In my mind, I'm goin' to Carolina ...

Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Maybe just like a friend of mine
It hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind



Lemme tell you some things I love about America.

I love huge, wide sidewalks. Swipes of concrete where you can walk without stumbling over someone's garbage bins, or their car straddling the kerb, or the ubiquitous pile of little French dog caca, or that never-graceful dance of confusion with passersby, where you try to figure out who has the right of way.

I love 24-hour supermarkets and gas stations and convenience stores and boites de nuit and always something to do, someone to talk to, someone to call. The ability to banter at the bank, the market, the shop on the corner.


I love houses that aren't beige, roofs that aren't the same red tile.

I love many faces, many voices, many languages on the same street. The French all look the same. The same bodies, the same trends, the same pointy-toed eagle talon boots and faux-fur trimmed vests. The same silver-and-black striped shirts, and so many buckles on everything that they could be Pilgrims.

Here I walk down Mission Street past Mexican men with slicked-back hair, black puffy jackets, and Adidas polished too-white peeking from the cuffs of their extravagantly baggy jeans.


Internet that works nearly all the time, and very, very fast.

Cheap cell phone minutes.

California wine.

Avocados, 4 for $1. Limes, 10 for $1.

American greenbacks.

Strong black coffee in those heavy white diner mugs, on a chipped formica or peeling woodgrain table, in a vinyl-covered booth at half-past midnight.

Pizza with tomato sauce and without creme fraiche. Or lardons.

American microwbrews. Fuck, American brews, whatever they are.

Large pillows, large towels, thick mattresses, hot showers, dryers (for clothes and for hair), comfortable socks, Christmas lights, fog around Sutro Tower.

The American Postal Service, bless them.

Grey's Anatomy.

The Sunday Times.

Gingerbread houses.

Knowing the correct usage of punctuation.

Knowing how much my cash is actually worth.

American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee.

The Food Network.

Graduate school.

Secondhand bookstores.

Refills.


Dark and silent last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
Signs that might be omens say I'm going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind


People who have travelled and come back and gone away again.

The ability to leave, and have a place to come home to.

My own apartment.

My friends, who, much to my surprise and pleasure, missed me.


With a holy host of others standing round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind


Hey guys - I finally had that cup of coffee, in the paper cup with the little sleeve and the plastic lid with that frustrating little hole through which to scald your tongue. I drank it walking down the street, while talking on my cell phone.

I'm going to the movies, where the previews are too long but not as long as the half-hour French ones, and where the popcorn comes with extra butter and isn't sweet. Then I'm going to eat Chinese food in the middle of the night, out of the paper cartons and with those wooden chopsticks that you break apart and then rub the ends together to smooth out the splinters.

I'm going to a brewery, to hear bluegrass and drink real beer. I'm ordering a hamburger. A big one. With melted yellow cheddar cheese. And fries, not frites, that will come beside my sandwich instead of in the middle of it. And ketchup that doesn't taste like that tomato sauce that comes in the toothpaste-tube things at the Casino.

I'm still waiting for my first diet Mountain Dew.

Tomorrow, I get to see my father, who's brining a turkey because my family kept Christmas on hold til I could be there. I'm going to eat my grandmother's sweet potato casserole, and the cornbread dressing she makes completely from scratch, and her grapefruit and avocado salad, and that quintessentially Southern truc with the apples and bananas and walnuts and celery and mayonnaise. And three kinds of pie. And iced tea, even in December. And I'll pour gravy over all of it, and leave my squashy buttered dinner roll on the plate the whole time.

It's a beautiful thing.


Say nice things about me 'cause I'm gone,
Southbound
You'll have to carry on without me
'cause I'm gone, I'm gone
I'm gone to Carolina in my mind

San Francisco 3: Pretending to Speak Spanish

I neglected to mention in my last post that, as part of my ongoing project to convince people that I speak Spanish (which I do not, but wish I did, and desire is nearly as good as practice, right?), I accosted the woman sitting beside me on the bus to the park. She sat down and opened her book, and I, in my newfound role as nosy American traveler, noticed out of the corner of my eye that she was reading a cookbook. Be still, my heart, right? Now, she loses points because the recipe she was reading was for pancakes with something that sounded suspiciously like fruit cocktail poured over the top of them, but she gained them back because the book was in Spanish. No, not only is there no need for me to show off, but I really have nothing *to* show off. Still, I haven't changed, and I do enjoy taking credit where it's not due occassionally, so I screwed my moxie to the sticking place, tapped her book with the tip of my index finger, and said "Sabe bien?" (Haven't figured out how to do the other upside-down question mark in this text box thing. Imagine it's there. And while you're at it, imagine I really speak Spanish.) And she said, oh, yes, yes, and something that was way too fast that I couldn't really follow as a consequence but that seemed to be about how her kid likes pancakes and fruit. Or maybe her kid is a fruit. I wasn't really sure, but I nodded and smiled and said "Si" a lot. And when she got off the bus she said "Adios" and waved, and I did the same, and I'm sure she totally knew I was a faker but I still hugged myself a little smugly. See, this is what being in a strange city with no one to hold one accountable does.

