Sunset Magazine
Usually I come home to find a pile of papers on our dining room table. It's the day's mail, yesterday's mail, receipts, occasionally a book. I look through the pile, scanning for bills, for postcards, for cards from distant lands, and once a month I find a magazine. D thinks I have too many magazine subscriptions, but I love them. He thinks I should toss all my old magazines, but I don't want to recycle them until I go through each one, cutting out pictures and articles to paste into my scrapbook. I haven't had time to do that lately. Sometimes I get two or three magazines in the mail, which is lovely because it puts me into a delicious predicament: what do I read first? It's the same feeling I get when I come home with more than one new book. I look at them, caress the covers (yes, I said caress) and slowly and painfully decide which one to sit down with. Both my children are hanging off a cliff and I can only save one. It's like that.
I've been finding that my New Yorker and and my Sunset Magazine come at the same time. My Rachel Ray magazine and Bon Appetite seem to have the same schedule too, and even though I love them as well, nothing compares to finding a brand new New Yorker and a brand new (shiny!) Sunset sitting on my dining room table. Invariably I pick up the Sunset first because I know it will take me less time to go through that publication. I tend to not read all the articles, as they have the capacity to upset me. They upset me because I cannot take the day trips that they recommend, nor can I re-vamp my patio to be an engaging and refreshing outdoor dining room. It's like window shopping - looking is fun, but what I would give to have.
Often I wonder if it's trite of me to want so badly to be back in California. Does this want I can't seem to shake make me less of a person? Am I foolish to think that I'd be happier if I were living in California? I think about these questions, and more often than not come to the conclusion that no, I am not being trite. I am not less of a person. There are books and articles and essays and movies and all sorts of expression that talk about going back to one's home, homeland. There are people in the world that have a connection to a place, that feel that a physical location is more than just an address, more than just the four walls and a door that shelter. California is a character in my life. It's someone I want to be with, who I want to commune with, take shelter with, someone who plays a very large role in my life. And there is nothing wrong with that.
I'm slowly, slowly starting to accept this part of my personality. The Sunset Magazine is like a letter from an old and distant lover, someone who you spent intimate time with and no longer see, someone you dream about and long for, but cannot have. That's really why reading Sunset is torture for me: it shows me perfectly what I left and where I no longer am.
I've been finding that my New Yorker and and my Sunset Magazine come at the same time. My Rachel Ray magazine and Bon Appetite seem to have the same schedule too, and even though I love them as well, nothing compares to finding a brand new New Yorker and a brand new (shiny!) Sunset sitting on my dining room table. Invariably I pick up the Sunset first because I know it will take me less time to go through that publication. I tend to not read all the articles, as they have the capacity to upset me. They upset me because I cannot take the day trips that they recommend, nor can I re-vamp my patio to be an engaging and refreshing outdoor dining room. It's like window shopping - looking is fun, but what I would give to have.
Often I wonder if it's trite of me to want so badly to be back in California. Does this want I can't seem to shake make me less of a person? Am I foolish to think that I'd be happier if I were living in California? I think about these questions, and more often than not come to the conclusion that no, I am not being trite. I am not less of a person. There are books and articles and essays and movies and all sorts of expression that talk about going back to one's home, homeland. There are people in the world that have a connection to a place, that feel that a physical location is more than just an address, more than just the four walls and a door that shelter. California is a character in my life. It's someone I want to be with, who I want to commune with, take shelter with, someone who plays a very large role in my life. And there is nothing wrong with that.
I'm slowly, slowly starting to accept this part of my personality. The Sunset Magazine is like a letter from an old and distant lover, someone who you spent intimate time with and no longer see, someone you dream about and long for, but cannot have. That's really why reading Sunset is torture for me: it shows me perfectly what I left and where I no longer am.