The California Dream (Farewell, California)
The movers come tomorrow to pack up our California life, and so I will post my final California missive tonight. It feels exceedingly strange to have so little time left but have our house remain more or less intact—as though leaving is something far off, abstract, instead of imminent. My next post will be dispatched from New York City. I’m sure there will be much to report.
***
Before moving to California in 2007, I’d never been here. And so I had in my mind only a fabricated highlight reel of what California was: L.A., the Pacific coast, hilly San Francisco, vineyards. Movie stars, tech prodigies, surfers. I imagined people said things like “Dude, I’m pumped” and ate a lot of bean sprouts. Without any facts to go on, I relied on the myth, imagining California to be a place where I’d feel a particular kind of freedom, or privilege, a place that promised something, though it wasn’t exactly clear what. I also imagined myself not quite fitting in—a dark-haired, bookish, sun-fearing East Coast type sticking out among bikinis and blondeness. I knew nothing about the real California, had never heard of places like Glen Ellen or Bodega Bay. I readily admit my ignorance. Even three years ago, I knew full well that the California in my mind was a Hollywood concoction, a stereotype, but I didn’t yet have any real images to replace the myth.
And so when we arrived that July in 2007, in the midst of a heat wave, and spent a couple of nights in the MDPOE, and saw that Andrew’s office was in an office park, and then found a nondescript studio apartment in the hideous Citrus Heights, and had to sleep on an air mattress for a month, and and and—the myth exploded. We’ve since become more or less used to office parks and strip-mall suburbs; but at that point, having left Spain just two weeks earlier, it seemed like we’d washed up on some desperate, awful shore. The reality of our California immediately, violently, punctured the dream. Of course, we went on to settle in, finding places we love, learning to look past all the awfulness to find the sublime. But it took a while.
Fortunately (I can say that, since we’re leaving), we had a while. And I wonder now what it’s like for those who do not. I see people who I sense have come to California looking for the dream—and I see the myth they’re seeking colliding with the reality. I’ve seen middle-aged convertible-driving men who’ve strayed too far from Napa, looking lost in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-80 by the outlets in Vacaville. Last week I saw a young guy in a convertible, blasting “California Girls” as he inched along in a line of cars in a shopping plaza, far from the beach he seemed to be seeking but not realizing yet that he should turn the radio down. I’ve seen a tanned, good-looking couple in a shining Ferrari, going through a Jack-in-the-Box drive-through in a not-so-nice part of Roseville. Three days ago I actually saw someone panning for gold by a Roseville creek. Surely these people were seeking—believing in—some other California.
I can see them on their journey West—flying down desert highways with their radios turned up, “Whoo-hoo!”-ing at regular intervals, ecstatic at the freedom, sunshine, and happiness that California promises, just ahead. I can see them fist-pumping the air as they see signs for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara (I have no idea what signs one would actually see on a desert highway heading West; bear with me here), certain that whatever troubles they’ve left behind will be nothing but distant memories as soon as they reach the Golden State. Isn’t that what California promises? A blank slate, an unfettered mind, the chance to strike gold, get discovered, see your name in lights—or at least the chance to find a truer, simpler version of yourself, out there in all that sky and sun and ocean?
And then I see them merging onto a superhighway, exiting at a place like Roseville, and finding themselves—hair windblown, cheeks flushed with anticipation—lost in a sea of strip malls, treeless housing developments, foreclosures, and SUVs. Instead of soul-stirring sunshine, there’s relentless 110-degree heat; and the only ocean in sight is a sea of big-box stores. There they are in their convertibles—poor dreamers—wondering what went wrong, what turn they missed, not realizing that the gems of California take work to discover, just like any other place. There are beautiful things, beautiful places, but getting there usually isn’t pretty. California is not some golden paradise; stars and fortunes are made here, surely, but quotidian life looks the same—worse, perhaps, for some people, in the wreckage of the housing bubble, and in the bloated, unwise overdevelopment of cookie-cutter homes with highway views—as it does in Ohio, or Pennsylvania.
The myth of California is that it provides transformation; escape; bubbly happiness. But for me, real California does not live up to the dream—and I say this as a person who really does love certain things and places about it, a person who, over three years, ultimately had a pretty good run. Do other people feel this way about other myth-bearing places, ones that have stolen my heart, New York, Paris, Barcelona—let down, disappointed, disillusioned?
