Do I exist?

a conscious exercise

for visual learners

This summer I disappeared, not too far but just enough. At the top of June, I got in a car with my dog and Boyfriend, our sights set on Oregon. A long drive, but we got his Mazda new tires and a tune up. Boyfriend was headed to Portland to film an indie movie with an old friend. He needed his car for work and I needed a road trip.

My plans for the Summer were liquid at best. Unwilling to claim a single point on the map, I wanted to melt from LAX to PDX to LAX with a light touch. We arrived in Portland and I told myself not to get settled. Don’t get attached to the lush green neighborhood with the four rose gardens and central roundabout. There were THINGS to DO at home. My parents needed me. I had friends in LA. Projects to cultivate. It’s important to be there for Junes Julys Augusts. I’ve had many LA Summers consumed by circumstances beyond my control. The magic months. Why would I skip them willingly?

I’m intimate with the pulse of LA Summer. A static heat, lingering between tongue and teeth. Sand on your pillow in the morning. Following the sunset, unravelling orange as you zip west on the 10. Lazy in your linen, in your athletic shorts, low rise everything because the most unbothered wins. Splitting a caesar salad and fries with a new friend, getting two drinks, getting stoned but only when it’s easy. Still in bed by 11pm. Summer is stamina, it’s fucking off, it’s wondering how long until the palm trees die and we can finally get some shade on these blistered sidewalks.

The only time I missed an LA Summer, it was not by choice. I was 15 years old. My mother saw me in her home and took me for a stranger. After a few months in the hospital, it seems she misplaced the key to her memories. She called me names and kicked me out of the apartment. The next morning I was on a plane to Chicago, where my dad’s family lives. Slipping, accidentally, into another realm of Summer. With thunderstorms and lightening bugs and Dairy Queen. Chicago was the best. A glimpse at childhood, where socializing at theatre camp was my biggest concern.

When I came back to LA, we staged a rebirth. My mother gave me another shot at being her daughter. We danced around our forgotten life. My mother stood under our window, doing isometric exercises in the sun. Flexing her biceps and pointing her toes. I watched her skin soak up the heat, simmering into a honey tan. A shade I’ll never get because I have my father’s midwest complexion.

Sifting through the LA soil, my mother planted nasturtiums, poppies, avocado trees. In the vacuum gasp of amnesia, my mother tried to find herself. Earth holds memory longer than we can. Even when the buildings are torn down, when the plants are thrown away, when the tide sweeps the sandcastles. Atomic outlines remains in play.

Los Angeles is my mother, it raised my mother. It raised my mother’s mother. It is my mother’s mother’s mother and her mother’s mother too. People love to tell me how much they hate LA. They say it to my face, right after I tell them I was raised there. And I smile and say I know it’s weird, but it’s also great. There are layers—everyone has a complicated relationship with their mother.

When we left LA in June, I didn’t want to disappear. It happened gradually, starting with my fingertips. Untethered from my home, I assumed I was losing my mind. Then I realized, true insanity does not present itself. If you’re journaling in the middle of a sunny field about being insane, you’re probably not. Something else was happening. I’ve been secretly working on this book project for so long. Half mentioning its existence to kind ears when necessary. It’s my first real effort at sculpting a long form narrative. Stories drawn from shuttered wells in the deserts of my memory. Sure, I’ve had fun, but it’s intense, doing something so alone. And so the work has been secret, which means I have been secretive. Not so easy in our lovely digital age.

Over the Summer, I finished a fourth draft of the book. I got an incredible set of notes, chopped and flipped the trajectory and launched directly into the fifth draft. The process is now about decoding. Listening to the new format. Finding certain twists, inroads to levity. Allowing characters to show themselves in real time, giving it over to the page.

Portland winked and I gave in. Letting myself become an abalone shell. Reflecting the slightest spit of light in its full array of color. Saturating the shadows too. Summer seems to be a time of visibility, all light and bare skin. And yet, I found a loophole. Extreme illumination distills existence. In that total bright, I disappeared with purpose.

Now, I’m driving the Mazda down to LA. I’m somewhere in Northern California, sitting in the bar of my friend’s hotel / restaurant. It’s a 98 year old roadhouse he bought with his boyfriend, refurbishing it piece by piece. Surrounded by redwoods and pine trees and gossiping birds. Yesterday I left Portland and drove 9 hours to land here. I have a long ways to go. I’m stopping at my cousin’s wedding on the way. Boyfriend is already in Malaysia on another job. He offered to ship the Mazda. The flight from PDX to LAX is just two hours, but I wanted the solo road trip. To feel every passing mile in my fingertips, to know the distance was not a mirage.

As I descend through the mountains, I see Autumn is just around the corner. She’s asking for something new. You see it in the trees: vibrancy and release. And so, slowly I’m re-existing. Coming here to say hi was the first step. There’s so much more I want to tell you. I’m gathering the words.

Talk soon. xoxoxooo

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