In my mind, I'm going to Santa Cruz

 (with apologies to James Taylor)

   I went downtown, and I was in Santa Cruz. 

   It was Saturday morning.  It had rained all day Friday and all night, and the sky was grey and drippy.  I went downtown – “the Village,” as Claremont calls it – to buy a ticket for a concert that night at the Folk Music Center, a well-known and beloved music store and hub of the local music (the grandson of its founders is Ben Harper, and there was a tribute to the recently deceased Claremont-based David Lindley in the front window).

   The sidewalks were stained a dark grey after an unusual amount of rain over the last few months, looking as if they would sprout at any time.  The people who were out, noticeably fewer than on a typical weekend, had on wool sweaters and beanies.  The guy at the store, who sold me the ticket and said he was glad to see me back, was similarly dressed. 

   I looked around the store, with its walls lined with guitars, banjos, violins, drums and with baskets of stickers, friendship bracelets, Guatemalan coin purses.  I looked down the street, with the small, independent shops, like the Eye of Budha and the Himalayan Collections. 

   And I was in Santa Cruz. 

   Many of the shops in the Village are more fru-fru and chic, almost Orange County, but enough, like the Folk Music Center, are funky and “homemade” enough to remind me of Santa Cruz on the coast an hour or two south of San Francisco.  It is one of my favorite places, where I spent a lot of time, including when I attended a year-end retreat for years in the nearby redwoods, another place I cherish, before my surgery.  When I was there in the days leading up to the new year, it would rain and rain, and I fondly remember going to downtown Santa Cruz, specifically Pacific Avenue with its small shops (where I bought some of my used and new overalls) and buskers (more so before an apparent gentrification), and the pier and the Sunset Cliffs walk on afternoons when it wasn’t too wet.  I did the same a number of times on summer trips.

   It has become, in recent years, more and more difficult, if not impossible, for me to travel, to make these trips. (Look at all the trips I made in just the year before my surgery, as I describe in two recent posts.) This is because of my increasing needs (equipment, attendants, etc.), and it is one of the hardest things I’ve had to face.  Traveling was always very important to me, something that I loved, and it devastates me, it breaks my heart, that I can’t really do it anymore, at least not like I used to. 

   I have had to shift my mindset in order to adjust to this new reality, so that it doesn’t make me crazy or drive me into complete despair.  I’ve realized that, strangely enough, the pandemic has helped me with this.  When we all had to stay at home or not go far, I learned how to be satisfied with what I have right here at home or in this immediate area. (I’ve wondered how I would have handled this if I had not had the surgery and become more disabled and was as active as I had been.)

   It has been getting harder now that things are picking up again, if not going back to normal, and many people are doing what they used to do, including traveling.  Although I’m thinking about planning a short trip up the coast, but not as far as the Bay Area or even Santa Cruz, later this year, I’m wrestling with whether I should just be satisfied, happy, content with what I have right here.  I’m wondering if I shouldn’t bother with traveling, which, as much as I love it and as much as I miss the redwoods and seeing family and friends and eating at my favorite restaurants in the Bay Area, has gotten all the harder and more exhausting. 

   I am learning to appreciate Claremont even more.  I am trying to enjoy the concerts, plays and lectures at the colleges even more.  I am trying harder to see that the Village is unique, with its little shops, including one that fills with people to see well-known folk musicians and bands, and an unusual number of artists and musicians who hang out there.  I am trying to see and to keep seeing that Claremont is not that unlike many places I love and miss and, what’s more, I am known and appreciated here (as with the guy at the Folk Music Center). 

   Also, day trips, such as the one I took recently to see two friends (not to mention the creepy huge statue of Marilyn Monroe, panties exposed) in Palm Springs, help.  It might also help to find a few restaurants here that I enjoy as much as my faves in the Bay Area, San Luis Obispo and San Diego.