A great number of people seem to associate snow with winter, which is, I suppose, reasonable, since it does snow during the winter in many regions of the world. But for those of us who have experienced limited snow, all this talk of white Christmases and so forth seems a bit abstract. December here is drizzly, at best; the real storms come in November and January, but not December.

It snowed in Greece when I was growing up, and I remember playing in the snow with friends and making various snow creations with my father, but once we returned to the States, I didn’t see snow for years until I was at [expensive East Coast college]. I still remember that first snowy morning, waking up to peer outside into a world which had gone white overnight.

But winter itself didn’t happen overnight. First came the frost, which I visualized as a layer which slowly seeped into the earth. I could actually feel the ground getting harder, as the grass froze so hard that it would snap under your feet when you walked on it. But that first snowy morning…it felt as though winter had finally come, at last, as though the frost was an extended overture. It was very early when I woke up, and only one thin thready line of footprints stretched out across the snow, so I leapt of of bed and ran outside, barefooted.

I still remember the crunch of snow under my feet, the moment when my feet finally got so cold that they felt like they were on fire and I ran back inside. My friends who had lived in the snow their whole lives laughed at me, but I didn’t care. I was delighted, entranced, filled with wonder. The snow makes me childlike, filling me with so much happiness that I think I might explode; a happiness so great that it is almost painful.

Maybe because I haven’t lived in the snow for years on end, I love it. I am insanely jealous of people who live in places where it snows. I miss falling down on icy patches, I miss plopping into piles of soft powder, I miss chasing snowflakes as they drift through the air, I miss sudden flurries so intense that I can’t see three feet in front of me. I miss the muffled silence that falls with the snow, the stark trees and sharp light. Having had a taste of snow, I will be forever wanting more.

It rarely snows here. If it does, it doesn’t stick. And by rarely, I mean every 10 years or so. More often, it hails, and the ground stays crunchy for an hour or so before it melts away. I really wish it did snow, because the snow is so very excellent. Our winters are long, and dreary, and dull. I already feel myself sinking into lethargy and depression, with dull grey skies and grinding cold weather but nothing that I can definitively point to as winter. We haven’t even reached the turning point of the solstice yet; I just want it to snow, or storm, or something, anything but this dreary, aching cold and greyness.

People who live in the snow always seem to complain about it. They say that they wished they lived somewhere temperate, but really they mean somewhere warm, where winter days are sunny, like Florida, not grey and heartbreaking, like they are here. When I lived in the snow, winter was my favorite season, for the clarity, the crisp cold, the whiteness, the beauty. Here, the winter makes me want to curl up and die. Instead, I just sleep and eat all the time, hoping to stave off the misery.

If you live somewhere snowy, you ought to appreciate it, for me if no one else. Go outside barefoot. Throw a snowball at something. Revel in this amazing gift from the skies. If your neighbors laugh at you, thumb your nose at them, because you are embracing the snow instead of moaning about it. As you look out into your winter wonderland, think that somewhere else in the world, someone is not as lucky as you are.

Here in the States, people call it “Veterans Day” so that we can have Veterans day blowout sales. And so that we can think abstractly about military service. Other countries call it Armistice Day, after the armistice which ended the First World War; by general agreement, the armistice was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Most people call it Remembrance Day and they buy red poppies to fund veteran’s groups and then they hold marches.

Both of my grandparents served in the Second World War. My grandmother worked in the signals intelligence department for the Navy, while my grandfather worked for the BOB, and later the OSS, which eventually became the CIA. As often happens in military families, many family members also joined; I have a couple of cousins scattered across the services, for example. Apparently the service gene died out in my father, but I inherited a certain liking for members of the military from my grandparents.

I didn’t really know my grandparents. I inherited my grandfather’s watch, and a box from India that belonged to my grandmother, and I know that my father has various mementos of theirs as well. I only interacted with them a handful of times, although I do remember my grandfather’s last words to me: “don’t let the man get you down.” This generation of people is starting to disappear; veterans of the Second World War are going to be in the 80s, at a minimum, at this point. They’ve been called the greatest generation, and maybe they were.

