Closing the sliding glass door behind her, the house hit Cecilia with a cool that she had nearly forgotten in the heavy humidity of the city. Even the city park could not provide this quality of coolness--cement blocks hovering around it on all fours. This was the kind of coolness that only grew from a ground not hollowed out by tunnels and steaming underground trains. Berkeley. It reminded her of the hills of Berkeley. The blend of drying jasmine and eucalyptus hot-whipped into a cloudless sky, the scent carrying itself out to the bay.
In Brooklyn, she still found it hard to believe she lived by the water. The tops of neighboring ships were to her merely another line of differently shaped structures rising up from the stiff water-floor. The real mother ocean was three thousand miles behind her.
Cherríe Moraga, "Pesadilla," in Loving in the War Years, p.33
