Chiron's Poisoned Wound

Where is Golden California tonight? It is still my home, though we are a country's width away, flung to this Eastern Seaboard in which all is alien and new to me. It has it's beauty, I cannot deny that, yet it is strange and hostile, too. I have grown used to my western life, however small and simple, in the rolling hills and valleys of the California, the great Pacific lapping at gently at it's shores, the sun winging each evening into the waves of warm water. It is like suddenly being flung through the looking-glass and all is backwards: the Atlantic cold and the Sun barely peaking above it, Phoebus Apollo sleepy in his chariot, shivering, never quite waking as he stumbles into this cold sky, where all is reversed and unsettling.

I see New York more clearly, it's many towers seem far less exciting and suddenly quite too real, soaring upwards dressed in dirty stone and steel and brick and glass. Less magical than when I knew it was a visit, a short adventure, vital and active, whirling through shops and restaurants, parties and glimmering theaters. Intense and loud and very present now, cloaked with the constant rumor of never resting humanity shrouded with their multitude of burdens. The great and wealthy gloat and the rest of us, seeming poverty stricken, in this mass of a dying twentieth century Gotham. Superman and Batman are long gone as rot and decay ripples around us like a flood of dirty sewer water. I have never felt so alone, nor ever thought I should pine for sunny Los Angeles and it's very different modernity.

What will it be like, I wonder. Will New York ever be a home to me, however fine the address or lofty the high-rise which elevator will sweep us skyward or earthbound day after day? Where is the glitter of the Metropolis I remember? Did it fall along with the Trade Center, or am I just in culture shock? Will Time tell me, or has He too fallen?

The heaven's stars were few in L.A., but you saw them still. Here the stars are lost all together, and the lights of all the skyscrapers do not replace them for me. San Francisco's hills and fog were alive as calmly, gently the horns of the Bay sounded as the Golden Gate disappeared each evening. Here the hills are flattened and the East River and the Hudson simply growl by, angry, dirty and fighting the city to pass on to the cold Atlantic. The trees of Central Park cannot match the wild California spruce cresting craggy hillsides with gnarled low swung arms swung towards each other like the dance of nymphs. Ah, Golden California, where are you? Thy son Chiron, the archer, has lost sight of you, blinded in the sky I think, forever eclipsed by this Babylon of heaven-stretched tombs filled with busy throngs weighted with woes and worries; my heart is left behind, and only my body lives on here, grappling with girders and masonry blackened by the black-robed reaper with his great dull-bladed scythe.

O! Diana, my Goddess of the Silver Moon, hear my call to return home. Call upon thy brother Phoebus to carry me westwards once again. Let me not say Farewell! Farewell, my Golden Home. California!