San Diego in Retrospect

The West Coast tasted like salsa fresca and American Spirit to me. It was laying outside and talking for hours about life and men, and food, and choices, and change. It was hands in soil and conserving water by keeping a bucket in the shower and watering flowers and vegetables with it, and it was picking snap peas. It was new bathing suits that just barely fit and coconut oil instead of sunscreen. It was down comforters and a warm puppy at night and puffy eyes and wild hair in the morning. California was San Diego for me. It was the zoo and the beach, and crumbling cliffs and late night lounges with wooden floors that pulsed with bass and heels. It was all woman, feminine and strong, more leisurely than I'm used to and I loved it. It was shorter dresses and no makeup. Pride in being a female and forgetting about what I was supposed to be. It was unemployed hipsters with prominent hip bones and bodies that wrestled waves and kind eyes and unassuming curiosities. Herbs from the garden and wine with dinner, San Diego was windows rolled down and arms singing along and sunglassed eyes. It was Lemon Grove and adobe houses and it was dancing with the doors open and shedding layers of clothing, layers of pain, layers of what was and what would have been. It was being a woman and being young and feeling every second of every day of every year that I've lived and not doing anything about it but feeling it. I felt it all. I felt everything that I could and then I slept. I slept and I woke, but not to bells or nudging, not to agendas and foot tapping. I woke to every day and was alive and stretched my body like the cat that I often am, and San Diego was not cell phones or computers. It was being there and nowhere else, because I was there, and not anywhere else. It was finishing Kerouac’s On the Road and knowing that I had my own stories to tell. San Diego made me wonder why purpose and productivity instead of simplicity and survival? It reminded me of the me that loves water and sunshine and let me forget for awhile about the me that thrives on change. It smelled like salt water and cooled the skin at night that it had warmed so well in the day. It begged for balance and I yielded and promised fulfillment and I found it. Because San Diego was God’s gentle hand and His easy gait and I rested in the yellow comforter and purple sheets of His goodness and walked in His gardens filled with tomatoes and cilantro and knew that He was good. He must have been to make oceans so big and stones so smooth and conversation so rich. I knew that He was good, and that San Diego was where I needed to be when I was there. Knew that I would return. Know that I will return.

San Diego

I'm going to San Diego for Spring Break. I will be there tomorrow morning. I don't think I could be more excited. I have all of these ideas of what California will look like, and what I will do when I'm there. I want to swim. Even if the water is freezing. I have to swim in the ocean. Walk in the sand. Get a sunburn. Put coconut oil on. Go to the zoo. Dance. Maybe go to Mexico?! Talk with Shay about everything under the sun. Get advice. Read in the sun. Wear flip flops. Shorts. Eat guacamole, made from avocados from Mexico. Just be there. Let myself be all there and love all of it. Plus it means flying alone again. Traveling alone is exciting to me. Even just in the U.S. And it's somewhere new. Warm. With different people and different smells and foods and soon it will have me. I'm going to San Diego

The night was a mosaic. Broken pieces of glass not all of them beautiful. Some jagged and sharp, some smooth and polished from crashing waves and gentle waters lapping over and over against the glass. We talked in rhyme and words and hands and hugs. We walked bridges and glued shards of ourselves to it on the way. Left red drops of blood trailing from our chest so we could always find our way back. Back to the mosaic of night and music and depths of souls and shards of glass that cut and smoothed. It was our night. It was our mosaic.

Rooftops

I have a deep appreciation for rooftops. It's almost an infatuation actually. And to be barefoot on a cold rooftop at night? Few things are better. I'm not sure why I they make me so happy. I suppose it isn't unlike the comforting feeling that some people get from having their bed made perfectly, hospital corners all tucked neatly, no wrinkles. Or the excitement that others get when they win a prize out of a claw machine. Even if the prize isn't worth fifty cents, let alone the five dollars in change spent to win it. But neatly made beds and claw machine treasures don't do it for me. No, I'll take my rooftops, best reached from fire escapes with bare feet. Preferably when the sky is lit up with the bridge, and the Chrysler building and the only visible stars shine from overpriced apartments. I recommend cherry cigars for the occasion, although silence is sometimes enough.

What next?

I want to write. I have all of these thoughts and ideas in my head that need to be put down on paper. That other people will read and say YES! YES! YES! YES! they are Kerouac words and Parker words and Chopin words and I can't figure out how to get them out of my brain and through my fingers. Does that mean that I don't really have the thoughts and ideas? Or just that I don't know how to write them? I want movement to come from the thoughts formed and I want relationships that are hanging on a thread to fall to pieces because of the epiphany of freedom found in my words. I want realizations of more than friends to start fires in hearts and in back seats of cars, and I don't want to make people better but helping them take a two inch step away from the ledge would be nice. I want to write. To communicate the things that have been bouncing around in my brain since 4th grade that ring as true today as they did when I first thought them. Maybe it's just a matter of sitting down and doing it. To make you say Yes! Yes! More! More! But for some reason I think that there is a lot more to it than that. I'll work on figuring out what it is.

Cold Panes and Bare Feet

I woke up at 6:45 this morning. And then I went back to bed. But not sleep. Until 6:47, and then 6:56, and then 7:05, and then 7:15, and then 7:23, and I finally got out of bed at 7:28. It had stormed a few hours earlier. I know because I woke up at exactly 4:20 a.m. to rains and winds beating on the window, throwing trash cans into apartment buildings and stretching telephone wires like sling shots. I jumped out of bed and leaned my forehead against the cold glass. The sky was light pink, from pollution and streetlights, and I thought everything looked so beautiful that way. And then I stretched a little, and went back to bed. And tossed and turned and slept and woke at 6:45 a.m.. And I only went back to bed because I thought I should. Because as restless as I was, I was tired too. And when I woke up at 7:28 and climbed out of bed, I saw only puddles and wet and white grey skies, and I wished that I had stayed awake with my face against the glass. Wished that it was still storming outside. That I could climb up the slippery black ladder right outside the shaking panes and onto the roof and jump and play and dance in the rain until I was soaked through, icy cold and sneezing. I would tire quickly, because I was tired to start, but I would throw my head back and let rains hit me sideways and let wind send chills down my spine and my feet would be bare and frozen on the sandpaper shingles beneath them. But I didn't. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass for a minute and stared wide eyed outside. And then I climbed back into bed and imagined being outside. It was 7:28 when I finally got up.

Radiator.

There is a strange calm that washes over me. The calm of a perfection that I cannot even comprehend. A sweetness in the stillness, a comfort of knowing that it is what it is what it is and nothing more. Maybe something more. But it needn't be anything more. Because as it is, it is perfect. Heat that radiates and hums even, but doesn't scald. Never makes me jump. It is there, within my reach, and far enough away that I can bask in its glow and sleep sweet. And sleep sweet I did. Even when the winds beat against the windows and rattled the old panes. Even when the heat burned hotter, it never burned me. Only radiated and hummed. And let me sleep sweet. A strange calm washes over me, glazing eyes, and unraveling hands from fists, and tugging at the corners of my lips. The calm of a perfection few will ever understand. I cannot even fully comprehend it. But it lets me sleep sweet. And sleep sweet I did.