Plunging Under The Wave

a birthday, being here, keeping watch

Going outside is crazy. You can read the future in the green patchwork hillside. A limitless overlap, compounding shades of lush. Leaves following their purpose, gathering moisture from the sky. A scrub brush could never tell a lie. Nature persists unending. Spirits are rendered again and again in the treetop canopies.

Last weekend, boyfriend and I drove up the coast of California. It was my birthday. I wanted to read the layers of clouds frosting the sky. Walk on a different sort of beach, holding rocks and shells in my palm, material that will survive me. Sometimes movement is celebration. Other times, movement recalls the sanctity of stillness. This trip offered a bit of both.

I used to dream of a way to speak without words—now I occupy most of my time writing them. Truthfully, I don’t always think in words, I think of the spaces between. What is born forth in the breath stretching each sentence. What is here to stay is nothingness. That’s always been a constant source of hope. And so, on my birthday, I wanted to plunge into the ocean. To run, sand sloping under my heels. Saltwater all around, to be shocked by cold. To release for an instant, into nothing. Plunge below the surface, come up new. And finally, let the sunlight cradle my shivered skin.

Good thing San Francisco has beaches. Do you think of sand when you think of San Francisco? I do not. No, I see belly-drop hills, yawning bridges and bright house paint. Then my friend Hannah moved to San Francisco. She grew up in LA but was getting most of her freelance jobs up north. She went to Berkley for college, it turns out she lived in the same co-op as my mom. Back in the early 80s, my mother co-habited with Vietnam vets after Reagan pushed to repeal the Mental Health Systems Act in California. This shuttered state run psychiatric hospitals and overnight, my mother saw lost souls scattered into a society that had no welcome prepared. Grown men showed up at dorms and common rooms, searching the cabinets for their old boxes of cereal. Things they swore they left just the other day. By the time Hannah went to Berkley, she met a few people still taking one class a semester to continue living in the co-op.

Besides my mother’s college stories, I have long family roots in San Francisco, but we never visited when I was growing up. My parents and I only left West LA to visit the Pain Management Specialist in West Covina. My mother’s only access to opioid prescriptions. In my mind, San Francisco dwelled in a perpetual fog that I would never permeate.

That was until January, during the LA fires. Boyfriend and I wanted to breathe easy for a few days, so we took up Hannah's offer to stay on her air mattress.

When we arrived at Hannah’s doorstep in the Mission District, I planned to visit family landmarks—but the city had other plans. It swept me into open arms. You know when a place really does that? I’ve only felt it a few times, most surprising was in London, but that’s another story.

San Francisco streets deserve more attention. If SF wanted to be That Girl, it could. But SF prefers to chill hard. I think it likes to play below the radar, comfortable in its underestimation. Probably for the best. Less crowds scouring the streets for that magical hype As Seen On IG TV—remember her? We move so fast.

Within all that fog, SF preserves a dreamlike quality. Maybe because you’re constantly holding your breath, riding those towering streets. On Saturday afternoon, the day before my birthday, people filled the sidewalks clutching white wax paper bags bursting with tulips. At first it seemed like a coincidence. Tulips have always been my flower, my pregnant mother planted them in the frozen earth, anticipating her baby’s springtime arrival. Could SF be playing a little birthday trick on me? Then I started clocking a tulip bearing pedestrian at all compass points. Finally, I stopped a woman mid-crosswalk to see where she got them. Union Square was having a Tulip Day. You could just get a bunch of flowers, bulbs still attached. On Sunday night, we saw a woman walking slow, texting, wearing a button-up blouse, classic black stilettos and a lace thong. Casual. The city is on another level.

So Sunday morning. We ran across the sand, into the cold cold water, nerves buzzing in my stomach. The older I get, the more I’ve learned to decode the sensations in my body. I do not get “excited” very much. As a kid, I was nervous all the time. My dad would tell me I was excited. He was usually right. My body codes joyful anticipation as pure nerves. There’s definitely a sweet little crossed wire inside me, blinking orange instead of green.

Upon first splash in the ocean, I found the water temp surprisingly approachable. Maybe it was the adrenaline of birthday, but the cold wasn’t overtaking me.

I shouted at the freezing, but heard my voice echo from somewhere else.

I watched Hannah dive into a wave and winced.

I watched myself, watching Hannah dive into a wave.

I watched myself wince.

January 1st 2025, boyfriend and I drove to Santa Monica to run into the ocean. A ceremony to start the new year. The icy winter water danced ellipses between my brain and my body, contracting everything into a giant ball of COLD. Every cell found its way to the surface of my body, every cell was frozen, every cell was alive.

Boyfriend loved it too. We promised to do it again, and soon. But then the fires. I have not been back to my familiar swatch of sand. I’ve walked to the cliff’s edge overlooking it. I’ve gazed down on PCH, the two lane highway that flames clambered over in January. My parents walk along that cliff’s edge damn near everyday. Always the same view, utterly postcard perfect.

Now, when I look out over the cliff, the absence of light is palpable. No more houses dotting the coast. A pattern of light I knew so well, I could have tattooed those glowing yellow dots on my arm without looking. Now it is back to what it was before. Before us. There was something before, many somethings actually. The jagged stones know it, the sand knows it. There are bones in the earth, buried not even that deep. My mother found a full skeleton in a cave when she was young. It's all right there.

I keep thinking, you can’t just disappear people. People will not go without a trace. There will be repercussions. We are here, watching. All day I’ve watched Cory Booker speak on his feet for nearly 24 hours. Incredible. Putting on his reading glasses, taking them off. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Holding his arms out, smiling. I can only guess there’s an incredible spirit, holding him up. I don’t pretend to understand all the hows. I just know our earth is governed by a certain nature. All things round out with time. Just look at the way the hill slopes in accordance with the sky.

When I plunged into the water on my 32nd birthday, it was an unfamiliar wave. Not the pearly blue of Santa Monica, but a sort of turquoise. A bit of froth, a husky teal. Good. A different energy. I plunged under three waves that morning.

Later that night, I made a wish. We wound up on the patio of a bar where Hannah’s friend works. My dog perched on my lap, Boyfriend presented pies he ordered from a local bakery. Hannah and her boyfriend Danny chatted with their friend. He hopes to get a city landscaping job so he could work outside and have benefits. Maybe even qualify for housing at the Presidio.

As Hannah lit birthday candles and placed them in the pie, I covered my eyes. Tiny candles shaped like fish. I wanted that moment of ignition to be sacred. Wishes are ritual in perpetual motion. I will have more on wishes soon. I’m starting a whole project on wishes, you can follow it here. My dog stared at the wisps of fire and I took a big inhale. Make a wish. With that one big breath, I extinguished the flames.

Matter cannot be created nor disappeared. Even as we blow out our candles, flames fly into smoke tails, waving up to the sky.

As we cut slices of pie for the bartenders, we ordered a round of drinks. Mine came with a lemon peel stamped into the shape of a star. Another secret wish. A full cup. I’ll take it and pass it on. One for me, one for you.