Her you-know-what-I-means always end with a slight wink of the right eye. Just like her big brother. It’s emphasis, not a question mark. The thing is, in this case, unlike most, I wasn’t sure I did.

“Yeah, you know, like, San Francisco is everything I could ever want in a city, but then, somehow, it just wasn’t enough. I dunno, my feelings about that city are so complex, like a relationship, like an ex-boyfriend … you know what I mean?”

Another wink of emphasis.

I was starting to get it. I thought about my friends, most of us in our late 20’s and early 30’s. We’ve been spending most of the last 10 years building up our expectations about this city and that person only to be lured by the next skyline over the horizon, the next pretty face smiling shyly at a bar.

There is the honeymoon period, of course, when we fill in the gaps of our ignorance with the optimism of our imagination. Every pillow talk whisper could still be Van Morrison’s wonderful remark. Every cafe barista could our new best friend.

Some cities are more enticing than others. Barcelona, Brooklyn, Seattle, Paris, Prague. And then, so are some lovers. Ultimately, though, comes the time when we must stop waiting to be impressed and start working to make it better.

Few are the cities I couldn’t live in … so long as I stop thinking that something better lies somewhere else. I’ve realized that all I need are a few good friends, a local cafe, a bookstore, a couple restaurants, and a market. After that, it’s just a matter of saying I’m home.

Couples love to say they were destined for one another. That fate would relegate all other pairs to failure. Looking back over the women of my life, what stands out most is how different they have all been.

There is no perfect city. There is no perfect person. Eventually you just have to choose. That is, if you go for that sorta thing.

As soon as I saw it I loved it. Lo que tú quieras oír - “What You Want to Hear” - is a short (and free-to-download) film by Spanish director Guillermo Zapata. It follows the story of Sofía who comes home after a long day of work to prepare dinner for her boyfriend. But a message on her answering machine changes her plans not only for the evening, but for the rest of her life. Zapata describes the movie as:

Ana historia de amor sobre la relación entre la ficción y la realidad. Siempre nos dijeron que contabamos historias para evadirnos de la realidad, pero no es cierto, contamos historias para transformar la realidad.

Not just reality, but more importantly, our memory. We’re not able to move on and to live comfortably until our conception of who we are and how we are treated is in line with how we view ourselves and view the world. Sofía must alter what she will remember before she is willing to accept what “happened”. And so do we all.

Fine, I admit it. I was listening to melancholy music. How could I not be; nostalgia and melancholy are as twisted together as Sunday morning lovers’ legs. First Palace Music and then Jose Gonzalez. With one hand on the steering wheel, the other clenched around the bleached hairs of my forearm, I floated 70 miles per hour through San Onofre’s nuclear limbo, where Camp Pendelton’s sage green marine base gives way to South Orange County’s cookie-cutter suburban Shangri-La.

Beyond the nuclear tits - an imaginative invitation to terrorists of any persuasion - a thin layer of afternoon, post-daylight-savings pink was sandwiched between the brooding white-capped Pacific Ocean and, above, a creeping cobweb of approaching sea fog. The three layers - flecked brownish-green, watermelon pink, and transparent steel gray - were as irreconcilable as my mood(s).

I was in San Diego for three days. My first time back since early August. On that last Indian Summer night before coming here to the Bay Area, an old friend of mine and I let our legs dangle from his balcony while we smoked a spliff, giggled like girls, and recounted stories from years ago. Of course they were only good memories. They always are. Nostalgia is not an act of remembering; it’s a process of forgetting, of filtering, or reconstructing your past as you wish it had occurred. Or, as it most conveniently fits into your present reality.

Passing by the toll road exit to Laguna Beach, I was aware that nostalgia had once again taken over my thoughts. We used to drive down that same canyon to the massive tree houses - surely torn down by now - and secret hillside cave that looked out onto … what are now subdivided developments. I tried to conjure up a bad memory - from high school, from college, from my childhood - but it was useless. Each time a hint of negativity rose to the surface, it was pushed back down again and replaced by a recollection decidedly more cheerful.

It’s very hard to put into words,” he said. “It’s probably the most frustrating thing that a person can ever go through, is to lose their identity. Because your past is what makes you who you are today - good or bad.

I can’t stop obsessing over the case of Jeff Ingram, a 40-year-old Canadian mill worker who woke up on the steps of a Denver building on September 10th with no wallet, no ID, and no idea of who he was. Though plenty of skepticism surrounds his case, most doctors are convinced that Ingram had experienced stress-related retrograde amnesia.

