"a land in which it seemed always afternoon"

I just realized that my picture of the sunset, with Dan's silhouette pointing, reminds me of a poem I haven't ever read, except for the first few lines, which I read via Laura Ingalls Wilder. For some reason this is what that pointing silhouette makes me think of.

“COURAGE!” he said, and pointed toward the land,
“This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”

Weird tricks of memory.

(The Lotus-Eaters)

I love LA?

I flew from San Francisco to LA today, home for a whole week for Thanksgiving. Words cannot express how thrilled I am to be somewhere I have almost no friends, where I can just sit around. It's sort of sad that I have to leave town in order to really force myself to relax and get sleep and watch those Netflix that have been sitting around since September. But, here I am.

Leaving a week early for thanksgiving as an "adult" somehow reminded me of that first Thanksgiving weekend during college, when leaving those friends you'd known for two months felt absolutely traumatic and wrenching. Breaks always felt like that back then. Now, life is much faster paced... things move so much faster, it's almost like we don't have time to feel wrenched. Either that, or we're just more mature.

Sometimes when I'm talking to someone who is leaving town for a bit, or when I'm leaving, or what have you, I end up talking like we're not going to see or communicate with each other for a painful or at least inconvenient amount of time, but the reality is that we are all online again within minutes. Or sending text messages. Or something. I guess when I was a freshman in school, I didn't have a phone, and I didn't sit around on IM over break - at least not all the time. So communication was less frequent over breaks back then. Because I have this weird, visceral memory for temperatures and lighting, I am currently flashing back to winter break freshman year. I remember talking to Pablo online, and I remember an e-mail from Miguel who had just watched Bridget Jones and, and this should speak to the fact that it was freshman year and I know weird people, felt like the "Nice guys don't kiss like that -- oh yes they fucking do" was really validation of his entire "nice guy" shtick. I feel like it was cool that year here, and sort of blue and shadowy. I think I remember someone calling me on New Year's Eve... which baffles me a bit, partly because I can't remember who.

It's very upsetting to me that my entire, embarrassing, awesome Diaryland.com diary has disappeared. It documents not only those first breaks, but my entire last year of high school -- a formative moment for anyone I should think.

As usual, upon my arrival to LA I felt like I was coming into a bit of a foreign land, and I felt as though I hadn't been here in ages, although the reality was I was here in September, for a weekend. It is a strange place -- it looks different from everywhere else. The smog is sort of weirdly futuristic feeling, like: post-apocalyptic. And I'm saying that on a pretty clear day. I was thinking about this today -- I don't think I couldn't ever live here again, even though I love San Francisco and the Bay Area. It's more like -- if I lived here, I would become a worse, or at least lazier, less challenged, version of myself. It's kind of easy to live here, everything is at your fingertips, everything comes to you, everything in LA takes 20 minutes (to quote Cher Horowitz' dad), you drive everywhere. The sad thing is that I'm kind of prone towards taking the easier option, possibly in part because I grew up here, and also just cause I think I can be kind of lazy, or stressed enough not to consider the possibilities that may not be totally obvious, whatever it is. So I can see it being easy to settle into a routine here, but I wouldn't want to do that.

Still, it's nice for a holiday. All I've done thus far since arriving here is help (er, I trimmed green beans and drank some chardonnay in the kitchen) make dinner, eat dinner, watched on DVR the winning play Stanford made against USC earlier this fall (it was so awesome, really -- I mean, the sheer horror on the faces of the SC fans), watched three episodes of Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, and stand/sit around talking to my parents. This is exactly what I want my vacation to be.

And, since its now 10:58, I believe it's my bedtime. This is great.

MSCL

I need more free time, for a lot of reasons, but one such reason is that I need to re-watch a lot of TV shows. I've been going through this weird (for lack of a better word) parental thing with Justin because he's watching The Office from the beginning, and I'm loaning the DVDs to him, watching occasional episodes, and receiving reports on the ones he watches by himself. (Not actually as formal as it sounds.) So I'm of course feeling this pang of nostalgia for the first watching of the Office, an experience really that no one can understand until they've watched them all and are witnessing someone else do it for the first time (hence my use of the word parental). I'm also feeling the need to re-watch all the Wes Andersen movies, because I saw The Darjeeling Limited a couple of weeks ago, and I need to re-read and re-watch Wonder Boys, because I recommended the book to my friend Peattie and now can't remember anything about it. This is a disturbing trend given how much new media I have that I'm behind on - my Netflix are gathering dust, I am still not done with Season 1 of Deadwood, and if I delay anymore on watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer my friend Santiago might just kill me. Plus there's all the books I need to read and the New Yorkers and Believers threatening to pile up... it's a problem. Anyway, with all of this it's a really bad time for the release of the updated, apparently awesome boxed set of My So-Called Life, which I already own in old, apparently not awesome boxed set form but, well, the point is my set isn't awesome, and now that I think about it I do kind of want the awesome set. I also want to watch My So-Called Life again, and get my nostalgia on for the first time I watched that, which was sophomore year in college, while I was finishing crocheting an afghan, and I stayed up until like 4am on a school night alone in the lounge watching MSCL and crocheting in the dark. It was awesome.

Just occurred to me: Is it wrong that I have nostalgia for watching TV?

Thinking

I was going to write something angry. Actually I did. And I just deleted it. Instead.


One thing I love about Northern California (one of many!): the dusty smell of oak trees at night, when it's finally cooled off after a very hot day. It's sort of funny because I'm highly allergic to oak, but I love it just the same. I was putting the mini-fridge (ok, beer fridge) out to defrost tonight and got a big whiff of it and I felt like I was a little kid again at my grandparents' house in Redding, where it's insanely awfully hot all day but at night it's finally bearable. And that's what oak makes me remember - that immense relief from the heat, that laziness of a summer night, the comforts and frustrations of family. The stones in the backyard, the strangeness of the sunroom, the cool leather chairs in the living room, all these very tangible, inexplicable feelings I won't ever feel again - that's what oak is to me, and that's why I love it. It's so enduring and fleeting at once.

It makes me feel good about moving. (Something I am in the middle of writing about right now and will hopefully post on tomorrow.)
And it makes me feel good about life.