The nice thing about referring to Remembrance Day as “Veterans Day” is that you don’t need to think about the men and women who are currently serving, or the injured service members recovering at places like Walter Reed. You can celebrate the greatest generation and call it good. Everybody likes veterans, right?

The military did all right by my grandparents. They owned their own house, raised three children, and lived fascinating, incredibly diverse lives. After the fact, I can be sad that I never really knew them, because they went to all sorts of interesting places and I’m sure they had stories to tell. I have inherited their stories second-hand, through my father, but it’s not quite the same.

I also think that the military isn’t doing so well by its current members and recent veterans. I think that when you sign up for military service, you’re making an agreement, with the expectation that the government will hold up its end. That you will have access to healthcare, that you will receive payments from pension funds. That you will get to march in Veterans Day parades, rather than being hidden away so that people don’t have to face reality. People don’t like our veterans now because they are injured and they have to fight for every benefit they receive, and I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t agree with the war, but I also don’t agree with letting veterans down.

Eight million people died in the First World War. They died in trenches and on fields, in hospital ships and in airplanes. Many of those injuries are probably survivable, today; who knows that the death toll would have been with the benefit of modern battlefield medicine. This war we are fighting in Iraq has cost comparatively few lives, but it is no less serious. Maybe if we called it “Remembrance Day” instead of “Veterans Day,” people would think about that.

A friend of mine and I have a sort of informal book club, in which we occasionally happen to be reading the same books, and then we talk about them. Lately he’s been on a kick of reading books from around the ’20s, and we both finished reading Tender is the Night at around the same time, so last night we had the following exchange:

meloukhia: I finished Tender is the Night
Friend: was it not really really depressing
meloukhia: I wasn’t as depressed by it as you were, I think.
Friend: ah
meloukhia: Maybe I just have fundamentally less faith in humanity
Friend: well it depressed the shit out of me
meloukhia: I mean, I’m not saying that it was uplifting or anything.
Friend: well that or you have less of an ideal of true love
meloukhia: Oh, yeah, that is actually a really good point.
meloukhia: I’ve been noticing lately that people keep recommending books with love as a central theme and I just don’t enjoy them as much as they think I should.
meloukhia: It was still good, though.

And then we talked some more about other themes in the book, and Fitzgerald’s penchant for corrupting beautiful, innocent young women, but the conversation got me thinking.

I realized last night that I don’t believe in true love. He definitely does, and it’s interesting to talk with him about love and relationships because I tend to view these things in terms of biological imperatives, pheromones, and psychology. Like all animals, we are programmed to want to perpetuate our own species, and while we happen to be biologically organized in a way that makes this fun, fundamentally, for me, this is all about biology and it has nothing to do with “love” except in the sense of love as a chemical imbalance. Maybe you do believe in love, in which case you probably reject the idea of sexual attraction as a chemical thing, and you prefer to imagine that people magically meet their complementary souls and then ride off into the sunset together. Or maybe you think think there’s a bit of brain chemistry and a bit of the ineffable power of love or some such nonsense.

I don’t think I’ve ever really admitted my lack of faith in love before, although I may have made passing jokes about it. But I really don’t believe in it. I don’t think that everyone has a soul mate, and I don’t believe that there’s some sort of indescribable force which governs human relationships. It’s all in the way your neurons fire. I’ve been living a very solitary life lately, and I’ve found that I deeply enjoy it. I sometimes go for several days without interacting with another person, and I have found that I like life this way. It’s clean, well organized, and far less complicated. I don’t want to share my life with anybody at the moment, and sometimes I think that hermitage really is a way of life for me.

I’ve never really wanted to share with anyone, so I suppose the fans of true love will say that I just haven’t found the right person yet. That someday I will be walking down the street and I will see the person of my dreams, the 100% perfect girl (or boy). But I don’t think I will, because the 100% perfect person for me is myself, is solitude and sitting on the porch in the rain in my pajamas. Maybe I like to be alone because I’m wired that way, and other people seek “love” because their brains tell them to, because this state is most likely to result in more little humans crowding our sick and poisoned planet.

