I have a habit of over thinking, and never more so than when I am in Santa Cruz, California.
The beauty is undeniable, a town where the hills roll down to a spectacularly indented, foamy coastline. There is a university and with that there is a community of astonishingly diverse cultural influences. The farmers’ market yesterday offered us Ethiopian, Uzbek, South African, Mexican,Vegan and Jewish cuisines,
And fresh fruits grown locally,
And the usual musical accompaniment:
All of which is normal summer activity across North America. People are doing this everywhere.
Santa Cruz prides itself on not being normal, it is one of those stars in the constellation of “keeping things weird” which includes Portland, Austin, Boulder and Taos among many other western cities. It’s a city of contrasts and contradictions that was that way in 1982 when I came as a foreign student and it still is today. Perhaps more so.
Layne settled here after graduating the University of California, Santa Cruz campus as so many students have done. She was a lawyer defending homeless protestors and murderers and came to realize she wanted another trade. Teaching adults in Key West suited her much better. Plus she got a pension.
I grew up here if you count being a 24 year old neophyte at life as being a human that needed to grow up. I learned to eat ethnic food here, I watched movies on the big screen, I learned the drug culture was not for me and I fell in love repeatedly with numerous unsuitable women. They were I am sure worthy but they were not right for me. It was a long and painful lesson. I walked the streets with much silly youthful despair. Night and my Minolta camera with black and white film were my consolation.
I lived in a boat and rode a bicycle. Dogs aren’t allowed to live in the harbor to this day so my camera was my companion. I sailed my boat,
I drove my Volkswagen bus to the mountains or Mexico for vacation. My wheel has come full circle.
Santa Cruz is a town that has stayed the same and has transformed radically depending on how you view it. I have done the same.
Once upon a time I read the news on KUSP a community radio staffed by eccentrics and geniuses and then I took up a better job in Key West telling the cops where to go on the radio, a sensible job that paid well and liberated me into dignified retirement. A job I held with skills painfully learned in my California apprenticeship.
Santa Cruz lives it’s own struggle between common sense fighting geriatric idealism, multi million dollar homes versus filthy homeless encampments and the tedium of lost dreams and hopeless romanticism.
And some of us, the smart ones, drift through enjoying the beauty and ignoring the chaos. But I’m not as smart as my dog.
