Place magic

copyright Dave's Marginal Hacks

Moving to California was the fulfillment of a dream I never thought would come true. It was the land of San Francisco and the Beats and the thud of the ocean waves on the sand. It was Height Ashbury and Beverly Hills 90210 and the Dream Factory of entertainment back when I was dying to work in film or television. Best of all, it was not New York.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love home (I grew up outside of it) but it was tagged with all things familiar, and with all things, family-iar. It surrounded me from everywhere I could see in my town, Shangri-La buildings rising in the mist, throwing the squat practical houses around me into relief. It was a thrill every time I could go into the City (as we all called it, no additional names necessary). I considered it my spiritual home, and thrilled to the final lurch of the train that threw me against my neighbor, and let me know that soon I’d be among my tribe again. New York City was striving excitement chaos hey tuck your gold necklace in stare up until you get a kink in your neck watch out for that taxi creative people lounging like art everywhere.

But it wasn’t California.

California called to me at a young age, expansive beaches and magical palm trees glowing with the white-hot sun of possibilities. Seeing it over and over again on television and in movies, I absorbed the idea that California was the way life was supposed to look, supposed to BE.

Nothing I learned as I grew older changed my mind.

California was progressive--the place where people moved to dye their hair and reinvent themselves. The place where social movements groaned and stretched and were birthed. It never failed...whenever I discovered a time period or an artist I really loved, California was in the picture somehow. California seemed...happy in a way that home seemed pinched, troubled, clouded over.

I never even thought I’d have the chance to see it--my family never traveled past the East Coast. Sure, intellectually I knew that eventually I’d have the freedom and adulthood to be able to book a plane ticket and visit myself, but that knowledge never really sunk into my heart. How could a very mere me even imagine that she could visit such a place? Didn’t they check for "cool passports" at the border?!

One of the things I’ll always adore about TEG is his way of shining the light of sense on me. He said, "Why don’t we just go there?" I stammered and shook my head wildly and admitted, "It’s always been such a dream that I don’t really think it’s possible." So, ever-practical, he booked airline tickets, told me to book a hotel, and proceeded to make my dream come true.

I looked around me a lot on that first trip, as though I was waiting for someone to shout "imposter!" and send me home on the first flight back. It was the first time I cried on the way home from a vacation.

It is still incredible to me that we made it happen--we actually moved here. To live! Is it ridiculous to admit that I always get a little charge of joy when I see my address? Well, then I am ridiculous.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

We’re moving again. Back to the Midwest. And even though I know, rationally, that things have been difficult for us here, and I also know, rationally, that TEG traveling less can only be a good thing for our little family...my soul hurts at the thought of giving up whatever magic is in the air here...the magic that helped bring me back to my creativity. Can I find a way to keep it going, even with cold gray skies and snowy mornings? Can I find a way to uproot myself from my perennial fantasyland? I think on some level, I still feel as though I’ll never be allowed back in.

I suppose it will be a good thing to learn that California is just a place, after all? Or so I have been telling myself every day since we decided to do this.

I need to get excited somehow. Help.

(edited to add: that's where family OHT was last week...visiting our soon-to-be new home.)