CALIFORNIA
We’re here

We’re subletting a studio apartment in a city of ageing hippies. The other day while perusing aisles of organic guacamole and bins of granola an ageing white-bearded man asked me how to get plastic bags in the bulk food section. I showed him where they kept the bags, and he said “cool, that’s cool man!” He tottered toward the checkout counter using his shopping cart as a walker – his cane hooked over the cart handle.

Berkeley is full of hybrid cars and long haired women on bikes. We live to the left of a Tibetan restaurant, over an Indonesian-Singaporean restaurant, next to a Salvadorian papusaria. We get up at 6:30 every morning and drink dark roast coffee, peel local oranges, and eat them with our granola. I’m teaching Jennifer how to drive herself to work so we take our time getting her there. By 8:15 I’m running under gnarled branches dripping in moss, past young Douglas Firs (which are only a several hundred years old and high), saying “g’ morning” to regular dog walkers and breathing in the morning fog.

Jennifer works at a nursing home. She says her patients are “low level” performers so she spends most of her times doing heavy transfers and helping her patients keep their pants on. We like California a lot.

We like to have long evenings together, watching Chinese TV, eating good food, and picking at each other’s noses.