As I found from our brief conversation, my cynicism appears to be ruining my ability to enjoy classic literature. So much literature is about love and human relationships that I often find it hard to relate to books that other people really enjoy. And perhaps this explains my dislike of entire generations of authors and novels; it’s not that they’re bad books, it’s just that they deal with concepts which are totally alien to me. I get that other people love, or at least think that they are in love, and that’s dandy for them. But I do wish they would stop writing about it so that I could settle down and enjoy a nice novel more often.

Instead, I read a lot of nonfiction, or very strange fiction. I like books like Some Prefer Nettles which are all about corruption and evil, two human things I do understand. I like eccentric short stories. I don’t even mind a bit of lust now and then, especially when it’s cold and calculated. Mystery novels ain’t half bad either.

We live in a society which is very focused on pairing us off, like the animals on the ark. A solitary state is alien, while a paired state is natural. This certainly makes sense biologically, but it makes people like me feel as though we live in the twilight zone. It reaches into so many strange aspects of our lives, like the security questions my bank wants me to fill out so that I can prove I’m me. In one of their list of choices of questions, none of the questions applied to me. They were all things like “What is your oldest child’s name?” and “What is your husband’s name?” I literally could not answer any of the questions, so I had to make up an answer to one of them which I will hopefully remember when the bank challenges me as to my identity.

How strange to think that my identity should be intertwined with someone else, that other people are apparently ok with being defined by the people around them, rather than themselves.

Lise asked me in the comments of the waterboarding post how I can say I’m not a Christian if I affirm the existence of Jesus.

It’s a reasonable question.

I affirm the existence of Jesus because he was a real person, as ample archaeological evidence has illustrated. I also believe that he was a prophet, and that he did offer lessons and homilies to his followers, although I have a harder time with concepts like the Resurrection and the loaves and the fishes. I believe in Jesus not because I have Christian faith, but because I have historical knowledge. I also know that Siddhartha Gautama Buddha was a real person, and that he also lived an ascetic life and offered instruction. Muhammad was also a real, living individual. I don’t consider myself Buddhist or Muslim either, however, although I like many aspects of these religious traditions.

Faith is tricky for a lot of people. I don’t believe in an overarching God figure, which means that I disagree with a fundamental tenant of Christianity. I do believe in being kind to others, in loving one another, in humility, in the value of an ascetic life and introspection, in caring for the Earth. A lot of these beliefs are important aspects of religious faith, but I also think they are an important part of being human. And I recognize historical figures like Christ, Buddha, and St. Francis of Assisi who also believed in these values. I also respect people with strong religious convictions, although I may not share those beliefs.

In terms of Christianity, I was baptized into the Eastern Orthodox Church, but I am not Christian. I was baptized because I went to school in Greece, and in Greece, everyone is Eastern Orthodox, and the whole school files up the hill to the church for services every Saturday. I have a huge problem with major segments of the Bible, I do not affirm the existence of the Trinity, and while I think that Christ may have been a holy man, he was not immortal, and he certainly wasn’t the son of god.

If anything, I would consider myself agnostic, or perhaps a borderline atheist.

I hope that answers the question of how I can say that I believe that Christ was a person without being Christian. Christ was Jewish, after all, and I think he would be horrified to see the things that people have done in his name. I’m also fairly certain that he would disagree with many sections in the Bible as well.

In a world where people are allowed to choose their faith, I think there’s a great deal of responsibility. I could not ally myself with Christianity because I cannot accept this religion wholesale and without doubt. Christianity is too conflicted, too polluted, and too confused for me to call myself a Christian. Perhaps someday I’ll call myself a Buddhist; I like Buddhism and I like Buddhist values, but I think that I would feel like too much of a poseur white girl. For now, I think that agnosticism is the best answer; I am open to information and persuasion, just as any good scientist is, but I’m not ready to take the plunge, and I may never be.

What do you do when it rains?