After walking around Denver’s streets for hours, Ingram found himself at the local police station where Detective Virginia Quinones helped get him on TV, eventually triggering a phone call from Ingram’s fiancee in Olympia, Washington.

Sit back and try to really picture this. You wake up one morning and you have absolutely no recollection of who you are. Then you are introduced to a woman or man who calls him/herself your fiancee and, presumably, shows you photographs to prove it. Your notion of who you are and what you have done with your life (both good and bad) is entirely dependent on what your fiancee, your friends, and your family decide to tell you.

Or, what if you are an avid blogger and you wake up one morning with complete amnesia? Most likely, the best record of who you are is what you have written. What would your weblog tell you about yourself if you read it without any recollection of who the person is who wrote it?

As it turns out, Ingram and his fiancee met online. According to the Lakeside Leader - the local paper of Ingram’s home town, Slave Lake:

Ingram met and married a woman in Slave Lake, a union that didn’t last. About three years ago he met Hansen online and they eventually became engaged to be married. He had “made quite a few trips to the States,” to spend time with her, Doreen says. The most recent visit started in March of this year, and ended with his departure for Slave Lake on Sept. 6. He’s back in Olympia with Hansen now. “He wants to stay in the States and be with his fiancée and that’s what she wants too,” Doreen says. 
Ingram doesn’t recognize her, but according to a report in ‘The Olympian’ newspaper, he feels a connection to Hansen.

Before Ingram fell in love with his fiancee for a second time, before he had any idea of who he was at all, the Denver Post published the following:

Maybe he’s an artist, perhaps a painter or a sculptor. He made a few sketches of the Denver skyline, and several people remarked about his talent. Maybe he’s connected to New York. The second day Al can remember was the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Al had a strong emotional reaction to the tributes he watched on TV. Maybe he had a family. Clues that came out during hypnosis and through the use of ‘truth serum’ suggest Al had a wife and two children, all of whom may have been killed by a drunken driver in April.

Talk about a blank slate. Had Ingram’s fiancee never called in, it’s quite plausible to imagine Ingram reinventing his life as a sculptor in New York with a new name, perhaps “Dante.” (why not?) Instead he returns to Olympia as a divorced former mill worker whose known for winning dart tournaments. I wonder which future would have brought the man more happiness and/or fulfillment.

While in San Diego I stayed with two friends, a married couple. In a conversation that has become as common as the weekend weather report, we got to talking about the impact of the internet on our lives. Half of the couple asked me if I was comfortable with my personal life archived and freely available for all to see online. “I don’t know, it would just be weird,” my friend went on, “if my kids were able to see photographs and get to know the people I dated before their parents got married.”

Personal history in public space can indeed be awkward. Mari and I had to reconcile our hypertextual pasts. And at times that means editing and deleting. Our online memory, it turns out, is not so distinct from our mental one. Except that we’re not always in control of what we remember.

I recently discovered the Flickr account of an ex-girlfriend of mine. My past was there for all to see and comment on - and I had no control of it. Nostalgia - or the art of convenient amnesia - isn’t possible when we’re inconvenienced by what we wish to forget.

Written on November 8th, 2006.

Now I’m back in Cardiff after years of being away. I’m at the library. I need to get work done. But first I needed a cup of coffee. That 30 minute early afternoon coffee break is an important time for me. A time to relax, recharge, flip through the local paper, overhear locals’ conversations, and feel part of the community. But now there’s no place to do that here. No more Miracles. Just a thin hallway of a Starbucks that was perfectly designed to get as many customers in and as many customers out as quickly as possible. At least the girl behind the register was cute.

― Hi there, what can I get for you?
― Hi. A double espresso poured long please.
― Poured … long?
― Yeah, if you could just keep the water running a couple extra seconds.
― Um, actually, we just press a button. Everything is in pods.

So depressing. At least she didn’t try to correct me and say doppio instead of double. So I take my wimpy little one and a half shots with me and walk silently pass the crowds of soccer moms and soccer dads with their starbucks cup in one hand and cell phone in the other.

The Save Miracles Cafe petition is still online, with almost 1,000 signatures. Here are a few:

Fami Lee

Miracles cafe has been very friendly not only to locals but also to people from all over the world. And these people from different parts of the world often have created beautiful friendships with locals - Americans. Getting to know Americans over the coffee is much more real and nicer than though the World news. Don’t you think so, too?

