Hot & Heavy, Pumpkin Pie

I write this sitting upon my roof in the sunshine, drinking coffee, reading Chekov, listening to Bob Dylan, daffodils in my hair. What a wonderfully pretentious existence mine has become, although there is no 'pretend' involved, for this is real life, darling.

My fascination with the homeless community here continues. My latest penchant is for a man who stands with a cardboard sign on which is scrawled 'FREE STORY. ASK ME'. I didn't ask, for the tattered pages of my mind are cluttered with more than enough scribbles for the moment, and i would prefer to wonder.

I encountered my first Santa Cruz farmer's market on Wednesday, whereupon i sampled my first oyster whilst a beautiful floral dress provided the soundtrack via a ukulele and a cassette player. It is hard to be unhappy in this land of perpetual sunlight. I purchased a bunch of flowers and attended my first bikram yoga class which was tres amiable and i felt at peace with the world.

As the sun searched for a bed for the night in the cloudless stretch of indigo above our heads, we headed to the beach. The tide was high and we perched precariously on the rocks, watching our mistress the ocean bat her lashes coyly upon the sand and toss the seaweed strands of her hair at us seductively. The late night mist created orbs in the flash of my camera, giving the impression that the air around us was full of celestial beings, clamouring for a glimpse of the endless galaxies swirling above us and enveloping our minds completely in their glorious magnitude. The stars here make me feel so small and insignificant, but in a comforting way. My life, this world, our incomprehensible smatter of milky way are simply one of many. Perhaps nothing is ever truly worth fretting over, for we are such a tiny element of the universe. The Earth will keep turning, gravity will continue to manipulate us like a mad puppeteer. Perhaps we ought to cry not for ourselves but for the stars, for the fact that those beautiful burning balls of fire are really trails of death, murdered by mathematics and the speed of light. I saw my first shooting star.

Saw my first banana slug too. I tripped over it. You are supposed to be subject to a lifetime of bad luck if you step on one, and a very long period of good luck if you kiss your first. I did neither of these things, for i live with three black cats.

The next evening i went to an open mic night at a voluntarily run anarchist library and cafe around the corner from my house. Books engulf the walls and fairy lights illuminate the wrought iron tables in the leafy garden, the trees decorated with old fire extinguishers and an accumulation of the debris of life, like anti-consumerist Christmas trees. The theme of the evening was feet, and the comperes lay on the floor with their bare toes in the air and let them do the talking. One man made us release guttural howls and squeaks into the air with our voices. Another sang a song to a baby in the corner. A woman showed us the dirt caught in the wrinkles of her soles, preserved for someone on the internet who wanted to pay money for her dirty socks. My housemate Jynx sang about the pile of unwashed dishes festering in our kitchen. A group of homeless men sat outside of the gates as we left, gathered around an old radio, laughing at the rest of us.

We ended the night drinking red wine upon a mattress while a circus ringleader we met hammered nails into his nostrils and showed us the self inflicted staple wounds on his body. He serenaded us with a rendition of 'Happy Birthday' played with his knuckles upon his skull.

After spending another afternoon perfecting my downward dog and vinyasa, i bade 'namaste' to the heat and donned a floor length evening gown and a pair of elbow length gloves to attend a cinematic, theatrical melting pot of the murder mystery 'Clue'. A french maid drank pepper flavoured vodka by my side as i flounced through the town in a haze of feathers and fur.

The weather remains warm and i whiled away Saturday reading 'Into The Wild' in the park and advising a homeless man intent on fondly referring to me as 'Little Paris' on the length of his cornrows. 'I would love to go to England one day', he told me. 'But it probably won't be today'.

I returned home to find our front porch was being used as an amateur film set, complete with clipboards, coffee runs and a lighting rig Hollywood would be proud of. One bright pink dress and an obligatory red plastic cup later, i made my acting debut as 'Girl Number Two'. Palm trees do line the sidewalk here, after all.

Another day, another trip to the beach.

Dogs delighted in the salty tang of freedom on the wind, as a man beat a drum beneath the cliff.

We stayed until the cold began to nibble affectionately at our elbows and the yolk of the sun broke and began to slide into the ocean, heavy with sticky heat and golden with the memory of a thousand lifetimes of beautiful days such as this.

The sky above the boardwalk blushed as we stared at her fleshy pink nakedness, before turning a deep dusky lilac. The careless gods must have used the same brush with which to paint the sea, for she too became tinged with lavender and air and water blended into one.