It gets worse, though. I'm now harassing the roofers working on top of the house across the street. Whatever - they've been wolf-whistling every time I walked out of the house for two weeks now, so I figure I can return the malarkey with impunity. So I sort of know this Spanish pun, which is hilarious more for the fact that it's about the longest exchange I can manage in Spanish with any degree of accuracy than for the humor of the joke itself. It's about a whale. I won't write it down because whatever kernels of amusement might be dredged out of it would be totally lost in print, but if you're genuinely interested, call me and I'll tell it to you. But anyway, amidst the catcalls and general merriment brought on my my emergence onto the street the other day, I decided enough was enough and that I ought to go and make friends. So I crossed the street and yelled up onto the roof. "Oye!" They yelled back down at me, and I told them the joke. At first they were confused, and I'm still not certain if they were laughing at the joke or at the crazy gringa. But at least now they yell full sentences at me, instead of just whistling.

I told all of you I'd save the world one day. Maybe I'll be, like, the multi-lingual Ellen. Who's with me?

San Francisco 2: This time, an Albatross

At length did cross an Albatross, / Through the fog it came.

Okay, so this wasn't an albatross, either. Just your garden variety San Francisco seagull, but it did come through the fog, and we still had a close encounter off the end of a pier. (No, I can't remember which number.) There weren't any sea lions, but there was an Asian couple in matching Hawaiian shirts pointing at the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island. A man dressed like Colonel Blake from MASH who had about eight fishing poles strung at various strategic locations off the end of the pier - perhaps he'd only just arrived, because I certainly didn't see any evidence of fish. And a couple of boys in white t-shirts and dark blue jeans licking ice cream cones like kids from the fifties.

I got up last Thursday intending to walk down to the bus stop, about three blocks from my mom's house, and ended up walking all the way up Mission St. from 30th to the Embarcadero. I took a brief detour at Yerba Buena Gardens, right across the street from SF MOMA, and rested while I listened to an Afro-Cuban band wail in French, Spanish and English. They had this way of clipping off the end of words - they'd count out beats in the music "Un', do', tre' ... " One of San Francisco's ubiquitous itinerant population came and sat across from where I was perched on the edge of a huge cement planter at the back of the gardens, a skinny, worn fellow in boots, trousers, turtleneck, jacket, and cap, all in different shades of black, and in a balmy 80 degrees. He proceeded to share (with only faint nods and a tapering series of "Mhmns" as encouragement) the history of his addiction to speed. How it cures everything. How he'll never touch it again. How the woman he loves doesn't like him sober. But how the Lord doesn't like him all strung out.

I walked along the Embarcadero until I got trapped in the gaggles of tourists down at Fisherman's Wharf. There's nothing like the smell of fried fish and freshly-minted I Heart SF sweatshirts early in the afternoon. So I headed away from the Bay and marched up the hills, past Ghirardelli Square (out of the fish-frying pan and into the chocolate pot, but the tourists are exactly the same) and into the groomed and cultivated facades of Pacific Heights. Giant houses and tidy gardens, but the only people outside are Latino landscapers. I walked onto Russian Hill and meandered down Fillmore Street, peeking into "secondhand" shops whose gathered leavings are pricier than anything I've ever considered buying, with the possible exception of my Forester. And little French bistros, and boutiques with embroidered blouses and scarves that look like the ones at Global Goods but that are clearly hand-woven by blind Belgian nuns instead of by Guatemalan village women, because they cost about forty times more.

I ended up down at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, where I saw a Monet exhibit of about fifty paintings from various parts of the artist's time in Normandy. There was some Water Lilies stuff, but mostly there were a lot of paintings of the sea in different lights and moods. The beach, the sky. Haystacks, of course. Churches and little cottages. Hardly any people. For whatever deep-seated emotional dysfunction, I take exception to the act of standing in front of art and being deeply moved by it. I'm glad to see it, but I often have very little to say about it that I'd consider worth repeating. I think that looking at art is for me more an act of quiet meditation, of simply being in the presence of the work of someone else's hands. Observing whatever it happens to be that another person believed was important enough to make note of, whether that be a church, a stormy sea, or a collection of particolored circles. Or drips. But it was much ... clearer, to use a word that's far too inadequate, when seen in person, the ways in which Monet was indeed able to capture not only the physical aspect of a place or object but also its mood and emotional shape.

Enough of that, eh?

San Francisco 1: Exit Boulder, Pursued by a Bear

Okay, so it wasn't a bear. But I've been having close encounters with a raccoon outside my building for several weeks now, and although I can't say for certain if it's the same raccoon (well, they do all wear the same outfit), it evidences an alarming affinity for my companionship. On my last night in Boulder, when I'm taking the trash out for the umpteenth "final" time, this little rotter appears, as usual, peering beadily from behind a railroad tie. I back away, as usual, in my best nonconfrontational manner. Nature's all well and good in its place, but really, it belongs in Percy Shelley poems and not in my lap. But he (she?) must've sensed that this was the last-ditch moment to make friends, because s/he crawled out and started following me into my building, for all the world as though we were going to have a lovely chat over a cup of tea with Snow White and Mr. Toad.

So, after six months of planning, I've finally set out on the first leg of this grand adventure. I left Boulder on Monday, 31 July for San Francisco, where I'm spending a couple of weeks with my family. My last night at my apartment in Boulder was appropriately dislocating; having already deposited absolutely everything that wouldn't fit into my backpack with friends, I hung out on the floor in a borrowed sleeping bag, listening to the air conditioner struggle and waiting for dawn. I did consciously endeavor not to be sentimental about the whole thing; one's life need be neither The Grapes of Wrath nor The Way We Were. But I did allow myself a moment of looking around my empty and silent home and owning the fact that it was no longer mine. Not pathetic, but rather purifying.

Here's the collection of possessions that will sustain me for the next half-year. Boulder Creek and the Flatirons at dawn. The walk up the hill to school that I won't be taking until it's icy instead of verdant.