Hotel Atzlan

[Los Angeles, 11/2/09]

A year after arriving in the USA, I saw California. In my father’s yellow Chevette, the cheapest model on the market, we were driven from Tacoma to Los Angeles. There, I got to see its zoo. California for me, then, was just Interstate 5 and the LA Zoo. Only 12-years-old, I hadn’t learned to pay more attention to all the outlandish beasts allowed to roam outside cages.

Eastward we continued, and I got as far as Mobile. In New Orleans, a cop shined a flashlight into our car as we slept. I gawked at the Superdome looming in the dark like some monstrous spaceship. To ever be allowed inside was out of the question. There would only be zoos in my future.

After two months in Houston, my father decided to return to the Pacific Northwest. Taken on a different route, I got glimpses of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho. In Garden City, I experienced its lame zoo. In Wyoming, I was astounded at seeing so many pronghorns roaming free, thus uneaten. Americans could be indifferent to tons of meat within easy reach. I marveled at the barren cliffs nudging the Hood River as we snaked along I-84. So empty, the US could house the entire world, it seemed.