Sebastopol loopholes

A friend, who used to live in west county years ago, was visiting from Solano County.  She came up for the weekend and was determined to hang out with me to have some Sebastopol Moments. No matter how many times I explain to people that a) I have no control over when Sebastopol encounters occur and b) there are many, many days in my life where nothing eventful takes place, they still want to roam the streets with me believing that just walking around Sebastopol will conjure up blog worthy material.  I told her I could not guarantee anything.  But she was fixated on the idea.
We set out to do her Sebastopol loop, which began at Funk and Flash.  After looking at some nice 70s-style boots while listening to very loud music, I stepped outside to reply to a text.  Kellie came out a few minutes later, saying to me:  "You know what I notice about people here after being gone for so many years?"
I shook my head.
"A lot of people around here have very good posture."
I don't know what I expected her to say, but it wasn't that.  {note to self: that was a blog-worthy comment}
We were about ready to make our way to Copperfield's when my we noticed a woman sitting on a bench with an apricot-colored crystal, reading a pamphlet.  When we strolled by my friend said hi, and the woman looked up.  "Love and light," she said.  "Love and light."
We walked to the stoplight and my friend said, "See!  That doesn't happen in Benicia."
Copperfield's was pretty quiet, as was Rosemary's Garden.  But we did hear a shopper talking to her friend about changing her name.  She had narrowed the choices to Dove, Falcon or Seastar. Her friend asked, "Are you talking about your first name or last name?  Because Debby Dove sounds like a cartoon character."
On to Milk and Honey where Kellie purchased some candles and a deck of self-care cards.  We sat in the back for a few minutes while she looked through the deck.  As we were going to continue our trek to East West Cafe, a woman sat down next to us.  She wondered if we could do a reading for her.  My friend said she didn't know how to do readings.
"I had a dream a few nights ago I was in Milk and Honey and someone was helping me figure out a problem in my life," she told us.  "They told me to draw a card and I would get the answer."  She looked at us imploringly, as if we were supposed to help her play this dream out.  Again she asked us to help her draw a card.  I suddenly felt I was caught in a Jungian whirlpool.
Kellie told her we needed to go somewhere.  The woman started to make the same request again, and then appeared to surrender.  "Okay, maybe this is a lesson.  Maybe I need to learn to draw cards on my own.  Maybe doing this alone will help me find the answers I need."  
We both nodded, more from hunger than agreement.
She stared at several decks on the table in front of her so intently I wondered if one of them was going to levitate.
We dashed out of there, ready for a late lunch.  "Oh, ye of little faith," Kellie said to me.  "Just a half hour on Main Street and already we have been quite Sebastopol'ed."

Woman, to her friend by the salad bar at Whole Foods:  "So this is a vegetarian pot luck?  Great.  There will be one really good veggie dish, some carrot sticks and a bunch of chips and salsa."


Favorite license plate:
SR MMNTS

More Sebastopol snippets

An acquaintance was sitting next to me in the plaza one Saturday morning and a man walked by drinking from a bottle out of a brown paper bag.  He ended up circling back a few minutes later and sat down on a bench near us.  He took a few more sips and then ended up taking the bottle out of the bag.  The drink was aloe and coconut water.  She turned to me and said, "Only in Sebastopol. Anywhere else that would have been vodka."
"Well, there still could be vodka in there," I observed.
She was quiet for a moment and said, "Well, that's true.  But still, sneaking alcohol in coconut water?  Still pretty Sebastopol."
"Well, yes," I conceded.

"Do I know what polyamory means?  I've lived in Sebastopol for eleven years.  Yes, I am very aware of what polyamory means."

Man behind the counter at a coffeehouse, murmuring to a co-worker:  "I think I've hit my limit of hipsters for the weekend."

Woman, in the Whole Foods supplement section, sounding a bit frantic:  "I can't believe I forgot my pendulum!"

From an email:
"I was standing outside Sprint one afternoon when I noticed four people talking to each other. Two of them were carrying yoga mats.  It caught me attention only because it turned out each of them were going to yoga, but to different classes.  One was going to hatha, one was going to beginning, one was going to Bikram and the last was going to some type of class I'd never heard of before.  I couldn't believe there were four different yoga classes about ready to start on a Tuesday afternoon!"

"Most of the families on that street home school their children.  They are very into Hinduism and Zen and things like that, so we call it 'Om Schooling.'"





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Power drinks, power couples

Sometimes when I sit outside of Whole Foods by myself I tend to watch people walk up to the trash/recycling/compost bins and see their reaction to all the choices.  It is a source of amusement for me.  Some shoppers are very quick: recycle-recycle-trash-compost. They know where each item goes.  And some just stand there looking bewildered as if the explanations are in Bulgarian.  They slowly start to put something in the trash... then, stop, wait, maybe this is compost?  Once in a while someone will hover over one of the bins, afraid to drop whatever they are holding in to the bins.  As if an alarm will sound if trash ends up in the recycling. (I cut them some slack for the more recent composting phenomena, but when they get stuck on recycling...?   I saw a movie about recycling in the tenth grade.  It's not new.)
Recently, I was finishing some pasta and looking on as people tried to decipher the complex terrain of recyclable versus compostable when a woman came up next to me.  She unscrewed a cap on a plastic-like bottle and poured a brown liquid into the compost.  Then she tossed the bottle into the recycling and something else in the trash.  Noticing I was observing her, she explained, "It was a protein drink that got passed on to me.  A vegan, non-gmo, sugarless smoothie that was pretty awful."
I apologized for staring.  Truthfully I was just impressed she got the various bins right.
She told me she lives in Las Vegas.  I asked her how she liked Sebastopol.  Good, bad, weird, wonderful, bizarre - people have different reactions to this town.  But I have found it nearly always leaves an impression.
"Oh, I love it.  I came four years ago to visit an old college roommate and have come back every summer since.  It's a lovely area, interesting people."
Of course "interesting" could be interpreted in several different ways.
After chatting for a few minutes she mentioned the owners of the property where her friend rented a small house.  "They are quite the characters.  They teach classes, do workshops, I believe she used to run a massage school.  And they also teach a couples tantric yoga class, which they invited me too.  I'm not that good at yoga, but I told my friend I'd rather do it by myself, thank you very much."
"What kind of workshops do they teach?" I asked.
"It has something to do with finding inner peace, it incorporates different things.  Meditation and something that is pretty new-agey that has to do with the brain.  I read one of their pamphlets but I didn't really understand it."  She paused.  "Very charismatic people.  My friend calls them the Sebastopol power couple.  They even have matching cars, sky blue and dark red.  They were telling me why that was symbolic but I can't remember why.  Something about colors and emotions."
Out of curiosity, I asked what kind of car they owned.
She took a sip of a presumably non-vegan sugar-sweetened drink.  "Prius."
Well, naturally.


Favorite line of the week:
"I am a Libra, and Libras don't believe in astrology."

Favorite license plate:
{heart symbol} DELITE