He crossed sleepy, pastoral Pennsylvania early in the morning, the damp summer mist hanging in the valley's like suspended thoughts. Soon, the aging pickup was in Ohio and amongst it's native landscape, the Rust Belt, it's notorious poverty somehow inexpressibly beautiful and raw. The countryside was littered with ghostly apparitions of half-abandoned towns and machines, unchanged since the height of American industry a half-century earlier. When he'd informed his parents of his plans to take a year off from Bowdoin, they agreed in the forced sympathy of a different, more passive generation, where wealth and education converged along the same path, and any postponement of the inevitable middle class boredom was acceptable. So, with this modest approval still fresh in his thoughts, and the sharp pinprick of social stigma faded behind Bowdoin's brick walls, he set off.
He thought of the urban wilderness of his youth in New York with hazy discontent, the kafka-esque groupings of featureless concrete edifices in Brooklyn and Queen where people dwelled all their life, awaiting nothing. This was not to say he wasn't going to miss the tremendous waves of bright creative light that swept the bleak cityscape, that gave it a youthful dimension he wasn't sure he'd find out west, wherever out west ended up being. He recalled a postcard he had received as a child of ten or so, July 1968 he believed it was, which depicted ghostly lime green trees with sinuous branches reaching out over a long, fog-swept crescent of sand, with "Greetings from Santa Cruz" written in gaudy white letters at the top. The yellowed image of the mysterious California coast has fixated him since, and it held a prominent position over his bed in his childhood home, a symbol of exotica suspended with scotch tape in a bedroom in Suburban New Jersey.
A college friend had mentioned this rogue hippy colony that apparently had taken up camp along the verdant green fringes of the U.C Santa Cruz campus, plotting domestic terrorism and writing LSD-fueled manifesto's in the fog-shrouded redwoods. He was smart enough to see the entitled, righteous hypocrisy of the weathermen and the SDS-er's though, their pale white prophecies of equality hollow and plastic. Nevertheless, he'd gladly take hollow prophecies over the toxic arrogance of the blueblood minions that constituted his life at home, so the arrow of change still shot west to Santa Cruz. Life was so worthwhile, so tangible and green, he had to keep reminding himself, or the nervous anticipation of tomorrow overwhelmed him.
The trip west was fantastic and surreal, framed in fleeting greenish-brown blurs of the fertile heartland, the earnest towns along the Mississippi and the rusting industrial cities scattered around the 2-dimensional expanse of cornrows and swampy lowlands. The monotony was broken somewhere around western Nebraska as he felt the imperceptible sensation of rising; indeed, each little town he passed now proudly announced it's elevation, 3000, 4000, 5000, till suddenly he was crossing the high, windswept plains or Wyoming, huge snowcapped peaks dotting the otherwise even horizon.
This was the mythical and romanticized American west, and it proved ever more vast and unkempt than he had imagined; somehow at odd's with man's vain insistence that it should be populated by cows and coal mines, rednecks and cowboys.
The barren plains of Wyoming epitomized the potential of the true west; vast and uncharacteristic, hewn of the same fabric that made men risk all their opportunities on one singular landscape. Silvery and crystalline, the highway burned west, resolved to escape the dry flatness and dive headfirst into the ocean, reckless and abrupt. The long hours on the road strung indecipherably together,and soon the chipped red paint on the truck bathed in the giant convex oven of the Great Basin, an ill-defined, shimmering expanse between Utah and California. The journey across it became a phantasmagorical experience; the mirage of each passing mountain range a promise of forever. When he was thirsty, he drank from a voluminous steel Army canteen, cool chrome water in the stubble on his chin. When he was hungry, he ate; heaping, steaming, plates of pancakes and potatoes, steak and fries nourishing the simple American ideal.
When he was restless, he wrote, mostly because writing connected the pinpoints of life into a single condensate, a map of the future coalescing out of the haze of fiction. One morning, he found himself sleeping in the bright, dewy mist along the imposing eastern flank of the Sierra, the fallen block of the North American plate suspended over the desert. People here believed in god and government, the preacher's and the politician's, the endless landscape they resided in merely an aesthetic backdrop for a pastoral life. These days, everyone was boring, because to pick meaning out of so much dullness and self-loathing was like sieving boulders through a screen; it just wouldn't fit. He was surrounded by that lovely mid-20's existential crisis in which the past and future where indistinguishable, and life was so colorful that a single monochromatic blur emerged from the fray.