Brett Sanders

miracles is the only soul of cardiff; everyone i know loves miracles and would be terribly upset if it were removed

Fred Duehr

I’d lived on Manchester Ave. from ‘87 to ‘91. Used to walk to Miracles and sit and enjoy my Espresso while gazing over the beautiful surf. I’ve taken my NYC wife to Miracles several times when we’ve visited. It’s exactly the kind of place that says “California” to visitors. What’s California left with if it loses its culture?

Jason Draheim

I surfed Cardiff Reef for 5 years while active in the Marine Corps, after each of my 3 combat tours in Iraq, I found comfort in arriving at Miracles after a morning session. I now live in Wisconsin and study forestry yet I long for my next surf trip to Cardiff and lunch at Miracles…please dont take this therapudic tool from an old combat Vet…..

Karen A. Furuya

Miracles Cafe offers a unique place in this world. It is not just a location but a home away from home for many of different ages, working classes, ethnic groups and friends. Miracles has given Cardiff its quaint down-to-earth feel in the midst of the fast-paced commercial development. I would not want to imply that I am against change, but rather that I support the preservation of a home that has brought me such warm feelings, strong friendships and fond memories. I believe Cardiff would suffer in character and charm without this cafe that’s been a part of it for so long. It would be a shame to deprive the people of such a place.

James Woeber

Miracles Cafe is one of the reasons that I love the Cardiff / Encinitas beach area. It’s one of the few areas in all of San Diego that still has a sense of community, and Miracles is a very strong part of that. It would be a shame to contribute to the de-flavoring of a city that already has been plagued with too much of that already.

Steve: Are you sure it leaves from the downtown airport and not Rio Negro?
Me: Yeah, of course. Positive.
Steve: You double-checked on the website?
Me (looking around the website, unable to find anything): Yeah, definitely.

Sunday afternoon we arrive to Medellín’s downtown airport - somehow hidden right in the middle of the city. Once inside it looks like a roller-skating rink turned into an airforce bunker. Or maybe vise-versa. The only thing that we culd be sure of was that we were in the wrong airport.

“No señor, AeroRepública flies out of Rio Negro.”

And, so, another taxi ride. This time up the steep winding road, through a jungle of exclusive condo buildings which give way to an equally dense forest of brightly lit billboards with eight-year-olds wearing lip-gloss and 18-year-olds wearing thongs. Eventually, pine trees. And the quasi-campesino life of Santa Elena.

At three o’clock every morning except for Sunday the mothers and daughters and aunts and grandmas of Santa Elena board a run-down shuttle-sized bus with their bunches and bunches of freshly cut flowers and deposit 800 hard-earned pesos into the rough hands of the bus driver. With the lights of all of Medellín shimmering below, it must be the most fragrant of journeys known to public transportation. They arrive to the mercado de las flores where they silently arrange their merchandise and await the young romantics and demanding housewives.

In all, the taxi ride to Rio Negro took longer than the flight itself to Bogotá. Upon arrival to Colombia’s most populous city (7 million), Steve seemed especially enthusiastic. It was time to compare and to contrast. Medellin versus Bogota. Girls? Food? Eye contact? Style? How much could we observe, how much could we absorb in just two days? We would try our best. It was not only a comparison of Medellin versus Bogota, but also of our expectations versus our experiences.

We had no hotel, no reservations, no plans. So, obviously, we look for the cutest girl and ask for help. This one turned out to be a hipster. With cute tapered jeans and cute hipster earrings. Her taste in hotels, however, turned out to be somewhat suspect. But so it goes.

Then the taxi. Pimped out. “Es que sí, mi coche es mi oficina,” says the taxista after Steve complements him on his racing steering wheel, in-dash DVD player, and the little fire extinguisher assuring his identity as Bogota’s speed racer. On the in-dash 5-inch screen was a DVD of an ostentatious rave. It must have been the UK - all the girls had love-handles and all the guys had bad teeth.

After the double-espresso at the airport and now the ponchis ponchis techno music bumping through the taxi’s sub-woofer, Bogotá seemed like the epitome of cosmopolis.

