lost on the coast

California
Then we fell into the shiny sea
The weight that drags your heart down
Well that’s what took me where I need to be
Which is here
Out on Zuma
Watchin’ you cry like a baby
California
At the dawn you thought would never come
But it did
Like it always does
All I know
And all I need to know
Is there is no end to love
I didn’t call ya
Words can scare a thought away
Everyone’s a star in our town
It’s just your light gets dimmer if you have to stay
In your bedroom
In a mirror
Watchin’ yourself cry like a baby
California
Blood orange sunset brings you to your knees
I’ve seen for myself there’s no end to grief
That’s how I know
And why I need to know that there is no end to love
We come and go
Stolen days you don’t give back
Stolen days are just enough
—————–
Last weekend, I backpacked the 25-mile Lost Coast Trail with five others. These are some of the photos I took, thoughts I had, and songs I sang on the trip.
—————–

Even out there, off the grid and on the trail, I couldn’t get video games out of my head. (I guess the parents of my generation were right in saying they would rot our brains.) Timing dashes forward to avoid incoming waves was like moving forward at just the right moment to avoid lava in a 2D platformer. Jumping from stone to stone over creeks was like being Pitfall Harry and jumping from alligator to alligator.

Much of the rocky coastal terrain reminded me of the Storm Coast in Dragon Age: Inquisition, a place I remember visiting with Cassandra.

More than any other game, though, I was reminded of OutRun, one of the games of my life. A California dream, I called it when I wrote about it earlier this year.

Every perfect California sunset sounded like this to me.
I think every perfect California sunset always will.
But it was the fantasy books I read as a teen I thought of most, as we walked like a party of adventurers, each of us wielding walking sticks like they were wizards’ staffs. I thought of how in those books, The Lord of the Rings in particular, characters would often sing old, sad songs to themselves, ancient laments as they traversed the terrain. And for a while, my heart heavy and my footfalls light, I sang to myself.
One of my companions came over and asked me what I was singing, so I smiled and sang the old, sad song I was singing to myself for her. This, too, is what California sounds like for me, and the past.
Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer’s out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone
I’m drivin’ by your house, don’t know you’re not home
But I can see you
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone





At one point, I feel inept, like I’m holding the whole group up (I am not an experienced backpacker) and the nasty, insecure voice inside of me that seizes on any opportunity to make me feel like a complete fuckup takes over. I lash out at a friend. I say something I don’t mean about myself, or that I do mean in the instant that I say it but that I know better than to believe.
A little while later, I apologize to my friend. I say it’s like I have this wounded child inside of me who I usually can quiet down but who still occasionally gets the better of me. My friend tells me that she and her husband both struggle with insecurity and she can’t always fight off her own and her husband can’t always fight off his own but each of them can usually lift up the other.
I can imagine this. I like the thought of it. I tell her that right now, for me, the lack of love and companionship in my life is just another thing for the voice to fixate on at times, more fuel for it to use in trying to tear me down.
What my friend said made me think about this passage by John Welwood, quoted by bell hooks in All About Love:
When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that this brings healing rather than harm, we make an important discovery–that intimate relationships can provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sacred space where we can be ourselves, as we are… This kind of unmasking–speaking our truth, sharing our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges–is sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and touch more deeply.
I want that kind of connection so much. The revealing of raw edges. I think a lot of my life has been about trying to take off masks.





One day at a campsite I do someone a small favor and he replies “Thank you, sir,” in that quick, perfunctory way men have of rattling off those words at each other. And he’s just a guy, just a dude making a mistake. I don’t hate him at all, of course. But I hate the reminder (even out here, I can’t escape it) that most people will never really see me as a woman, not in the true, immediate sense. And more than that, that people can understand that trans people exist, can watch Orange is the New Black or Transparent or whatever, and not “have a problem” with it at all, but also not care enough to even do the tiny bit of mental work it would take to go from thinking of trans women not as “men pretending to be women” and not as women* but as women, full stop. But this is exactly what people must do.
I wrote recently about the game Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and one line from it in particular: “We understand now our failure to touch, to belong.” I wrote, “I know what it is to feel like an outsider, to feel like the people around me aren’t really seeing me, and I have sometimes asked myself how much I am really alienated by others and how much I isolate myself as a preemptive defense against that alienation.” This event, this being misgendered out on the trail, reminded me that it is not just me, it is not just my failure. I cannot pretend to feel fully human and welcomed and acknowledged and respected with a person or with a group in which I am not even seen as myself in the most basic and fundamental way.


I tried to stop the voices in my head, the associations to games and pop songs, the voices of insecurity trying to tear me down.
I tried to stop my mind from turning everything into a story. The party of adventurers. The couples and the unchosen one. The stories I don’t always want to be at the center of anymore.
I tried to just walk along, and be in the moment. Quiet the voices in my head and take in the beauty around me. Sometimes I succeeded.

One day a sudden gust of wind lifted our tent right off the ground and flung it into a nearby tree where a branch tore right through the fabric. We slept under the stars that night. It was incredible.
Love can make you weep
Can make you run for cover
Roots that spread so deep
Bring life to frozen ground
Something so strong could carry us away
Something so strong could carry us today
Turnin’ in my sleep
Love can leave you cold
The taste of jealousy
Is like a lust for gold
I’ve been feelin’ so much older
Frame me and hang me on the wall
I’ve seen you fall into the same trap
This thing is happenin’ to us all

I was glad to get away for a little while. Off the grid. But I don’t just want to get away into nature. I want to get away into cities–other cities, my own city–and I want to get away from myself and into another person, or people.


We
So tired of all the darkness in our lives
With no more angry words to say
Can come alive
Get into a car and drive
To the other side
We
Are young but getting old before our time
We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind
Don’t you wonder what we’ll find
Steppin’ out tonight
We can leave the TV and the radio and the Facebook and the Twitter and the email behind.
Don’t you wonder what we’ll find?

Notes
griffinsierra said: California Girls forever!
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w-c-fields said:
Love this blending of holiday and games space. Great read.
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