THE LAND OF SPIRITUAL DOLPHINS

This morning my co-worker was cranky and peculiar till he had his breakfast. Which, regrettably, consisted of a breakfast burrito with three kinds of cheese, fried chorizo chunks, beans, rice, and SriRacha.

He loved every artery-clogging bite, and was a calm happy hamster till the middle of the afternoon.

The only part of his breakfast of which I approve is the SriRacha sauce. SriRacha makes eating in Marin both bearable and nutritious.

Marin County is where tofu, veganism, and gluten-free were invented.

As well as auras, chakras, and medicinal pot.

Thank g*d for burritos.


It strikes me that if European tourists really want to experience America to the fullest, they need to eat chocolate-crusted sugar kruncheez to start their day, along with toasted cheese and fried egg muffins, and greasy breakfast burritos. And then, like my co-worker, cap the delightful learning experience with an expensive cigar. It had a lovely sensuous wrapper leaf.
Nothing says good living as well as acid-reflux and a cheroot.
More American than that you cannot get.

There should be a bucolic country spa that offers precisely that.
Somewhere between Mill Valley and Napa.
Adventure lodgings.


My breakfast, if it can be called that, when I am in Marin is a pack of snack cookies, dark hot tea, and a pipe. This follows the bus-ride from civilization across the Golden Gate, and is three hours after my first cup of strong coffee. Also not particularly nutritious, even with SriRacha.
But not totally suicidal either.

Unlike the typical Yanqui grease-bombe breakfast.

I'd actually prefer crackers and cheese.

Seven-Eleven doesn't sell that.


On days off I do not need solids in my stomach to enjoy that first pipe.
I actually don't eat anything till early afternoon, or quite a bit later.
Two cups of strong coffee, a pipe, the internet, and at least one screen tab open to Wikipedia at all times.
Often, on such days, I am a wee bit wacked by the time I roll into a lunch place.

It's still better than Marin, though. People there club you over the head with imaginary coeliac disease, an overweening sense of entitlement, and fantasy re-interpretations of reality that include re-incarnation, spirit guides, and extra-terrestrial communication.

Then tell you how happy you will be once you stop eating gluten.

You have to liberate your inner-pizza.

Hug the tree within.


Fortunately there are enough Mexicans doing all the things Marinites can't do for themselves to keep real food from being banished entirely, but a breakfast burrito is NOT authentic, except for truck drivers.

[There is also a nice woman who occasionally indulges in a pipeful of tobacco, whom I saw today for what must be the second time. She'll be trying some bullseye and flake, and I am keen to hear her feedback. That by itself indicates that Marin is not totally irredeemable.]


For dinner this evening I decompressed from three days over in Marin with sautéed 雞肶菇 ('gai bei gu'; "chicken thigh mushrooms", pleurotus eryngii), some bittermelon, garlic and soy sauce stewed chicken legs, and wheat-flour noodles. Plus SriRacha.

Real food.




I actually rather like Marin. It's like a strange foreign culture where nothing is real, whose inhabitants worship peculiar deities and strenuously experiment with new forms of navel-gazing.





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