Didn't sleep much last night- My subletters leave in a wee less than 3 weeks which means I have to go back to Santa Monica and be forced into things I don't want to do just yet (or at all in some things). Unless a miracle happens and I get a job soon. VERY SOON.
Even Kennedy knows I'm paralyzed with anxiety right now. Instead of sleeping at my feet, she squeezed her body along side mine on that very narrow couch I've been calling a bed for 3 months. I don't even have money to buy my flight back to California. Don't have the money to bring the animals to a vet for a flight certificate. Then, of course, no money to fly them with me.
And as it looks like I may be forced to spend April packing up to move back to Illinois - into my mother's home - 100% dependent on her indefinitely....well I slip into a depression I'm determined to fight. But some days even walking homeless dogs and helping kittens post-surgery won't remove the sludge from my heart. Thanks to yet another one of my mother's fits, I try to consider really how bad it would be to just live on the streets vs more time enslaved to her and her anger.
So before I walk doggies, I treat myself. More Intelligensia. Since it's my 1st cup of the day, I can enjoy one of their award-winning lattes. Made by the recent winner of the US Barista Championship, Michael Phillips. I get lucky and he's here this morning. My latte is exquisite. Both to see and taste. The photo above is me enjoying my, eh, 3rd sip. It's so beautiful I hate to drink it not wanting to destroy the artful way he poured the steamed milk. But to drink it- ahhhhhhhhh-- for now my anxiety lessens...and I'm able to give 4+ hours of this snowy day to 30+ homeless dogs I've been neglecting this past week thanks to flu bugs and motherly surprises.
1 comment:
Kara,
Very sorry to read that you are at the mercy of the woman you described to me years ago. I cannot image a circumstance in which it might be harder to keep your sanity. But I am glad to see that you have a big furry friend to keep you and some little ones too.
LA is a wasteland. They say unemployment is at 12 percent but of course that figure is always dubious. I have now fully retreated to the desert. This little military town is no postcard, but all that surrounds it is exactly that - - picturesque. It is grandly beautiful, open, often otherworldly. You’d be hard-pressed to find a really champion latte, and the summer temps are indeed like something from another planet.
Waiting out the recession here seems like as good a plan as any. I can resume teaching and the base itself is actually hiring in production. Imagine, hiring. Not sure I can bring myself to work for Uncle Sam just yet but it seems highly likely that I will need to do so, soon.
The thing about living up here is that it has none of what Chicago or LA offers, but in many ways it has so much they cannot. You would not believe the night sky. Every star looks to be visible, close even. There are broad valleys and mountains all around but if you go just few miles out of town into the desert night it becomes down right majestic. I have always come back to this place for a sense of that majesty. Laying on your back on a desert hilltop at night is a truly mystical experience. No latte at Intelligensia but all things have their place.
That is the crux. This is not Bend Oregon, or Gstaad or even Silverlake. Unless you are here to test missiles or hike in Sierra, or dream about the stars it is totally up to you to make a good latte or, a purpose for your life. There is something extraordinarily freeing about that. Maybe it is why so many of my friends went on to unusually self-determined lives? In any case, it is a feeling that I wish was available to bottle. It is as open as the landscape and the sky. It is full of warm winds and possibilities. It is a feeling that I desperately wish could be FedEx-ed to you. I’d like you to have some… some sense of your possibilities and a purpose chosen by no one but you.
My very best wishes.
~e.
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