California

California is problematical. As an idea, a story -- California as it was, as it wants to be, as it pretends it is -- comes on strong. The shining city, the promised land, the golden state. Snow-capped mountains, towering trees, turquoise oceans, orange groves, vineyards, deserts; California has it all.

But then there are the freeways. Hollywood. More avocados and almonds and palm trees than one water table can sustainably support. The San Andreas Fault. Wildfires. California will die, one way or another, maybe sooner than other places, definitely sooner than we expect, but meanwhile it keeps on telling its story and people believe, because people are storytellers (Pan narrans), and inextricable from that is a belief in said stories.

Last week we rented a campervan (literally a minivan, with a mattress in the back instead of seats) and drove from San Francisco to Big Sur to Sequoia to Death Valley to Los Angeles. It was a great trip, the sun shone, it was high orange and low tourist season, and basically the whole thing was like an extended ride on Soarin' (version 1). It was a great trip also in the way that many great trips are: great as trips, but not at all the sort of thing you'd want to do indefinitely.

In other words, I don't want to move to California. (It's a common enough migration amongst New Yorkers that it feels important to declare, one way or the other.) Well, okay, maybe if someone hands me a vineyard. But otherwise it would have to be a city, and in CA that basically means SF or LA.

I'll pass.

LA is easy to hate. At the same time, if you shut off enough parts of your brain, easy to love. Beaches, perfect weather, delicious food, lemons and pink peppercorns growing all over the place, Art Deco architecture, and did I mention the weather? Find yourself a nice pocket of the city and make it yours and sure, I can see the appeal. Until of course you want to leave that pocket, or even walk from one side of it to another. Because this is Not Done. There is no walking. I could live in LA only if I could convince myself that being in a car, on a freeway, everyday, was a reasonable way to spend a life. So. What's the point of perfect weather if you're just going to spend it all in traffic? LA calls itself a city, but everything about its design defeats the entire purpose of city life.

Alright then, what about SF? Plenty of SoCal haters out there, but NoCal -- that's alright, right? That's where the smart people go?

Honestly, I'd rather live in LA. At least LA is honest about its schizophrenia.

When I was in college, I knew a guy who said he'd gone to San Francisco to die. This is late 90s-early 00s, so he'd moved from New England to work at some internet-related company. He had every intention of cashing in and then blowing his brains out. And obviously there's a lot that's wrong with this (and anyway neither event happened), but I don't think, about his central point, that he was wrong exactly. SF is a place to die.

Some of the city is beautiful. High in the hills, it smells better than any city has a right to -- the eucalyptus, the pines, the ocean. The views across the Bay, fog or no fog, are glorious. But there is a rottenness there too. The smell of urine. The homelessness. The bridge that is too much of an icon to put a goddam suicide fence on. SF pretends it's a hippy enclave, a paradise for free-thinking, boundary-pushing intelligent civilization... But seriously, who can afford that? The reality underneath is corrupt, haunted. It is not a good place to live.

Which is not to say that NY is perfect. No more is London. I don't have an answer, just shades of better and worse. Feel free to let me know if you think there's a solution. Requirements: surfing; no car; biking; good food; health insurance. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto?

RECIPE: Irish Soda Bread, because that's the next holiday on the calendar.

#$%^(&*

Clarion Alley, SF

I have nothing against protecting children. It's nice, isn't it, to believe in things like Santa Claus, and that "The good guys are always stalwart and true; the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies and everybody lives happily ever after." We'd all like to live in that world if we could.

But I find it odd when the notion of childhood innocence is extended to the realm of language. Introduce a child to the vicinity of a conversation and suddenly the adults, with shrugs and guilty looks, will all self-consciously start using words like "fudge," "sugar," and "goldarnit."

Why?

As far as a kid is concerned, all words are equal. They're just sounds, noises to indicate objects or thoughts. None are better and worse than others except insofar as they help communicate what you're trying to communicate.

Only adults know that some words are 'bad.' And what does that even mean? Certainly not that they interfere with communication; nothing gets a point across more concisely than "asshole," and I've seen some very effective sentences using nothing but the word "fuck." What makes them 'bad' is that they are not acceptable in certain social arenas. You can use them with your friends, but maybe not your boss.

Doesn't it then follow that we should teach children when and how to use words, rather than trying to pretend some of them don't exist?

After all, it's not like they're not going to learn these things anyway. Kids are little savages, and they will pick this shit up like my all-black wardrobe picks up cat hair. They will experiment with their friends, and meanwhile, learn not to use these words around teachers and parents. Kids learn. It is pretty much the entire point of childhood. You can facilitate this or not but it happens, with or without you.

What is the point of trying to pretend it won't? Like if you don't say "Shit!" when you drop a knife on your foot, somehow this will save your child from... what?

Belief in Santa Claus and a just universe are worth preserving. Magic always is. The rest of this is nonsense.

Besides, kids create enough worries. Why would I add "uses a combination of letters to express self" to the list?

RECIPE: Chocolate Stout Cake, my go-to chocolate cake recipe when I'm after something with a few layers. Also means you can do a little of the ol' "one for me, one for the cake" business with the beer (for which I highly recommend Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro).

But really?

San Francisco

I wonder about Donald Trump, sort of the same way I wonder about very religious people. Like, they can't actually -- really, truly, deep down -- believe this crap, can they? There has to be some level on which they know that a lot of it is just helpful trappings, where they choose to follow the rules and walk the walk because it works for their lives, not because any of it is literally true. Right?

Right?

I mean the guy can't be serious. He must know the New York Times isn't lying. He must know his inauguration was empty. He must know that probably a lot of those people who showed up to march against him did, in fact, vote against him as well. He must know there is opposition to the pipeline.

...He must know he's crafting an alternate narrative.

My rule on religion, of course, is that: If it makes you a better, happier person, go for it. Live and let live, as they say. But the minute your first hits my face or my door, we've got a problem.

Trump... is shitting on my stoop and slamming my head in the door. Line crossed. He's using an alternate narrative not to make himself a kinder person or experience some sort of fulfilment, but to control and destroy. So. Is he doing it consciously, or is it all just knee-jerk arrogant insanity? I almost hope it's the former, because that implies a consistent worldview and an... integrity of purpose. But I fear, more every day, that it is the latter.

Much of my justification for that comes from direct experience of the man through Twitter. He is not consciously building anything. He's raving.

I had been ignoring his Twitter as much as possible. There's still plenty that filters through, after all. But now I have a new rule: Glance at Trump's Twitter, respond to one thing, move on. Do not follow him, do not spend hours thinking about responses; just choose, reply, go about with my day being a better person and living a better life. And try not to use language incendiary enough to result in an FBI file.

RECIPE: Lemon Polenta Cake, though of course you could use any citrus.