craving chocolate

Pound Plus, imported from Belgium, sits on my Mom's coffee table.  The package says it is made exclusively for Trader Joe's in a small town outside of Antwerp by confectionery artisans known for producing the finest chocolate in the world.

To put it lightly, i've been addicted since a piece landed in my mouth.  This chocolate is so good that letting it slowly melt in your mouth is an ongoing delight.  Letting it linger allows the flavor to develop and explode.  Any thoughts of restraint go out the window as long as there is more available for consumption.

The benefits of eating this chocolate is that it makes me happy and i have no desire to restrict myself as long as it is available.  i rationalize this because when i leave San Diego i won't have access.

Your probably wondering what craving delicious chocolate has to do with this post today.  Well it has to do with happiness.  It has to do with how the decisions we all make affect others and ourselves.  It has to do with the on going struggle we all have to do the right thing. It has to do with how we all stress over our selfish desires as opposed to someone else's life.

And it is a struggle.  i'm struggling with doing the right thing and doing what i want.  i want to eat the chocolate but is it the right thing?  If i eat too much of the chocolate there won't be any for my mom when she wants to eat it, so i have to control myself.  Is my happiness more important than my mom's?

Controlling impulses when we want something is difficult.  How do we choose instead of reacting because we want to? 

Today we have a whole generation of people who were raised to think of themselves first.  Their needs come first and their wants come first.  i want to know if their lives will be filled with disappointment they won't be able to handle because failure to achieve their wants will affect them more adversely than those taught to delay gratification?

i have wants right now that i can't achieve.  i want to go home to St. Croix but the timing is wrong.  i can get angry, i can mull over it and feel denied but does that make me feel any better?  No, because we all have the ability to deny gratification.  i can choose to be upset about having to stay here or i can choose to take a wait and see attitude.  If i choose the angry path, i'm going to make myself and my mom miserable.  But if i take the wait and see route we can both enjoy a level of tranquility unavailable if i only think of myself.

So looking on the sunny side of continued life in San Diego is the fact that i can eat more chocolate, i can walk the long long beach every morning, i can watch wildlife i don't see at home and maybe interact with people i never imagined, and i can continue to figure out ways to avoid traffic congestion and enjoy spending more time with my mom.

Whoo Hoo....see ya next week.

Pride Parade San Diego

Last evening i was walking my mom around the block when we passed a bus that was parked.  i asked why the driver was reading his newspaper and my mother replied he was ahead of schedule and needed to sit for a while before moving on.  As we walked past  i looked at the people on the bus, one woman of color was drawing an elaborate design on a sketch pad and i thought she had talent.  The piece wasn't finished but it had a certain appeal that drew me in as i walked past, in fact it made me look back to see more.

The others on the bus were minding their own business, staring out the window, reading newspapers or just waiting for the bus to get going.  i was thinking the bus looked quite peaceful until i got to the back end of it.  In the middle of the back seat sat an American Indian all by himself sprawling all over and looking huge.  He had long dark hair and a pock marked face right out of an old western movie.  i thought he looked distinguished until i looked down and saw he was flipping me the bird.

My mind went into overdrive as i walked past the back of the bus. i turned around, walked back and mimed "Why?" through the window back at him.  He flipped me the bird again, no smile, no change in facial expression just this hand tilted sideways flipping me the bird with an intense stare included.  i mimed "Why?" again and mimed  "i'm a nice person" through the window.  He maintained his posture, his stare and his hand flipping me the bird.  i flipped him back the bird and smiled.  He then broke a smile and we were both happy.

My mother couldn't believe what i was doing, she thought i was inciting a riot but i explained i was communicating.  The same thing had happened while at the beach with my sister and her twins a few days earlier.  Three men of color, in their early 20's walked up to me.  One of them asked me to hold what i thought was his half smoked cigarette.  i told him i didn't smoke and didn't want to hold his cigarette while looking away.  He pointed to a pink sweat shirt on his arm and said...could you hold this.  i said no politely and continued talking with my sister who was going to blast him.  i stopped her and said they were OK to just leave them alone.  Her twins were alarmed and i told them to calm down they had done nothing.  My sister was offended by their pants falling off and their brazen attempt to engage us in conversation.

i told her to relax, they were fine. Once she stopped being annoyed they walked away.  i explained that being nice was far easier than being offended and if you expressed offense it opened the door for more abuse and that is the topic i'm really interested in today.

Abuse is a well known state for many gays and lesbians but Saturday on University Avenue in San Diego they expressed their pride in who they are by holding a parade.

It was a lovely day for a parade, sunny and warm.  From the apartment window i could see them pouring in for hours before the parade was scheduled to begin.  The participants were lined up all along the streets and the floats took up the side streets, it was quite a colorful display.

i decided to walk as far along the parade route as i could to find a shady spot to watch and to get into the thick of things.  Along the way i came upon a group of protesters who were being protected by police tape and two police cars.  The display looked wrong so i stopped to talk with the policeman.  i asked him who they were protecting.  He said everyone.  i looked at the scene and said it looks like you are only protecting these folks who are against people not following their bible.  He looked around also, then smiled back at me and said nothing.

As i walked away i also saw in the parade people marching along with signs they had made at their churchs.  These people who adhered to the same bible intrepreted it differently.  They had love in their hearts.

