Santa Cruz

It is just after dawn in lompoc, a town of strip malls and one big mexican barrio on california's central coast. The town is surrounded by hills to the south and fields to the east, with the sea west and vandenburg airbase, where the US government launches all its intercontinental balistic missiles from, to the north. I sit in the growing patch of sun in the garden of my old friend steve, who is still sleeping after a heavy night of 'magic cards' (apparently like pokemon cards but for adults) and try to weave some cogent and interesting thoughts out of these last joyful weeks.

After san fransisco i headed south to Santa Cruz, where i had spent a dreamy year in 06/07 learning to play jazz, climbing trees and eating burritos (and beginning this blog). I was a bit worried that the nostalgic bubble might burst when i got back there and that i would find the trees i lived in chopped down and my friends doing shitty jobs. Fortunately that wasn't the case- though most of my cats had moved away, a couple of key friends were still doing their thing, activism was still yielding results (check out - http://scsolidarity.blogspot.com/2011/01/11811-demand-letter-delivered-at-secret.html - for an action and cheesy photo i got involved in whilst there) and, after a good dirty crawl in the woods i found my old spot, now a little overgrown but still with the same trees in the same places. I even found my old tarpaulin that i made a shelter out of that had been used and now abandoned by someone else, and jack told me that my 10 gallon army water container that i myself had found in the forest was now being used by one of his friends. Beautiful stuff.

As i sat there though i did feel something of what john steinbeck calls a 'mystical sadness', i can't put it more succinctly than that so i hope you know what i mean, i sat there with my mbira and several oranges and realised that if i was ever able to really live this life again- the sun, the surf, the forest, the huge quantities of free food, the musicians, the proximity of san fransisco- and just a week in santa cruz made me want to- i would have to come back either for a phd (which, if you get into one, you get PAID to do, unlike masters') or get married to someone to get a work permit, and commit myself for at least 3 or 5 years. This would of course mean not being in england and among the cold and the fucking conservative party but also not realising the plans i have for music and system-jamming there and all the amazing people that have been shaping me like a stone in the north sea and who i am not sure i could handle saying proper goodbyes to. So i guess the sadness is that at some point soon i am going to have to make a choice, and as lucky i am to have that choice, it still closes down lots of paths. Twice i have been picked up when hitching by english guys who have settled here, and both times i have wanted to be like 'but what about all your friends you left behind!!!' but i know if i did they would just shrug and my friends are worth more than a shrug.

What a funny word 'shrug' is when put down twice in the same sentence.

But hold on, i mentioned jack. I said goodbye to jacklast time just before i left america as he headed into the hills to make fire breaks (done with no machinery and is very hard work) and write poetry. At the time he was the darling of the santa cruz beat poet scene, and his tall, adonis like frame would tense up and jerk around with his hands and his words as he congealed mixed up thoughts into questioning sentences and animal-metaphors. He was not overtly political though, and when he helped me build my place in the woods i remember seeing him as a young person with huge potential for the world.

I found him again, 3.5 years later, in a garage that was called the 'office' on the east side of town. In 3 years he had quit the beat poet scene as too cliquey and found the best expression of his need for freedom and happiness in the anarchist movement. He had lived in the forest for 2 years, gone train hopping and was now one of the key organisers of Santa Cruz Solidarity. We spent a night in his place in the woods... after 30 minutes of walking and then crawling we came upon what can only be described as a hut with a plastic roof, containing a raised bed, desk, gas ring, supplies of canned food... a veritable palace compared to my old place; rat proof and water proof. A bottle of jack daniels (which tastes no more like whisky in america than it does in england) was found and we discussed our independent political journeys over the last years. And we had basically got to the same point, expressed in different terms- the need to build communities and reach out beyond the usual activist groups, the struggle to balance fighting hard in this shit system with building a better one outside it, maybe, MAYBE, knowing that this whole thing is soooo small in the paradigms of space and time that we can put our whole heart into it without worrying about it too much... and we talked about how to find Freedom.

This cheered me up no end, as did jamming and busking hard all over town and beach with percussion wizard Moises, as did the process of 'building' (i.e. Watching whilst max and macneil actually built) a beautiful and strong bicycle out of a ridgeback touring frame that max had given me. We did it at the bike church, an amazing bike workshop based on anarchist do-it-yourself principles- you buy a membership and then can use their tools and expertise and massive collection of spare parts to repair or build your bike. If you don't have any money you can work for credit (probably the only place in america where you get paid $10 an hour for sweeping floors) and buy your bike that way. After 3 solid days in the church, one test ride and one broken chain, the bike oozed power and confidence, with front and back pannier racks, 27 gears, foothold thingys and even reflectors.

On the last night before i left i took moises to see the Wailers (as in bob marley and the...). It said they were playing the whole of Uprising and i expected a load of wizened old men with dreadlocks at their knees playing some dirty dub reggae. I was severely disappointed. Out came four singers, all young- one who looked like bob, one who sounded like bob, and two ladies- with keys (playing synth horns) and just one original wailer, the bass player. They did poppy rearrangements of only the most well known tunes and were for all intents and purposes a cover band. And i got so smampfed that when a beautiful mexican girl who i had been talking to earlier came to dance with me towards the end i COULDN'T REMEMBER WHO SHE WAS, never mind what her name was. She watched my face as it dawned on me who she was and was suitably let down and unimpressed. Fucking schoolboy error and another message that says 'come on ben, you know you are a fool when you get too high, EVEN if it is at a wailers gig and the guy dancing next to you keeps passing you his pipe'

that night was a full moon. In the morning i ate some porridge with dumpstered papaya smoothie (i had made the most ridiculously delicious asparagus soup out of a sack of dumpstered asparagus the week before), checked all the screws on my bike and started pedalling south. Destination: Los Angeles.