So, I think it's time for the tongue ring to go. I knew this day would come, when I'd wake up and decide I didn't really want it anymore, and I always wondered what I'd be thinking at the time. I think mostly I'm thinking that I'm tired of being taken for a 22-year-old, and while there aren't a lot of aspects of that within my control, this might be one of them. It was fun for a while, and I still remember getting it done on Telegraph Avenue, squeezing Andrew's hand nearly hard enough to yank it off and then realizing it was over and it hadn't even hurt. I lisped for a week, which made Natalie laugh, which is one of my favorite sounds in the whole world.
There's also something cathartic about taking it out. I got it right after I quit Westminster House, and for some reason the tongue ring seemed to mark my freedom from the job I had been letting suck my soul dry for two long years (thankfully, at least it wasn't another tattoo). But as you Berkeley folks can attest, the next two-plus years of wandering around aimlessly didn't make me feel any more free. Let's face it, I've been miserable for a really long time. So now, as I realized in a conversation with a friend last week, for the first time in a loooong time, I'm doing really well and I'm grateful for every minute of it.
I talked to Andrew a few weeks ago on the phone and shortly thereafter got an email: "I was just surprised to hear you so happy." Maybe I will take the tongue ring out to mark the occasion.
My mother will be elated....
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
The Random San Francisco Craigslist Roommate Circus
I was reading Hannah's blog and was recently reminded (as if I could have forgotten) of all the strange stories that she, Natalie and I collected during our three years living together in Berkeley/Oakland/Alameda. Most of them surrounded the perpetual search for someone to fill the revolving roommate position we always seemed to have open... so with no further ado, let me introduce you to the wacky cast of characters.
S: my first bay area roommate, getting her PhD in Chemistry, who was wonderful, but -- being in the agonizing throes of a dissertation -- spent every evening despondent over her laser that never worked right.
R: R, Natalie, Hannah and I moved into a fun little four-bedroom apartment in South Berkeley (where Hannah kept getting yelled at for being white). Shortly into our move, R's boyfriend broke up with her, while the rest of us were all out of town for the weekend. When we returned, she had redecorated the entire apartment, and then proceeded to "bill" us for everything she didn't want to take with her when she got back together with her boyfriend and moved to LA, whether we wanted it or not.
Tracy: After R moved out, Tracy moved in, and proceeded to complain. About everything. All the time. For eight months straight. She was one of those people that you wanted to love, because you knew she needed it, but you had trouble being in the same room.
After a while, Tracy moved in with her new boyfriend and we found a really cute house in Alameda. Total strange-roommate-free bliss for six months. Then Hannah sublet her room for the summer while she went to Brazil.
Nancy: Nancy was really nice... and liked to talk... alot. She was a Jewish Buddhist who was living with us so she could be closer to her boyfriend while her divorce was finalized. Her husband and her boyfriend helped her move in -- together. She had a little massage practice on the side, and asked me if I minded if she worked on clients in the living room. Let's see... naked people I've never met hanging out in my house? Luckily, she realized how bad of an idea that would be before we had to tell her no. We actually ended up really liking Nancy, and her fun British boyfriend Alan, who lived at the marina down the street, working on his boat. She had this fun paper-mache camel from Africa that would scare Sadie the pug whenever I was dogsitting. Anyway, Nancy left to go sail around the world with Alan, and Hannah decided she needed to live at home to save money while she was in grad school, so it was time for a new roommate.
Hannah put another ad on Craigslist, and we met Humuu, Haystack, and LoveSong (all real names), who all didn't work out for various reasons. Then there was the family of 3 that wanted to move into Hannah's room. Then some guy named Daniel (or something like that) came by. He described himself in his roommate ad as a "sensitive, affectionate guy, with an interest in 'wimmin's studies'." I made Warren come over to meet him with me 'cause it just sounded weird. He drove a big white van, and he kept telling me that he could tell it was going to work out because I "had such good energy." Plus, he was, like, 40, and he described himself as "affectionate," and he was interested in living with two single 20-something women? Uh uh, I don't think so. Natalie and I were not very happy about Daniel, but by this time we were getting desperate and we only needed to make it through three months before our lease was up.
