Love letters, from Laguna.

The coffee shop I like to go to is on PCH. When I first moved here from HB coffee shop was the very first thing I looked up.  You can sit in the alley and see and speak with the sea.  A corner away is the beach where at the top of the street an oak tree stands so great-big and enchanted I am certain you can get to Avalon through there.  Seriously, there's even a random statue of Pan on that corner which always makes me think about the artists then hippies that mapped this town.  Supposedly, Ken Kesey lived on my street decades ago when it was a commune.  There is an unfinished, always under construction straw-bale sprawling mansion which is the first house on the right and most times when the man is up there under the tarp with the yellow light on slapping on some earthen adobe I think of that.  The free love vibes that built all the funky houses, tucked away back in the canyon where I live.  The folks in and around town comfy-clothed with the little lippy smiles that embody that, still.

Sometimes people in their frenzy get under my skin which is what happened yesterday.  I was in the alley fusing creative writing with thesis research and had really dropped in to the flow.  This hetero couple shows up, he was loud, she louder and that's one of the first things I learned to hate about Southern California.  The obnoxious warm-up suit men with too white teeth, yoga pants women with fake tits fake face or at the least fake blonde hair.  These people always talk too loud and are purposefully drawing attention to themselves.  Often they have a little annoying fuckn dog.

Our coffee shop almost never gets these types, who in my experience don't take the time to meander and sip and stare at the sea.  Anyhow I got up from the alley as soon as they sat down and went inside to the high top in the window.  It had just cleared out and the man was there, beginning the afternoon ritual of roasting the beans.  It's the only coffee shop I've ever been a regular at that roasts their own.  The whir noise and knee-deep smell has become part of the atmosphere for me of love.

It was a little after four so the sun was muted by the horizon clouds.  Hazy orange light came through the front window in a slant from the blind pulled half down.  I was writing and thought I saw a guy I knew.  It started me thinking about how many men I've dated since I've been here.  A lot.  Real, adult dating.  I don't drink so not talking hook-up or first night sex followed by oh shit what next.  But like, I meet men on the beach or out and about or for a while on the dating site and then the customary phone calls and get to know you dates.

A face from the past was on my radar yesterday, we talked for a few minutes about how much we have in common because of our beach lifestyle.  He made me think about this.  Specifically:  I have dated a lot of good, just not right for me men.  Since right around when I moved to Laguna two years ago it started with a lifeguard in Newport and pretty much since has not stopped except for last year when I took three months off.  When a funny outspoken Brazilian guy who drank too much got me playing the  bullshit hang-out games I was so good at in Ocean City before I came west.

I am actually single right now, not dating anyone.  Enjoying the golden silence, considering the momentum of my life.   My life, built by me, measured out in breaths I take in and out and choices I've made.  Clear seeing, looking out on a life made by my own two hands! I have only four months left of school, including this month.  I am not ready to talk about that yet, but it is there like a new part of my breath and I am tending it everyday.  As a rule, since a gnarly gnarly break-up in 2008, I keep my love life tight and quiet on the internet.  We broke up the same month I got on Facebook, so it's sorta been how I reinvented.  Figured out who I was, separate from a man. That's six years behind me now though--and in the orange haze light, that sun that spilled over my hands like it was meant to feed the ink from finger tap to screen, this all amounted in my head yesterday.  Thinking on the men that have showed up as I've walked this whole, wild way made me pause and see this whole, wild way:

My god, I have been in Laguna over two years now.  That is longer than I have ever lived anywhere, ever!  Since I first left my mom's when I was 18.  I have stayed in one place.   I stayed!   Even at Philosopher's Terrace, where I had my name on the lease from 98 to spring in 02, I still left to go live twice with mom.  Alcohol and drugs.  They'll do that shit to you.

I almost left, last summer.  I almost fell back, like a wise woman can slide a minute

into dumb girl hang out games, to my old style of cut and run.

Last week I was picking out furniture for my sun deck, this little wooden alter built up out of the side of a Laguna Canyon wall.  Underneath, my compost bin.  Attached to post, my hammock swings.  I just bought fins, snorkel gear, got my wetsuit out to live in my trunk for easy access.  It would seem rather than making cut and run plans, my intent is to snuggle even further down and in.

What contentment, to nod at the coffee roaster, glance up from the orange-gold on my hands. It doesn't feel melodramatic anymore, like something I need to figure out.  It just is, easy as how the same sun that rises will eventually go down.   Love letters, from Laguna.  From and to my heart, my soul.  They are my own :)

 On their Facebook page! Me in the alley.  

I put their sticker over the Starbucks logo on the plastic cup I reuse.  

Which cracks people up.  It goes everywhere I go.