4 posts tagged “california”
Outside Auburn. We were going to stop for breakfast, but the smoky air destroyed our appetites. The news reports that the National Guard's been called out to help the exhausted fire crews.
It would be super just for the weather; that outrageous storm over the weekend is now a bad memory. Today is bright, clear, and mild in the East Bay. Turning out for the primary election can be easily incorporated into an early springtime walk.
The newspapers all have bazillion-point type on their front page headlines, frantic to say anything definite about the primary. The televisions over at Gold's Gym seem permanently tuned to one of those talking heads political shows. Barack Obama supporters, nearly all young, Caucasian university students, cluster at the neighborhood intersections holding endearingly crude handmade posters urging motorists to honk in support of Obama.
Supporters of the other presidential candidates seem unconcerned about my neighborhood. There's a die-hard across the street with her "JOHN EDWARDS 2008" sign still posted on her lawn, but little other overt sentiment. We didn't even get the usual dead forest of campaign mailers. But it's only the primary--- not the final episode for this show.
The Ron Paul campaign did remind us of its presence by virtue of an airplane overhead trailing a "RON PAUL REVOLUTION" banner. However, all of us in the Grand Lake neighborhood were on the reverse side of the banner, so the only letters we could read spelled "LOVE." Awww-- a valentine!
I spent two and a half hours trying to get home from work yesterday. I thought I was catching the same old bus, but the planners at AC Transit decided to play an early April Fool's prank on me. That almost-tolerable forty-five minute ride I used to have to get to BART? An hour fifteen last night, thanks to the new, convoluted bus route.
This morning's commute to the office was uneventful. It took the usual two hours.
I am crinkly-eyed and weary. I leave home around sunrise and get home after dark. A lot of things in my life aren't getting done, thanks to my absence or bone-tiredness. But this will soon change.
I've resigned.
Nobody at work seemed very surprised; they've lived in the Bay Area long enough to know how thoroughly soul-robbing getting one's self around this region can be. Whole lunchtimes could be spent with each of us sharing our favorite ways to game the system, whether by bus, bike, BART, or Bug.
Me, I'm tired of negotiating the schedules of rival transit agencies, tired of accommodating a moving-vehicle sequence more delicately timed than the chase scene in Bullitt. And... I'm just tired.
Three weeks into my new job, the one with the two-hour commute each way. It's midwinter, so I leave and return home in pitch darkness, which is a mercy in its way, considering how filthy the apartment is now that I'm too preoccupied to clean it (as is, ahem, its other resident). Today, the solstice, I'm starting to understand the excitement pagan Europeans felt at this time of year: the sun will return, pushing aside darkness only a minute or two more each day. The sun is coming back, bringing a minute or two more of illumination that isn't from a Godawful 1000-watt fluorescent light bulb like the ones above my cringing head in my work cubicle.
Tomorrow night I'll be in the Mojave desert. The stars will shine crisply in the cold, dry air: I never minded the dark of night when I lived in the country, and could see the stars and moon. I will be able to watch the sunrise at leisure, rather than in a state of suspension from a commuter train platform. The light will intensify, the hillsides will gather detail, and I'll be able to just watch it all, unperturbed by station announcements or train whistles: watch it all, as long as it lasts-- a minute or two earlier than it was this morning.
