A Larger Perspective

Having grown up in the Midwest, I often contemplate why the West Coast feels like home to me. I think it’s because the seasons within me are so extreme I need a milder climate to maintain my balance. To the extent that’s possible, anyway.

When I am in a longing way, I yearn for my family, for the wind in my face as I slide down the hill on an enormous bank of snow, for the embrace of my brothers and sisters and mother.

Living in California I am rootless. I’ve kept it that way. It’s like a desert of privacy with lush gardens of friendship just beyond my physical reach. When I’m feeling sorry for myself, I think about this Disneyland of madness that is California. For god’s sake, it’s completely man-made - literally a desert transformed into obsession with youth, fame, money, celebrity… Why did I choose such a place to call home? It feels like a mirror to me. I came here to create myself…. Make something or someone beautiful out of the dry, scorching emptiness I can believe I am sometimes.

Then I have to laugh because the mirror also reflects freedom, choices, acceptance of the incredible variety of lifestyles and beliefs people choose to live. And when I open more, I realize that this little patch of land is merely part of the surface of a planet whose core is magnetic, molten and pulsing with life. I remember that I am that too. All of us are. Pulsing with life that tastes like me. Pulsing with life that tastes like you. Not alone in a desert…. Alive and together creating the heartbeat of our lives.