Air

The fog and the sky looked crazy the other day, I wished I had my camera with me. This winter’s rain has been amazing. People around here are starting to grumble, but I’m still in love with it. Let it keep coming for all of me. It really reminds me of the weather five years ago, the winter Clare and I got together. There was just crazy storm after crazy storm. It was such an amazing time… every time we’d go some place we’d see something beautiful. At the beach we watched loose sand blow gently over shoreline on a pitch black moonless night like the thinnest possible fog. On a drive down to the desert we saw millions and millions of butterflies migrating down Banner Grade. Walking around Julian when there was fog so thick you couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you. It just sort of made you feel alive and aware that you were surrounded by the world, and that there was magic in it… a beautiful way to start a relationship.

An old co-worker of mine from the Adult School, Michelle (not to be confused with Chelle from PetCo), wrote on her Facebook the other day about how her daughter had just lost her first tooth, and apparently hid the tooth for the tooth fairy so well that Michelle couldn’t find it to take and replace with money. She mentions how she crawled all over the room in the middle of the night with a flashlight and then finally says, “Why do we go to such lengths to deceive our children?”

I think thats the answer.

Listening to The Album Leaf, In A Safe Place, which seems appropriate.

Back in Berk

Been back in Berkeley; back to waking up at 6:30. At least the days are getting longer, though. Still seeing beautiful sunrises, just coming into them a little later. Christmas was really nice, Clare and I got like 6 cookbooks for Christmas, which is pretty cool. I’ve been cooking a lot more lately, and really fun stuff, like Thai coconut soup and such.

It was nice being in San Diego again – it really felt like coming home for the first time in a while. It probably helps that we drove around a bit with the intention of looking at places we might like to live. It looks like we’ve decided we’d like to live somewhere in North Park or that area. That will be pretty sweet if it happens – we’d only be about 15 minutes from the beach. We went to La Jolla on our little excursion, and watched a guy on a boogie board zipping around the waves and Clare declared (teehee!) that was what I ought to be doing when we come back to SD, which sounds great to me. I think she’s going to actually buy me a boogie board for Christmas, lol. Caught a great sunrise with a few dozen random onlookers.

So what about Berkeley and the Bay Area? I’ll miss things about it. I’ll miss that I can (mostly) rely on public transportation. Riding BART has been very… interesting… at times, and at other times frustrating. But on the whole I appreciate it quite a bit. I’ll miss Halfmoon Bay and San Gregorio beach. I hope Clare and I can make at least one more day trip to San Gregorio before we leave. That beach has a very strong and personal connection for us. I love how it just goes on and on for miles, and on some days you won’t see another soul on it for half an hour. It’s not like any other beach I’ve been to. Magical things seem to happen there.

There’s a sort of hardy loneliness to it. The sand is fine, like good Southern California beach sand, but… crunchier. People build huts out of driftwood logs and branches. Shells, sea glass, driftwood are all scattered along the shore. Cliffs jut straight up and run along the coast for miles in either direction, dotted with caves. When the tide rises you’re physically separated from other parts of the beach. In some places, between the cliffs and the shoreline, the sand forms dunes and valleys where you can just disappear.