What is your happy place? Is it something in memory? Something in imagination? Someplace you can escape without feeling like it\u2019s just a temporary escape, some place where you can hide out? Is there an actual physical spot you can go to and feel at peace, all\u2019s right with the world, or at least the madness of the wider world can\u2019t get inside you for a while?<\/p>\n
This is something I\u2019ve had a long time to mull over in the last few weeks and months, largely because I\u2019m looking for commonalities – is there one thread (or several) that run through all of these places in my memory? Something that\u2019s easily reproducible in a pinch? Something that informs why it works and how I can obtain that peace of mind elsewhere? Why not take a look and see what comes up?<\/p>\n
One of the first things was isolation. Whether it was stashing myself under the gym bleachers at day care, locking myself in my room as an adolescent, or just squirreling away in music-building practice rooms or walking around abandoned academic buildings at midnight as an undergrad, getting away was frequently a big part of it. Not even necessarily isolation – retreating to a Tahoe cabin with the wife or going down the basement cigar shop with a bunch of guys whose names I never knew. A cozy space away from most of the world – that might be as clear a definition of the happy place as I can think of, with one exception: if I have a crew around me, we can do anything. The 4P\u2019s on Saturday night. Winery tours. The Santa Cruz Warriors game. (It\u2019s a particular paradox of the bus leagues that the San Jose Giants at home can be either a group outing or cozy isolation in the exact same seats.)<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also dark. Obviously a public house is not often well-lit, which is the desired effect. Neither is a cabin in a snow-strewn landscape with a fire in the potbelly stove. In recent months, I\u2019ve come to appreciate the appeal of copper string lights as the only illumination, especially against a plain brick wall. It\u2019s the same principle by which I feel better in the fog: sometimes, you\u2019re just better off without too much light. It\u2019s why I couldn\u2019t go to my favorite San Jose pub in the summertime: because I hate walking out of the pub when it\u2019s still light. (It doesn\u2019t help that they lack air conditioning.) The practice of staying home in the front room to try to pub it works less well when sunlight is still streaming through the windows. (By contrast, having the Christmas string lights as the only illumination works surprisingly well.)<\/p>\n
On the other hand, something I never would have considered before moving here – there\u2019s the coast. Highway 1 from Ocean Beach in the city all the way south of Davenport – the Pacific off to your right as you drive down, past small towns and random homes and the occasional pie ranch or strawberry farm. The sort of place where if you did have a tiny house, you\u2019d be happy to plunk it down within sight of the ocean and set up one of those zero-g reclining chairs outside (maybe bike-chained to the corner of the house) to read and watch the waves in the distance on a foggy day.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, I described the seaside town where the \u201ccoffee shop\u201d is the old diner, the bar has a fireplace and doesn\u2019t carry anything fancier than Guinness, the cops all still carry revolvers and the baseball comes over the radio, and how I\u2019d take turning 60 now if I could just be retired there. I kind of stand by that, but more than ever the thought drifts through – Greenock, in Scotland? Somewhere like Kinvara on the west coast of Ireland? Someplace where I don\u2019t have a rooting interest in the sport and don\u2019t even understand the politics and could just relax for the rest of my days?<\/p>\n
Which really gets to the point of the whole thing: the only real<\/em> happy place is one you don\u2019t have to return from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is your happy place? Is it something in memory? Something in imagination? Someplace you can escape without feeling like it\u2019s just a temporary escape, some place where you can hide out? Is there an actual physical spot you can go to and feel at peace, all\u2019s right with the world, or at least the … <\/p>\n