Last night a friend said on the phone, "Why do I feel I'm living in some urban jungle, while you're swimming in a salt water pool and drinking pomegranate juice?"

Indeed, I am drinking Pom, though it is overpriced and marketed for its antioxidants. I do not want to support the terrifying vision of a world in which yuppies never die, but the juice is an ineffable texture.

My friend asked a question last night, and today I noticed my paradise.

In Lotus Land, bus drivers respond to the frustrations of traffic and low wages and tedium and rudeness by being more polite. When the day is sunny and warm and a driver is on an eight hour shift remarkable for its greater than usual number of screaming babies and fare-less vagrants, passengers are greeted and thanked, blessed when they sneeze, bid farewell when they disembark at stops that are clearly announced. Out of concern and a little fear, each passenger duly says thanks to the driver. If the prime minister were beheaded, would this all change?

I used the juice (ambrosia, essence) left over from last night, when my friend asked a question, to make a drink that also contained strawberries, banana, pineapple yougurt, and ice. While I made the drink, because I was thinking of paradise, I thought about the future and change and felt pre-emptively nostalgic, keenly bitter-sweet, which really, I think, means I felt happy.