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Sep 13, 2022Liked by Alexandru Constantin

I remember taking my daughter to see her Grandparents in San Diego, and seeing the needle disposal bins mounted on the wall in the public restrooms. It took a few heartbeats for this square Texican to understand what he was seeing. As nice as San Diego was, as beautiful a day at the beach and a trip to legoland was, and it was. That right there told me all I needed to know about the vector of the place.

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Sep 14, 2022Liked by Alexandru Constantin

Good luck on your new journey, my friend. I pray that the new place will prove to be the right one for your family.

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Welcome to the east coast, man. You may be south of the Mason-Dixon line and I may be a dirty Yankee New Englander, but welcome nonetheless.

Moving is always poignant. Your descriptions of California, it's promise and its rot, are very moving. There is no place like home, and uprooting oneself is never easy. It's why when we left the D.C./Northern Virginia area to return to New England, I felt zero remorse. D.C. was nothing to me, the definition of a rootless place full of rootless people.

You'll be able to put new roots down where you are. Your daughter will thank you for it. Best of luck my brother.

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I left California almost a quarter century ago. Part of my soul still yearns for the place I left, which of course is no more, as you describe. It lives on, pristine, in my mind's eye, as the lunatics melt down the real California.

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