So on the eve of having to say yes to sensitive-ponytail man, Hannah called with one more potential Craigslist roomie. Brian came over to meet us and he was quirky, like the rest, but he was kind of like a little kid and for some reason Natalie and I were a little bit won over (well, especially in the face of the competition). He was a white hip-hop gangster wannabe from Brooklyn who just needed a place to crash for a few months while he figured out where to plant himself in California. "A place to crash" turned out to mean for himself and enough stuff to fill his room AND the three-car garage. He worked on a goat farm in Santa Rosa, and when his license got suspended his friend moved in too, "to drive him around," he said, only she never drove him anywhere 'cause his car was broken down too and I don't think she had one either. He stopped going to work, and shortly thereafter stopped paying rent, and was actually really sad when we told him we weren't going to pay his rent for him and let him stay. This story could go on and on, but the highlights are that he moved out but left all his stuff, moved back in with even more stuff in the middle of the night, and started punching out the guy who was nice enough to rent him a moving truck on the day we were supposed to be out of the house, so once again we enlisted our guy-friends (and the crew of large roofers next door) to come over and watch out for us. In the end, he ended up stealing Natalie's computer, ditching his broken-down car on the street in front, spackling his walls brown so the place had to be repainted, and leaving us with mountains of garbage, which we then had to drive all around Alameda in the middle of the night trying to ditch in dumpsters without getting arrested.
Ahh, the joys of communal living :)
S: my first bay area roommate, getting her PhD in Chemistry, who was wonderful, but -- being in the agonizing throes of a dissertation -- spent every evening despondent over her laser that never worked right.
R: R, Natalie, Hannah and I moved into a fun little four-bedroom apartment in South Berkeley (where Hannah kept getting yelled at for being white). Shortly into our move, R's boyfriend broke up with her, while the rest of us were all out of town for the weekend. When we returned, she had redecorated the entire apartment, and then proceeded to "bill" us for everything she didn't want to take with her when she got back together with her boyfriend and moved to LA, whether we wanted it or not.
Tracy: After R moved out, Tracy moved in, and proceeded to complain. About everything. All the time. For eight months straight. She was one of those people that you wanted to love, because you knew she needed it, but you had trouble being in the same room.
After a while, Tracy moved in with her new boyfriend and we found a really cute house in Alameda. Total strange-roommate-free bliss for six months. Then Hannah sublet her room for the summer while she went to Brazil.
Nancy: Nancy was really nice... and liked to talk... alot. She was a Jewish Buddhist who was living with us so she could be closer to her boyfriend while her divorce was finalized. Her husband and her boyfriend helped her move in -- together. She had a little massage practice on the side, and asked me if I minded if she worked on clients in the living room. Let's see... naked people I've never met hanging out in my house? Luckily, she realized how bad of an idea that would be before we had to tell her no. We actually ended up really liking Nancy, and her fun British boyfriend Alan, who lived at the marina down the street, working on his boat. She had this fun paper-mache camel from Africa that would scare Sadie the pug whenever I was dogsitting. Anyway, Nancy left to go sail around the world with Alan, and Hannah decided she needed to live at home to save money while she was in grad school, so it was time for a new roommate.
Hannah put another ad on Craigslist, and we met Humuu, Haystack, and LoveSong (all real names), who all didn't work out for various reasons. Then there was the family of 3 that wanted to move into Hannah's room. Then some guy named Daniel (or something like that) came by. He described himself in his roommate ad as a "sensitive, affectionate guy, with an interest in 'wimmin's studies'." I made Warren come over to meet him with me 'cause it just sounded weird. He drove a big white van, and he kept telling me that he could tell it was going to work out because I "had such good energy." Plus, he was, like, 40, and he described himself as "affectionate," and he was interested in living with two single 20-something women? Uh uh, I don't think so. Natalie and I were not very happy about Daniel, but by this time we were getting desperate and we only needed to make it through three months before our lease was up.
