I didn’t want to live in the city because if you forget and leave something on the seat of your car, someone will smash the window and take it.  Driving around looking for parking leaves me feel hollow, like someone scooped out my organs in order to fry them in oil.  Money flies out of my hands; the crush of people exhausts me.

But I didn’t want to live where nothing happened, and at one point made a drastic career change to prevent it.  I knew that in isolated areas, it’s a significant event to congregate at a major franchise like Sizzler.  Days feel like acres.  The familiar, dreary surroundings burn into your brain like the after image on a television screen.  I wanted to be within ten minutes of a city, where you can get food that tastes so good that you’ll remember it months later, even if you forget who you were with and what you talked about.

I once knew a girl who rented a cheap apartment in an expensive area of the city, and she could only park her car in a driveway on certain hours of the week.  She loved it.  I still know a girl who married someone who grew up a mile away from her, and they both live near their small hometown.

I’m not like either of them; I live somewhere inbetween.  A half block from my building lets me stand on a tree-lined street that reaches up into the Oakland hills.  The other direction reveals a view of downtown Oakland, and beyond that, on a clear day, a hazy outline of downtown San Francisco.  I know that if I lived in the city, its buildings would seem to curl over my head like knuckles.  From this distance, they look like outstretched fingers.  I should laugh at myself for making life decisions based on a carefully tuned, somewhat deranged sense of urban ambivalence, but having actually achieved that delicate equilibrium, I’m at a loss to describe my deep feeling of comfort.