Dear California
We are with you.
Dear California, you are the best of us.
You are the dreamers and strivers, the upstarts who were just too restless to stay put. And while some of us went East (I did) to the silver sparkling city with the Statue of Liberty lifting her light, some of us (you) went west to the holy sequoias and the mind-bending bent-tree deserts and the vast peacefulness alongside the ocean where the sun sets. Of course some of you were already there, have always been there, your families reaching all the way back into the mists along the coast, speaking Chumashan and Shastan and Yuman. You who speak Spanish and Chicano are newcomers, also you who speak Cantonese or Punjabi or Tagalog. But there you are, and there you belong.
And the rest of us dreamers and strivers and barefoot upstarts who like to walk along the surf’s edge, we are come lately, with our mission brogue and surfspeak and AAVE and Valley girl. But we came, too, and keep coming. And you hold us all.
Oh, dear California, we are all of us there with you now – either in our cars jamming the freeways or in spirit -- because of your sacred trees and the water lapping blue against the shores and because of the poppies blooming in orange drifts to the edge of the continent, our continent. We are there because of your genius engineers turning their garage creations into magical machines that power our world and drive our innovation (transform us, for better, for worse). We are there because of that sign on the hillside – HOLLYWOOD – that spins out our American imagination in vivid color and sends it to dark space to bounce off the satellites and from there around the globe: showcasing all our beautiful promises to one another, and all our terrible failings, but mostly, always, our ambition to be better somehow through the stories we tell one another and share with the world.
Our dear California, you are the wild beautiful part of our imaginations, our respite from the gray grind over here in the east where we fight about whether we can be what you already are: a beautiful space that speaks all our languages and holds all our different kinds of energy and seeks fairness for all (and is willing to muck around in the messiness of that ongoing search) and accepts that love is love is love is love is love is love is love….
So I say to you now as our American fight comes down on you, that we are with you. We see you rising up to protect what we too love. We thank you. And we will rise across the country this Saturday. We will rise with you, and stand our ground. Our ground. Our ground.
The tanks are rolling across our ground toward you. You first. Because you are the best of us. You are all of us.
And we are all with you.