Yesterday was the first serious rain of the season. It started out kind of sunny in the morning, with a hint of gloom, and then it started to cloud over and get a bit cold, and then it started to rain, glorious rain. I heard it hitting the roof and trickling through the gutters, watched it puddle up in the low areas of the garden and pool on the porch. Cars splashed lazily by outside and the windows slowly filled with steam while I cooked. The cats spent most of the day sleeping, sprawled out on the bed and lazily opening an eye now and then to check the weather. Mr. Bell snores.

I forced myself to finish all of my work for the day before going out, which was hard. I would look out and see the rain start to stop, and I would worry that I wasn’t going to get to enjoy it. My worries turned out to be groundless, as it was still raining briskly at 6:30, when I pulled on some pants and an overcoat and went outside to revel in the rain. Fortunately, I wore boots, because there were puddles in the road and the rain was coming down hard.

It was glorious. My hair started to plaster back, snaking wet and heavy down my back while the rain covered the surface of my glasses, and a few drops snuck into my eyes now and then. I felt like everything was being washed away, the dirt and grime and oil and what have you that just sort of builds up when there’s no rain to clean it. I noticed other people in the streets, and we would furtively glance at each other as if to say “what, me play in the rain? Of course not, I’m, er, just taking out the garbage.”

I stumbled over to Headlands, slipping through the door into the warmth and humidity and trying not to drip too much. Headlands seemed more vibrant and alive because of the cold and wet outside, and there were a fair number of people inside, for a Tuesday night. I ordered a hot chocolate and steamed gently in the window while I read the paper and listened to jazz. There was something disgustingly cozy and excellent about it, and so very relaxing.

Today is sunny again, but the Earth seems cleaner and so much more fresh. The soil in the garden is dark and the plants are gleaming like someone’s just been by the polish them for a Hollywood role. The air smells sweet and glorious, and I can’t wait for more rain to roll in over the next few days so that I can run around in it, eat ice cream, and skulk in a warm coffeehouse with a hot drink.

I think, secretly, I like rain because it’s so quiet. I mean, the rain itself is noisy, but the noisy neighbors and their children and dogs and power tools are silent for once. It almost fools me into thinking I’m alone.

The weather outside is sunny and bright. When I got up this morning, I decided that I should take advantage of it, rather thank skulking indoors all day. I already pushed my socializing limits last night when I was out for First Friday, but I thought I should suck it up like a big girl. I’m quite the lurker, you know. Mainly because usually when I venture into the outside world, I end up feeling even more depressed and less interested in human society.

At any rate, I got dressed and wandered up to the library to return some books and to see if anything had come in for me. Alas, nothing on the hold shelf (although I did note what all the other Smiths are reading, thanks to the awesome system where the library prints our full names on hold cards). I wandered bleakly around the library to see if I could find anything to read between moldering 1950s books and a formidable mystery section, and I was sadly disappointed. Usually there’s a book or two on the new books shelf which attracts my attention, but it was grim today. I understand that the library wants to cater to their market or what have you, but would it kill them to order something other than mystery novels and diet books?

I think I need a larger stack of books on order; most of the titles I have holds on have long waiting lists. So if you have any reading recommendations, you should hook me up. I’m starving for material. I almost went by the lackluster bookstore to see if I could find any even vaguely interesting books to buy, but I was stymied by the sidewalk sale and a growing sense of ennui.

Because, my friends, there was a sidewalk sale. A number of the Laurel and Franklin Street businesses had tables out front with their tired sale stock, and big festive signs in their windows. The sidewalks were clogged with tourists looking through piles of dust covered crap and talking loudly on their cell phones. As I fought my way through the crowds, a deep sense of melancholy started to fill me. Fort Bragg felt so pathetic, dusty, and outmoded that I was almost embarrassed for it, the way you want to cover your face in shame when someone says something mindblowingly inappropriate and gauche.

