Just where is the grass greener, anyway?

This is what I see out the window, right now, at this very moment. Actually, the light has shifted a bit and the clouds have spread since I ran out on the balcony with the little doggie to capture yet another insanely beautiful evening. The springtime light that falls from behind our hill is tricky after a shower. It picks up the remnants of rain from passing clouds and casts rainbows right into the strait. Right now, it's particularly lovely. It's like a tribute to the day, except, the day wasn't really this good. I mean, it was okay, but not THIS great. It certainly wasn't incandescent.

I mean, today was a day spent thinking about leaving here. I'm calling the movers and talking to the bank and telling the little dog about her next great Pacific crossing. (She wags and slurps and then snores on the beanbag.) So committed did I become to high-tailing it out of here, I looked up the weather in LA. Sunny and 79. Surprise, surprise.

Today, I completely disconnected from this place. In honor of the status shift, I put on a backpack and went to the museum. I walked a lot and ate gelato and when someone recognized my accent to be somewhere from North America, I lied and said I was just visiting. At least, as a tourist, I can anticipate our departure. I can start craving the apples from our lovely garden in the backyard, and the pizza from Tarantino's or the butterscotch pie at Pie n' Burger. I'll start taking more pictures to share with friends and maybe reactivate my brain should I be so fortunate to become an employed attorney again. Maybe I'll stop saying "wee bit" and "quite" and get going on the "totally" thing again. We're packing up. It's time to go home.

But I'm taking a moment to sigh, just for a second. Because New Zealand is really beautiful. It just isn't home. I mean, wouldn't you sigh, just a wee bit if you were looking at this from the window in front of your computer in your own house? And we pay a really reasonable rent!

We left LA a year ago, not making promises to never return, but with the intention to make the most out of this tiny place in the middle of the ocean. It's a lovely country with a wide sky and more sheep than people. You've heard that, right? It's a country where the middle class can still inhabit the coastline, and the kids wander around on the beach without supervision, and young mothers park their strollers outside cafes and leave everything in them while the order up their lattes. Sometimes, even their seedling.

Despite all the beauty and simplicity and apparent safety, neither of us felt the commitment to the place that would keep us from responding to the wild call of California. When I visited family in June for ten days, I smiled everytime I heard someone say "hey" and "dude." "Oi" and "mate" don't do it for me; they're too sharp, too refined. I like the heavy eyelids and requisite smirk that comes along with a nicely expressed "dude." I like what that smirk makes us. I like the old guys who cruise on beater bikes along the boardwalk in San Diego. I like to watch the old dudes interact with the young dudes, the twenty-somethings who are growing little pots above their shorts and share the same taste in women as the old dudes. Sure, there's a lot of cars, and smog, and, well, a fairly depressing lack of social consciousness among the population in southern California, but at heart, the people are still decent and diverse and moderatley pleasant to each other. They say "excuse me" when they bump into you. If you make eye contact with someone, she'll say hi, even if she's really old or really young or completely shocked that it came out of her mouth.

In California, for all its faults, there's an aim to achieve something. There's a desire to make change. There's a inclination to enjoy what's out there. People want to innovate and work and be happy and look beyond the miserable aspects of the sprawling cities to celebrate the orange trees and the beaches and the mountains that are out there... somewhere...maybe off the next exit? Well, whatever, you can see it all when the Santa Ana blows. Even if they really can't see the physical form of these things through the smog, people seem to consider themselves blessed just to stomp the ground of wonderful California. And even if the wonder of California is antiquated or has been paved or turned into a strip mall, people are still pleased as punch to be Californian. Why that is, I have no idea. It's a party without a reason, but it rocks.