Los Angeles Zen

Today, I bought an avocado.

Sure, it sounds like a small feat, but as I stand in the midst of an open air market, at the corner of third and Arizona, thousands of miles away from home, three hours behind all of my family, friends, and the majority of NPR employees, this avocado means a lot.

At the moment, it is the only thing upon which I seem to have a firm grip.

Things I do not quite yet have a firm grip on:

-this time zone
-the equipment that's supposed to make teleconferencing easy?
-Los Angeles street maps
-ENPS
-the art of eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich while searching on Lexis Nexis and using the telephone system's call waiting feature simultaneously

In all honesty, life in the Los Angeles office (NPR West) is fairly laid back. Life in my cubicle however, is not. Today was my third day of work, which means that I am beginning to get the hang of conducting research, but I haven't yet discovered how to open my desk drawers to put things away. Instead, I have a dozen or so very organized piles of paper on the top of my desk. I haven't yet learned where hanging files are kept, but I did discover a large supply of post-it notes. These were perfect for covering the rest of the empty space on my desk. And the edges of my computer.

Needless to say, getting away from my cubicle (which now resembles a post-it note covered porcupine) and finding Santa Monica's farmers market was a relief. I could stand there in the California sunshine, smelling roasted pistachios and the last of this season's Rainier cherries, listening to white peach salesmen advertising their wares ("Fresh! Sweet! Come on, aren't you thirsty? Hungry? Try one!"), holding my perfect avocado in the palm of my hand. For a moment, letting go of the demands written on my post-it notes, forgetting my grocery lists and electricity bills, and staving off my homesickness for all things East Coast. The avocado is such a deep shade of green, it glows purple in the sunlight. Tonight, I will go home and have farm fresh guacamole, I think. And suddenly I realize that for the next ten weeks, Los Angeles will be home.

Standing in the sunlit, 75 degree farmers market, that doesn't seem like such a bad forecast.


Haley Bridger
Day to Day; Science Desk
NPR West