Some men of "God" claim they know what "he" wants.  How that is possible i will never understand.  Although the bulk of the participants were of one mind, that everyone was equal, those few protected by our tax dollars stood out as sore thumbs.  They looked mean and hateful and were booed by almost everyone that passed by.  i think it is they who need to look into their hearts and see human beings not sex acts.

driving the highways

Coming from an island where the population is limited in size, the throngs of people in places like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego becomes overwhelming at times.  Touring around, especially in traffic when friends are driving and you are sitting in the back seat, is a great way to view developing road rage or the lack of it.

Road rage got its claim to fame in the 1980's when TV broadcaster's in LA coined the term after a series of freeway shootings; it later morphed to include all sorts of aggressive behaviors that endangered other drivers and their cars.   Road rage actually got so much attention that a mental disorder was created to include the symptoms of intermittent explosive displays on the highways.  Cities with the least courteous drivers (Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Phoenix)were rated Road Rage Capitals.

Well until i got to San Diego the road rage was limited.  In SF, LA and Santa Monica we drove around in bumper to bumper traffic and never encountered a raised finger, or any thing more than a plea to pay attention projected  from our driver to others in his way.  But when i was behind the wheel and not in the back seat a crazed woman screached out from behind me narrowly missing bashing the front of my car and careening and skidding while cussing me out from inside her vehicle.  i felt the rage even though i couldn't hear a damn thing she was screaming at me.  She may have felt she had just cause, as i had changed lanes when i realized i was going the wrong way. The fact that she almost wrecked her car and mine seemed to be lost in her disordered rush to let me know she was annoyed.

i hadn't almost crashed into her all i had done was slow her down but it was enough to elicit rage.

In two days i have almost had three accidents caused by drivers in a rush.  Yesterday a truck almost slammed into the back of me but managed to stop inches from my bumper.  He unfortunately got rear ended by another driver in a rush.  This morning i went to change lanes and a car that must have been going 90 came barreling down and  had to swerve to avoid hitting him.  Then on the way home from my walk another car swerved into me, luckily i had the shoulder to move into. 

Why anyone would risk damage to themselves their car and someone else's car and maybe even that other person too, just to let you know they were pissed has to be a mental disorder; what else explain's that type of reaction to a minor slight while driving?

Driving in California is like an exercise in trying not to get involved in a demolition derby.  People in a rush don't seem to realize that they aren't getting there any faster than those going a tad slower.  i watched a red car trying to pass everyone end up at the same stoplight the same time I did a few miles down the road.  He may have thought he was making progress but he wasn't and he almost wrecked his car.

St. Croix is a great place to drive.  The speed limit is 35 miles an hour on most roads and if you do get in an accident it is rarely ever fatal.  Locals stop in the middle of the street for no reason and when you pull up behind a stopped car you would never dream of complaining, you just wait patiently for them to get going again.  Everyone stops to let someone in front of you and not allowing someone into the stream of traffic is the greatest form of rudeness around.  Honking is used to thank someone, not complain about their driving.

Some time ago i read an article about traffic that said if more people stopped rushing and accommodated drivers by letting them into the flow the experience would be more pleasurable and actually faster.  Unfortunately i can't find the article to quote it, so you will just have to take my word for it.

So anyway yesterday when i was peering into my rear view mirror hoping that the truck behind me had enough room to stop i thought someone should start a driving school that taught people how to cooperate instead of fight each other to get some place 30 seconds faster.  Slow down a few miles and stop agonizing about the drivers not driving like you want them too, life is too short.

And that's just my two cents worth on the topic of road rage and aggressive drivers, see ya next week.

Giant Sequoia's

i'm on a dial up today so i'm not attaching any pics.  i do have some lovely one's of the Sequoia's but they will have to wait for a faster connection.


We have family on both coasts, so we try to split the visiting time. i’ve always lamented that the trees in the east are too close together and not as tall as those on the west coast. The dense trees in the east are small and stubby to my western eyes and although beautiful in their own right don’t have the appeal that the western pines and sequoia’s have.


Yesterday we visited some Giant Sequoias and as we were walking through the grove a deep sadness came over me. Lying on the ground were the remains of an old Sequoia. It had been uprooted and lay exposed upon the ground. The bare blackened dead tree had a presence on the forest floor that cut to my core. People were walking on top of it and through it by way of a tunnel that pierced its middle.

Close by, live Giant Sequoias made your neck hurt just trying to find the top of these massive trees; their girth dwarfing other pines while their red bark glowed unlike the surrounding vegetation. The grove of elder trees appeared to be holding court while also being reminded of those who have passed on.

The Sequoia’s are not numerous, just dominant. You wanted to touch them to find out what they knew but the fences erected to keep us away prevented any close contact with the living and that is what made me sad.

Californian’s had waited too long to protect these monstrous trees. The ones lying on the forest floor were evidence of our neglect. Fortunately, according to the signs along the trail the population is now starting to increase. New ones are beginning to grow because we finally learned that keeping fire away from them impeded their reproductive abilities.

The time spent amongst the Sequoia’s reminded me of man. The fences we build, the fires we try to put out and the ability we all have to learn from our mistakes and change course.  All of us, man and nature are too precious to ignore.

These massive giants dwell in a grove that is hard to reach. This is a place that encourages us to think about our impact on the environment. A place to think about life and death and still leave with such a good feeling it accompanies you all the way to bed.

We have been interacting with friends and family on a daily basis.  Telling our stories, joining together in various settings and melding with whom ever is present.  This trip is not just about enjoyment, it is about connecting while you have the chance. 

Time to edit this is lacking so please bear with me, its a miracle it is even getting published.  See you next week.