Taste

There’s nothing quite like a big American meal. The USA’s cultures-within-cultures result in many kinds of meals, but I’m talking about the stereotypical. Peas and mashed potatoes. Steak and pot-roast. Corn-on-the-cob and cottage cheese. Spaghetti like your folks used to make.

Well, and that’s just it; I was living with my Dad for three weeks before moving “down the hill” to the beach. He has particular tastes that I grew up with, and they continue to this day. Between the many things with which I occupied myself in the desert, the meals he prepared graciously for us brought me back home in a special way. Each night we’d talk and talk, from the mundane to the philosophical, amidst the starchy and fatty goodness.

Once I moved to Long Beach, a new car in my possession, I was free to roam, and that meant Mexican food. That meant In N Out. That meant Trader Joe’s smoked gouda. That meant Taco Bell…which is NOT Mexican food (this statement is to the benefit of my foreign friends). Wordlessly, taste gave deep meaning to where I now was. Taste is the slowest but most enduring of my senses.

Smell

Smell, almost as enduring, conjures memories in the most immediate, powerful way. My Dad is a smoker. His place and his car had that immediate, powerful familiarity it always had. My childhood flashed across the screen of my mind. It continued to do so in those three weeks.

Once I moved to Long Beach? Well…smell both anchors me to and detaches me from the present. The anchor involves the smells I’ve known forever. The sea, and the salty wind. The gentle chimney smoke of autumn and winter. But the detachment happens in my new home. Many scents here repel me. They are unfamiliar, to the point where I feel out-of-place. Like I’m just observing myself live here. Like I don’t belong. I know this feeling will pass, but for now the unfamiliarity is one of several things that makes me yearn for London.

Sight

Ah, sight…. That which makes me belong in two worlds the most deeply. That which makes me yearn for London the most.

The vista stretches on and on, into the mountains and crumbling rock-hills of the high desert.  It holds beauty especially in its vastness. — The vista stretches on and on, into the mountains and crumbling rock-hills of the high desert. It holds beauty especially in its vastness.

Rosie’s Dog Beach stretches on and on and on….

I will always be in awe at my infinitesimal self next to the Pacific. I will always know interconnectedness to the world, next to the Pacific. Here, as always, my mind comes back to its natural state of calm and peace. Since moving I have gone almost every day. Each time I go is better than the last. I am me at the beach. Always have been. Always will be.

These days, however, something is hallow within.

As spring turned into summer in Greenwich Park.

And as Autumn bared its beauty in Greenwich Park. The vista stretches to many, many sights.  A collage of wonder and awe, history and people, nature and the spirit of being alive. — And as Autumn bared its beauty in Greenwich Park. The vista stretches to many, many sights. A collage of wonder and awe, history and people, nature and the spirit of being alive.

Within the entrance to Greenwich Park, 2019.

I miss London with a total passion. I am empty of that passion, this phenomenal palette with which I can imagine in the best way.

Yes: weather is far better in Long Beach. Yes: my family and old, dear friends are here. But as the season changed from summer to autumn, my mind always thinks of London.

The grounds of the Old Royal Naval College, and of Trinity Laban Conservatoire—my old school; 2018.

To experience the collage of London within the golden aura of nature is gorgeous in its own right. Yet it is beyond that entirely. Experiencing London in autumn means the potential to grow into your best self. In London, history, people, and nature exist in a balance which brings great wisdom when one attunes to that balance. And that wisdom seems boundless during autumn. It is a spectacular change that tells us, “change is all around, all the time, and this is inherently good.” Impermanence is the boundless wisdom of the present moment. In London, it is effortless to feel impermanence in this time of year.

In autumn 2020, it is difficult for me to feel full in Long Beach. In similar fashion the beach and Signal Hill—a singular hill from which you can see the entire Southland—become a wellspring of interconnectivity, and a beacon for the impermanent.

And yet I have to make the effort here. It was effortless in London Why? It’s because London changes with the seasons. Southern California barely changes. For all its sunny weather, it lacks imagination. It lacks manifestations of impermanence. London gave to me the deepest joy through its awesome history, people, and nature as as they all—unquestionably, inevitably, and gloriously—changed.

