Dreaming California

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!

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I dreamt I lived in a cabin by the sea.
Its walls were small, but I survived
by making the beach my home.

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I watched the days turn into night,
as that mottled tide came and went,
awaiting some rescue of my own making.

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As time went by, I met some friends
and we hiked a desert mountain peak,
counting shooting stars overhead.

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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.

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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.

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However long the days were,
the nights were always longer. All alone,
I huddles inside four walls and one small roof.

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I'd branch out, of course.
That city by the beach had plenty of amusements,
but every wild night's punctuation was retreat.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...