Perhaps California is everything it promises to a different kind of seeker. Perhaps the broad, open highways, the limitless space, inspire and enchant. But with less than two days now left in my California adventure, I feel a tingling excitement when I think of shop-lined streets and skyscrapers, honking taxis, crowded sidewalk cafes, blocks of Brooklyn brownstones, subway platforms moodily populated with street musicians, parks teeming with life. That’s the kind of promise that speaks to me. I won’t be “Whoo-hoo!”-ing out loud on the redeye Wednesday night. But you just may see me do a tiny, secret fist-pump when the wheels of the plane touch down at JFK.
And so when we arrived that July in 2007, in the midst of a heat wave, and spent a couple of nights in the MDPOE, and saw that Andrew’s office was in an office park, and then found a nondescript studio apartment in the hideous Citrus Heights, and had to sleep on an air mattress for a month, and and and—the myth exploded. We’ve since become more or less used to office parks and strip-mall suburbs; but at that point, having left Spain just two weeks earlier, it seemed like we’d washed up on some desperate, awful shore. The reality of our California immediately, violently, punctured the dream. Of course, we went on to settle in, finding places we love, learning to look past all the awfulness to find the sublime. But it took a while.
Fortunately (I can say that, since we’re leaving), we had a while. And I wonder now what it’s like for those who do not. I see people who I sense have come to California looking for the dream—and I see the myth they’re seeking colliding with the reality. I’ve seen middle-aged convertible-driving men who’ve strayed too far from Napa, looking lost in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-80 by the outlets in Vacaville. Last week I saw a young guy in a convertible, blasting “California Girls” as he inched along in a line of cars in a shopping plaza, far from the beach he seemed to be seeking but not realizing yet that he should turn the radio down. I’ve seen a tanned, good-looking couple in a shining Ferrari, going through a Jack-in-the-Box drive-through in a not-so-nice part of Roseville. Three days ago I actually saw someone panning for gold by a Roseville creek. Surely these people were seeking—believing in—some other California.
I can see them on their journey West—flying down desert highways with their radios turned up, “Whoo-hoo!”-ing at regular intervals, ecstatic at the freedom, sunshine, and happiness that California promises, just ahead. I can see them fist-pumping the air as they see signs for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara (I have no idea what signs one would actually see on a desert highway heading West; bear with me here), certain that whatever troubles they’ve left behind will be nothing but distant memories as soon as they reach the Golden State. Isn’t that what California promises? A blank slate, an unfettered mind, the chance to strike gold, get discovered, see your name in lights—or at least the chance to find a truer, simpler version of yourself, out there in all that sky and sun and ocean?
And then I see them merging onto a superhighway, exiting at a place like Roseville, and finding themselves—hair windblown, cheeks flushed with anticipation—lost in a sea of strip malls, treeless housing developments, foreclosures, and SUVs. Instead of soul-stirring sunshine, there’s relentless 110-degree heat; and the only ocean in sight is a sea of big-box stores. There they are in their convertibles—poor dreamers—wondering what went wrong, what turn they missed, not realizing that the gems of California take work to discover, just like any other place. There are beautiful things, beautiful places, but getting there usually isn’t pretty. California is not some golden paradise; stars and fortunes are made here, surely, but quotidian life looks the same—worse, perhaps, for some people, in the wreckage of the housing bubble, and in the bloated, unwise overdevelopment of cookie-cutter homes with highway views—as it does in Ohio, or Pennsylvania.
The myth of California is that it provides transformation; escape; bubbly happiness. But for me, real California does not live up to the dream—and I say this as a person who really does love certain things and places about it, a person who, over three years, ultimately had a pretty good run. Do other people feel this way about other myth-bearing places, ones that have stolen my heart, New York, Paris, Barcelona—let down, disappointed, disillusioned?
Perhaps California is everything it promises to a different kind of seeker. Perhaps the broad, open highways, the limitless space, inspire and enchant. But with less than two days now left in my California adventure, I feel a tingling excitement when I think of shop-lined streets and skyscrapers, honking taxis, crowded sidewalk cafes, blocks of Brooklyn brownstones, subway platforms moodily populated with street musicians, parks teeming with life. That’s the kind of promise that speaks to me. I won’t be “Whoo-hoo!”-ing out loud on the redeye Wednesday night. But you just may see me do a tiny, secret fist-pump when the wheels of the plane touch down at JFK.
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