The waves on Capitola Beach came in long, sweeping set's, their muffled arrival belaying an energy carried across the whole Pacific. Their even, intent geometry was at odds with the ragged coastline, and he marveled at the end of America, as the interstate had long since faded into neon reflection's in the rear view mirror, replaced my sleepy, vintage roadway's of central California, winding down to the coast. He crossed the fertile, fog-shrouded Central Valley, it's productivity a clever guise against nature, and crested the low Coast Ranges, where the Pacific plate eked slowly to the northwest in a barely perceptible struggle. It was 3 in the morning in late July and the cool evening humidity hung like a half-finished thought as he finally met with the mythical Highway 1, gateway to the promised land of Pacifica.
A half mile to the north he coasted down a gentle grass terrace onto the gravelly beach, and, parking the truck behind some high bushes, stripped naked and ran into the the fluorescent black mouth of the sea, the longest night sealed with salty ocean water. A quarter mile or so to the south, the dull amber light of a bonfire lit the sand, and a half-dozen bum's and hippies huddled round the ephemeral warmth, staged protest against a society they didn't want. He was one of them now, he mused, yet he found their thoughtless, entitled disregard for work repulsive, and vowed to make this newfound vagrancy soulful and fulfilling, to himself at least. He was exhausted in the way the physique withers under stress, yet not in the soul, which flourished in this newfound expanse of space and sky, the tangled green edges of nature now firmly settled on him.
The sun rose slowly over the low, mysterious auburn hills to the east, and suddenly, cresting the broad, contemplative top's of the redwoods, was a brilliant looking glass into the sea, the ramshackle expanse of Santa Cruz spread out to the north. He was hungry, and after a brief survey of the truck located nothing particularly edible or appealing, decided a stroll up the beach into town was of the utmost importance, to establish ground's for future experience. The town was pleasant, no, utopian in a sense, built essentially from nothing, the cultural crossroad's of a place fresh and growing, sprung from wet moss and sharp rock falling into the sea. He thought of money as something ephemeral and unnecessary, yet only when he had it in good supply, the upper class bubble paradox he loathed yet hid behind it's safe plastic curves, insulated from fear.
Santa Cruz was slim and organic, ragged at the edges but bred from the wealth and content of the young people who had escaped from somewhere mediocre and settled here. He walked into a downtown coffee shop with the easy confidence of feigned indifference; the cool calmness of someone terrified of their own potential. He was so human though, so bound by the sun and stars and ocean, that the easy smile of the boy behind the counter still shook his resolve to be sullenly content. The soles of his feet were raw and calloused, stubborn from too many sharp pointy things in the wild underbrush, the smooth quartz sand that squeaked under brisk footsteps. The Barista was a young man much like himself, interjected into a contrived, contextually irrelevant paradigm, free will something to be considered and then forgotten. He was a wild thing, a creature of the deep misty coastal valley's, the sun never quite touching the ground the way it ought to, cast instead in steely oblique angles.
They made pleasant conversation that soon took on the delicious flavor of possibility, of an interest unspoken and perhaps unrealized, the quick exchange of intellectual flexing and playful one-upmanship stirring the restlessness, fueling the inevitable fuck up, he though detachedly, and with this, he smiled and skipped out the rusty green door towards the ocean. The young people gathered down on the beach, their bright uniforms of inequality both shabby and purposeful, fraught with too much caring what other's thought, the opaque mud in the little tidal estuary to the north clouding their thoughts. They took him in as one of their own; indeed, he was, he met the unspoken rules of conduct with exceptional fortitude, the girls all inquisitive and flirting, the boys casually jealous and offhanded.