Fortunately, deep in the pit of bitterness I spotted an old boss who had recently sold her business, and I stopped to say hello and congratulate her. We got to talking about various community projects, and she was telling me about a group she’s a member of which is working to promote sustainable ecotourism on the coast. They go around and assess various sites to determine whether or not they can support tourism, basically. In some cases, they’re advocating for less tourist exposure for more delicate areas, or working to try to make visitors to these areas sustainable. That cheered me up immensely, because I’m so tired of the mindless boosterism that goes on in this town, and it was nice to hear that people actually are thinking sustainably about the long term.

We also abused the Democratic candidates soundly, which caused a smile to creep across my face as I continued to fight my way back through the crowds to my house. At Headlands, I ran into another friend who recently moved back from Seattle. I think he sometimes feels lonely and disconnected too, so it was nice to talk to him even if we were harassed by a policeman who told us not to loiter. I glared pointedly and asked why he wasn’t citing the clusterfuck of obnoxiously loud old people on the opposite corner who had been gabbling since before I arrived, and he drifted off, muttering something under his breath. It made me momentarily sad to think that I’ve reached a strange inbetween age, where cops still feel comfortable harassing me but they don’t actually want to cite me.

I ambled back home to sit in the garden, noting that the city clock was broken again, reading 6:45 when I crossed Laurel Street when it was quite obviously no such time. As sunscreen drenched tourists cut in front of me, causing my nose to wrinkle, I felt like an isolated stranger in the town I grew up in, a strange moment.

I think I might be having a crisis of class guilt.

A riveting story in the Advocate about drains. You won’t want to miss it.

The sordid history of Monterey Jack. Who knew cheese was so fraught with melodrama?

Marine protected areas are a new concept, and it’s a concept I’m rather digging. It’s time to get serious about protecting marine life, kids, before it’s too late.

More on the proposed electoral split in California. Needless to say, I oppose this measure.

Rats are the new trendy pet in France, thanks to an American film. Just keep them out of the kitchen. Ugh.

A Muslim sitcom is getting some rave reviews; I wonder if we’ll get it in the US.

I just finished reading an awesome book called Caring for the Dead, which is about, uh, caring for the dead. I’ve always been interested in death culture and the American funeral industry, and I am especially intrigued by the idea of caring for your own dead. The thought of surrendering someone to a funeral director to sit in a freezer for a few days is deeply repugnant to me, as is the thought of removing bodily fluids, like a vampire, and replacing them with toxins. There was a time when Americans cared for their own dead, and that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, and that is really unfortunate.

Not only because funerals are expensive. Even the most basic of funerals runs to thousands of dollars, and I think that funeral directors really take advantage of consumers who might be feeling distressed or disoriented. It’s also because giving up your dead does not allow you to mourn them. I feel like caring for a loved one after their death would be really important to me, and I’m surprised that more people don’t do it. I like the idea of holding a big party to celebrate the deceased, and of allowing people to visit with the dead, if they so desire. I also firmly believe that death care is an important ritual which allows us to deal with our fears and uncertainties about death.

In addition to providing basic tips and information, the book also provides an overview of prevailing law in most American states. A lot of people are surprised to learn that, in most areas, it is perfectly legal to care for your own dead. You can keep them at home, and take them to a burial spot or crematory on your own. You do not need a funeral director to have a funeral, although some regions might make it really hard for you to hold a funeral without a funeral director.

Since a lot of my readers are Californians, I thought that I would briefly discuss the section on California law. There are also a lot of organizations which help people take charge of their own funerals, like Final Passages and the Natural Death Care Project. If you are interested in handling funeral arrangements yourself, make sure to look up prevailing local laws to make sure you do it right; and you may want to think about preparing ahead of time.

To care for your own dead in California, you need the following documentation:

Death Certificate. If someone dies at home, get the family doctor to sign a death certificate. In the case of an unattended or suspicious death, the coroner will probably perform an autopsy and provide a death certificate. Electronic death registration is probably on the way, in which case this procedure may change. In the case of fetal death, a fetal death certificate is required after 20 weeks of gestation.

Transport and Disposition Permit. You need to present the registrar of the health department with your death certificate to receive this piece of paperwork. It allows you to transport the body, and it indicates the intended final disposition (burial, cremation, etc). You need to file one copy with the registrar in the county where the disposition occurs, and another with the registrar who originally issues it.

