August 16, 2007

Someone who gets it.

Once upon a time i was Googling around the interweb and stumbled across a blog belonging to a gal in New York named Sarah who likes to write. i check it from time to time because she is funny and insightful. Recently, she visited NorCal and wrote about it and i love her perspective on it. i thought other NorCalians or NorCalphiles would too. There's even a Chico shout-out :]

---------------
...But I digress. Tahoe! The water is really blue and clear, and at night you can light a fire, and if you leave your lemon bars cooling in the window, a bear will climb up the deck and eat them. But they’re cool bears; they wear plaid hats and share their weed and sell hot tubs in Chico the rest of the year. Megan’s house is the type of house where you’re suddenly a little chilly and you wish you had a blanket, and hello, there’s a blanket right next to you. It’s a big, cozy, rambling house that makes you want to tell secrets, the good kind. Sarah and I would lie in bed at night and sing and giggle like tiny, wasted children. You drink wine and eat almonds while making dinner, listening to Andrew Bird and The Band. Everyone sings along. Everything smells good. Everything you do seems sort of momentous and glowing, like those times when you know that what you’re doing right that second will be a wonderful memory, even if you’re just watching Point Break at 1 am. It feels like June during the day and October once the sun goes down. Just being outside in that cool, dry air is invigorating. It skews your brain. You eat an apple without cutting it first and feel heroic for doing this. Suddenly not cutting up an apple makes you freaking Hemingway. You think, I could live off the land. I should write fiction. It would be good. Everything is beautiful and clean. Maybe you’re just high. Probably.

One night we took the boat across the lake for dinner. The ride back was late at night, and Megan tucked us in with blankets like it was Little House in the Big Woods. That boat ride is now one of my favorite moments of my life. I have never seen so many stars, ever. You could see the Milky Way. I counted eight shooting stars. Then we sat on the dock and had the most ridiculous heated argument about the universe that we are never allowed to mention again, except that I keep mentioning it.

One day we drove into Reno to fetch Sarah at the airport. Reno smelled like meth and grandmas. I worry about Reno. I want to give Reno a sandwich and some tissues and a note from its mom saying it’s okay, it can come home now, all is forgiven.

The day I had to leave California, I had a hard time walking inside the airport. I felt like a little kid. I wanted to whine, “Five more minutes.” The only other time I’ve felt like this was the first time I visited New York, when I nearly had a panic attack on the plane home, and the only way I could calm down was to promise myself I’d be back soon, really really soon. Less than three months later, I lived here.

-----------------------

No comments: