Sitting in the East Bay

As many of you know, I am presently housesitting for my friends Roger and Jen while they eat all sorts of wursts and schnitzels and things in Germany. I, however, am in the East Bay, and last night, prior to settling in for a few more episodes of Six Feet Under, I decided to be festive about my screen watching and make a bowl of popcorn. As any good Californian knows, when you make popcorn, you always dress it with tamari (sometimes mixed with Bragg’s in the essential spray bottle, for that perfect light coat of saltiness) and a dusting of nutritional yeast. As the corn was popping on the stovetop, I opened the cabinet to find my ingredients. Roger and Jen have a very well stocked kitchen. They buy everything in bulk, put right into tare-weighted mason jars and recycled plastic bags, and everything is properly labeled and organized. So it came as quite a shock when, after searching high and low, I could not find nutritional yeast in the cabinet. I held my breath, and then I realized, Why, Of course! Nutritonal yeast is a condiment that joins the ranks of salt and pepper here in California, so it will be right next to the stove!…except it wasn’t there, either. The popping sounds from the saucepan began to lag behind the ticks of the of the clock, and still: no jar of yellow flakes. I couldn’t believe it. What kind of crunchy, vegan, environmental activists are these people??? And then I realized that I was in Oakland. Not Berkeley. See, nearly every house that I know of in Berkeley has, at one point or another, been inhabited or at least frequented by a person who has left a mason jar of nutritional yeast (okay, I’ve heard it called “hippie dust”, too) in the kitchen. But Oakland, now, has a much different history.

Had I just presumptiously leapt into unfair criticisms of my own friends due to my own regional blindness? The whole idea that popcorn with Nutritional yeast and tamari is a" California Thing" --who am I to say such things? it could just be me, my sister, and the crunchy liberal, back-to-the-landers that do this. Am I elitist for assuming that EVERYONE should know about nutritional yeast?

Okay. If I sound a little touchy, it’s only because I learned today that, according to a 40 year study of California birth certificates, Amy is one of the Whitest girls’ names (meaning that, of all names given to children in California, Amy was given more often to children of Caucasian descent than to children of other ethnicities than nearly ANY OTHER girl name). Can you guess what name is more white than mine? Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow (thank God there IS one!!). But reading that article brought up all those issues of privilege and concern that I have to make up for all the injustices created by my racial ancestry that I struggled with when, in 11th grade history class, Mr. Heim pointed me out as the _sole_ example of a WASP. While the issues are different, they are, in effect, the same: how do i come from a place within that has an openness that is not dictated by my privelege? how do i create a presence in the world that is not predicated by people's judgements of who I'm going to be, given my appearance, my socio-economic background, my schooling, my place of birth? how can i be confident in my being in the world without that confidence being given by a false sense of knowing my place in relationship to what my culture has taught me to be? how do i own everything that this world says i am, and still make room in my being to become something entirely outside of it all?

don't worry, i'm going for a run now.