The Day After

The election is over, you that know me know I am disappointed, both in Bush's victory and in my country. I realize that last is harsh, and I know some of you must have voted for Bush, the two friends we have up here our age are ardent supporters of Bush, but that's how I feel. History will speak in future decades and tell me whether I am right or wrong. God will speak to each of us, and that will be the only enforced final word.

Blessed are the peacemakers

I don't even want to go into why I dislike Bush's administration so much, or challenge the christian right that had so much to do with electing him. Or talk about Iraq. Or the evangelical view of homosexuality. The one bright side I see is I'll have another healthy tax return; hopefully I'll consider doing something with that money to alleviate the suffering of others. Probably I'll buy a laptop and furniture for my house. Certainly my stock market pittance is going up today.

So what do I want to talk about?

I'm trying to improve my attitude and self-care in a number of ways. I'm home alone a lot working, and not working. So I started cooking. I had a few dishes under my belt, but once I opened Joy of Cooking and actually followed the directions, I've found I can make all kinds of things: killer shepherd's pie, great beef stew, good quick breads (here I discovered the wonder of molasses); a couple nights ago I made chicken sandwiches with goat cheese, carmelized onions, and arrugula. I got the recipe from cooking light and it took me, oh, 45 minutes? I enjoy cooking 'good things' from recipes. It gives me something to do and to look forward to during the day. I can shop, plan, marinate the meat, in between working online and grading papers. Even laundry, scrubbing a tub...these things help when I feel the long alone hours ahead and depression setting in. I will probably not have so many of these days in future years whether I stay at my campus or move, but I'm learning to make the best of the stay at home working dad motif.

Rain, all day. It is so beautiful. Our dogwood is setting very yellow. I really should learn to use my wife's camera and post some pictures.

And I've made up, some, with the chair of my dept. That helped my mood as much as anything, just emailing with her a little. She is supportive of me as a person, though of course our vision of online differs radically, now. When she starts teaching those classes, who knows. I have all winter to think about moving campuses, but it seems likely.

Still, there are times I miss the city. I think, I should be walking around SF or LB with my wife, in black leather jackets, jeans, black boots and gloves, shaved, cologned, gel in my hair and mango oil in hers, looking for a warm table in an italian restaurant just around some paved corner. Long scarves, the sound of traffic, wet pavement after a rain, thinking about pasta in a tomato and cream sauce and a bottle of supertuscan. The self-confidence that comes from wearing fashionable clothes and knowing a wine list. Maybe after a ballet, or symphony, or opera, or the theater; I miss those and I also miss museums that actually display art and aren't about gold panning or dead cowboys. Of course, people take the train into SF all the time. I could drive an hour, take a two and a half hour train ride, and bop out into Union Square: plays and restaurants to walk to everywhere.

It's craving what I don't have. If I took a job in the east bay, I'd dream, in the tiny condo I could afford, of jogging in the pines. I'd regret all the hiking I didn't do when I lived up here. I'd probably make long drives to get into the woods. And would I be the same? Have the mountains changed me in ways I don't know? I'm not sure.

I am so appreciative for Sheri's comment to my post below. She said it wasn't as easy to shift culture as it appears in her blog. That is comforting. I actually do remember her, a little, as a so.cal. culture girl. But I'm such a perfectionist. And I admit I hide my fears and insecurities under a thought-veneer of superiority: oh, I teach college (at a city college) I read books and have a graduate degree. I drink wine and microbeers instead of budweiser. I cook with fresh herbs, dahling. My flannels come from l.l. bean and pendleton instead of mervyn's or the long's drug. And where does all this get me?

No effing place, that's where (nothing wrong with l.l. bean, jack russell beer or fresh rosemary; it's the thought-veneer that's hazardous). Since I'm not surrounded by people with similar inferiority/superiority visions, as in some sense I was in LB (and I always find this very comfortable) I'm stuck having to find out who I really am and what I really feel. I am flawed; my body is aging; I'm fearful as prufrock. I live where looking and acting hip, two things I know well, isolate me, not integrate me. Jeez...I'm a long way from the orange curtain. It takes a secure man to be genuinely friendly and caring.

Did I have a central theme in this blog? I don't remember. But I'm looking forward to cooking dinner and baking pumpkin bread for the first time. And if it stops raining, I'll get my first jog in a week in. How glorious that will be, running on the tree-thick streets around my house, rain heavy in the leaves and on the muddy streets.