California

We are staying in a mid-century modern in Beverly Hills that looks like a 50’s Hollywood dream and fits like a favorite sweater. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the living room, Los Angeles sprawls. At night, it shimmers.  I picked the least distracting bedroom to be my writing room. There’s a window with an owl decal (the owl being both my grandmother’s and mother’s spirit animal) and an appropriately bird’s-eye view of Benedict Canyon.

We are just off Cielo Drive, right around the corner from where Sharon Tate and her houseguests were murdered by followers of Charles Manson in the summer of 1969. That house was torn down; a larger one replaces it.

Last week an atmospheric river fell, and parts of the canyon gave way. To get to our Airbnb, our rented Toyota had to muscle through the aftermath of mudslides.

Last night, while we slept, there was a small earthquake. We didn’t feel it.

California. On Rodeo Drive we pass Gucci as a guy with a plastic bag on his head walks by, screaming, trying to pull down his pants. The juxtaposition fascinates rather than shocks me, in this wild state where the morning sun breaks over mountains and nightly falls into the Pacific.

California cruelly mixes my childhood memories and adult desire for something I can’t have or name but crave desperately. I am Connecticut born and bred, that sweet little nutmeg my home, but I am never more alive than now, chasing my longing for California.