Right Pretty Spell

We had beautiful weather yesterday and today. It made me think of home, and it made me feel homesick - which is counterintuitive to what you'd think a little puncture of happiness would do - because as long as my routine is one continuous fabric of drab boredom, illuminated most by those flashes of Greek and Latin literature - of all things!- I forget that there's anything else out there, and I'm okay.

But today I also happened to wake up late and dress hastily, and I wore my bright red boardshorts to class. The combination of the gear and the sunshine on my walk to class fell on me like an anvil, and I was suddenly floored with a recollection of Santa Cruz - just as I knew would happen the last few times I went surfing there. I remember bobbing there on the salt water in the cold wind, soaking in the sun and watching the cars pass by drowsily on the blooming cliffs, and I remember hurting with contentment. And then there was that one time when, after a day of surfing like this, I stumbled into the Agent Orange concert (discovering a local band that has since become one of my most beloved), and Santa Cruz became a night memory for me as well. There's an apathy, a certain carpe diem, in that place that is simply incomparable; I felt like the people there had no age, no future, no occupation, or if they did it didn't matter because...well, because we didn't care. Brains of only temporary capacity...I know, my fondest dream sounds like another person's worst nightmare. Though Santa Cruz is not my home in the true sense, I felt like that was the kind of place where I belong. I will always be a little expatriated.