I am Joe’s search for happiness….

Went to Ikea to search for chairs for the dinning room table. Found some that I liked (they were $39 not $49), but they were all sold out. It was depressing being at Ikea by myself, with all of these families and couple around.
So I left and debated whether to go home or go to Stone Cold Creamery in Concord. Traffic was backed up on the bridge, so I decided to find a laundrymat in Berkeley. However, today was the Juneteenth, so traffic was crazy. So I headed into Oakland.
Has I’m drivign through Oakland, I realize why I don’t like it. It is so empty in downtown Oakland. And I felt so unsafe driving through the town. Call me a racist or whatever, but I could not stand to live there. The only place that I felt safe and secure was in Chinatown (yes, Oakland has a Chinatown. It also has a Koreatown, but I guess every town has a disrict or area where a specific ethnic gorup lives at.)
Anyway, I was feeling like crap and I wanted to get home, so I started driving down to the San Mateo Bridge however something made me pull off at Marina Blvd in San Leandro. San Leandro is where I first lived after returning to the States from Korea in 1989. So I drove around town and eventually drove pass my old neighborhood and my old house. The house looked good, and it actually looked empty. I wondered if it was for sale or rent and for how much. I drove around, letting the ghosts of memories pass brush against me.I spent about an hour driving around town, pass the houses of old friends and crushes, Pass the school and the after school hang outs, seeking out a particular memory. But in the end, I could not find a single happy rememberance to capture and to embrace. Perhaps there were some happy memories in my old home town. But the ones that stood out the most were the ones of me, walking alone down the streets of this town, or walking for hours along the coast alone with my thoughts. I wonder if I could find those happy thoughts thousands of miles away in Daegu, Korea. I would like to believe so, but I seriously doubt it.
Current mood: accomplished
Current music: BT – Love, Peace and Grease