Some things must be said. People, here and back home, obviously resist this piece of information, but the winter is really cold here in Santa Cruz. Selma’s present, a warm and soft set of legwarmers, was providential, to say the least. When i was still living with MarÃa, we would complain about how cold the house and lousy the heating system was. Which we mostly only turned on when the temperature inside started falling below 56 degrees. Somehow this sounded a lot. Until i got myself to check, two weeks ago, how that would convert in celsius: around 13 degrees. When i moved to my new house and we first drove to the Capitola Mall to get a comforter and pillows, i got so lucky that MarÃa convinced me to get the “extra warm” comforter. Remember they are genetically modified here. As i was dragging the big thing behind me a shop attendent commented: “So you guys are cold sleepers, huh.” After my first night in my new house i understood that the new comforter was fine, but probably one of the lightest i ever had.
Cause this is the thing: it wouldn’t have to be so cold if everybody lived up to the fact that this part of California is simply cold in winter, and organized their houses and lives accordingly. Of course it’s not really cold, not like in Kazan for instance where during the winter the temperature regularly drops to minus 30. But in Kazan there’s a whole culture around protecting the body from the cold, and the house where i lived, situated in a run-down and shabby neighborhood of the city, was always intensly warm. Too warm sometimes, and then the only remedy was opening a window, since central heating meant that the heating system was regulated centrally for the whole neighborhood. (ah, rampant individualism here makes me nostalgic for these collective arrangements…) But here we are up against a persistent myth of warm & sunny California. So people go around in t-shirts and sandals, houses have lousy heating, and “extra warm” comforters need some fleece blankets on top to do the job during these wintery days. The best kept secret, Diana called it the other day. She had never been so cold than after moving from London to San Francisco, where she had to put on a jumper and socks in bed at night in order not to freeze. It was June. The secret is well kept, and so there are all these hard hermetically sealed bodies performing the myth of warm and sunny California. Meanwhile i’m freezing.
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An amazing winter wonderland storm hit the Bay area yesterday. Unseen, unheard of. It started with giant hail hitting the earth in the afternoon, and it continued all evening long with hail becoming snow as you move away from the ocean (or is it snow becoming hail in the ocean’s vicinity) and roaring thunder and lightening. Highway 17 closed down. The streets covered in white hail-snow. People making pictures, fighting with hail-snow balls. Today people asking each other “where were you yesterday night?” and telling their stories of winter adventures. | |
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And so we… we had a wonderful heart-warming dinner with Clea and David. By the time we had dessert we sat in the candle light to better witness all the rage outside. Then, in the excitement of the storm, David proposed to drive to the ocean. Amazing. This never happens in Santa Cruz, they kept on saying. It’s since the two ladies from Belgium came, Clea insisted. | |