All the leaves are brown / And the sky is gray / I've been for a walk / On a winter's day /
I'd be safe and warm / If I was in L.A. / California dreamin' / On such a winter's day
- California Dreamin’, The Mamas and the Papas

So why does it come as such a shock / To know you really have no one / Only a river of changing faces / Looking for an ocean / They trickle through your leaky plans / Another dream over the dam / And you're lying in some room / Feeling like your right to be human / Is going over too / Well some are going to knock you / And some'll try to clock you / You know it's really hard / To talk sense to you / Trouble child / Breaking like the waves at Malibu
- Trouble Child, Joni Mitchell

I am sitting in the morning / At the diner on the corner / I am waiting at the counter / For the man to pour the coffee / And he fills it only halfway / And before I even argue / He is looking out the window / At somebody coming in / "It is always nice to see you" Says the man behind the counter / To the woman who has come in / She is shaking her umbrella /
And I look the other way / As they are kissing their hellos / I'm pretending not to see them / Instead I pour the milk / Oh, this rain it will continue / Through the morning as I'm listening / To the bells of the cathedral / I am thinking of your voice / And of the midnight picnic once upon a time / Before the rain began
- Tom’s Diner, Suzanne Vega

Things will be better in California / I'm sure we had our reasons / But I can't recall them / I can't stand California / Foundations can never be relain / And anyway its too late for weak hearts who won't decide / Don't stop when you hit the ocean / Panicked ants on the coast of slow motion / I smell a dream dying, die dream die / The rotted rind of this rotted country / Rots in the West and its beyond me / Why anyone would look there for anything unless
- All of California and Everyone Who Lives There Stinks, World Inferno friendship Society

Are you ever coming clean? / Or will I never know the meaning / Of the lines you scribbled out / So that I couldn’t read between? Are you ever coming home? / Or should I learn to do without you? / Should it one day come to pass / That you sit down to your memoirs / Where will this go? / The chapter in your life entitled San Francisco
- The Chapter In Your Life Entitled San Francisco, The Lucksmiths

Editor’s note: Chris is stuck in a public library in San Fran where there’s free internet use. He left upon his parents’ request, in spite of himself, and will be back in June. He says he’s is no mood to write a column for this issue. In an e-mail from him, we found these lyrics, in between random musings and involuntary expletives. He says he’s ok, though.# Philippine Collegian

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