Growing up in Florida, there was one essential truth that I knew beyond any other: that someday, I would move out  in Florida.
It didn't even seem like a conscious decision, just something that seemed obvious. In fact, I don't think it even occurred to me until I was in my teens that staying in the same town, or area, or state where one grew up is something that plenty of rational human beings do; that, actually, that had been the way of the world for most of human history. In high school, I had one teacher who had gone to that very school where she now taught, studied under the same other teachers that I did, gone away to a state university and then came back home to teach. In a lot of circumstances that would be called, "giving back"; I just felt bad for her. I couldn't fathom why anyone--especially someone in their late 20s like that teacher was--would choose to live in Palm Beach County.
Despite having three entire generations of my family in Florida, our roots there did not go deep. The only reason we were there is because my grandparents, each set independently of each other, had retired to Florida and my parents followed them. We all came from New York--everyone except my sister, the only native Floridian in my family (though currently the only one among us living in the motherland, i.e. Brooklyn). When my grandparents told stories, it was of that other place that they had left. Sort of like the narrative arc of my family history had gotten bleached out by the Florida sun.
I came to think of Florida like Ogygia, the island where Odysseus was stuck at the beginning of Homer's Odyssey: a warm, sunny place that is supposed to be full of passion and leisure but really everyone just loses track of time and no one realizes that they've turned into animals. Calypso, anyone?
And of course the stories that come out the state. Stories so bizarre and sad and strange that you couldn't make them up. Homeless meth addict accidentally burns down the state's oldest tree. Crazed naked man tries to eat someone's face. Giant python swallows giant alligator whole and they both die in a gruesome tangled mess. Immigration fates contingent upon whether you can get out of your raft fast enough to touch dry land. Mines where they extract phosphates by mixing earth with sulphuric acid. Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman. Katherine Harris and dimpled chads. Eliån Gonzålez.
I left Florida when I was 22, and for the most part, not living in Florida has been everything I had wanted. I've lived in places where there are seasons, where you can see snow sometimes, where the primary reason for living there isn't the weather. Where you can get places without a car, and there are actually places you want to go. Where there are young people. Where there are all different kinds of people.
But the thing about living in not-Florida is that it's a really huge and diverse part of the world. It's hard to know where to go because anywhere seems about as good or as viable a place to live as anywhere else (that's not Florida). I could live in Chicago, but I'll never be a Midwesterner, just like I could move to Japan but never become Japanese. I could move to New York, but I think I'd be too self-conscious to ever call myself a New Yorker. I could live anywhere, but don't feel like I'm from anywhere.
Which, I guess, is how some people end up living in California.
I still don't totally get the vibe here. There are palm trees and beaches, but it's not warm. It's a hub of power and a magnet for smart people, but it goes to bed early. It's liberal in who gets a elected, but conservative in terms of wanting anything to change. The housing market is going through the roof, yet most of it is not very dense at all.
But maybe I'm only wary of it because in some ways it reminds me so much of Florida. ("Did I really end up living in a place with strip malls and no seasons and palm trees again?"). Yet despite all that, I suppose Oakland might as well be home. I still think kind of wistfully about New York, or Chicago, or Paris or Berlin or Rio de Janeiro--places with deep history and an urban fabric that is just stunning and fantastic. But as the economist Edward Glaeser says, a city isn't buildings and alleyways and infrastructure--it's the absence of physical space between people. And you can be close to some cool people here. There is movement and signs that something really big could happen here soon.
And it's also kind of the only place this side of Crystal River where you can get a decent grapefruit.Â
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