Home Turf

I awoke with California on the brain. How totally weird.

We hear that folks are leaving CA in record numbers. There may be a lot of reasons for this, an overly mobile society who wants to explore more affordable places to live, or maybe just tired of trying to raise a family in an environment that over-emphasizes materialism. Inevitably most people recognize the truth of an unsustainable, larger-than-life lifestyle. People come enchanted and leave disheartened. California, with all of its complexities, eventually outprices or outliberalizes us.

Me and my state, we have been like this for decades. It's comfortable. I know where everything is. I have come to depend on its warts and rainbows. But suddenly something happens to mix things up. A friend moves, violence erupts close to home, levees give way along with livelihoods, and the kids move up and out.

I don't remember moving out of the fast lane, but I obviously did. The geography is clearer now, the late-summer ugliness as I putter along, gratefully watching the rush rush rush of traffic from a safe distance away. Lost in thought; lost in direction; out of the loop.

California no longer seems edgy or quaint: it more resembles the worn out coat tails we've been riding for too many years.  It can't just be me with one foot rooted in yesterday and the other creeping towards tomorrow, timid and unsure. Where am I?

I've heard it said that the future is waiting to be born, waiting for us to form and shape it. Maybe the greatness of California will someday be found beneath all the rubble, but I earnestly doubt we know where to dig.