Good morning.

So look, I know that I make fun of California a lot, but it comes from a place of love. I hate on San Diego like you hate on your favorite sibling, which is to say, because I can. Because I know that we are forever connected by a force that is larger than either one of us. We’re bonded, like atoms. I felt that bond today.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING (JULY 13)

This was the kind of day where the air is so thick that you can barely breathe. So I rubbed coconut sunscreen into my skin, threw a pair of baggy jeans on over a bikini, and drove to ocean with all of the windows down. I parked where the locals know to park and laughed a bit as I watched the tourists circling round and round, their out of state license plates and carfuls of screaming children giving everything away. I smiled and waved.

The main reason I wanted to go to this particular beach at all was because I had an intense craving for an iced coffee, and this place has some of the best in San Diego. Don’t tell my boss. So I walked along the beach, a walk that felt infinitesimally longer than it did a few months back when summer had yet to scorch the earth, until arriving at the luxury resort located at the end of the beach. It always hits me full force when I step into that sea of vacationers that I live here, that I come here to run and do yoga and cry into sand year round. But that to them, it’s all just an ethereal world, one that work and home obligations will dissolve like acid in a matter of days. Hence the winding line at the piña colada bar.

I have to practically bodycheck my way through that line and past the array scattered families and drunken singles and exhausted mothers pulling their sandy children behind them in order to get anywhere. I finally step into the air conditioned cafe, which feels a lot like stepping into a time machine. They have it set up like a candy shop from the 1950s. Eclectically shaped glass jars house colorful gems of sugar drops and licorice twists. The baristas wear red and white pinstriped aprons and there’s a guy making sandwiches in the back. I adore it. My mother used to take my brother and I there when candy was enough to make the world go round. I order an iced coffee and grab a table outside, under the black and white striped awnings. Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis serenade the scene from the speakers so that the whole place resembles an idyllic Hollywood set. I feel a bit like Marilyn Monroe, lounging poolside at the Roosevelt.

But then a drunken twenty something stumbles in front of me in a thong and the whole dream gets much harder to hold onto. Which is only to say, the people watching? Oh my god. Worth it. To my left, a grown son shouting the family’s entire, extensive drink order to his father, who hard of hearing, keeps asking whAt. This only aggravates said son and the cycle repeats in a dizzying loop. To my right, a family with children old enough to be embarrassed to be seen with their parents, but not old enough to be seen without them are snapping group photos under the pam trees. The tweenage girl has this look on her face that could cut glass. I know it well. But directly in front of me is the ocean and that has a way of making all else fall away. I stare out at the waves crashing and sip my coffee, thankful to be alone.

The thing about staring at the ocean though, is that is pulls you like a vortex. It tugs at something human in you that is connected to the earthliness of it and you find yourself walking right into its thrashing embrace. I walk down the beach, untie my hair, and dive under an icy wall of water. This is the hardest part, the part that the tourists never seem to be able to bring themselves to do. They stand knee deep, clutching their arms into their shivering bodies, flinching and shrieking with each rising wave. But I swim. And I laugh. I laugh with every part of me that couldn’t that summer that I stood on this same beach, in this same ocean, with a broken heart. I surfaced from the belly of a wave to see diamonds of sunlight glistening off of the sea’s edge, a sight I look forward to each year. It has a way of making you feel like you are entirely alone with the earth. Nothing else exists in those moments for me. They bring me home.

THIS WEEK ON BEING A BARISTA

Speaking of home, the coffee shop I work at has become something of one. It’s funny how each week, I dread having to go to work. Yet, once I’m there, I’m reminded of why I love it. There’s a group of old guys who come in every day and hang out outside with iced teas and coffees. They’re always ragging on each other, but you can tell how much love is there. They’re these tough old men who ride motorcycles and wear leather jackets, but they have the biggest hearts of anyone who steps though those doors. They also bring in all of the outdoor furniture for me when I’m closing, which is, quite angelic of them. And when it’s slow, we talk. They tell me about their wives and about their wild days of youth or about the cool new artist that they just found. And I tell them about my studies and my writing and my plans to move to New York and be the next Joan Didion. When I close up on Friday nights, they tell me to be safe out there and I laugh, as if I am going anywhere but home to roast a Delicata squash and write about the world.

But it’s strangers too. For example, today I served coffee to a couple reading in the sun together. Each with their own books, alone, but together. They looked so beautiful. I told my coworker and we got into a comedic conversation about boys and books. She told me that her boyfriend and her are reading the same book together, but that she is perpetually ahead of him. I told her about how my first boyfriend told me that he liked to read at coffeeshops when we first met, yet how I later found out that the last thing he read were the cliff notes on The Great Gatsby. And who reads the cliff notes for Gatsby? It’s short enough to be a cliff note. Anyway. I also told her about my last boyfriend, about how he actually did read, and about how we used to go to coffee shops and read together like that couple. There were a lot of things that never felt right about that relationship, but reading in grungy coffee shops on rainy days was never one of them. That much I knew. So I smiled at that couple and watched the steam from their mugs pirouette through the streak of sunlight that fell upon onto their table. Temporary, but beautiful.

Happy Sunday. ♥️

Love, m.

JOIN THE FUN

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