I'm starting this post from Crema Cafe in Pacific Grove, California. The coffee here is so good, that I can almost forgive their judgement of hippies.
Pacific Grove (or, PG, as the locals call it), is known as the "butterfly town" of California. Hence, the three painted wooden monarch butterflies that perch on the wall of this quaint house-turned-coffee-shop to my right.
An empty mug wobbles on the table in front of me, golden, cream foam stubbornly sticking to the sides. Boy leans over the white, paint flecked table and flips through his wine book. He's currently studying merlot. Which grows pretty much everywhere and boasts flavors such as raspberry, black cherry, sugar plum, chocolate and cedar.
We've had a glorious week.
"Even if we had to go home tomorrow, I'd be okay," I told Boy at Trader Joe's this morning. "I mean, I'd be bummed... but okay. This week has just been so perfect."
I'm experiencing such profound emotional conflict regarding my injury.
The gratitude of being able to walk without crutches. To make, carry and clean up after my own damn coffee (although Boy probably still finds me lacking in the final department).
The enveloping sadness of no longer being able to teach yoga. My physical therapists have told me that I'm recovering at about twice the speed of the average ACL reconstructive surgery patient, but it'll still be another three months before I have permission to jog, to jump or even walk on uneven surfaces.
You know where there are a lot of uneven surfaces?
Rocky beaches.
I toe the line between gratitude for legs that carry me and resentment and bitterness that they don't allow me to scamper around the rocks the way Boy's do.
It's okay to be here, Bourget. You don't always need to be balancing at the top of a precarious rock formation, staring off into the distance. What can you see from here? What can you see when you're holding a space with too much pain to climb the rock and too much fear to look into the distance?
I see the community that's carried me (physically, sometimes). The boyfriend that's loved me. The family that's supported me.
During our final game of D&D in Grand Junction, I broke down sobbing. In part because I'd had far too much wine, in part because I had finally found the words to capture my confusion.
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| Yes, I play D&D. I'm a druid wood elf who is always turning into a giant crocodile. Even when we're campaigning in a very tiny dungeon that was not been designed with giant crocodile crossing in mind |
"Grand Junction has been so hard for me... I have to be teaching yoga when I'm in this place. The last time I was here for a long layover, I taught twelve classes a week. This time, I was up to seven. It's probably the main thing that helps me cope with the fear and depression I feel when I inevitably end up back in the valley... But because of my injury, I've been stuck in Grand Junction without yoga. For two months. And it's been hard. It's been really, really hard. But... because I didn't have yoga, I was able to really see my community. I had to rely on people to help me cope the way I've relied on yoga for the last six years. And now I'm leaving. And it hurts in a new way."
(I did not say it this eloquently at the time. There was a lot more choking and sobbing and trying not to choke and sob)
During one of my earlier writing classes this year, the instructor asked us to create a map of our lives. We drew our lives as if they flowed like rivers... each bend reflecting something dramatic that changed the direction of the life.
This injury turned my life in an entirely new direction. I don't know where I'm heading (nobody does -- unless their lives are like the linguine roads in Nevada)... and I feel a melancholic longing for the places I've been, but I can't let all the resentment and bitterness and melancholic longing keep me from exploring this new bend in my life.
Without bends, life would be as boring as driving through Nevada.
Mori explains two things very well. Where to go/what to do in Monterey (and the surrounding areas) and how all things (somehow or other) come from Persia.
"What will you do today?" Mori asked over our Persian breakfast of tomatoes, eggs, feta and walnuts.
"Find a cafe... walk around downtown... maybe get in a sunset."
"Go to Cafe Trieste," Mori suggested. "And you should visit Pacific Grove today -- see the butterfly house."
I taught Boy how to drink cappuccinos the way I'd learned in southern Italy -- slowly sprinkling one bag of raw sugar over the top of the foam so that the tiny cubes of sugar stay suspended.
"I remember how upset Giuseppe got when I poured the sugar so that it sunk to the bottom. And then I stirred. NEVER stir. Holy cow. If you want to piss off an Italian, try stirring your cappuccino. See, if you leave the sugar resting on the top, then you get the texture of the foam with the crunch of the sugar."
We walked around downtown Monterey, window-shopping and lollygagging up and down the shady streets.
We returned to Mori's shop around noon, and after loading a very large rug (bound for Boulder) into the back of his SUV, Mori drove Boy and me to Pacific Grove to see the Butterfly House.
