what I’ll miss about San Jose
[I’ve been prompted to get started on the posts that have been waiting for me to write them down. Thanks, prompters.]
Most of this blog has been about what’s so great about Minneapolis, and it really is great. But back in September, I sent myself a short list of things I planned to miss about San Jose. Annotated, here they are:
Thai dentists. Okay, I don’t know any Thai dentists. But they’re in the phone book, and this has become my mental shorthand for a diverse, integrated middle class. The Twin Cities are more ethnically diverse than you’d think from A Prairie Home Companion, but the doctors and lawyers seem to be almost all white. In Silicon Valley there are working professionals of many descents, and - this matters - their kids all know each other from school. It’s not “It’s a Small World” but it’s not bad.
Related: The back page of the travel section. I grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota, reading books about the wide world, and although I didn’t think about it at the time, my concept of travel was basically white people in exotic places. When I started reading the San Jose Mercury-News, I would turn to the back page of the travel section and see pictures, sent in by local readers, of their Indian-American family at Versailles, or their Sino-/Franco-American family in Egypt, and I was surprised! And then uncomfortable with my surprise; it was because I had made unconscious assumptions like “people who look different from me are ‘foreign’” and “‘foreign’ people would mostly want to travel to their ancestral homelands.” Working through those assumptions led me to a deeper understanding of my community and its place in the world. I checked that page every week.
I hate writing about this stuff, because although I mean well I’m afraid I will offend somebody. But I will miss it.
Fresh, local produce all year round. It’s wonderful to be able to get up on a Sunday morning in January, head over to downtown Campbell, and get just-picked fruits and vegetables from Watsonville or Corralitos. (Minnesota has a lot of farmers markets, and some of them operate in winter but I guess I just assume it’s all meat and dairy.)
The West Coast. Not the coast as such, but “the rest of the western coastal states,” and specifically Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Portland, Olympia, Seattle… all these places I love, and people I’d love to see again, but it’s harder to visit them from across the Mountain West, especially for a flight-hater like myself. It’s a long drive from Minnesota to the west coast, and even when the drive is beautiful, it’s still long.
The ocean. I’ve never spent that much time with it, but every once in a while, when the sorrows and worries of my life seemed too much to bear, I’d drive down past Santa Cruz, find a deserted beach, and gaze out at the waves rolling in, or at the far horizon, until I started to understand again how big the world is, and how little my troubles matter to it. It’s very comforting, being reminded of your own insignificance. Even when I couldn’t get there, it was good to know that vastness was there, just on the other side of those hills. I don’t know where to find that in my new old home.
So that’s the list. When I made it, I didn’t mention my band or my friends - let’s not get mushy. But I’m gone now, and I miss them.
erikostrom • 1 year ago • 2 notes • view comments