Of course, that façade would soon fade away. Bogota is bohemian. But it is also full of beggars, of inequality, of empty restaurants with telenovelas blaring on TV’s hanging in every corner.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was getting to meet up with Carolina and Álvaro. The last (and only) time I had seen Carolina was at iSummit ‘06 in Rio de Janeiro. She was almost always accompanied by Ariel, Jorge, and Eduardo. The four of them together was a symphony of wit and comedy that I couldn’t even get close to keeping up with.

Carolina has a way of speaking, of holding on to your forearm with both hands as she looks up at you, not dreamy-eyed, but with excited anticipation as if she is about tell you a secret that she can no longer bear to keep to herself. It is hard not to pay attention to everything she says.

After lunch, which included the most delicious juice (pineapple + mint) that I’ve ever had, Carolina took us on a tour of the city. Although Álvaro lived in Bogotá for two years when he was working in television, there were still hidden gems of the city that he hadn’t discovered.

And there was much of Álvaro’s past that I had never discovered from his weblog. He told me how a documentary film he once made was nominated for a prize at a Cuban film festival but no one ever told him because they didn’t have enough money to send him there. So instead he paid for his own trip and it was there that he met colleagues from the University of Bergen where he is now a professor.

I have no idea how old Álvaro is. My guess would be 50 - 55. But everything about him is youthful: how he walks, talks, laughs, sings along to teenagers playing the guitar. He has somehow managed to accomplish so much throughout his life and yet has maintained a carefreeness that most of us start to lose at adulthood. I can only hope that I follow his example.

On the half-hour flight back to Medellín there was so much turbulence that I couldn’t even finish my coffee. Steve, who heads back to Canada tomorrow, was still jovial and we joked around while waiting for my baggage. There was a taxi, though without the DVD player and without the ponchis ponchis techno music. Instead it was Phil Collins and Boyz II Men as we descended down down down to the valley floor of Medellin, breaking through the fragrant pines, the billboards of 8-year-olds with lip gloss and 18-year-olds with g-strings, the exclusive condos with English names.

As we arrived to our own almost-exclusive condo building, named after an artist who one day decided to cut off his ear, it started to rain. A drop here, a drop there. I fell asleep at 1 a.m. after the usual workflows of photographs, videos and rss feeds. The world was muted by the sheets and sheets of rain falling onto the lamplit sepia-tinged pavement.

Basically, both activities take up about an hour. One 24th of a day. One 168th of a week.

And, both activities make me feel wonderful, inspired, energetic; a perfect balance between contemplative and content.

The mystery, then, is why I almost always tend to put both off? If I love This American Life so much, then why do I let episode after episode pile up on my ipod? And if I always feel good after going to the gym, then why must I drag myself there?

You could argue that it’s only after I’m working out that I feel good, but that just isn’t true. I really enjoy my time in the gym. (Especially - and ironically - because I tend to be listening This American Life). And yes, the scenery of the Poblado Paisas doesn’t hurt either.

Anyway, point being, I just got back from the gym and just finished listening to the beautifully crafted episode #346: Home Alone. And I feel like it was one of the best hours I’ve spent down here. I could ramble on for hours about the various shades of solitude and loneliness and the good and bad of each, but, as usual, This American Life does a better job.

Also highly recommended, Kurt Anderson with writer Jonathan Lethem and musician Andrew Bird on the relationship between solitude and creativity.

And finally, Jeff Tweedy, on ‘how to fight loneliness”. Enjoy.

I realize that complaining, to a certain degree, is the currency of compassion. We sit, a coffee, a glass of wine, an apertif. You complain, I soothe. Then: I complain, you soothe. We relate, we bond, and we tell our friends how close we’ve become. I try. Like I said, I fail.

Instead I roll up into a ball of fierce silence. Preservation. My way of coping. Attack it if you will. But in just a few hours I’m back, felling better, giggling under the shaded breeze of public spaces. The complaints aren’t repressed. They’re there, part of life, but digested and accepted. And, eventually, no matter what, we either move forward or we don’t. Right? Suicide has never been an option. And so forward I march, sitting, cross-legged, under the shaded breeze of public spaces.

A decade ago I had no use for newspapers or magazines or books. Any interaction that was to happen, I believed, needed to happen face-toface or it meant nothing at all. Now the first thing I do is grab the local paper.

I don’t know how so much has changed in less than a decade. I don’t know how I quote-unquote made it. All I know is that I look back at those days of aimless, anxious wandering with a slight sense of yearning. A yearning for the wonderment, the mysteries, for all that was yet to be discovered. A yearning for the days when you couldn’t google every question … you had to grapple with it.

