It wasn't enough for the phone to ring, not enough to leave it unanswered. It wasn't enough to see the caller i.d., to know exactly who it was, and still to resist both the urge to call back and the inclination to brood over it.
It wasn't enough to ignore all of that and get up in the morning to pack. It wasn't enough to fight back the weariness and to walk to the BART station with the Mission sun taunting me, as it will. It wasn't enough to do all of the practical, necessary things.
It wasn't enough. None of it prepared me for the uncertainty hurtled into the banality of this morning. Fitting it should originate from California. Fitting it should feel just like a fault line yawning, stretching, rubbing its sleepy eyes. Fitting that, as I made my way towards steady, solid ground, towards the grey coldness I associate with truth and reality, that California should fashion its own earthquake, a personal one, just for me.
It wasn't enough to take the right steps, to make the best of it- no, to appreciate how fortunate I am, not enough to accept the imperfection of fulfilled dreams and celebrate them anyways. This is California. California. California that I claimed had chased me out of my home. The same California lured me in again, into unreasonable hopes, teased me to dream once more, inconvenient and unlikely dreams.
Maybe it's like that dying gasp, like that unanswered phone call. Some things, you learn, are impossible and so you let them go. But I can't deny California, even if it's simply offering up a chasm of inevitable disappointment. It's worth the fall.
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