Feels Like Home — HERCULANEUM

I have to admit, that there have been times when Santa Barbara felt like home, but it never really was a lingering feeling. And don't get me wrong, Santa Barbara is beautiful. Strikingly beautiful in fact, to the point of surreality. In your face beautiful, like Barbara Streisand, Hillary Clinton, or Janet Reno.

I grew up in Ohio. And I miss it, terribly. I miss my family and my dearest friends. I miss thunderstorms and fireflies.

I miss the incredible anticipation of Spring,

the buzzing of the cicadas and warm sheet-less nights of Summer,

the coolness of melancholy in Autumn,

and the magic of walking at night in the woods of Winter

and red Cardinals against a backdrop of snow.

When I first moved out here from Cleveland over 7 years ago, one of my biggest adjustments when I moved in with one of my best friends was to get used to sleeping with the periodic, eerie howls and screams of the coyotes over their nightly kills. My friend's house is on the edge of Santa Barbara up on a hill, so the coyotes are pretty common up there.

It was new and exciting, but an adjustment coming from a very urban setting of the West 28th/Bridge Avenue area of Cleveland where rather than a quiet night being pierced by the sounds of coyotes celebrating their feast, what I was accustomed to, being bellowed outside my home, while deep in slumber was more like:

"YOU GONNA DIE, MOTHAFUCKA!!!"

Or,

"YOU COCKSUCKA, MOTHAFUCKA, EAT A BAG OF SHIT, ASSHOLE! GIVE ME BACK MY 40 OUNCE!!"

And that was just my Mom. You should've heard my Dad.

Aahhh...those were the days. Those were the days that the lord hath made, let us rejoice, rejoice and be glad.

So, I've really been missing Ohio lately. Sometimes to the point where I ache.

The depression that I've been feeling wasn't helped when a couple of weeks ago, I had an unexpected $1875.00 repair bill on my car (of which I didn't have). So, to blow off some steam from having to charge a repair, I went out to jump some rope with the neighborhood girls and to play hopscotch.

We all split a bottle of Jack Daniels that I had brought, experimented with their mothers' make-up and talked about boys. Even at age 10, boys are pigs.

Actually, I do jump rope as part of my workout, but unfortunately was not warmed up enough so I ended up pulling a muscle in my leg. I limped back into the house feeling a bit of defeat.

Then the next day, I fell off a sidewalk and hit my head on a tree.

So then I thought, I really need a haircut, because some of my hair was long enough and became caught on the bark of that tree and yanked out of my melon. And I didn't want anymore hair to be pulled out when I made contact with my next tree.

Note to self: please do not seek the shears of a barber who has bad hair himself, for this will denote that he lacks skills, judgment, or good eyesight.

My defeat was imminent.

He was a nice guy, but he hummed the entire time while he fucked up my hair. Like he was making a musical out of mish-mashing my head.

But, something happened while I was in that barber shop getting my hair all jacked up that made me feel a little bit better and reminded me of Cleveland. The barber working the chair next to where I was getting the last of my dignity hacked, dialed a number on his cell phone as a customer was walking up to him. Then he proceeded to SCREAM into the phone with the prospective customer watching;

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? GET THE FUCK OVER THERE!!! SHIT IS GOING DOWN!! HE JUST CALLED CRYING! THEY'RE BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER!! GET YOUR ASS OVER THERE NOW!! FUCK!!"

He hung up the phone and then turned calmly to the customer as if none of that had happened and said, "Hi. How would you like your hair?"

So fucking money, I tell you.

Then later that night, my homesickness improved some more. Will and I went to our favorite sushi restaurant and gorged ourselves on sushi, sashimi and sake. As we were leaving the restaurant, a gentleman/derelict who was sitting on a nearby bench became enraged at a street lamp (that was doing its job) and looked up from his seat looking something like this and yelled:

"I'M GONNA SHOOT THAT LIGHT OUT WITH MY CANNON!!!"

Suddenly, I felt all warm and fuzzy and felt like I was home.