The best stories change with chapters. They grow with chapters. The phases of our lives are like chapters. I yearn, most of all, for chapters in the place I call home. Chapters by which I can know the best parts of life. I miss autumn in London. I miss the seasons in London. Terribly I miss them.

Touch

One night, I was chatting with my roommate shortly before going out to practice. I stepped into our backyard to get a glimpse of the Moon and Mars, that fine pair in the calm of evening. Instant knowledge. Instant peace. The feeling gripped me completely. It was the cold, dry air. The cold, dry air that only California can give at the end of the year. I was put fully into the present, limitless flashbacks of my life shining on the screen of my mind.

The Orange Circle in Orange, CA. A total favorite place of mine, and many others.

Downtown Santa Ana, during the autumn season in Orange County, 2020.

My mind overflowed almost dangerously. My inner peace grew and grew. My yearning for London diminished. For all I knew I may have stayed in the US….

Hearing

Music, though, always brings me to my true self. Hearing is what made me. Music is what makes me still. And music is equal to sight in how I yearn for London.

The first drive of the new car. What. A. Feeling. When was the last time I drove? Christmas-time…nearly nine months ago. I could swear that it felt like years ago…. Suffice it to say, I felt free. The smell of sweetness which permeated the car since its last owner. The taste of coffee still on my tongue from the morning. The sights of the grey-black road and the grey-blue, brilliant sky. Me. Free.

At times like these, I feel compelled to listen to meaningful music. The choice is indescribable; all I know is that the choice comes from something further beyond my mind, something from the realm of the transcendental. So I selected something which has evolved to complement my most beautiful experiences in London: Wayne Shorter’s “Black Swan,” off of his 90’s album High Life. So I set off…and just as suddenly the music had filled my being. Immediately I had tears. Immediately I pulled over.

And I just sat. The road, the sky, the car, and all of my senses were gone. It was just the music and my memories of London. My mind was no longer the screen for projection. It was now reality of the moment. I projected onto it that which I left behind. I reached inward, deeply, to reach outward, straining, hoping London was just outside, just around the corner….

“Black Swan” is a brief, moving piece. It moves beyond reason. Emotion, like the piece’s harmonies, grows and calms like the tide, and the wind picks up, and up again…. Then it is gone.

Memories, after all. And so more tears welled up….

This car, this place, California…this is my reality now.

Epilogue

November 7th, 2020. Rain had come and gone. By late morning the wind was ample, and the clouds were artful. The sky was clean. The world was changed. Cold, but damp air blew in fresh droves across Long Beach. Rain came, then went. The world was changed, yet my mind was monopolized by one thought: this is a typical autumn day in London.

I drove out to Signal Hill, to get a glimpse of sights I know and love: downtown Los Angeles, and the city of Long Beach.

This weather convoluted my sight; my smell; my taste; my touch; my hearing. I perceived Long Beach, but my senses knew only London…on day like this…in Long Beach, California.

This day, November 7th, 2020, is a day when I knew the presence of both cities, together. In the most profound way my reality became a duality. I stood, dumbfounded, at this incredible wisdom. My melancholy ebbed and flowed with the winds as much as my gratitude did. Melancholy moves wistfully in the finite, though. It’s the latter—gratitude for friends, fortune, and especially family—that stretches beyond any horizon I’ve known.

…meeting the skyline of Los Angeles in autumn, way in the distance.

So I stood there, perceiving both London and Long Beach at once—and a small balloon displaying “Biden-Harris” drifted past the vista. Alas: there was something to which both cities could relate. There was something to which the whole world could relate.

Only moments later, an SUV pulled alongside the cul-de-sac. Two men got out—Asian-American and African-American—and left the doors open. They talked and stretched for a run. Even then, they had a gait. “Here Comes The Sun” played joyously from the SUV’s speakers. Light danced upon the landscape. The balloon wafted lazily away into a little speck. The sun came; for a time, at least. I closed my eyes, perched against the guard rail, smiled, and let it all be.

One of the guys said to the other: “yeah, I mean, that’s a whole different feeling when you’ve got the world on your shoulders!”

Well…