Their unofficial ringleader, a swaggering, surreal young man who they all called Heavy, who wore filthy cowboy boots and old wrangler jeans 2 sizes 2 small, his lean frame leering forward with intent and determination, balanced on comical, sharp heels, here on the beach in Santa Cruz. He proved kind and endearing though, his rambling stories infused with humble respect for the earth and plenty of self-deprecating humor. Heavy couldn't have been an ounce over a buck fifty, tops, and his skin was taunt yet robust over six feet of muscle and weatherworn freckles, tangled blonde streaks falling down his neck like a runaway train. The girls all liked him, they followed him and asked pressing questions with the urgency of unrequited attention; his answer's always thoughtful yet illegible; written in the cryptic hippy language the young man had yet to learn. Heavy had it figured out though man, he had tuned in and tuned out or whatever that fuckin Leary guy had said; he'd found a quiet place on the fringes of things to sit and think and watch the endless conveyor belt of society spin it's little metal wheels, sipping on a beer and drawing fine maps of the future in his head.
Heavy was a sketcher, an improvisational artist who took in the fleeting details of circumstance and made some meaning out of it. The young man, well he was more of a landscape artist, romantic and thorough, processing the myriad subtleties of place long after everyone else had forgotten. A blessing and a curse, he thought, the comprehension of too much and too little; he needed something to take the edge off this reality a bit, and quickly accepted when one of Heavy's girls pulled out a tab of acid for him. Though the contemplative morning fog had scarcely lifted, he felt the heat and pressure of a New York disco in the damp, warm trip he was setting off on, and settled down on a dirty blanket on the sand, jesting and wrestling with Caroline and Emily, 2 of Heavy's girls, their defiant style both posed and effortless. Life was so strange and circuitous, full of unseen collisions with people who you wanted to meet from the start; the people who kept you awake at night squirming under the cover's in some suburban hellhole.
He thought the California coast was beautiful yet spoiled; exploited by slackers and the debonair, hippies and rednecks, all bent on experiencing the land in such a passive way, their grand beach houses and forest shack's merely appropriating a grandeur that needed no introduction. He always kept his body pointed forward, anticipating, ready for a good introduction, and secretly despised the way Heavy carried himself with effortless swagger, content to slouch and have the tribe come to him instead. The tribe, that's what they were, not a family or a cult or a hippy clan, they had such minimal cohesion it amazed him that they all stayed together so tightly. The girls were well-educated and pretty, their free-spirited demeanor a calculated escape from a neat and trim upbringing, caught in the claustrophobic confines of the 'establishment'.
The LSD and caffeine faded like a train whistle across the plains, and soon he caught the strong desire to climb something, anything, the beach had become filthy and gross, the sand itching as it clung to his feet and tan legs. He spotted a craggy gray outcrop a couple hundred yards to the north, and ran at it full stride, scrambling up the slick, mottled stone until suddenly he was the king of the world, or at least Santa Cruz. The bustling town spreads out to the east before him, and to the west, the horizon stretched unbroken to Japan, made of nothing but liquid and current. He heard a rough laugh and some jumbled dialogue below and turned to see Heavy and Meredith pointing and snickering, Meredith reeling backward a few feet and catching herself in the soft sand with each laugh. He quickly scrambled down the precipice and bear hugged the two before dragging them down into the sand, poking and laughing and tickling until they collapsed, gasping for air and breathing unspoken thoughts.
The air rang clear with the sharp call of the gull's and the shallow, heaving waves until Heavy broke the silence with a declaration. "Getting too warm here. How about you and me and Mer go up to my hideout in town and talk about the elements over tea, eh tiger?" Heavy called everyone tiger. He also spoke a lot of 'the elements', which as far as the young man could tell referred to drugs of sex. He was ok with either, as long as he was safe, safe from strangers, the cold, the dark, the wild, no! he wanted to the wild. But to be now was to be safe. The inside of Heavy's shack was warm and cozy. The uneven plywood and scrap walls were covered in tattered blankets, from which hung half-finished paintings, a brushstroke cut off suddenly like a car off a bridge. In one corner a huge mattress, or rather a stack of mattresses, lay uneven and inviting, books scattered around the edges with bright little notes coming out of pages haphazardly.
