California
The snow is melting. Nearly 60 degrees of sunshine breaking through the layers of ice and grit to expose the mashed up sodden remains of last fall’s leaves. They call it “Fool’s Spring”.
I have California on my mind. Like the Joni Mitchell song, some part of it still feels like home. In my case, Santa Monica, not Laurel Canyon. I miss the morning light, and the salt water breeze curls in my hair, and the smell of orange and lemon blossoms. I miss the artichokes popping up in the garden, fully grown overnight, and the art house movie theaters with real butter on the popcorn.
It’s been long enough since I’ve been back that I’ve forgotten the dryness, and the overwhelming consumerism, the noise and the traffic. Sixty-degree days are the perfect spring day in Los Angeles, when everything feels filled with possibility and you are certain that there is a contagious optimism surrounding the place, like the plastic of a snow globe. I remember talking to a famous writer once about how I felt like I needed to leave LA because it’s too sunny all the time. It didn’t feel like the outside matched the inside. That dissonance made me feel itchy in my skin. He said he felt that, too, both being people born of cold and snowy places, and when he signed my book, he referenced that bond between of us, of finding ourselves in places that didn’t match the inside.
But today, I feel optimism. I feel a burning desire to plant my garden and imagine house renovations complete. To feel myself settling into a peacefulness of no real purpose. It’s a Southern California kind of feeling, filled with fresh strawberries and ocean sunsets witnessed by neighbors holding glasses of cold chardonnay and clapping at the spectacle. It’s a feeling of bountiful farmers markets every day of the week, and long bike rides along the beach.
Tonight, the temperatures start to go back down and by Monday it will be a low of 9 degrees. Even if it’s short-lived, I am dreading it. I’m not ready for more grey skies and shoveling. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to be a fool. Winter has been entirely too long and my insides match the outsides 3000 miles away.
