lost puppies, copious old people and PB&J

at some point in the not so distant past i lost a degree of the cynicism i have always held so close to my heart. i don't know where i left it, and even more importantly i don't much mind since my pessimism isn't exactly like a runaway puppy that you put up flyers and scour the streets for. and least i don't. though as it happens i've also never lost a puppy, so that analogy's a lie.

i find this newfound optimism in sentences like "there is still a lot of good in the world". no, it's not something i heard on a Save the Children infommerical and am planning on now berating to bits. i actually said it, and without even the slightest bit of sarcasm. well except for that tiny bit that tends to just sneak in out of pure habit, but that's more of a subtle inflection than a tone per se. and completely out of even my subconscious control.

instead of being the hopeful youth that grows jaded with age i think i might end up the cynical kid who ends up a naieve AARP activist. though hell, with that group i guess it's not simple idealism that makes you believe you can change the world. at least as long as that world keeps it's abundant ratio of old folks. maybe i reversed it somehow and am unlearning how much our world sucks, if so i can only hope such lessons are accompanied by a return of the simple pleasures of parks and balloon animals. and peanut butter and jelly- why does no one eat PB&J anymore? maybe it's just a phase, maybe this good mood is like teenage angst and will also eventually pass in a wake of awkwardness, depressing songs and bad style choices.

but i kinda hope not. i kind of hope that what i lost gets flattened in the road. even though I'll tell myself that it just found a better home with a kind elderly couple up the street. after all, that's what happens to lost puppies.

6525---> 2525, keys that fit and running away

there are times when i miss my dad's house. after all, it is the place i spent half of most of my childhood, every other two weeks of it to be exact. I don't think of it as home anymore; that title was surrendered long ago to one of the series of charming slummish apartments I've lived in for the past few years. it could be doubted if anywhere in Isla Vista could ever really qualify as a home, but right now it's the closest thing i've got to it.

but there are times when i want to go back to that place. with the two brick pillars and the front door my key still fits into. times when i just feel like nothing here is right and that the only solution, the only way to make it all ok again is to drive either 3 and a half or 7 hours to sleep in a guest room and wonder what to do with the comparatively dull evenings of any place outside of IV. it's not even about seeking the familiarity of the house i grew up in or going back to hometown i'm nostalgic for. anyone who knows me knows the first is as unattractive as the second is unexistent. i know a total of three people in sonoma county and visiting my mom there is as likely and effective a cure as the much shorter drive to Oceanside.

maybe it's just about getting away for a while, a change of scenery and all that. maybe if i knew other people in other places (a comparative distance from here) as well as my parents i'd go there instead. maybe it's just the comfort of being around someone you know is pretty much bound to love oyu no matter what, and expect so much of me while requiring so little. maybe i just like being around people who don't know what i'm usually like on a saturday night at 2AM. though lately that's been asleep as often as not.

and it's all fine and good now. my parents still miss me enough to nag me to visit, i still have a flexible enough schedule that i can leave for four or five days when i start feeling a little claustrophobic in my six person apartment. but what happens when i'm out of college? when i move to oakland or some city even farther north and get the sudden hankering to ease my depression with a stay at my parents place- showing up with my laundry and an empty stomach. at some point am i going to have a home that i don't need to run away from periodically?

maybe it's just IV, maybe it's just me.
maybe it's just everything.