California, a lake, and peace in the calm of the evening (original) (raw)
January 13 2011, 02:48
I'm very fond of California.
I've just gotten back from an hour's walk in the hills south of San Jose. It wasn't all that easy to pay attention to my surroundings, as I was being dragged along on the leash by a borderline manic German shepherd, but it was sweet to be out of the city and into the company of green and growing things and the gentle rush of a stream nearby.
I've been in California for, what?—four days now? It feels like both more and less. I've mostly spent the time holed up at a friend's place, eating too much and sleeping on an odd schedule, but I seem to be over the jet-lag now, and also over an ill-timed outbreak of reclusiveness. 
sabertail was nice enough to put me up for an evening and to accommodate my desires to go for rambling walks, not eat anything, and lose consciousness at the wrong time of day. But now it's Wednesday; Further Confusion begins tomorrow, and I am ready to par-tay.
But before the riot begins, this hour spent walking with a dog who alternates between heaving at the leash and pathetically whining for no obvious reason. The earth smells different in California, the vegetation smells unfamiliar and sweet, the bird-calls are strange and the cast of the light is like nowhere I know in Europe. So I bundle the dog into our borrowed car and, before we return to the city, I gaze out across the glittering light on the reservoir, and think...
... I think nothing. A brief moment of unquestioned peace, of the kind that's very good to carry in your heart once in a while.