"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."
David Foster WallaceThis world will sadly miss his insight...
Postcards from Palo Alto
The fashionable scruffy young men who apparently slept in their shiny black lexus overnight… not really Palo Alto homeless.
The new trendy restaurant on University that is too trendy to have a name or menu posted outside. Everyone inside talking on their iphones rather than to the people they are with.
Michael says “I’m in” for the New Zealand trek in 2014. Just typing 2014 is very strange… I look forward to my Medicine rotation and time to do something outside the hospital other than sleep, time to get back to the training that will keep me in shape for the New Zealand Fijords…
Walking to Peets every morning where they sell coffee in the curious sizes of small, medium and large.
Keplers.. O Keplers! Where I bought my first Jane Austen, Laura Ingals Wilder, Willa Cather. The muse of my country….. (see my senior thesis for a complete explanation…..)
My mother using the new verb “to yelp…” as in the website, not the exclamation
Not having to explain my verbs to Michael and Sylvia… Sylvia always there for me .. at the airport, checking in on Mom at the hospital when I can’t. Finding her own joy, her own meaning in these favors I ask of her.. Friendships old and vital and as comfortable as a twenty year old shirt.
Tesla motors taking over the old Cadillac dealership and selling their $100,00 electric sports car.
Missing Gina on the phone, screaming 5 times over “I’m sleeping” and realizing, chagrined, if I was screaming I wasn’t actually sleeping.
Missing Gina this time, catch you next time love….
Red Mango, Matcha frozen yogurt with fresh mangos. If this is what it means to be a corporate tool sign me up…..
Nail salons gradually replacing the rug galleries in downtown Palo Alto signifying a shift toward????
Finishing Baby Nora’s baby hoodie finally… my crocheter’s fear of sewing with yarn no longer owns me!
The fashionable new restaurant has a name! Joya. Argentinian Tapas, (because apparently Spanish tapas are too passé for Palo alto…) Red Sangria is not to be found, but white is, Malbecs are favored on the wine list, seared Spanish sausages are cold but the Halibut is a revelation.
Last days of summer on the peninsula, oak leaves coated thick with summer dust filtering the slanted light, warm brown hills rise above the bay.. Eucalyptus, part of my peninsula childhood and an invader from oversees. Like many immigrants it is too successful here for the jealous earlier arrivals.
Mom on the mend but maybe not quite there. A plane in my future tomorrow. I am once again pulled in two directions, west and east, with a longing backward glance south to New Mexico. Grateful that it is such good friends that pull me apart, happy to have made the journey, feeling the bittersweet of another leave taking.