So on the eve of having to say yes to sensitive-ponytail man, Hannah called with one more potential Craigslist roomie. Brian came over to meet us and he was quirky, like the rest, but he was kind of like a little kid and for some reason Natalie and I were a little bit won over (well, especially in the face of the competition). He was a white hip-hop gangster wannabe from Brooklyn who just needed a place to crash for a few months while he figured out where to plant himself in California. "A place to crash" turned out to mean for himself and enough stuff to fill his room AND the three-car garage. He worked on a goat farm in Santa Rosa, and when his license got suspended his friend moved in too, "to drive him around," he said, only she never drove him anywhere 'cause his car was broken down too and I don't think she had one either. He stopped going to work, and shortly thereafter stopped paying rent, and was actually really sad when we told him we weren't going to pay his rent for him and let him stay. This story could go on and on, but the highlights are that he moved out but left all his stuff, moved back in with even more stuff in the middle of the night, and started punching out the guy who was nice enough to rent him a moving truck on the day we were supposed to be out of the house, so once again we enlisted our guy-friends (and the crew of large roofers next door) to come over and watch out for us. In the end, he ended up stealing Natalie's computer, ditching his broken-down car on the street in front, spackling his walls brown so the place had to be repainted, and leaving us with mountains of garbage, which we then had to drive all around Alameda in the middle of the night trying to ditch in dumpsters without getting arrested.
Ahh, the joys of communal living :)
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Is it just me...
... or is 6th grade getting harder?
I tutored a kid in math today, and he was working on one of those logic puzzles that you have to do at that age, where it's got the grid you put all the X's and O's in... and I got so stuck I had to give up. I do Sudoku puzzles in the NY Times, and I couldn't figure out an 11-year-old's logic homework?
Oooh, also -- 'cause I know you were all wondering what happened to the philandering Peruvian trekking guide... Jeanne forwarded the emails we got from his girlfriend back to him, so he knows that she hacked into his email to track us down halfway around the world to find out if he was cheating (seriously, it's like Where's Waldo meets Melrose Place). But... apparently they worked everything out, because they're starting a trekking company of their own. So, if you are ever in Cusco and you need a great guide to places few other gringos go, look him up. Sure, he'll pick you up at 5am with a hangover, get too tired to speak English a mile into every day, and hit on you while he explains the astrological designs of Incan ruins -- but playing soccer at a UNESCO site with peruvians at 13,000 feet is worth it.
I tutored a kid in math today, and he was working on one of those logic puzzles that you have to do at that age, where it's got the grid you put all the X's and O's in... and I got so stuck I had to give up. I do Sudoku puzzles in the NY Times, and I couldn't figure out an 11-year-old's logic homework?
Oooh, also -- 'cause I know you were all wondering what happened to the philandering Peruvian trekking guide... Jeanne forwarded the emails we got from his girlfriend back to him, so he knows that she hacked into his email to track us down halfway around the world to find out if he was cheating (seriously, it's like Where's Waldo meets Melrose Place). But... apparently they worked everything out, because they're starting a trekking company of their own. So, if you are ever in Cusco and you need a great guide to places few other gringos go, look him up. Sure, he'll pick you up at 5am with a hangover, get too tired to speak English a mile into every day, and hit on you while he explains the astrological designs of Incan ruins -- but playing soccer at a UNESCO site with peruvians at 13,000 feet is worth it.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Unmasticated regurgitation
Seriously... that's what a TA wrote on one of my friend's papers: "this is pure unmasticated regurgitation." Ouch. Couldn't he think of a more appropriate way to offer his criticism?