Dropping off Mari at City Hall, coasting down San Pablo while Keith Jarrett’s 1970’s piano chops flow out of public jazz radio like a flirtatious girl on a first date.

The stretch of San Pablo from 20th to 40th is one of Oakland’s most blighted thoroughfares. Every block is bookended with a liquor store at the beginning and a ramshackle chapel at the end. In between are Korean grocers, struggling small businesses, and a few mechanics. The only slice of corporate America audacious enough to show its face are paycheck advance lenders. There is not a single bank on San Pablo for 20 blocks.

blight |blīt| |blaɪt| |blʌɪt|
noun
a plant disease, esp. one caused by fungi such as mildews, rusts, and smuts : the vines suffered blight and disease | [with adj. ] potato blight.

I still can’t get use to how they say San Pablo up here. Not Sahn Pahblo, but Saan Paablo. You’d think, eventually, it would begin to sound just fine, but still, I flinch each time I hear those ugly A’s where they don’t belong. On both sides of the street Black men and women, young and old, impeccably dressed, make their way north and south. The hue of epidermis - that thin layer, thinner than the cotton of a t-shirt, that holds together our heart and guts and blood - ranges from caramel to ash, but is unconditionally what we’ve come to call in this country, ‘Black’.

San Pablo from 20th to 40th is what Op-Ed writers and rappers and preachers refer to as Black America. And, if you’re sufficiently objective and politically incorrect, you see that it is its own country. Which is not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t visit, but like any other country, unless you’re born there, you’re probably not going to get citizenship.

I have an office now. 22nd and Broadway. Come visit, first drink’s on me at Luka’s. I’ve spent the last eight years of my life in search of a job that wouldn’t require me to work in an office. Finally that dream has come true and what do I do? I get an office.

For lunch yesterday I walked a few blocks up to Mama Buzz Cafe on Telegraph. It reminds me a lot of Miracles Cafe: same hipster mugs, same angry cutish baristas, and the same customers. White, with tattoos, MacBooks, Converses, and iced lattes. The café looks purposely run down, like $200 jeans that have been ripped at the knees and worn at the crotch. Each customer seemed the polar opposite of the immaculately dressed men and women walking down San Pablo. Whereas San Pablo’s pedestrians sport starched, bleached white shirts, Mama Buzz’s cyberhipsters slouch over their laptops in wrinkled and stained cowboy shirts from the 1970’s. Whereas San Pablo’s pedestrians glide gracefully down the sidewalk in polished leather shoes and bright white basketball sneakers, Mama Buzz’s customers shuffle around in sandals and Converses scrawled with drunken Sharpie nonsense.

I ate my panini while reading Cannery Row at the bar, not wanting to take up an entire table. Just as I finished my last bite, a young Black girl walked in, a blipster, the only non-White person in the entire cafe. “What’s a Mate?” she asked the on-edge girl behind the bar.
— A latte? It’s espresso with milk.
— No, a mmmate, what’s a mate?
— Oh, it’s like a tea thing.
— Oh … can I get it iced?
— Umm … no, not really.
— Hmmm, ok, umm, can I get an iced chai then? With soy milk please.

While her Chai was being made she looked around the café as if it were the first time she’d been there and noticed that nearly everyone was staring at her. She offered a cheerful smile, but just as the hundreds of individual muscles of her face agreed to work in unison to produce the most natural of disarming gestures, her spectators embarrassedly shifted their gazes to the glossy monitors of their laptops and pretended to read. Before her beautiful smile could meet their observations it began to evaporate and floated upward through the roof, into the sky, above the clouds, and into the sparse ether of the atmosphere, that thin layer - thinner than the tierra firma under our feet - that holds together the oceans and mountains and trees and animals and bugs.

But not this time. This time it was Mike, “Big Mike.” We’re talking about four years ago - he was in his late 30’s and still spent too much time fixing up motorcycles that never quite worked. He changed jobs just about as often as he smiled: all the time.

And he was smiling then, towering over me while I sliced cucumbers on a warm, windless afternoon. “What are you making for yourself?” he asked.
“How’d you know it was for me?”
“Because you’re taking your sweet time.” Another disarming, million dollar smile. “I used to work as a chef’s assistant at an expensive hotel in Del Mar. The head chef, he would always tell new employees that they could make themselves whatever they wanted on their lunch breaks. Man, that restaurant had everything: fresh organic produce, dozens of kinds of cheeses, caviar, all the gourmet stuff.”

