Today TJ and I woke up around ten (last night was a party and we were there kinda late) and he felt like ass (unusual for him, to be sick or hungover) so I stayed and nursed him and watched tv with he and Sylkia. I then left around 3 as he started to feel better and went for a drive up the 210, to the 118 north, to the 23 to Ventura Freeway and out to Old Town Ventura, where three or four weeks ago I'd seen a necklace I'd loved and wanted to buy it.

I never get really nice, expensive things for myself. This is because I cannot afford to. But I really loved this necklace--the chain is made to look like leaves, and there are little blueberries all along it--not real of course, but they LOOK real, just tinier, and jewellike--there's nothing like it anywhere and I love it. And they let me put it on layaway! Which means by October or so I'll have it paid off. ;) Oh well. It's good to have goals.

Then I wandered around the old town. There are lots of old art-deco, arts-n-crafts, and earlier buildings. A few Victorian bungalows, a few early-1900's brick buildings. Above the main street (aptly named Main Street), the roads angle abruptly uphill as the bluff beneath the town throws itself away from the ocean. The city hall is obscured by scaffolding but is a lovely building, and a monumental statue taller than the palms on the hill stands in front of the hall. It's a statue of St. Francis or Father Serra (the founder of all California's missions) and it overlooks the town almost like Rio de Janiero's famous image of Jesus the Redeemer, its arms outstretched, with nothing but sky behind it. I looked up at the statue and noticed that the light transparent clouds overhead were moving faster than any clouds I'd ever seen. They looked like time-lapse photography, sliding past with silent speed, like I was underwater and they were on the surface, ten thousand feet above me.

I felt indescribable.

The drive home was along this inland highway I've never taken, the 150 or something, past fields of tomatoes and budding cauliflower and blackberry brambles. A few farmhouses punctuated the landscape every few miles and the rows of irrigated green alternated between glittery flashing water and deep viridian spokes that seemed to click reasurringly alongside my vision as I drove across them, snapping each one back into the field rolling along, rising up in the distance to low gold hills with one or two oaks leaning in the direction of the wind, where I was driving.