Leaving Las Vegas

"Turn right", stutters the GPS ("gi-gi" as E calls it), "Then... take the freeway". OK it seems we've made it out alright, and now we were headed into the thick of things again. When we hit California, I was receiving so many mixed signals from my head and heart, that now that I look back on it I can see why people think this place is doomed to be either the cause of or the solution to the rest of the nation's problems (and consequently many other places too). I watched out the window driving on the interstate as we passed deeper and deeper toward what looked to be areas of mixed residential and business. "I don't understand it", I thought but I both want to understand and be understood. "There's a lot to be done here."