Matted heads of hair and a garden full of warm sunlight, cold strings, fizzy acoustics, sweating writhing living room pounding with life, roses hanging from the chandeliers. A balmy bike ride, smoky back yards, glitter on our cheeks and adventure on our lips and in our hair.
Coffee on a blanket on the roof after a night cocooned in a hammock, emerging as a sunlight-infused butterfly. I drink a whole mug this morning, trying to break the ritualistic habit of filling cups and then leaving them to go cold, distracted by the next warm thing. Santa Cruz Pride; a parade of feathers and rainbows and a glass bottle filled with raspberry lemonade in my rucksack. Four Loco and paint splattered across our tasseled bodies, sunflowers on my hat, sea salt caught in the folds of the t-shirt we made ourselves this morning. Bare feet in the grass, marijuana smoke and a tent made from dead tree branches and fishing wire, strung together by patterned shirts and old skirts, forgotten lives and periods of time fading in the relentless sun. Graffiti and bluegrass, dancing fiddles and hot cigarette kisses on your skin.
Yellow saxophone moaning and that delicious puddle of ocean yearning in front of us, so perfect that it makes my soul ache.
Hours blend into days blend into nights. I have emerged a butterfly, can't you tell?
Red lipstick and Mike's Hard Lemonade, fairy lights strung by punk pirates across the yard and all our friends are here. Music bleeds across our living room and into the night and so much has happened since i first was here. We are all more ourselves now. I watch the love grow and swell in this breathless world of sunlight and of understanding,, of dirty kitchens and black bare feet and guitars in the loft. You play my favorite song with your hot-pink toenails.
"Ah" you say, in your wonderful New-York-City drawl.
"Once you've lived in a place, it never leaves you. It is a part of you always".
An unruly bunch of farmers market flowers wrapped in newspaper, bronzed shoulders and a blue polka dot dress, the smell of earthy uncertainty by my side. We shun yoga for the beach and bundle into your car and drive up the one. We scramble stealthily through a farm and clamber along a wooded path, purple daisies in our hair and buttonholes. The wind blows the sand and it whips our bodies, making them sting, shredding our skin yet we're alive, we're alive. We suck beer through sticky bottles in the gentle shelter of the cliffs. I string shells around my neck and entwine them in my shoe laces. We shed our clothes and clamber onto the rocks, the sharp edges drawing blood from the fleshy peach pits of my pale fingertips. The sun lavishes herself on the water and creates wonderful rainbow arcs in the surf. You jump into the turquoise universe and scream as the playful cold pierces your tanned skin. I am scared that i will fall on the rocks below and be sliced to naked ribbons. You count to three. I jump and let the seaweed tendrils caress my body as my feet hit the soft bed of the ocean floor and the waves ricochet through my icy soul. We dry in the sun and drive back along the coast in your car. We tumble into a record shop and i make you buy my favourite album, "Let's drive" we say and watch the lilac-rose-marmalade sunset as surfers frolic in the lavender ocean. The sky makes me ache, deep in the pit of my stomach, an ache akin to the one that creeps in when you have lost something that you once loved dearly.
This time and place will pass us by, as times and places do but there is salt water caught in my hair and quinoa in the pan and kindness in the moon and love in the sweet-soft bay air forever.
That long, slow roll up to Frisco, the sunshine biscuits factory on the BART route through Oakland, a neon green fairy vomiting all over the train. Corkscrew rows, redwoods on the summit, cold and windy city, tiny yet so full. Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park; secret geisha giggle in the bushes and your hand is clasped tightly around mine. Clinging. A street punk blows bubbles and plays my favourite song on her radio. Everything is sugar-coated. No cavities. Falling through parties with my neck in the grass. That lucid golden bridge. Peanut butter and jam, what is the difference between jelly and jam? Fisherman's wharf, hot peanuts, The Fillmore. I can't quite believe that you were once here. Everything hurts. New York to San Francisco. Every place has such a distinct flavour. I gulp it down, spilling it all over my skin, saturating my clothes.
One thousand million tiny shards of iridescent glitter, swirling iridescent tessellation behind my eyelids before i go to sleep at night.
"Golden particles, brilliant forest-green particles, each one picking up the light, and all shimmering and glowing like an electronic mosaic, pure California neon dust". - Tom Wolfe
Goodbyes are the most crushing things.
We head to the boardwalk in the sun, rollercoaster locomotive whiplash, flashing on the log flume and letting our brains and teeth rattle in our skulls. Falling into the hot warm sand, covering our skin in beachy love bites.
We find a boat at the harbour and barter our way onto the deck with a sic pack of Blue Moon. Balloons stream from the sails as we photograph coloured yachts rolling on the waves. Frantic activity, words like poetry: port, starboard, rigging, the sail is in the water. The boardwalk looms in the distance, skeletal in the best coast haze,.. A dolphin laughs in the distance making glittering arcs like wet bridges. The next thing we know we are sipping sidecars in the yacht club with a man called Bruce and handing out birthday cake. We dance like sunflowers and giggle our way home. We always have adventures, you say. No goodbyes, just see-you-laters. Oh, too-big, to-fast, too-sad-and-beautiful world. Is it all merely a bunch of circumstances and coincidences?
Another beach, another bonfire. I let the thick black smoke fill every pore of my skin. We drink tea in an all night diner in the early hours and the clock just keeps on ticking.
A mad hatter's tea party, live sunflowers stuck to my chest and a garland of flowers in my hair. Golden glitter swallows everyone. You are dark and beautiful, fierce eyes, bare chest, youthful defiance. A queen and a doormouse, a blonde afro wig, a topless seder, Titania the seductress. The world evaporates and we hide in the lair. Things were always meant to be this way. Silver boots, lilac shorts. Sadness, mourning, loss hangs heavy in my limbs like a corpse. I never want to leave this behind.
We pack up my life and string prayer flags from the windows of the car, drawing lotus flowers in the dust. You wake early to drink coffee with us and to say goodbye. Salt burns my eyes and my limbs ache but i have almost found peace in myself and we drive again up the one-oh-one and our lives are fresh and green again and we are most certainly on our way to somewhere. Things will come together, as they always do. We will meet again.
"Wilt thou not be loath
To leave this paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far"
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