This isn't a museum. This isn't an art gallery. This is a labor of love. A home created by J Jackson for his wife.
Sonja.
Sonja Jackson lived with degenerative eye disease, and as the years went by, her vision slowly faded.
All that remained visible to her were bright colors.
So J rebuilt their home, painted it in vivid colors and overlaid it with butterflies.
Boy and I strolled back to Monterey, taking a coastal path that was dotted with wildflowers, seals, squirrels and dolphins playing in the surf.
We took a day trip to San Francisco on Friday. We'd hoped to couchsurf in the city for two nights, but had been unable to find hosts who were willing to have a couple stay with them. After hours of searching couchsurfing and sending thoughtful requests to all sorts of people, I realized that San Francisco has three kinds of hosts.
Group 1) I'm a gay man and only host other gay men.
Group 2) I love couchsurfing and hosting and all the things but NOT COUPLES.
Group 3) I'm super open, anyone can stay here, but not when I'm in Korea. Which I am.
I've never had to work this hard to find a place to stay before. And then fail at finding a place. Gosh, this is depressing. Is this how the rest of our trip is going to be? Only able to stay with friends and in hostels because people don't host couples?
We left Monterey at 6:30 am, hoping that we'd miss the majority of crazy city traffic.
We didn't miss it. Bumper to bumper traffic, accidents everywhere, absolutely nuts drivers who don't acknowledge Cummerbund's existence because he's so freaking tiny.
"Boy," I tried to explain after the 17th time my heart flew into my throat, "for me, being in a car like Cummerbund in this kind of traffic is like you being trapped in a room bursting with nasty, horrible spiders. It doesn't matter how great a driver you are. It's nerve wracking."
At the very top of a stupidly steep hill in San Francisco, Cummerbund didn't shift gears properly (he now struggles shifting into first, second and reverse. He's extremely cantankerous these days). And we started rolling backwards. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream, and Boy kept the calm (as he usually does) and got Bundy in line.
"Boy," my lower lip quivered, "if we ever live in a big city like San Francisco, we are not owning a car."
We went to Mama's for breakfast, waiting in the horrendously long line in the blistering sun for over an hour.
"This had better be worth it," I grumbled. "I can't believe we drove over two and a half hours to just wait in line."
"It's about the experience," Boy tried to mollify my ruffled feathers.
"The experience of waiting in line?"
"Now you can say you've been to Mama's. And you never have to do it again."
Now I've been to Mama's. And I never have to do it again.
The food wasn't even that great. The restaurant that we went to last time with the polenta was so much better... Mama's must just be a tourist attraction now. I can't imagine people who actually live here would wait that long for mediocre food.
After breakfast, we walked.
And walked.
And walked.
My leg started to ache. San Francisco is not the city for people recovering from knee surgeries to take leisurely strolls.
Spending the last year working at a homeless shelter in Colorado must have sensitized me to a particular kind of suffering. When I walked through San Francisco last April, I must have been blind. I don't remember the rampant homelessness. But walking through San Francisco this June, I was struck by it.
Last April, walking through San Francisco was pure delight.
This June, it hurt (and not just because I'm recovering from knee surgery).
There are SO many homeless people here. Everywhere.
I was waiting at a park for Boy to re-park the car, and noticed a woman in her bathing suit, sunbathing with a book, skin glistening with lotion. I noticed a shirtless man with a six pack, lounging on a beach towel with his magazine. A homeless fellow claimed the grass between them, unrolling his bed of cardboard, taking off his shirt and revealing his bony torso.
Homelessness on the beach.
Homelessness in a park by a pier.
I couldn't walk fifty feet without bearing witness to this kind of suffering.
Boy drove us to the Presidio for a sunset.
But he was once again thwarted by Northern California's epic mist.
Mori recommended that we visit the wharf in Monterey for some clam chowder.
"Each restaurant gives samples of chowder," he told us. "You can try them all."
So we did. I felt like I was in Amsterdam, going into all the cheese shops and trying all the hundreds of types of gouda.
Boy and I have developed a ritual. Every night we go to the beach and wait for the sunset.
"There won't be a sunset."
"Loosely gripped optimism, Bourget. Loosely gripped," Boy tells me.
There's never a sunset.
But we sit together, wrapped in blankets, waiting for it, nonetheless.
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