under the boardwalk

I took a day trip to Santa Cruz today. I am a hick tourist from the Midwest.

Santa Cruz has a beautiful beach front. There's an amusement park, roller coasters, a ferris wheel, right on the beach. There is the Pacific Ocean. There is the beautiful beach, which was full of people. People actually in the water. Blankets. Sand castles. Music blaring on bad sound systems. Carnival games. Bad food.

When I was nineteen, I lived in Bogota, Colombia for a year, studying at Universidad de los Andes. For the first several months, each time I tried to imagine where I was in the world, inside my own thoughts, I had to picture myself in Chicago, my hometown and then mentally picture myself being not in Chicago but in South America. I had to 'see' Bogota, Colombia, South America on a map in my head and then place myself 'down' there. For many months, I had to make a mental leap, to know where I was on planet earth. Gradually, I was able to 'know' that I was in South America. But at the beginning, my frame of reference was the Midwest and I couldn't quite picture myself being based on another continent. It was an interesting disconnect.

I have a similar disconnect about living in California. I do live here. I really do. Right? Sometimes, though, I am still 'in' Chicago, as a child, imagining California. Like maybe as a teenager, reading about Haight Asbury District in San Francisco, I would imagine a far-off jewel-of-a-city with what I imagined hippies looked like. Or when I imagined L.A., it was all palm trees with an ocean in the distance. It was all distant, dreamy, unreal.

Well, California is distant, dreamy and unreal to me now, even though I live here. I am pretty sure that this is my true, physical-plane, material-based reality: I live in California. Not that it really matters. Who knows? Maybe I am a pulse of energy, lost in time and space and I don't have a physical existence. How can I be sure?

In my heart, California is distant, dreamy and unreal. But it is real. I am pretty sure.

So. I am pretty sure I really was in Santa Cruz, California today. I am pretty sure I had a great time. We actually did walk under the boardwalk. And I sang the lines I know from the pop song 'under the boardwalk' and I asked my friend to pretend that I was the first person ever to crack such a dumb joke.

Under the boardwalk, we'll be having some fun. Under the boardwalk, out of the sun. Boardwalk!

I had lots of fun today.