                                      

The beauty of the dusk finally allowed the stars to have their moment and i descended into town to wear my purple lipstick and dance to The Smiths at 'Goth Night', which occurs every Sunday in a bar downtown. It is a marvellous fracas of Robert Smith inspired hair as the cares which plague the modern goth are left to smoulder in whiskey tumblers on the side of the bar as everyone remembers the blissful ease of forgetting.

We welcomed the dawn of another day by drinking champagne around a bonfire outside of a vintage trailer as a boy strummed 'House of the Rising Sun' on a guitar he made himself and we all sang along.

'I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.'

-Leo Tolstoy

-'Family Happiness'

“Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.” ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

One of my favourite spectacles thus far in Santa Cruz is a man who sits on Pacific Avenue with a table and chairs offering 'Free Empathy' to passers-by, and one is able to sit with him and talk.

I have officially moved into Zami, my co-op; a cavern of fairy lights, kittens,incense, politics, seeds, spices, forties, punks, flowers, art and yoga. I am sharing a room with a girl named Sparrow and our window leads out onto the roof where we are able to sit and watch the Californian sunshine both rise and set. Words of previous genius are chalked into the wooden beams above my head and our shelves are piled with books. Sparrow burns sage in a pan upon our makeshift loft to ward off evil spirits. She taught me how to make origami cranes, tiny delicate birds in rainbow colours. We give them wings that truly fly but they will probably never even see the sky, for they are too delicate.

On the bus into town from campus on day, i met a boy named Forest who befriended me by offering me a very small lemon and inviting me to a potluck in his trailer park.

I have 8am classes here and waking with the birds means it is awfully cold, although there is something delicious about donning some (faux) fur and braving the forest with my thermos, caffeine whispers casting my  foggy secrets into the air like smoke. The clouds in the land of eternal sunshine have been letting out their frustration over the past few days and one night even lightning paid us a visit, outshining the stars with her chaotic brilliance. There was no thunder to accompany her, perhaps here in the land of the free even the elements are loose to roam, conducting their own orchestras, regardless of expectations.

I bought a coat from a vintage shop to shield my pasty northern skin from the forest and there is a name embroidered with extravagant flourishes within the lining. Out of curiosity, i googled it and it seems the coat once belonged to a writer from California who settled not too far from Santa Cruz, before passing away a couple of years ago. Another kindred spirit guiding me from the ocean.

After purchasing some second-hand crochet to sleep upon, i visited the bank. Upon opening an account, i had a choice of two languages: English and Espanol. Naturally, i chose English. I do not wish to stereotype, but my blonde and barbie-pink-nailed personal banker 'Britney' exclaimed, 'Wow! So like, you can speak the British language as well?' I nonchalantly told her that i could and she stared at me, wide eyed. 'That is like, so cool.' Indeed. She then proceeded to try and persuade me to choose a pink debit card with an animal of my choice imprinted on it. I declined and in retrospect regret this decision.

As darkness descended, we lit a bonfire in the garden of my new home and whiled away the hours drinking herbal tinctures from tiny glass apothecary bottles and watching sparks evaporate into the night like fireworks, as our drowsy thoughts spiraled with the intoxicating smell of thick festival smoke. A boy with a moustache produced a banjo and began to tug upon it's heartstrings, as Zack, a boy from the forest, produced a miniature organ  from a suitcase and accompanied him. It was simultaneously melancholic and wonderful.

On Friday evening we hosted a gig in our living room at Zami, to raise money for local bands going on tour. We spent the night playing old cassettes and swing dancing as the rain waltzed in sheets from the sky. A boy played a saw plugged into an amplifier with the bow from a violin. Apparently this is a common occurrence in Santa Cruz. It has a beautiful, soul wrenching sound.

                                           

I attempted to spend Saturday writing in a cafe but got distracted and strayed into an antiques shop. I was wearing a tshirt emblazoned with the American flag and after watching me for a while, the owner called me over. 'I have something you need.' He pressed a button and cases of precious stones, chipped brooches and charm bracelets laden with the heavy trinkets of past lives and lovers rotated before my eyes. I could see my eager face shining in the glass, waiting in anticipation for this ancient gem which was about to change my life. He stopped upon a diamante encrusted star spangled banner belt buckle........

I am having incredibly vivid dreams again, dreams in which i cannot distinguish what is reality, where i wake burning with kaleidoscopes exploding and whirling behind my eyes. The tortilla chips are black and there are pirates living in the basement. The sky is awash with fire and there are accordions ringing in my ears. There are punks crowd surfing through my living room and bearded men handing me origami in the street. I am clicking my boots made of glitter together but i am so far down the yellow brick road there is no going back now. There are mountain lions in the forest and I am certainly not in Kansas anymore. 

But i think i might just like it.