Simple and Silly Pleasures

GOAT HILL JUNCTION

I have been busy trying to plan a trip to Israel on a limited budget and a tight schedule framed by life sustaining IVIG infusions. It has kept me glued to a small laptop, my generation's answer to the idiot box as the great time waster.

Our trip will be pretty standard fare, but I must visit Safed where I can walk in the footstep of Isaac Luria, and if I am lucky and don't try too hard, maybe just maybe I will see a vision of a healed world. First I got to find a way to get to the middle east and travel while I'm there, keep a clean roof over our head, eat my veggies and still get home while my platelets are still copious and my credit card isn't feeling tipsy from the heights it's climbed.

I feel a bit like Cinderella.

Last night, I broke from the ionic grip of the CPU to picked up my Canadian cousin at LAX during his 7 hour lay over to take him for a vegan meal and catch the sights of Santa Monica, home of the homeless. It was a eye and mouthful for him. "I didn't know vegetables could taste this good." We ate at Real Food Daily, not raw, but at least vegan and organic. I figured that was enough of a culinary stretch. We then walked the nearby third street promenade. I ask you: Where else can you see skateboarding dogs and hear electric violins?

Being an only child, it was a unique kind of joy to share a meal and some conversation with my cousin.

Today, my wife and I went for a brain re-orienting miniature train ride in Goat Hill Junction, Costa Mesa, and still had time to catch another amazing, only in California, sunset.

It is good to be a kid again, if only for a few hours.