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theatokosI don't mind. I didn't really want to have coffee with him. At first, because I thought he might try and flirt with me and hug me too tightly like he has in the past, then because I wondered if he'd go on and on about his woman drama and I'd have to hear about low class women who stalk their prey and the action he picks up in cab rides. But he didn't show. So I sat and drank my latte at a little table outside in the shade, listening to the Italians sipping espresso behind me.
I stumbled into an extra half hour in my day for reading for pleasure, only loosely for my thesis. The chapter was on the author's experience in Northern Ireland, very different from my experience there, but I have merely a wee drop of Irish blood (1700s, convict sent to Austrlia) and no family ties of any kind to the island. However her discussions of place and displacement, victim mentality vs siege mentality, assimilation and integration, proked and prodded the part of me that says "you still haven't given California a chance." After all, I cannot name the trees or plants around here, I know nothing of the geography, and I know only the most rudimentary history (Berkeley, the '60s, Free Speech Movement, Black Panthers, um, the Gold Rush). My soul may be in Alaska, but I have more family history in California than I do in the Last Frontier. My grandmother fled Pasadena in the mid 40s, but her family had been in the area for a few generations. I am but a mere 2nd generation born and bred Alaskan, 3rd generation to call it home. Now I no longer live there and it is time to learn this place, even if I do not send down permament roots, even if I never have children here, even if I leave in ten months time, bags packed and degree under my arm.
And if I don't learn about California for me, it is the home of my love. I need to quit writing off this place that he loves. Just as I may yet live in myriad more places and still call Alaska the home of my heart, sunny California is the shape of his heart no matter where he may be.
I stumbled into an extra half hour in my day for reading for pleasure, only loosely for my thesis. The chapter was on the author's experience in Northern Ireland, very different from my experience there, but I have merely a wee drop of Irish blood (1700s, convict sent to Austrlia) and no family ties of any kind to the island. However her discussions of place and displacement, victim mentality vs siege mentality, assimilation and integration, proked and prodded the part of me that says "you still haven't given California a chance." After all, I cannot name the trees or plants around here, I know nothing of the geography, and I know only the most rudimentary history (Berkeley, the '60s, Free Speech Movement, Black Panthers, um, the Gold Rush). My soul may be in Alaska, but I have more family history in California than I do in the Last Frontier. My grandmother fled Pasadena in the mid 40s, but her family had been in the area for a few generations. I am but a mere 2nd generation born and bred Alaskan, 3rd generation to call it home. Now I no longer live there and it is time to learn this place, even if I do not send down permament roots, even if I never have children here, even if I leave in ten months time, bags packed and degree under my arm.
And if I don't learn about California for me, it is the home of my love. I need to quit writing off this place that he loves. Just as I may yet live in myriad more places and still call Alaska the home of my heart, sunny California is the shape of his heart no matter where he may be.
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Ol' Molly Gallagher
Date: 2004-08-04 07:41 pm (UTC)or
Frisky San Fransisky: The Hooker with the Heart of Gold
In an old prospectors voice oddly similar to Gram'pa Simpson's...
Ireland and California, have had a looooong and glorious hisotry together. In 1845 gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. Thus began the california gold rush. Gold let of course to prostitutes, and California has never been the same since.
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