He went on, shifting from conversation mode to storytelling mode. I peeked around the wall to make sure no one was waiting.

“But this head chef, Dmitri, he always kept his eye on you. And when you were finished making that perfect meal, he’d come by and ask for a bite and he’d say, ‘you kknow, that’s the best thing that you’ve ever cooked here. Why don’t you cook like that for our guests?’ And he was right. A real artist - whether it’s food or literature or music - always creates as if it were for himself.”

By the time Big Mike was done, I had finished making my sandwich: Milton’s multigrain bread toasted lightly, covered witha thick spread of homemade hummus, thinly sliced turkey, roasted red bell peppers, sharp white cheddar, and slivers of cucumber. I handed it to Big Mike, “here you go, on the house.” (I’m sure this was his entire plan from the beginning.)

From that day forward, whenever Mike ordered food, he always asked for the same thing: “whatever you made yourself last.” I was happy to, for he had given me a lesson I’ve taken with me wherever I go.

These days I spend the majority of my time editing what other people write on Global Voices rather than writing myself. The temptation of carelessness is always there - especially at 11 p.m. But then I think of Big Mike and I try to turn that carelessness into conscientious creativity.

Sparsh and I are in the business of adventures.

Just like the ridge hike the afternoon before, each new bend introduced us to another subsequent bend, which called out, tantalizingly, with sure promises of beautiful things beyond it. The tide was in our favor, pushing our kayaks along ever further, but this only added to the anxiety: turning back would be hell.

Finally, we came to a rocky beach that we christened “the end.” Littered on the rocks were half-inflated balloons that read Feliz Cumpleaños, a bald tennis ball, and, ironically, a black plastic bin that must have floated over from the California shoreline. Printed in white lettering: “Keep Your Beaches Clean.”

According to Sparsh, he arrived back to our point of departure exactly 363 paddles after I did. We were exhausted. We were famished. We felt fantastic.

Unfortunately, our apetites outperformed our preparations. The boat was coming to pick us up in three hours; in the meantime, we had half a box of plain couscous and enough salt and pepper to tempt us into cooking it. Heading back to the picnic tables to stuff ourselves with little dots of wheat, we passed a family of pigeons innocently walking along the trail.

Sparsh: I don’t get why France is the only country where they eat pigeons.
Oso: Yeah, I dunno.
Sparsh: I mean, pigeons are everywhere and people are hungry.
Oso: That’s a good point Sparshles. Maybe it’s not worth it - too much effort, too little meat.
Sparsh: Wha!!?? If you’re hungry, you’re hungry.

Five minutes go by. I had changed out of my wet boxers and was now going commando, as the saying goes. The denim of my jeans, though softer than most, still chafed against my sunburned thighs and my unmentionables.

Sparsh: One time I was walking in New York city and I saw all these homeless people and all these pigeons … why don’t they eat them?
Oso: Would you eat a pigeon Sparsh?
Sparsh: Sure, if I was hungry.

Another minute further down the trail, another minute closer to our couscous.

Oso: If you had to eat a dove or a pigeon, which one would you eat?
Sparsh: Wha?
Oso: Yeah, if you had to choose between eating a dove or a pigeon, which one?
Sparsh: I don’t know, I mean, I guess a pigeon.
Oso: Of course you would. Save the white bird. Self-hater. You know, pigeons and doves are the same bird, same species.(1)
Sparsh: No they’re not.
Oso: Yes they are.
Sparsh: No, they are not.
Oso: Whatever man, Google it.

Two days later, Sparsh and I were walking along Lake Merritt. He was getting to know my new neighborhood. Lake Merritt has a log of goose shit. A lot of goose shit and a lot of geese.

Sparsh: And geese … why don’t people eat geese?
Oso: I dunno Sparshles.
Sparsh: I mean, you figure there are hungry people in Oakland. And there are geese. Why don’t they eat them?
Oso: Would you eat a goose Sparsh?
Sparsh: Sure, if I was hungry.
Oso: Man, you are the strangest type of vegetarian I’ve ever come across.

Footnotes: 1.) I learned this fascinating fact from the highly recommended (and freely available) documentary Pigeons by blogging compadre Joshua Levy.