If you're going to. . .

"The coast is not a line really but a borderland, site of a continual conversation between elements which transforms both [water and land]" - Mark Doty

San Diego was just what I expected: a gorgeous beach city with a rather impressive sky line bordering the ocean bay. There are succulent plants everywhere & I never grew tired of stopping to squeeze their petals, feeling the firm moosh beneath their leathery skin. I was told later that succulents are the annoying pests that infest and dominate yards. I can't even imagine! I visited the future site of my fieldwork and it's omnipresence was rather daunting and large. I retreated back down the little wooded lane to major highways, safety, & a love story with a predictable ending. I had the pleasure of going sailing with an all woman crew (all over 59, tan, & amazing) & I wondered a few times whether the sail would skim the water. I have never been on a sailboat that was tipped 60 degrees to the left. I look forward to the experiences I will have in San Diego when I move there but I already know that it will become unbearable not to experience the changing colors of the leaves in autumn or anticipate the first snow in December. I know that, at the heart of it all, I am a northerner through and through.

Read two great books over the weekend: Stiff, the amazing and wacky adventure of a cadaver, is very comical as well as informative and intelligent. It really shows how far humans have come in ethical behaviors both in the scientific realm & in medical advancement. Heaven's Coast: a memoir is a beautiful, poetic memoir that I found myself lusting after the writing. If only I had the language to capture inner thoughts like Mark Doty... The memoirs weave the memories, experiences, reality, and ghosts of a man who lost his lover (and many friends) to AIDS in the eighties and nineties.