Many years ago, shortly after I finished college, I packed up everything I owned and drove across the country from Boston to San Diego. I had no job lined up, few friends there, and fewer plans. Somehow though, I made my way, and had countless amazing experiences in the process! I lived there by the beach for exactly one year, and it was one of the most formative and monumental years of my life. However, I had no fancy camera back then, so my memories are fading, becoming more abstract and dreamlike with each passing year...
In the time since I lived in southern California, I've returned many times. I've explored natural and man-made beauty all over this state, and thankfully I've captured bits and pieces of it with each trip. Dreaming California is a set of images I've put together that conveys my own dream-like memories of my first year there, as well as my subsequent visits since. I hope you enjoy these depictions of the Golden State as much as I enjoyed crafting them!
I dreamt I lived in a cabin by the sea.
Its walls were small, but I survived
by making the beach my home.
I watched the days turn into night,
as that mottled tide came and went,
awaiting some rescue of my own making.
As time went by, I met some friends
and we hiked a desert mountain peak,
counting shooting stars overhead.
There was love, of course, or what I thought was love.
I chased a dream there, in that desert, on that beach,
but in the end, it was sand running through fingers.
No matter where my social life took me,
I always returned to my cabin by the sea.
The weather was perfect, and the views infinite.
However long the days were,
the nights were always longer. All alone,
I huddles inside four walls and one small roof.
I'd branch out, of course.
That city by the beach had plenty of amusements,
but every wild night's punctuation was retreat.
The nights at the beach got me by.
Long walks, not by streetlamps, no,
but by the moon and stars, closer to darkness than to light.
I guess I'd hoped for more.
Setting out into the unknown, across a continent,
to its other edge? It's supposed to change you.
It's supposed to change everything.
The minutes were like grains of sand
in an hourglass that refused to find its final settling.
I held them dear,
not knowing that my time was close at hand.
All good things must come to an end;
isn't that what they say?
But I never realized that even the memories of good things
are impermanent.
In the end, I left my cabin by the sea.
My state changed, both inside and out.
Experiences gained, friends loved and lost,
all left behind and fading to memory...