photographs and love letters.

Today, I sat by the water in Redwood Shores, blinded by the sun's reflection off the miniature waves. I looked behind me onto a perfectly manicured street, lined with identical houses, a girl passing me on her bicycle, smiling. I thought about my friends spending time in Africa, making changes in the world, dealing with starvation and injustice and murder and political disjunction. I thought of my cousins in Tennessee, roasting in the sticky heat. I thought of Los Angeles, of all the inequality there and all of the racial and class divisions.

How lucky I am that all I do is complain. I sit in the sunlight, in the breezy, dry eighty degrees. I ponder academia, my job, yoga classes, running, sex, books I've been reading, this insanely adorable/funny/sexy/creative/beautifully confusing guy I have been seeing, my best friends here and there. I have everything. I am a lucky bitch. I hate even my own life sometimes it's so picture perfect.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked to Burlingame Avenue with Saleh, who I have realized is one of my closest friends. I love talking to him about everything as we walk down the tree-lined streets. We passed Burlingame's annual Art on the Avenue - all the Cajun food and frozen lemonade and handmade jewelry you could ever want. I turned to Saleh and said "We live in a disgustingly perfect little town. It's not suburbia, it's a fucking village. It's what people dream about. It's what families hope for. It is utopia." He didn't even argue with me like he usually does. He nodded and explained that there couldn't possibly be anything better than this in America. And while this may be true, it's also very easy to rebel from perfection.

That's where I am coming from. All of that perfection and all I want is a little complexity. Because beneath the pristine shine of the lacquer-painted village in which I live, I want there to be so much more. Maybe that's not necessary. Maybe all I need is everything I already have. But maybe I am simply scared, as I whispered to Tyler as I fell asleep Friday night, to have what I want. He doesn't seem to understand that having him, having a good job, living in a place so devoid of flaws would be too overwhelming for me. Where is the meaning in an existence with no dramatic set of events, no build-up, no peak, no intricate and beautiful denouement?