And I am lost and I can't even say why...

To paraphrase Neil Diamond,

"Well, I'm NYC born and raised. But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores
Frisco's fine, but it ain't home. New York's home, but it ain't mine no more."

This is the time of year I get homesick.  Some years, not so much. Other years, a lot.  This year it's bad.  On Nov. 6th, I will be living here on the Left Coast 30 years.  That's longer than I lived in NYC, since I was 23 when I moved here.  Time- wise, I'm more of a Californian than a New Yorker; more of a Westerner than an Easterner.  But still, you know what they say about taking the girl out of NYC...

There are things I just can't get used to.  There's no weather here.  It's always the same, cool and damp and usually windy.  It gets a little colder in the winter.  At least, it used to.  With global warming, the winters are even warmer than they used to be.  I miss the seasons, the crisp chill in the air and riotous colors of Autumn.  The first snow of winter.  The first crocus of spring.  Time passes by unnoticed, until one day you wake up and see your hair is grey and your youth is gone.  I guess that happens everywhere, but when you have no outward signs of the seasons passing, it all becomes internal, and it's easier to fool yourself.  It comes as more of a shock when you do realize it.

My bonsai tree.  The most fall color I'll see around here...sigh.

Another thing is the people.  Oh, they're mostly nice.  I've made friends, and genuinely like many of them.  But they're... different.  I always feel that separation, have that feeling of being an alien. The myth of the laid back Californian is exactly that, a myth.  They think highly of themselves, these San Franciscans,  They take themselves seriously.  Not necessarily in a conceited way, but just in the general sense of an unconscious feeling of entitlement.  You can't kid them, can't make fun of them.  They don't get it.  They take it seriously, they start to dislike you.  Their sense of humor seems to be lacking; that sense of laugh, or go mad.  Or laugh and go mad.  I miss it.  Oh, there's madness here, but it's not MY kind of madness.  They are mad, but not in a good way.

And yet, if I went back... 

If I went back, I would be alien there.  I would hate it.  I'd hate that everyone is always trying to get one over on me.  I'd hate the suspicion and distrust, the expectation that everyone is dangerous and/or trying to get something at my expense.  The way they know that you're lying to them, even when you aren't.  I'd hate the heat and humidity and bugs of summer, and I'd hate the dreary dark of winters that never seem to end.

I've softened in my 30 years in California.  Land of milk & honey, the promised land.