubble to be respected.
  

the moral dilemma is that a lot of the things that bug me about new york are representative of the way we should be living. we should not have cars. those of us who aren't farmers probably should live in pockets of dense population where services can be provided to a concentrated audience. we should have to pay attention to the homeless rather than isolate ourselves from the moral discomfort that confronting the issue provokes.

i still want to do a happy dance. LA may not have been exactly what i had in mind in all my pining for the west coast, but i'll take it.