Home again...Davis, CA

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I've been thinking for quite some time about how unfortunate it is that I stopped writing these blogs after I left Argentina. When every day of your life is an adventure, how can one rank the importance of place? Is it not worth writing about my life if I'm not living and learning about a foreign land?

My parents just went to sleep. This is the first night since I've been home (3 weeks) that I am staying up later than them...and no...I'm not stoned. They usually mention something about being tired around 10:30 and then....boom! It's 1 in the morning...and another episode of _(Insert any tv show you want here)__ winds down on Hulu. I had my own odd too-early-to-be-real sensation of tiredness this evening. At about 8, after finishing a delicious dinner of take-out Symposium pizza (The best in the world) and watching a couple classic episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, I couldn't keep my eyes open. My dad threw a blanket on me as he left the room, and I was gone. Minutes later I was rudely awakened by an urgent ringing coming from 8 different parts of the house. It was the phone and after ring 3, I realized that it was my duty to answer it. Oddly instantly awake, I managed to have a relatively energetic and positive conversation with Malka, the woman who replaced my mom as The Boss at Congregation Bet Haverim so many years ago. Only slightly easier to understand, I hadn't spoken with her since before I left Davis for college. College. The University. The Establishment of Higher Learning that is supposed to prepare us for life. Really?

What is college? Is it what you make of it? What the people around you make of it? Does it really matter what you study or is it simply about the journey? My graduation felt like a finalization. It left me with no real burning desire to return to school as an eager graduate student. What would I study? I have experienced enough of the business curriculum to know that another two years of hypothetical situational study wouldn't increase my learning curve of life. What is there to learn and which parts are most important?

I'm asking a lot of questions - most for which I may never have satisfactory answers. Even when I don't verbalize my thoughts, I am constantly questioning situations and moving through the process of thought in my head. I just paused for a moment and realized my sidetrack to my original intention. Actually, my intention was to sit down and write. I loved writing my blogs and diary while I was travelling and it has been much too long since my last writing session. So no matter what I write, I am on track to succeed, to learn, and to love.

I grew up in Davis. Never truly appreciating the environment in which I was raised, I am beginning to understand more and more what a special place Davis is. I can't imagine Davis ever growing too large. The best indicators of size and quality in a finite living area that I can come up is dependent on the existence of societally destructive establishments such as Target, Wal-Mart, Costco, Best Buy. You know, the types of places that you once had to drive to your nearest commercial center to visit. Against my obvious personal feelings, I tend to shop at Target when necessary so don't take this as a condemnation of 'the big box store'.

This is what I'm trying to illustrate:
Throughout this past year, Davis begrudgingly allowed the construction of a Target. Up until this point, Davis-ites or temporary Davis infiltrators were forced to either go North to Woodland or South to Sacramento for that type of one-stop-shop. With the addition of Target, many implications arise, and Davis moves one step closer to a Boulder-like societal situation. Boulder has been my home since Fall 2004 and I love it. All that it has to offer in the way of innovation, outdoors, natural beauty, wilderness seclusion, and everything having to do with ease of living, transportation and most people's mindsets. However, it is a city. It is not a Davis, a town where it is personally unheard of to visit a local store and NOT run into an old acquaintance.

Consider a Target as a Somalian Pirate Ship and a local mom & pop shop as an unsuspecting oceanic vessel, which we will call The Davis. As The Davis goes about its usual routine conducting business in a customer-sympathetic manner, it can occasionally be so closely related to the offerings of The Target that is (passively) attacked, sunk & looted. Besides the macro aspects and implications of Target within the world, it is important to look at how it affects the everyday 'Joe DavisIte' as he goes about life. How does it change the experiences in the day to day? Those experiences are what build us. How we are treated by others directly affects the way that we feel inclined to conduct our personal lives. Target, available in more small towns than any other big box behemoth, can be closely linked from World Poverty down to Intrapersonal Depression.

Wow. I wasn't really trying to put together a worldly class-action against corporations, but that's the way this session has gone. More next time. No promise on when, but when the mood strikes you'll know. For now, make sure you have plenty of www.ZSpecialtyFood.com products to spread the love of quality food this year. It sounds like a marketing plug, but not too deep down it's a small family business trying to survive against $100 million marketing campaigns.

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Comments

[Patti]

back in the saddle
nice to hear your comments on life and living again; and true to form....i love you, josh.

[Sis]

Target
Is Target's prominence really linked to rates of depression???!!! Maybe there are more factors like urban living and related stressors. But it is fitting that they built the target right by that HUGE church, right? The two biggest buildings in Davis, side by side. . .

[andrew]

glad to have you back!
i love reading your blogs. you are such an excellent writer Josh. and just an overall great teller of stories. i love that you remember all of the details and minutia about your day. you make the mundane... fun-dane! after this tomorrow, i expect hardcore hangout time. start planning the adventures now. im thinking a few solid bike trips. ive taken the one from davis to winters once. its a good 15 mi. each way, which is about an hour depending on how fast we ride. you have an extra bike perchance?.. because mine is a'hurtin' right now.. maybe a trip or two to the bay. um, i'm just throwin ideas out there.. maybe a round or three of disc golf around sac or davis? oh! sushi! teach me! um... eff my a, what else?... i don't know, you think of somethin. holla at a schola'!