There’s something comforting about familiar freeways. Sure, I’m driving down the 55, and I can all but see the carbon monoxide in the air and my field of view is saturated to the peripheries with oil-slicked concrete and windowless bunker-like warehouses, but the traffic is moving, I am at home, and I am happy.

When I returned in 1992 after spending two years in Japan, I remember driving down the 405 from LAX to Orange County. The palm trees were as tall as I remembered them, the half-buried military bunkers in Huntington Beach were green after the winter rains, and it was good to be home again.

The boundaries of my world are defined by freeway exits. Bear St off of 73N gets me to my favorite Borders and the neighboring Wahoo’s and Champagne French Bakery, Santa Monica Blvd off the 405 used to get me to the Mormon temple, Western off the 10 gets me to LACMA. Haven’t worked out a favorite path to downtown Pasadena and the Huntington yet.

You could probably read the signs for the 405 off-ramps I take regularly like a short bio–Wilshire, Westwood, Getty Ctr Dr, the Orange County Performing Arts center, the multiple Irvine exits, the 73S interchange. Little insights into my interests, habits, social and ethnic class, etc. I can’t think of how many times the Bison or Culver exits have welcomed us after long family road trips.

More notable are all the off-ramps that are missing. There are stretches of freeway (through East L.A., for example) where I’ve never exited. Not sure where we got off (didn’t have a license then, so a friend was driving) to get to the AME church to help clean up during the LA riots. I had to hike to another unremembered exit when my over-inflated tire exploded on a hot July afternoon in Long Beach. It is sometimes disconcerting to travel down new freeways, to navigate unfamiliar exits and on-ramps. Sometimes I try to look over the high walls as I drive past Long Beach, wondering what unfamiliarities lie behind them, and at the same time hoping I don’t have to find out anytime soon.

Today a splash of lavender interrupts the grayscape of urban Orange County, as viewed from the 55. I recognize the color of the Jacaranda in full bloom–its blossoms pop-up unexpectedly, blazing brilliantly for a few weeks and then disappear into green anonymity. I get off at McFadden and drive deep into the heart of Santa Ana. I know this route cause I use it occasionally to get to the Food-4-Less on the borders between the BMW and Buick Orange Counties. I leave the land of Trader Joes and nail salons and enter the world of Carnecerias and Taquerias, of mariscos, of 99� and 98� and checks cashed here stores, I pass by at least two or three Casa del Reys, house of the king. In the distance I can see a cloud of purple brilliance hovering just above the cityscape–I turn my Saturn wagon towards it, into the neighborhood. As I drive I lock my door, feeling guiltily prejudiced and classist on this bright Sunday afternoon.

In Irvine, most cars are hidden away in garages–during the day the neighborhoods look pristine but sterilized of all mammalian life. Here, the street margins and driveways are crammed with burgundy Buicks, massive white Chevy trucks, maxivans, lowriders at rest with hubcaps spinning in the wind. The neighborhoods are alive–families and neighbors are crowded in garages, in grassy yards, in the street, drinking, eating, playing. I grew up in a neighborhood not unlike this one (mine was about half-black, half-Latino, with a few Southeast Asians, Japanese and whites), with vacant lots and gang graffiti and working class families, but now I feel like an intruder. There is a divide, there is a me and them–an us and them–and I’m not sure how to bridge the gap.

Finally, I find several residential blocks lined with ancient (for Orange County, that means more than 30-40 years old) jacarandas. I drop my speed to 15, then 10 mph and move in slow motion through tunnels of lilac-blue. The cars and streets and yards are sprinkled with light purple snowfall of blossoms. Occasionally the wind picks up and the trees scatter their flowers in my path. After circling around the blocks in a jacaranda daze, I turn back, ready to return to parts well-known, comforting and manicured, via Bristol, the 55, the 73, and the Bison off-ramp.