Breakfast. A shower. In someone else's home. Someone you haven't met yet, someone you can hear moving around upstairs. Suddenly in it, in the thing, in the thing of meeting new people and asking for help and seeing what happens. Just take it one baby step at a time. You're here. You've paid to be here. You are welcome.
She is excited. He is too but doesn't show it too much. She is American, a sound artist, a podcaster, an artist doing her own projects and in the midst of it all. He is English, a furniture maker, or seller? They know the AirBnB guys, would I like an introduction?
Oh wait. He's English. Really, not just doing the accent, he really is. And he's from Dorset, he's from Weymouth, well Dorchester, well knows Jeremy Gould. What are the chances? Well quite good really because this is 2011 and AirBnB is the sort of thing that people like me and he and Jeremy do, but many others don't quite yet. So yes, you know it really is a small world. We eat granola and yogurt and blueberries.
And then they're both gone and off to work and I'm alone again in their house, ready to go soon and post the key back through the door. Slowly, taking it slowly, there's nothing much else to do. Perhaps sit here in the conservatory and write. Oh and say thankyou to Neal for renewing your Flickr when you didn't even know it needed doing, but it does.
Spider plants and aloe vera and pebbles and stuff all the stuff of a West Coast Victorian home, old and wooden and light at the front and back, but dark in the middle. Cold stone floor in the bathroom. Brush my teeth. Look in the mirror. Pull a face and ask myself what am I doing here? How did I get here? Hello jetlag too.
Out into the street and walk a little, get my bearings, find a grocery store, a market, stock up on fruit and veg and meat and bread for the road. This is California, it's a Spanish colony first, a bit of Mexico, really. And it shows everywhere.
Walk some, and find the BART again to take me into the city. It's not far.