The appeal of living as a nomad has already worn off and all i want is somewhere to hang my hat, so to speak. I have moved out of the good old motel and am staying with a friend on campus in the forest. It is very isolated up there and i have come to the realisation that i will never live in a Kerouacian shack upon the mountains, for ' I like my whiskey wild, I like Saturday night in the shack to be crazy, I like the tenor to be woman-mad, I like things to GO and rock and be flipped..', however i am not a huge fan of the kind of silence that hurts your ears. I cannot help but feel a little like Gretel when embarking into the forest after dark and am considering leaving a trail of Hershey's Kisses as i walk, in case i am lured into any gingerbread cottages. I encountered a raccoon on my way home one night and walked through a family of baby deer on my way to classes yesterday morning. That said, there is something wonderful about waking early and walking in the morning sunlight, the sweet pines of the redwoods filling your lungs.
This is the path leading to the library. A little different from the bustle of Chancery Lane?
After morning coffee over Bukowski, the sunlight creating rainbows in my sunglasses as the man at the table opposite me cast his dreams into their air above our heads with 'clicks' and 'clacks' as his fingers caressed the keys of an old-fashioned typewriter, I stumbled upon a monthly vintage market in the town centre. It was full of jewellery and antiques and a myriad of quirky chunky knits, like a little slice of Brick Lane in the sunshine. I bought a dress for FIVE DOLLARS, this place will be the ruin of me. A friendly shopkeeper inquired as to what i was doing so far from home. 'Don't they have books in England?!' he roared at me, guffawing raucous laughter. I told him i suppose they do.
The great house search has begun and i warmed to the idea of co-operative housing. There are a lot of co-ops in California, particularly Santa Cruz, centered around community living, cooking group meals together and contributing to the house and garden as part of your stay.Unsure of how to go about such things, i googled the address of a well-known co-op which houses a lot of gigs and art shows and knocked upon their door. The house itself was a brilliant cacophony of sunflower seeds, lentils, bunting, graffiti and political posters. The co-op is composed of two main houses with rooms named 'opium den' and my favourite, 'the sunshine room' which had sunshine murals blooming across the walls.Whilst being shown around their vegetable plots in the garden, a dog appeared wielding a skateboard in her mouth. With a deft shake of her curls, she sent the skateboard wheeling across the ground. She proceeded to jump onto it and rode across the garden. I'm not joking. The residents informed me that they did indeed have spare rooms and invited me to a house meeting that evening.
I arrived in the dark and pushed my way through strings of coloured fairy lights and tattered lengths of flags to the back of the house. Three hours of intense discussion ensued. Before everyone spoke, they stated their 'PGP'S', or 'Preferred Gender Pronouns.' I do actually believe it is innovative and appropriate that they do this. It is a concept i have never considered before - the gendering of your language depending on your sexuality. Drowning in a sea of 'he' and 'him' and 'they', i actually felt a little ashamed for being so conventionally heterosexual. This is interesting, as i assume this is the way people with same sex or transgender preferences may feel in a society where heterosexuality is the prevailing assumption. After learning about the eroticism of cookies, thunderstorms and spine-shaped trees and declaring that meat is indeed murder, i was invited to return to interview.
I am yet to form a complete judgement on the American education system, but, bearing in mind the obscene amount of dollars they pay towards it i have so far: watched a Michael Jackson youtube clip in a lecture on Ovid's Metamorphoses, been taught 'On The Road' by a professor who has not read it and does not know what it is about other than what she 'read on Wikipedia' and encountered an esteemed literature teacher who was unaware that T.S Eliot wrote 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.' which later became the Broadway musical, 'Cats'.
Santa Cruz is certainly an interesting place. The homeless characters here are of celebrity status. There is a man who lives in a truck with four rabbits and nothing else. I asked the lady in the campus cafe yesterday which way to my classroom. After proclaiming that i was 'the sparkliest girl in town', she continued to declare, 'Do i really look like i study here?' (Do i? Distinct lack of University hoody.) 'Fourteen years i've worked here,' she told me, 'and i've never even been to the beach.' I felt a little piece of my heart crumble away for her. Trapped among the redwoods forever.
There is a fuzzy parma-violet headache behind my eyes and deep green pangs of loneliness in my stomach. I feel a little lost and awfully unsure. Restlessness is a cruel mistress. The prospect of having potentially found a house, the lure of jazz clubs and frequent glimpses of the ocean do return a little bit of the lustre to life.
All things considered, i have come a long way since the Sainsbury's supermarket cafe at Washington Galleries Shopping Centre with my thermos of coffee. Which is a good thing.
I think.
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