Entry 68
Sunflowers, jasmine, new eyes, grief and the way things should be
In fact I was right: California looks, feels, smells, tastes different to me today. A few things are the same - my cat’s winding his tail around my wrist, burying his face in the crook of my elbow. Leather boots are strewn across the wood floor. My cassette player is where i left it with the same tape only half-played - it’s playing out this very minute, its melodies crackling and warm; the Chateau candle burns the way it always does; so does the white sage. On my walk, everything smells of jasmine. Soft purple and pink and white petals cover the dark sidewalks, the air is warmer than I expected, just like usually happens here, unexpected warmth. I noticed earlier that spring really has spread across the state. February is almost over. Even the desert now is dusted in lamblike greenery and small new sunflowers line the highway, their buds reflected a thousand times over in pieces of broken glass that collect there along with scraps of rubber from burst tires. I’m smoking an american spirit instead of my usual marlboro gold, missing some things that have happened and even more that haven’t yet.
On the phone with Brette we agreed that staying up late at home without reason is the ultimate freedom, and as the sun set through smog and some gentle congestion of cars that appear to have collectively decided that today is not a day for speeding, have decided en masse to meander in the same direction together, we’ll all make it there at some point, won’t we, I found myself a little dazed. Everything is different. “That’s exactly how it should be” my brother said yesterday.
Grief that has a reasonable timeline, an expected end, is no less real a feeling
There are parts of each of us we may never see ourselves, except through the eyes of somebody else
Reminders that I do actually live here - a neighbor I’ve never met coming by to borrow a wine key, making deliberate plans with the woman who lives right next door, taking the trash out, finding just about everything else exactly as I left it