Got to head West last weekend to go do Staggering down in Escondido (for those unfamiliar, Escondido is about 25 miles Northeast of San Diego). I spent every spare minute driving...driving through the charred hills of last year's fires...driving through rolling hills recovering from the burning where amid the blackness there was a green so impossibly vibrant busting up through the burnt crust it hurt your eyes. Driving east through the mountains and over that last rocky ridge that sends you sweeping down onto the desert floor. Driving back toward the coast with the anticipation building...knowing that the route I had chosen would hide the ocean from me until the last minute. And then cresting the last hill and seeing the Pacific open up before me.
Hanging out down at Pacific Beach. Walking south along the walkway to Mission Beach. Funky little shops and coffee stops and restaurants. I ate fish tacos every day. Usually more than once. And I stared out at that ocean, watched the sandpipers skitter along the beach, listened to the waves and drank in the salt air.
Jesus. I've missed this place. This fucked up, dysfunctional, beautiful California.The only job I've every really wanted, really, really wanted and wished some miracle would take place that could make it happen is to be governor of California. Yes, I know it's absurd. Still, I want to protect it and nurture it and bring it back from the doldrums it's been in for the last 30 years. I want to restore the Golden State, the shining hope, the dream of California and give it to a new generation. I wander the streets of downtown San Diego and while so many of us are obsessed with closing the borders I want to open them up...more Latinos, more Asians, Europeans, and even a few random Okies and Texans...bring 'em all. As Ellis Island and New York were to the late 19th century so should California be to the 21st. All these people, all these cultures colliding and fitfully fitting together. The new America. The city on the hill. The beautiful California.California takes the worst we have to offer...the traffic and smog, the fouled beaches and dead rivers, the overcrowding, the ridiculous expense, and routinely throws back at us vistas and moments that make this agnostic believe in the Divine. For every trash and shit strewn street in Hollywood that make you weep for humankind there are one hundred mountain tops in the clouds that make you believe anything and everything is possible.
'Course, with my checkered past there ain't a prayer of that ever happening. Hopefully there is a hero out there somewhere waiting to come along.
In the meantime, here's hoping we stop screwing it up. Or keep screwing it up...I don't know...maybe that's the magic of it.
