Brains!

December 18, 2005
I drove fourteen hours yesterday straight down California and through Berkeley and LA traffic. The farther I got away from Arcata the more I wanted to go back. I went to bed last night alone for the first time in months. I was wired from the drive, my eyes were so tired but they wouldn’t close. I imagined what he was doing and pretended I was there too. I imagined him sleeping on the couch, bibles stacked high all around, the little gray terrier curled up on his chest. That helped a little, I ended up sitting by the fire playing with the ceramic nativity scene from Mexico that my mum has had for years. All the pieces cracked, an angel with one wing. Our real sequoia growing wildly in all directions potted in the front room was waiting for decorations and lights.

The week before leaving meant cleaning and we found the mouse nest. Four naked baby mice squirming around squeaking and a terrified mother dashing out to safety under Heather’s bed. Colin had to use a brick to kill them. James, Heather and I stood by watching him pound it into the paper bag we had swept them into. He said, “listen I’ll do it, but I don’t want you people to think I get any sort of pleasure out of this.” We assured him we had no such feelings at all, and that we had just watched The Secret of NIMH hours earlier. We could not have an infestation. It had to be done, but the three city slickers had not the gut and conviction as a farmer’s son might have, so I called him over. It was one of those things I feel you’ll remember forever…I had never thought that killing something like mice would still have such a great affect on me. Heather said that the mother would have most likely rejected them had we caught her too and tried to put them in the wild together. This hardly helped me.

December 23, 2005
The damn Christmas season is upon us. Heathens, Christians and all thing holy or not being forced down our necks no matter how hard you try to resist. Always caught up in a holiday I vow to make my own one-day. To do right one day. Having said that I am going to Church tomorrow, with James’s family. I though it a polite gesture if anything…honestly I feel like I am more interested in the education about a world I still know crap about and a world I think most people including devote Christians know nothing about. The last time I went to church was in Colorado for Easter. Pretty damn boring. This church is supposedly small; I refused to go to the three thousand attendee’s one out in West Covina. So I will be attending tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to write about it. I also have more to say about Heathens and Christians and Christmas, I really think Christmas could be much more magical and compelling at any age if people actually knew why we hung lights, or left out cookies, or why Santa wears red and why is everything green. I feel like the true meaning could not only be a family oriented one but an earth oriented one also. And if you want to throw Jesus in that’s fine too, because for some people he is the light of the their world just as the sun is the light of the pagan’s. But alas I left all of my notes on the subject in Humboldt…

Whenever I think about the place I long for it greatly. Luckily the heat in LA has subsided and it is bearable. But I am suffering headaches from an unfamiliar bed and the smog. Today I wanted to go to Don’s Donuts so badly it surprised me. It’s just a damn buttermilk donut, but I wanted to go to because I could glimpse the plaza from the street, and look out over the bay and up at the forest on my way there. I miss the quiet of Arcata. The lack of worrying about who I have to see, who I’m obligated to see. I am now both Northern and Southern Californian all in one. I’m so laid back it bothers people, but so tired of sitting down that I need to twitch and fidget. I guess I am having an argument with myself. Living in LA, and living so far away from it for so long makes the place so damn hard. I am not surprised to hear that you die sooner here. Driving down Venice Blvd at 8 in the morning I noticed the sky was clear all the way to the San Gabriel Mountains, but later in the day on the same street I could not see head or tails of any natural feature in the distance. In my side mirrors however the sunset was brilliantly orange, influenced by the smog, it was still beautiful.