Without pretense of explanation, Meredith pulled him down onto the bed and demurely pushed him into the tangled mess of blankets and books. Soon, he was breathing shallow, ragged gasps, and slick with warm bare sweat, the three of them intertwined like some round, organic machine, gear's whirring with animal precision. He wanted this greatly and the mental fireworks came in uneven, staccato rhythms; yet somehow his mind still drifted lazily to ideas of the beach and the lime green trees, the ones that yellowed in harsh suburban glare back home. Heavy eased into him with smooth confidence from behind, and he shivered with static joy as his hand came low across his abdomen, rough callouses on perfect flesh. "That's it tiger, I said god damn!" said Heavy, and the young man smiled nervously, he was his, he was taken, Meredith now sat aside and watched in quiet awe; two men alive and connected. Clearly 4 years at Guilford Academy and 2 at Wesleyan hadn't prepared her for this. When they were done, he lay passively aside a filthy orange beanbag past the stove for a good spell, naked in a thin blanket and conscious of the immediacy of the present as if for the first time.
Meredith came over and started kissing, tugging at him again, but he declined irritably, then relented and wrapped her blonde pigtails in the shallow bony nest of his lap, the afternoon sun filtering in obliquely over the stove. There always had to be a next, he thought morbidly as the little teapot restlessly heated on the stove; always a next, now never lasted against the neurotic leanings of self. He like the silent, faithful ocean, the mountains framed in cold solidarity against man's impudence, how the only thing really familiar was the wild edges of what we'd made. Heavy's shack was spartan and coo, plugged in yet still off the grid to all the non-believer's out there. "Id rather be a whisper to another that a shout to a lover" he thought suddenly, as if speaking the first words after a monastic retreat, vocalizing eons of trapped intent. With that thought suspended like dewey morning ether, he bid Meredith a Heavy farewell for the moment and set off towards town, whistling and leaning back on his heels with the sharp spring of each step. The heavy afternoon air parted in swirling eddies in his wake, and soon he reached the colorful, pastel edges of downtown. He decided that a trip to the art museum [now free on Tuesday's after 5! a bold sign informed] was imperative, like Russia and America making peace or Nixon resigning, it just has to happen, goddamnit.
The bare white adobe walls framed a lot of hippy bullshit, and also some brilliant arrangements, bits of someone's life framed and hung out to dry in the intellectual oven of Santa Cruz. He half stumbled around, drunk on art and sex and youthfulness, until the older woman at the front desk politely informed him it was 6:50 and they would be closing in ten minutes. 10 minutes to the end of the world, he thought, and all he had to show for it were some fucking experiences, "I said god damn!" he whispered, and set off into the buzzing night.
The Art museum was superb, yet he left with the keen sensory deprivation that comes with over exposure to everything, audiovisual assault, and his head reeled as if his eyeballs had been peeled back involuntarily. The early evening was the best part of the California summer, he thought contently, as the heavy oppressive sun faded over the green hills, replaced by intermittent whispers from the sea, fog moving moving over the sidewalk like a lost traveler. Encounter's with other people were draining and physical; they demanded he brush up the rough edges of his personality. His last incident with Heavy and Meredith had been beautiful and unforgiving, and it left him wary of attachment. Perhaps it was the naive depth of experience he sought from strangers; either way it did little to elicit anything meaningful.
He impassively started back towards the beach, away from Heavy and Meredith and the claustrophobic inclusion of the cabin. He was filled with warm thoughts of the first night under the bright, grass green trees in the sand, their crooked branches reaching out of the mildewy postcard. The beach was nature's democracy, the neutral zone between the familiarity of land and the flat, alien landscape of the sea. A martyred, patchwork blanket bobbed in a neat bundle behind his back, the crown on a modest stack of all the earthly possession's he might call his, right now at least. Lying in the itchy, plastic sand, making eyes with the dull cosmic particles in the sky, he realized he didn't have to wake up with any promises or expectations, just the honesty of the moment. His senses were still the master of him though, and he wanted the freedom the Bhagavad Gita promised; completeness only came when nothing was needed.
Suddenly he despised all the posers ,the cretins, the cultural appropriators, they stole and worse, even worse they thought only when it pleased them, as if the experience was a part time gig. "Fuck those cowards who know only action and not consequence", he thought hotly, and with a pinprick of nervous hypocrisy, under the inky black sky. soon he was crying, tugging at the sewn-together fragments of the blanket; he could be warm and content next to Meredith or some of Heavy's kids in the cabin, another tab of acid skewering his brainwaves; instead he was cold and alone on the wet sand. He didn't want them though, to be a follower, yet leading wasn't a goal either. He just wanted the acceptance of the quiet forest and heaving surf; nothing was even good enough for them.
[To be continued!!]