Anyhow, that's also what I have for you tonight -- mostly unmasticated regurgitation, with a healthy dose of idealism thrown in for good measure. I had hoped to have more blog entries digging in and writing through issues, to offer up some food for thought and to give myself a reason to process. But right now the sheer volume of information my brain is taking in means that trying to put a coherent thought or argument together feels like trying to build a spaceship at a garbage dump (except for the fact that the information I'm learning is actually fabulous, and nothing like garbage... that's where the analogy breaks down). Can it be done? Maybe. Do I have the energy for it on this particular night after 11 hours of class? Hell no. What I can do, instead, is rummage through the heap and hold up a few shiny objects.
Warning: begin soapbox.
The latest issue of the Semi (Fuller campus weekly paper) was on the topic of the environment, and why it is both the responsibility of individuals, and of the church itself, to take up the cause. Slightly, oh so slightly, close to my heart, especially after working as a backpacking guide for Sierra Treks for several seasons, where I was consistently awed by the creativity exhibited in wilderness, and the ways we have desperately mistaken the priviledge of dominion over the earth with domination of it.
Anyhow, I had hoped to write an article for this issue of the Semi, but that was before I came down with Death for a week before Christmas. So I was quite pleased to see the lead article, by a Fuller professor who talks of her unlikely conversion to environmentalism, addressing the issues I would have written about, and much more articulately than I could have mustered. Three things struck me, both for how she presented them in the context of environmentalism, and also in the context of what it really means to care about all the other things God cares about -- which is pretty much what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me."
She writes of how it is hard to love what we don't often see. This applies to spectacular places like Rainbow Canyon in NE Yosemite - where there are no roads and no trails and the only way to find them is to learn to read a topographic map - as well as to kinds of people that we don't spend time with on a regular basis. Maybe our roads don't naturally "go" to those people and we have to pull out a map, or enlist a guide, to get to them. She writes of how, while it's important to have ideals and opinions, it's a problem when we're not ready to be personally uncomfortable. Maybe this means taking the bus, maybe it means learning how to love people when it's inconvenient - which, if we're talking about the kind of love God asks us to have for each other, might be more often than, say, every third Tuesday. And she writes of how this is a justice issue, because the comfortable will not change until we feel a pinch, and because we are the comfortable we are the last to feel the pinch, and by then it may be too late.
But I won't convince anyone of anything, and neither will she, as we sit and write from our comfy Ikea chairs. And she knew it too. So now I will move from regurgitation to full-on plagiarism:
End soapbox.
Anyhow, that's also what I have for you tonight -- mostly unmasticated regurgitation, with a healthy dose of idealism thrown in for good measure. I had hoped to have more blog entries digging in and writing through issues, to offer up some food for thought and to give myself a reason to process. But right now the sheer volume of information my brain is taking in means that trying to put a coherent thought or argument together feels like trying to build a spaceship at a garbage dump (except for the fact that the information I'm learning is actually fabulous, and nothing like garbage... that's where the analogy breaks down). Can it be done? Maybe. Do I have the energy for it on this particular night after 11 hours of class? Hell no. What I can do, instead, is rummage through the heap and hold up a few shiny objects.
Warning: begin soapbox.
The latest issue of the Semi (Fuller campus weekly paper) was on the topic of the environment, and why it is both the responsibility of individuals, and of the church itself, to take up the cause. Slightly, oh so slightly, close to my heart, especially after working as a backpacking guide for Sierra Treks for several seasons, where I was consistently awed by the creativity exhibited in wilderness, and the ways we have desperately mistaken the priviledge of dominion over the earth with domination of it.
Anyhow, I had hoped to write an article for this issue of the Semi, but that was before I came down with Death for a week before Christmas. So I was quite pleased to see the lead article, by a Fuller professor who talks of her unlikely conversion to environmentalism, addressing the issues I would have written about, and much more articulately than I could have mustered. Three things struck me, both for how she presented them in the context of environmentalism, and also in the context of what it really means to care about all the other things God cares about -- which is pretty much what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me."
