My Cali Dream

My Cali Dream is to understand Cali. The -fornia Cali, to be specific.

Yosemite seems liked a good place to see how much of Cali I could scope with my mind, from memory with my eyes closed. From the spot I was standing I let my mind zoom gracefully over the contours of the State, gliding topologically in wrinkles of mountains and valleys,  from one named place to another. I zoom into see details, explore known locales from different angles and then on to the next one.

From one corner of the state to the other---Fresno, Taft, Santa Barbara, Hawthorne, Swami's, Chula Vista, Slab City, Palm Springs, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Bishop, Mammoth, even to Reno--where it leaves off, on the continental map, is sort of arbitrary.

Susanville, Surprise Valley, Goose Lake, Klamath River, Trinity River, Crescent City, Eureka, Fort Ross, Bodega Bay, Santa Rosa, Marin, San Pablo Bay, Crocket, Emeryville, etc.---until it's all one glowing whole and I can almost see and feel them all at once  I wrap it all up in my mind and call it C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A.
 
I think about all of it teaming with people, all of us lost-soul beautiful scumbag angelic selfish full-of-life-force gloriuos individuals, one by one, across not only space but time too---because every bit of my memory of these places is from a dis-simultaneous instant in the past.

It's gloriously incomplete---still many places I could add. And individuals everywhere you look.

...now I am interrupted by a man talking loudly on his cell phone next to me at the coffeeshop. So fleeting is the dream.