This has been the longest winter of my life, so I've been creating elaborate escapist fantasies fueled by Craigslist apartment browsing (Inner and Outer Sunset in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Westwood in LA, all with hardwood floors, white kitchen cabinets, and glowing with natural sunlight). This isn't healthy, I realize, as it's certainly keeping me out of "the moment." But my current moment is mostly made of anticipating the second half of this year's uncertainty. Move back to California, yes, but where? Get a job? Start a second master's degree at UCLA? Will I be able to find a job? Do I want to keep going to school? Anyway, it got me thinking about our trip to California in December. We had just watched The Birds, and were hoping to take a day trip to Bodega Bay. Unfortunately, Devin and I both came down with the worst incarnation of the flu--the norovirus--and those plans were put on an indefinite hiatus. Earlier in the trip, we took a hike at Rancho San Antonio, and on the way back to Devin's neighborhood, we drove past our high school's rival school. The neighborhood was swarming with huge crows, all cawing at the top of their lungs and lurching about on their spindly legs. It was dusk, and having just watched Alfred Hitchcock's interpretation of avian dispositions, it was more than a little eerie. Here's suburbia swamped in inky black feathers.
