Pt. 1 of a California memory:
There was a stretch and really there have been multiple stretches of my life since the prior millennium where my brain basically stopped working and nothing was simple and easy. I am not one for labels and each and every time I found my way back towards the light of living and purpose even if it took a year or two.
I vividly remember being 4.5 years old 1997, in a park in DC outside my old preschool thinking things will never be the same. Thinking that right there was the end of innocence, the end of innate peace just in existing. The darkness had not came yet, but in some way even at 4 years old I finally knew that the world or at least society was never going to be built for me and my brain. Who is it truly built for though I really wonder.
But I always at least had California. Los Angeles was where I was born, it’s where my earliest memories are from before my family switched coasts when I turned 4. If I knew anything before that day in the park it was probably first that my grandparents were like gods on earth in their love and second that there little magic like a perfect Southern California golden afternoon. There was nothing like weekly Sunday beach days right off the Manhattan beach pier or for that matter going with my Dad in the first Sunday morning light to
And when the darkest of darkness would strike my brain at times in coming years I still at least had California. The entirety of a memory spent in innocence and spent riding a wave of energy and golden light that had not yet been corrupted.
Later in life those perfect California memories turned into a perfect California dream of my own future family living in the same heavenly California light and specifically Malibu. It would appear to me unconsciously in dreams and meditations. This is how I found hope in my darkness, but it also seemed like a feasible reality. I had already lived this dream as a kid.
So I would California dream of and still do...
of: "days going to Topanga gourmet to load up on snacks before a family hike to the top of tuna canyon. Days of sailing as a future family out from marina del Rey all the way up the Malibu coast.”
of:, “teaching my kids how to swim in the shallows of a calm pacific ocean day. Teaching them also the best ways to spot dolphins in the distance of the ocean.”
of:, “having a beautiful garden around our glass ocean view house and a guesthouse that my kids’ grandparents could stay in whenever they wanted."
of:, “our property as a sanctuary of sorts for all the neighborhood cats and fosters from throughout Los Angeles.”
of: “ Catching the sunrise most mornings over the pink orange that is also downtown and snowy mountains in the distance if you look hard enough on a winter smogless day. Of taking beach day naps together on Zuma beach and walking down to Point Dume for sunset. Taking drives together up random canyons to see wildflowers and butterflies along with the somehow beautiful fire damage that will always be a constant. Driving to where the dolphins liked to hang out as one approaches the Ventura county line. Continuing all the way up the coast to the golden mountain light perfection of Ojai and Santa Barbara."
of: “opening up our own vegan restaurant on PCH or all the way up in Ojai. And being married to that women with the long black hair who is the most beautiful person I have ever met and in turn having kids just as beautiful with her same clarity on almost everything."
of: “Having it feel like music was coming out of all of us no matter where we went because we were just riding the infinite wave of our collective destiny, a certain unmistakable melody that the darkness can never reach. A wave capable of turning the most mundane into the most potent light.”
of: “ living in a realm where our best friends among the canyons of Malibu and Los Angeles also had these magic powers of light transmutation and of riding waves on land. Together we would believe we could help change the world into a new wave of being from our little oasis."
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