If you intend to cremate the body, you will need a container appropriate for cremation, and you will need to make sure that implanted medical devices such as pacemakers are removed. I would highly recommend working directly with a crematory, rather than a crematory attached to a funeral home. If promession ever becomes available in the United States, I imagine that the requirements will be similar to those for cremation.

If you intend to bury the body, you need to use an established cemetery. If you want to bury at home, talk to your county registrar and find out whether or not you can establish a cemetery on your land. People in rural areas are going to have much more success with this, but it’s still the sort of thing that you need to plan ahead; if you know that burial at home is something you want, get cracking now. Many green cemeteries are happy to work with people who are holding their own funerals, and some crematoriums are willing as well, but if you want a burial in a more traditional cemetery, be prepared to put up a fight.

If you’re interested in burial at sea, naval burial is available free to veterans, active duty, and retired military members, along with their immediate families. Several private companies offer burial at sea or ash scattering to people who want these services; a sea burial or ash scattering does need to be noted on a disposition permit.

California does not have any law requiring embalming, and there is no legal time schedule for disposition of a body which has not been embalmed. However, for obvious reasons, it’s a really good idea to get things taken care of quickly. The Jewish tradition of burying a body on the same day of the death is a rather sound one, in my opinion. In cool weather, it may be possible for a body to remain uniced for several hours, but it’s a good idea to pack the body with dry ice in all other situations. If you intend to hold visiting hours, tie a scarf around the decedent’s head at the time of death so that the jaw will not fall open, and weight his or her eyes; the Greek tradition of coins for the ferryman is practical as well as mystical. You should also use diapers or padding to absorb body fluids which may leak.

If you choose burial, you have a number of coffin or shroud options, depending on where you bury the body. Be aware that many cemeteries require a coffin liner or vault for burial. Others may let you use a shroud. In any case, you are entitled to build your own coffin, if you choose to do so, or you can purchase one from a private purveyor. Cremated bodies must be cremated in containers of some kind; a natural wood or wicker coffin is a great choice because it will readily burn. Avoid coffins with treated wood or metal fixtures which will cause air pollution while they burn.

If you do decide to use the services of a funeral home, you are protected by law from a lot of predatory practices. Every funeral home, by law, must provide you with a copy of the general price list, and you can select a la carte services, although you will still be required to pay a basic, non-declinable fee. You are not obligated to embalm a body unless it is being transported by air, and the funeral home may not carry out an embalming without your permission. You are also permitted to bring in your own coffin, although a funeral home might fight it. Get and sign a contract clearly specifying the desired services and price. Avoid “package deals,” and consider holding memorial services off site to avoid price gouging. You should also be aware that funeral directors are trained in the art of manipulation, so you’re going to hear a lot of “If you really loved your ______, you would go with this service,” or “Show your love for your ________ with this casket,” and so forth. Funerals are for the living, not for the dead, and you already know exactly how much you love the decedent; you don’t need to prove it with a lavish funeral.

I’ll try to have a less ghoulish entry tomorrow, I promise. But I would love to hear from my international readers about funeral traditions in your part of the world, since I get the impression that American funerals are really pretty unique.

One of the reasons I like being back home is that I get to hang out with my father. Today we made some lunch and wandered around his neck of the woods; there’s a deeded coastal access trail very close to his house where you can go out onto the headlands or down onto a little beach. Since it was so beautiful today, it was awesome to be able to get out of the house, breathe some fresh air, and ramble with my father.

His garden is certainly flourishing; he’s got plants exploding all around the house, with lots of flowers which were wide open to drink in the sun today. We harvested some produce from the garden for lunch, and I ate some of his peas; I do have a fondness for peas fresh out of the pod. It’s interesting to see how much he’s shaped his garden, which was pretty minimal when he moved in. He used mostly rejected free plants which no nursery wanted, coaxing them into health. Despite his constant battle with the deer, he seems to be doing ok in the garden department; although the gophers ate all of his potatoes, apparently.