She writes of how it is hard to love what we don't often see. This applies to spectacular places like Rainbow Canyon in NE Yosemite - where there are no roads and no trails and the only way to find them is to learn to read a topographic map - as well as to kinds of people that we don't spend time with on a regular basis. Maybe our roads don't naturally "go" to those people and we have to pull out a map, or enlist a guide, to get to them. She writes of how, while it's important to have ideals and opinions, it's a problem when we're not ready to be personally uncomfortable. Maybe this means taking the bus, maybe it means learning how to love people when it's inconvenient - which, if we're talking about the kind of love God asks us to have for each other, might be more often than, say, every third Tuesday. And she writes of how this is a justice issue, because the comfortable will not change until we feel a pinch, and because we are the comfortable we are the last to feel the pinch, and by then it may be too late.
But I won't convince anyone of anything, and neither will she, as we sit and write from our comfy Ikea chairs. And she knew it too. So now I will move from regurgitation to full-on plagiarism:
"Only changed hearts will willingly bear real costs, and hearts are rarely changed by arguments, whether from the pulpit or elsewhere. Thus, I suspect that what the church can do to carry out its responsibility to the environment depends less on what policies might be advocated Sunday morning in the sanctuary, or on what sort of coffee is served in what sort of cups on the patio, than on what God's people are taught to love. Oh yes, by all means show the moral costs of policies; by all means choose coffee that does not destroy lives and rain forests; but even more, be as creative and concrete as you can to help people to love God's world and God's creatures, human and nonhuman - the world God himself, who made it, loves. Then they will steadfastly support the policies and pay more to buy the less destructive coffee."May my heart be changed, that I might remember the world doesn't revolve around me, and that I may learn to bear real costs with grace and humility.
End soapbox.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Freegan
Meet Matt. He's a guy I play ultimate with. In the last week I have learned that he lived on a bus for a while (a decommissioned city bus) and the reason he lives in SoCal is because that's where he was when he got tired of driving the bus around the country. Matt is 25, and he's marrying his 34-year-old Italian girlfriend so she can get a visa. Since Matt doesn't have a car, he brings Nicole (another ultimate friend) and I large bags of tangerines from his tree in exchange for rides to winter league games.
Matt is also a Freegan. When Nicole mentioned this on the way home from our game on Monday, I hesitated to ask what that meant, since it sounded kind of sketchy and I didn't know what the reply would be. Turns out it's just a better name for Dumpster Diving. Matt eats for free. He "shops," and takes anyone who will drive him, behind the Trader Joe's on Arroyo. So I went with him and one of his friends the other night. When they picked me up in the getaway car, I felt like I was one of the characters in Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," except I was taking garbage out secretively in the middle of the night rather than putting it in. . According to Matt it was an "average" night at the dumpster... on a good night, apparently there's lots of cheese. I happily trucked home two bunches of flowers.
I'm not sure if there's a point to the story, but it's been an interesting week.
Matt is also a Freegan. When Nicole mentioned this on the way home from our game on Monday, I hesitated to ask what that meant, since it sounded kind of sketchy and I didn't know what the reply would be. Turns out it's just a better name for Dumpster Diving. Matt eats for free. He "shops," and takes anyone who will drive him, behind the Trader Joe's on Arroyo. So I went with him and one of his friends the other night. When they picked me up in the getaway car, I felt like I was one of the characters in Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," except I was taking garbage out secretively in the middle of the night rather than putting it in. . According to Matt it was an "average" night at the dumpster... on a good night, apparently there's lots of cheese. I happily trucked home two bunches of flowers.
I'm not sure if there's a point to the story, but it's been an interesting week.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
more verbatim
"I mean really, if you're trying to kill yourself, lithium's the way to go. I'll tell you how in a little while." -my psychopharmacology prof
"Before this class is over, you will have lost your innocence. If you're still naive about people, and you want to stay that way, you are not in the right program." - my psychopathology prof
Ahhh, now we're getting to the juicy stuff. It's not exactly "weed-out" material in the academically rigorous sense, but it is causing us all to ask if we really want to open Pandora's Box any further. As Thomas Cardinal Woolsey said, "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." We started up Psychopathology and Ethics after the break, and even those of us who still feel like we made the right decision to be here can't help but wonder what it will be like to undergo a course of professional preparation that gives us unceasing awareness of the pathology and dysfunction of everyone from our best friends to our bus drivers. It's like X-ray goggles that you can never, ever take off.
