Notes on California

 I.

I’m in the car, passing hills, suffocating bits of dry grass, and flush trees. I’m in vague Northern California. Grape vines spill over vineyards. The air is dry. The sky is indecisive gray and it smells like rain. I’m trying to capture something tangible—a place I was raised in, but never called home.

I’m headed to Willets, California— 3 hours north of San Francisco. My parents are looking for a spit of land. They want to put a house on it and spend their time back in Northern California. The very state, as my Dad said, “chewed us up and spit us out.” I’m at a place in my life where home is wherever I am at the moment. My parents live similarly. They taught me to live this way—constantly traveling, planting myself in different cities every 6-8 months.

The air smells like wet leaves and redwoods. The creek sits low and still. Foxes hide in their holes and deer peak out from large bits of brush. The clouds sit on top of the mountains looking out over the valley. Then there’s the daylight—daybreak through the clouds. It shines down on the land, giving spots of sun to us down below. Just as I pass swamps and bayous in Louisiana, scorched earth surrounds me here—black hillsides. Somewhere in the riverbeds, foothills, and golden hills, there lies my next home, not a final destination, but a temporary feeling.

II.

I’m sitting in Washington Square and searching for the sound of parrots my Dad told me about.

“What’s it like being back in California Dad?”

“Like I never left.”

I told my current roommate that we had to move to San Francisco. There’s something so live and captive, trapping about this city.

I sit in the backseat, startled by the city's hills, letting my parents' stories of the 80s and 90s wash over me, instilling an element of nostalgia and jealousy—jealousy for a reality, a world nestled in their memories that doesn’t exist anymore. 700 square feet goes for 1 million dollars now. I texted my roommate: We have to move here, knowing we can’t and shouldn’t. There seems to be a mass exodus happening in California right now. Close to 1 million people leave California every year. People are leaving for a number of reasons: high taxes, unlivable climate, and impossible living costs. I wonder sometimes if this beautiful state will be abandoned, left to burn and shake by itself.

“We just need to find our slice of heaven,” my Dad said.

What if there aren’t any pieces left? I thought to myself.

III.

I’m staying at Gravenstein Apple Orchard for 3 days. An old couple, Ed and Dee, own the property and rent out the upstairs to travelers. As I hike up the stairs to our home for the next few days, I’m met with the sudden realization that I may never settle down. I’ll never have a peaceful life like Ed and Dee. My mind isn’t wired for finality, I’ve never handled it well. I envy people like them. They’ve each found someone they could live in a remote location with and spend the rest of their days harvesting apples and growing pink ladies. There’s a sort of acceptance in living this way—there is a pleasure found in knowing that you will live the rest of your life in one place.

I settle in and look out over the backyard. Apples scatter the ground and trees grow within inches of each other. The sun shines through the clouds and gets caught in the trees. The air is still and hot but the breeze is cool and forgiving. Deer lurks on the perimeter, cautiously eating an apple or two off the ground. This is the California people write books, songs, and movies about, but can never quite understand. All you can do is stare into it, hoping it doesn’t stare back.

IV.

Children are laughing by the pool. The water is cold, the air is colder. I’m reading Ocean Vuong’s poetry. Let me begin again. I’m swimming, but I can’t find the bottom. I’m floating but I can’t see the sky. California is cruel and its soil is on fire. I want to build a life here, nestled in the foothills of some mountain range. I’d make kombucha and knit my own sweaters. Let me start over. California is dead and its residents are zombies who don’t know that they are wandering to nothing and no one. The fruit is rotting, there’s no water, and the mountains are scared from burning. The people are lost, broke, and out of their depths. Let me lead with honesty. I am searching for purpose in a broken place. California was my first home—the place that first held me and eventually set me free—she’s like a dormant mother, waiting for me to have enough of the world and come home.

There’s a dog panting next to me. The trees shape the laughter of the children behind me. I try to orient myself, find a place, and master it—overcome its barriers.

“This doesn’t feel like home so much as a familiar space,” my dad says to me. This made me think of the other place I’ve so quickly called home, but are really just familiar—something that moved in me. Is New York only familiar? Is it equally as uninhabitable as California? Are both places just a part of the familiar, leaving me stranded from home?

It’s dark now. The pool is empty. The children are gone. I don’t think the dog was ever really there and I’m left floating, hovering in the unfamiliar, forced to come to terms with the prospect of what home is and the consequences of familiarity, the knowing of a place. California will never again be home and its untouched beauty holds an unforgiving mirror to the blatant abuse of the land.

V.

I’m lying on my back in a pool, my only focal point a single star, hanging above my head as I float, lazily. My mind drifts to my breath—the deep heaving in and out, the fast pace of my heart as I stare into a clear California sky. It’s as if I’m inches away from a finish line, waiting for that sudden release of adrenaline as I pant and push, my lungs a tether to this fictitious race, my feet and arms buoys in the water.

I float and I wait. I wait for something violent to happen— a star exploding, a car accident, a fire, an earthquake, or the sudden descent of California into the Pacific Ocean. I float and I think. I think about how I would react if any of these things happened. Maybe I would scream if I could. Some people can’t when met with such life-threatening, yet magical events. They just go quiet, unable to reason with what they see.

I’m in California and all I can think of, the only word that comes to mind is consumption. When I was driving to Napa with my parents, I saw a small fire—wild, yellow grass being eaten by red and orange. The fire department was already on the scene, ready to combat the flames. As I drove up the bend to my grandmother’s house, I saw green, lush trees surrounded and consumed by dry grass and rocky terrain. Consumption.

VI.

Time is a mother¹ and I’m stuck on a bridge, carrying out a forward motion, a feeling. I can’t feel my feet. My breasts are cold and my arms lay like broken pendulums at my side. I look up to the sky and the promise of stars. I tend to get carried away, stuck on a moment, incapable of action. California traps its residents, the same way this bridge traps my feet, its iron railings suggestions for a happy life. I’m on the precipice of brilliance. California sweeps inside of me, fast and willful. I can feel its fiery winds and wild animals settling inside of me. I don’t know how to tell her that I can’t stay. I just can’t, you’re too volatile. It’s all spilling out of me. There’s no stopping it now.

Time is a mother and I am wandering, lawless, and immature through desert earth and soft dirt asking where my father is. He’s between two mobile homes getting high. I think I am having one of those moments—I’m breaking through something. It hurts. It’s only when I come back to California that I feel myself reset. Reprocess. I’m talking to myself. I need to seize and conquer a place, but I can’t without feeling so broken. California seeps through my words. I can feel myself shifting into a new person—a whole one. Someone who can look at a deer and feel something. Time is a mother and finally, I am happy.

¹ A reference to Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection Time Is A Mother.