welcome back, lovely hope

Last year I got to live in LA for a few months. Now, it's May and chilly in our lovely foggy beachside town, and I'm more excited than ever before to go back.
I guess the way I see Los Angeles is less a place to "go" and moreso a place to "lead". I don't want to live there, or anywhere for that matter, for any great period of time. I know that the time in my life will come when I do want to stay in one place, see the same things, enjoy the luxuries of relaxing and coming home to the country after a long day of working in the outdoors or in society. But right now in my life, I haven't gotten there yet. I'm not sure how to get there really either, except to just live.
Last year I left LA without any real plans except to show some people how much I loved them. While living between then and now, I have learned finally the great value of loving other people and speaking and listening more respectfully. Now I'm able to see balance, to respect the judgments of others and love all kinds of creations. It's funny that this basic lesson wasn't something I could have learned anywhere else but back here at home (Placerville and Santa Cruz), with the people I loved the most. It was easy for me to listen to strangers, but impossible to listen to those closest to me.
LA is a wonderful place, because it is a stepping stone. It's beautiful like a foreign country, filled with diverse culture and art and hopes of all kinds. And it is a place that teaches you that there are so many more places. I lied a few times over the past year by putting down this place, because I needed to lie to myself for a little while. But I remember some of the better nights of my life, wearing pajamas and driving through the empty streets of Hollywood and Burbank at 2 or 3 am, seeing glistening stars, hearing no noise but the hum of the road and the wind in the hills. I fell in love with it place then, just like I fell in love with UC Santa Cruz as I walked through that foresty campus in amazement.
I'm ready to be taught again. The streets teach us, as we walk down them or ride by on our bikes. The nights teach us, in their distance and twinkling. The crowds teach us, in fashion and noise and laughter. The smells teach us, in rank and floral pleasures. The clouds teach us, whether vacant or pluming. The hills teach us, in their nooks and old houses. And the world teaches us, with its society and jobs and show and uncertain futures. The world, and I am ready to learn. I'm ready to be put in the face of danger and laugh again, hold my chest bare and beat my fists against it, photograph every nuance and dirt-speck, fill my nostrils with the fresh flowers and the spring and dirty summer airs; colors and sights and sounds and wonder. There's something out there, humming in the night. It's not the wind, the ocean, or the birds in flight. It's the humming of future roads, empty, humming to me behind some horizon in morning dew. I can smell flowers again, and it gives me hope. It's in the air.