I may have lost much of my naivete about people a while ago, but I still feel a bit like Eve, about to chomp on that apple and get smacked with the knowledge of good and evil.... :):)
"Before this class is over, you will have lost your innocence. If you're still naive about people, and you want to stay that way, you are not in the right program." - my psychopathology prof
Ahhh, now we're getting to the juicy stuff. It's not exactly "weed-out" material in the academically rigorous sense, but it is causing us all to ask if we really want to open Pandora's Box any further. As Thomas Cardinal Woolsey said, "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." We started up Psychopathology and Ethics after the break, and even those of us who still feel like we made the right decision to be here can't help but wonder what it will be like to undergo a course of professional preparation that gives us unceasing awareness of the pathology and dysfunction of everyone from our best friends to our bus drivers. It's like X-ray goggles that you can never, ever take off.
I may have lost much of my naivete about people a while ago, but I still feel a bit like Eve, about to chomp on that apple and get smacked with the knowledge of good and evil.... :):)
Sunday, January 08, 2006
verbatim
Actual comment made to me by stereotypically LA-looking girl while Barista-ing tonight, referring to the fact that we had only 2% milk (no nonfat) with which to make her hot chocolate:
"Ugh, I can't drink THAT! Chocolate and fat at the same time?!"
"Ugh, I can't drink THAT! Chocolate and fat at the same time?!"
Saturday, January 07, 2006
people I love in faraway places
As usual, the highlight of the break was hanging out with fabulous people who are all currently spread all over the globe. I spent some quality time with my family and big bro (we had better outfits in '78 in the photo at left); my college roommate Ruth dropped in from Ukraine (where her name is spelled PYT -- and she finally gets the michael jackson references we heap on her) and we daytripped to Dungeness Spit; I caught up with my spunky preggo friend Jessica, with whom I share a tattooed nickname and the scars of surviving middle and high school together; I caught up (in Seattle) with Berkeley friends who now live in Seattle, Berkeley, and Montana; and finally flew back to Oakland to pass a lovely New Years Eve with former roommates Natalie (enjoying a break from shoveling her car out of the snow in Boston) and Hannah (about to travel the world as a rock star), and our dear friends Phil and James, who cook us gourmet dinners an
d reveal far more than we ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the male mind, and we love every minute of it.
more photos from the holiday travels here....
d reveal far more than we ever wanted to know about the inner workings of the male mind, and we love every minute of it.
more photos from the holiday travels here....
Friday, January 06, 2006
The winter of our discontent
OK, so really I like quotes like this because they make me feel better about the general state of discontent my 20s have turned out to be, like maybe it's OK that sometimes the world just seems like a messy place to be.
"You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in... so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come." - henri nouwen
In practice, I'm still working on finding a balance.... and I suppose if I had to choose I'd rather be content being discontent that discontent with contentedness, because in the first one you ultimately get to be content at the end of the day but still hold out hope for people and try to be a change agent in whatever small way you've been given to influence. But to get there I have to figure out the content thing. So maybe life is a long process of figuring out which of your discontent to be content with and which discontent you should either do something about or get over and just be content. Another cool quote on the topic, via Becky D:
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a deep desire to enjoy the world. And that makes it hard to plan the day." -eb white
But speaking of the winter of my discontent, will someone please tell LA that 85 degrees is a totally inappropriate temperature for January?
"You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in... so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come." - henri nouwen
In practice, I'm still working on finding a balance.... and I suppose if I had to choose I'd rather be content being discontent that discontent with contentedness, because in the first one you ultimately get to be content at the end of the day but still hold out hope for people and try to be a change agent in whatever small way you've been given to influence. But to get there I have to figure out the content thing. So maybe life is a long process of figuring out which of your discontent to be content with and which discontent you should either do something about or get over and just be content. Another cool quote on the topic, via Becky D:
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a deep desire to enjoy the world. And that makes it hard to plan the day." -eb white
But speaking of the winter of my discontent, will someone please tell LA that 85 degrees is a totally inappropriate temperature for January?