My father and I are similar in a lot of ways. We’re both surprisingly inflexible, for such liberal people, and we both really like set, dependable schedules. Stubbornness is also a trait that we both have, along with a certain amount of reverse class snobbery. We can also be surprisingly blunt, sometimes, and we often make social gaffes despite being otherwise pretty on it and observant. I noticed today that we both also get on reading kicks, where we track down every possible book on a subject and read about it until we’re exhausted. I think that my father is a bit more compassionate that I am, which is presumably something that comes with age, and I’m much more hotheaded and impatient than he is, something that I hope will settle down with age.

Wandering along the coastal access trail, we were talking about all sorts of things, as we usually do, but the inanity of owning land came up. It is kind of strange, isn’t it, to think of “owning” the Earth. “Leasing” would be a more accurate word, I think. He made the point that the commodification of land has really changed our society, perhaps not for the better. Even if we do see and recognize that, I doubt it’s going to change; we’ve gone too far to go back now.

For those of you who don’t know what deeded coastal access is, it’s pretty neat. Essentially, California recognizes that beaches are something which everyone should enjoy, and so the state has a law which ensures that trails to the beach stay open to the public, even if they are on private property. These trails are built into property titles, so when people buy land, they do so with the understanding that the public can walk on their property.

As you can imagine, rich people who buy oceanfront property resent this, and a lot of coastal access trails are actually illegally closed off. The trail that we used today is on a piece of land which was bought by some rich lawyers from the city a few years ago. Initially, they tried to close off the land with no tresspassing signs and a high fence; to their surprise, the community fought back. Thanks to the efforts of a few people, the trail is now open to the public, although it’s lined with aggressive “no trespassing; private property; stay on trail; we’re rich self righteous fucks who never actually come our vacation home” signage.

Despite that, there’s something deeply satisfying about using this trail, not only because it opens out onto a beautiful headland and the ocean today was blue and sparkling and perfect, but because my father and I got to thumb our noses at the idea of “owning” property, of controlling rights to it, of refusing to get to know your neighbors. The people who own this house learned to their cost that communities still mean something in some parts of the world.

Do you ever think that you could have been an entirely different person?

I was lying awake in bed last night, thinking that maybe I should have gone to medical school, to become a cardiac surgeon or a neurologist or perhaps an emergency physician. I suppose that I still could, but I feel like that’s a door that’s closed to me now, that every day more doors close and my options become fewer and narrower. Maybe I was meant to be a cabinet maker, or a postman, or someone else, and I’ll never know. Perhaps in some alternate world, I am a cardiac surgeon, doing my residency, or I’m apprenticed to a cabinet maker, or I’m taking the bar exam. Maybe I’m actually doing something worthwhile in that other place.

It’s hard to think of a single defining moment when the choice of who I would become was made, but rather than a series of choices ended up creating me. Not necessarily my choices, either. Maybe if I’d gone to school somewhere else, I would have had a passion for physics and become a scientist. Or if my father had pushed me to play music, I would have become a concert harpist. Perhaps if I had been born with different neural pathways, read different books, taken different classes.

For some reason, today I feel like a nobody. I don’t feel like my presence on Earth has had a positive impact on anyone’s life; like I haven’t made any great changes in my society or contributed, in any way, to human existence. Perhaps it’s the equinox causing an existential crisis, as I know that they days will get shorter and colder and darker like they do every year while I remain the same person. Perhaps I think that with five billion people on Earth, a few of them are bound to be losers. I mean, it’s just statistical fact.

Maybe, I think, maybe I should get a second bachelor’s degree in biology, and maybe I should attend medical school and become a doctor. “Why aren’t you a doctor,” my Chinese mother says, and I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel like I am crippled with debt which overshadows all my choices now, like I can’t go back to school because I can’t afford it, I can’t pursue any dreams at all because I have trapped myself. I don’t know why I’m not anything.

I have to say, if this is what being grownup is, I want a fresh deal of cards. I don’t think I want to stand pat anymore.