Home again
... both in the sense of me being here, and revisiting the blog subject of a month ago.I have been moving around a lot since Oxford (once a year, like clockwork), and each time there is a break at home in between one place and the next, for a a week or two, or six this time around.
I like the little details that remind me I'm here: getting cut off two or three times on every freeway journey (indeed, making freeway journeys and driving at all); readily available quality Mexican food (there was one on St. Aldate's in Oxford, but the lamb fajitas didn't sound quite right); the Angels causing me stress as the pennant race heats up; the contrast between all the stereotypical blonde 'California girls,' by the beach trying to get as tan as possible by revealing all the flesh they can get away with, while in my neighborhood the Vietnamese women wear long white sleeves and wide-brimmed hats, and carry parasols to stay as pale as they can. For the first time in my life today, I went to a proper Vietnamese restaraunt in Little Saigon, only a mile away from my parents house. The first time I had that cuisine was with Missy in DC, even though my town and the two next door make up the largest Vietnamese and Cambodian community in the country. A bit of finding the undiscovered character of the place you have always lived and taken for granted.
There are things I don't like as well, since afterall I moved away for a reason. Aesthetically, I like living in places where the architecture has some character, as opposed to the strip-malls and stuccoed subdivisions block after block after block in an unending grid in the area that invented sprawl. I hate that you can't get around here without a car, although public transport elsewhere has its frustrations too.
I love California (greatest state in the Union, in my extremely biased opinion, Nicole), but LA/OC is not my cup of tea. But I love my parents, and I love being back at the house I grew up in. This is a great life, with good food, cheating on my vegetarian diet (it's a special occasion afterall, and my parents can afford the farm-raised, natural diet, humanely treated variety), wine with dinner (the ubiquitous and obtrusive cases of which are an amusing, on-going mini-spat between my parents), sunshine, a bit of grass in the back, and the too-energetic dog busy pulling unfortunate opossums off our seven-foot back fence. This is home, but already now the childhood home that I can only remain in so long as an adult (or a proximate one, at least). This is a temporary life, afterall. I am not going to again live with my parents permanently, but I wouldn't want to move back to the area and live in some bland apartment either. It is nice to relive this life periodically, but it only works as a respite between seeking out a 'life of my own.'
Now I finally have a chance for a real do-nothing mental vacation after finishing my dissertation and helping to extensively remodel another house my parents are renting out. I got to do very manly things like bust up concrete with a sledge and a rotohammer, and lift heavy objects. It was very satisfying. Afterall, let's face it, 'manly' isn't an adjective by which I am often described, so I need to take those opportunities to flex my skinny muscles where I can. We took a trip to San Francisco last weekend, my first time there in years, and I must say it's one of my two or three favorite cities anywhere. I got started with some books that weren't for my dissertation and are actually fun to read (novels!), and am gearing up to move out east again next Wednesday. Hope to see some (or all) of you who live out that way. I am more than willing to travel as far as Northern Virginia or Boston for that purpose. Cheers, and I will be thinking of you all.
posted by Zack @ 9/02/2005 01:25:00 AM
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