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Miles to go before I sleep
I had 382 miles to make peace with LA last night.
At 5:30, I sat in Berkeley on the corner of Telegraph and Haste, watching the sky squeeze out the last of the light and the last of the rain for the day, and I had no desire to make the six-hour drive south on dark, wet roads. I had offers for two dinners, one movie, three beds to sleep in, and even the pair of guest pajamas at Phil and James' place so I wouldn't have to unpack to stay the night. And I didn't have anywhere I had to be today in Pasadena. I kept trying to talk myself into staying, but I kept pointing my car south. I even pulled over on MLK and sat with my car running for 10 more minutes, trying to will myself to turn around and stay the night. But stronger than all my reasons for staying was the inescapable urge to wake up in LA today, even if I had to drive all night to get here.
To use a totally non-dinner-table analogy, revisiting the past is a bit like poking at a wound. If you pick at it too much while it's still fresh, it takes a lot longer for new skin to grow in its place. Once you've got a scar, you can stay there longer. In a little while, further through transition, I'll be able to go back to Seattle and Berkeley and appreciate each for what it is, but this time I was spending too much energy appreciating them for what LA isn't. Four months into starting over, staying another night in fantasyland (which is what each place was, considering half the people I spent time with don't even live in those places anymore) was starting to feel masochistic. Or maybe it's less dramatic than that -- maybe revisiting the past is more like baking cookies... the oven is a necessary place to be but when the timer goes off, ding! Stay any longer and you'll burn on the bottom and get dried out and crumbly. Either way, it was time to hit the road.
I-5 ended up being closed in two places, and the drive took nine hours. I rolled in around 3am and caffeine kept me up until 5. But I woke up at lunchtime today a little more at peace with LA, having drawn up a tiny truce with everything Berkeley is/was and isn't/wasn't, and with a new appreciation for the scars that cut across the landscape of my arms, legs, and hands, reminding me not to poke too much right now.
At 5:30, I sat in Berkeley on the corner of Telegraph and Haste, watching the sky squeeze out the last of the light and the last of the rain for the day, and I had no desire to make the six-hour drive south on dark, wet roads. I had offers for two dinners, one movie, three beds to sleep in, and even the pair of guest pajamas at Phil and James' place so I wouldn't have to unpack to stay the night. And I didn't have anywhere I had to be today in Pasadena. I kept trying to talk myself into staying, but I kept pointing my car south. I even pulled over on MLK and sat with my car running for 10 more minutes, trying to will myself to turn around and stay the night. But stronger than all my reasons for staying was the inescapable urge to wake up in LA today, even if I had to drive all night to get here.
To use a totally non-dinner-table analogy, revisiting the past is a bit like poking at a wound. If you pick at it too much while it's still fresh, it takes a lot longer for new skin to grow in its place. Once you've got a scar, you can stay there longer. In a little while, further through transition, I'll be able to go back to Seattle and Berkeley and appreciate each for what it is, but this time I was spending too much energy appreciating them for what LA isn't. Four months into starting over, staying another night in fantasyland (which is what each place was, considering half the people I spent time with don't even live in those places anymore) was starting to feel masochistic. Or maybe it's less dramatic than that -- maybe revisiting the past is more like baking cookies... the oven is a necessary place to be but when the timer goes off, ding! Stay any longer and you'll burn on the bottom and get dried out and crumbly. Either way, it was time to hit the road.
I-5 ended up being closed in two places, and the drive took nine hours. I rolled in around 3am and caffeine kept me up until 5. But I woke up at lunchtime today a little more at peace with LA, having drawn up a tiny truce with everything Berkeley is/was and isn't/wasn't, and with a new appreciation for the scars that cut across the landscape of my arms, legs, and hands, reminding me not to poke too much right now.
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