Ode to California, on Getting Caught Up and Washed Back out Along the Golden Crusted Shoreline

Disclaimer: everything, eve-ry damned thing is open to interpretation. Find your own truth. I do not advise taking mine and running with it, from my angle it’s a bed of roses, but from yours you may find the roses were only covering a steaming pile of horse shit.

And, on to my point. I can assure you, however, I will weave and wind you through this foggy mess that is; that was, my Californiacation, my getting dragged around under the golden waves and waking up along that shore thoroughly disillusioned among the plastic bags, empty beer cans and cigarette butts.

“Welcome to California,” she shrugged with blue eyes and fair skin and her cheeks were dusted with pale brown freckles. She was waving a dainty wrist towards to two young women who were busy whamming each other in the face with open fists. One, in one red bandana tube-top was losing the battle between holding up shirt with one hand and fighting off blows with the other. A boob slipped out and then wind was whizzing by me as men sprinted to catch a glimpse of the show. Blue iPhone hues were suddenly waving around, somewhat reminiscent of lighters burning at a concert. But this was no concert, this was no DEAD show, no WOODSTOCK. This was not the far-out wavy California I was searching for. This was just another shit bar in another shit town and these were just more drunk idiots. Where were the Jimi’s and Janis’s?

But they looked like them… they talked like them… they even dressed like them...

Her words were still hanging in the air, caught in the wisps of my own cigarette smoke and after awhile I felt them finally lowering; finally settling somewhere deep in my mind.

Welcome to California. It left a disturbing ring in my ears. It was the first time since I moved to the state that I heard the words, and actually felt the words. Sometimes it takes awhile for a truth to really settle in, to unpack and unwind.

I was starting to think this Californiacation I kept hearing about was just a fancy word for disillusionment.

I came here seeking the freaks; for the others like me; for the place where the waves of the sixties finally broke. I was looking for the broken shells that had to be left behind somewhere to prove IT was real, to prove IT happened.

So, I found myself going to a strange bar on a strange night hoping the cool Saturday night breeze would somehow drag me closer to IT. I was leaving for Denver in a few months and after a year of not finding much (it was as if every damn time I thought I had stumbled upon something golden, something REAL, I scratched their surfaces and kept finding plastic underneath. Time and Time again) I was throwing in my last meek attempts here.

We must belong here, there must be freaks here. The real ones, not the ones with dreadlocks, bare feet and bare minds. The ones that sell you cocaine while preaching Buddhism, the ones that hash tag "Stay woke" while staring at television and cell phones screens with hazy half open eyes. I was looking for the ones that mean what they say, and say what they mean. The ones that feel something wild knocking around in their chest when they talk about IT.

I found one. One strange and beautiful woman whom said nearly those exact words last two sentences to describe myself and after having only spent a few hours with me. And it was the same woman with the pale blue eyes that had said welcome to California to me.

We were sitting on a leather couch now, in a stranger’s house and we were having the first real conversation I had had with a true California blooded human since I moved there. And if you’re wondering what kind of crazy person follows strangers back to their house after having just met them, this kind, the kind that is searching for something. In order to find the real, you gotta wade through the shit, you gotta flail around in the dark blue, black and purple abyss. So that’s what I was doing for a year… maybe longer, just dangling out here in the universe.

And she was speaking of how she hadn’t had a real conversation, in about two months, and how she stayed away from most people because of it. And I was suddenly realizing I sensed a deep sadness when she said it, and I felt it when she spoke of speaking with gumption, to actually believe the words that were pouring out of our mouths instead of just throwing up some old used up, crusty cliché just to fit the trend. I could sense it coming from me too.

That was the moment the words moved from my mind and sunk deep into the pits of my guts, somewhere around the lower intestine, somewhere that was finally getting sore from swallowing and digesting bullshit.

And that was when I realized something.

The evidence of the love decade cannot be found in the sand, is not tangible and the end result will never be pin pointed.

That is because it never ended.

That is because it could not be contained to one physical place. Not even one with such a reputation as California. I believe, when the tide rolled back and the world seemingly turned away from mass movements of rebellion and peace, it never really left it just sort of split and splintered off into a thousand jet streams. And those miniscule jets streams hit you and I. We are the love generation. That one woman who dressed like a hippy and WAS a hippy, those of you I have met along the way that preached living free and those of you still reading now and that feel it resonating deep within your soul.

They may call us lost, they may call us wanderers, dreamers without the blueprints to make anything happen. They will tell us we will never see a change, they’ll tell us the tides changed, the 60s are over. And yet we will still smile, we will still believe; somewhere in our rattling chests, in our weary bones, that they are wrong. We don't want your blueprints, we will make our own, and we would rather dream than give up. Love is not something that could be contained by a decade, could not be contained by a state and cannot be snuffed out. We see the change in the world NOW because we are the change in the world.

So keep smiling. Keep fueling that buzzing positivity; that buzzing peace, and let it radiate through you. No matter how strange, how disillusioned, how out of place you may feel, you are not alone. You are strange and you are perfect because there is no other way that you could be. Keep spreading the love and keep being the light. We out here.