It's Real

Elie at Zeppelin Hall in Jersey City

 I haven't posted in four months.

I told myself at this time last year that I would post to the blog at least once a week, to help develop a following to market my forthcoming novel, maybe like the following I used to have some ten years ago when this was an indie music blog, back when sharing mp3's was a thing and indie music blogs were my life and I got hundreds of interested page views a day. But  mp3 blogs are not coming back and I'm not going to spend a couple hours a week crafting blog posts. I could have, this year especially, when Covid made work less demanding and travel nonexistent and activities that I used to do in my free time--concerts, visits to Manhattan and Brooklyn, everything--no longer viable. So I had time. But I poured that time into writing my next novel, into my dog Elie, and unfortunately way too much Netflix and Chill, something I always thought was lame but now has become my nightly existence. And now that the beautiful fall weather in Hoboken, NJ, has turned to winter cold and dark at 4:30, even the brief fleeting joys of going to write at one of the many outside bar/restaurants after work each night (often with Elie!) are gone, as it's been too cold and too dark to do much more than stay inside once the work day finishes.

​Biden won the election. And a vaccine is coming. But this is going to be a rough winter after a hellishly bad year and I wish I were in California right now. Maybe always.

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On March 2 2020, I was in Huntington Beach. Sitting at a coffee shop several blocks away from downtown. It was a Monday so it was quiet, and it was warm enough to sit outside and write, something I couldn't do in NJ at the time. The coffee shop was very dog-friendly and I sent pictures to my boyfriend about how great it would be if he and Elie were there with me in Huntington Beach, and I could walk down to the coffee shop with Elie every morning and sit outside and write. That was my dream at the time. I remember it vividly. That was a long time ago.

Downtown Huntington Beach

On the evening of March 2, 2020, I got on the red-eye back to NJ. I'd been out in California for a work trip the week before and I extended the stay for a long weekend in Manhattan Beach and then on Monday headed to Huntington for the day before my flight back. On the plane, the woman in the seat in front of me had wipes that she used to wipe down her seat and the seats around her and I didn't pay it much mind. I mean, I think I thought "that's weird". Then the guy across the aisle did the same thing. Then the woman in front of me was sharing her wipes with other passengers and everyone was wiping down their seat around me because back on March 2, the "Coronavirus" was just becoming 'something' in America (at least in the news, in reality it had been here at least a month and was already spreading rapidly back where I was heading) but "surfaces" were the worry at the time--an unfounded worry it seems--and we should have all been wearing masks to stop the spread, which no one on that flight was doing (if I recall correctly). And of course, that would be the last flight I would take for 6 months. It would be the last time I'd leave the tri-state area for 6 months. And it would be the end of "normal" life as I'd known it for much, much longer. It's kind of crazy how much I enjoyed that day in Huntington Beach, at the coffee shop, in the beautiful weather, dreaming of being out there permanently with Mike and Elie. And then I'd be stuck in my Hoboken apartment for much of the next 6 months, depending only on the vagaries of NJ weather for any chance of freedom to go out and enjoy the world. 

Manhattan Beach Pier

A couple years ago, I brought Mike to Manhattan Beach for the first time. I'd been going there a lot, probably 20 separate visits in the past decade (maybe more?) but Mike had never been. He'd never been to California and I believe I had a work trip up in Visalia but we spent a few days in Manhattan Beach before and after the 3-hour drive up near Fresno, as vacation. And I remember we went into a "surf-style clothing" store, which had way too expensive shorts and T-shirts but Mike was shopping and I took a seat and the laid-back vibe at the time in the store--which had tons of sunlight and wide open breezes--it just felt amazing. And I remember specifically that "It's Real" by Real Estate was playing on the speakers in the store. And I thought at the time this is a perfect feeling and a perfect song and I could live here forever.

Since that time, my musical interest has maybe mellowed a bit from the harder indie rock tracks and punk songs I used to love. I mean, I still love them, but I spend the majority of my writing time listening to my "Super Summer Mostly Mellow Mix" on my iPhone, which is full of tracks by Day Wave and DIIV and Wavves and Beach House (you see the mood I'm creating), and of course a lot of Real Estate, which is a beach band by a different name and "It's Real" is such a calm and perfect song, evoking a mood--that mood, sitting in the sun and the breeze at a surf shop in Manhattan Beach. 

Ever since his first visit, or especially since his second visit--when we made our way down to San Diego--Mike and I have talked about moving to California. I think I've always wanted to, or at least was really strongly considering it every single time I've spent time in Manhattan Beach. But it's a big move, a much bigger move than my "big move" from the suburbs of Central Jersey up to the "city" (or Hoboken, right across from The City), and one I haven't made yet. But because Mike loves San Diego so much and I love Manhattan Beach so much, we'd decided to compromise by moving "in between" (in our dreams, when we talk about moving to California), which is basically Orange County and the place I knew best of Orange County was Huntington Beach so I'd been looking at housing and apartments and where to live in Huntington if we moved there, when I went out there in March of this year. So it wasn't quite the pipe dream to be dreaming of going to that coffee shop every morning with Elie. Of walking downtown to the bars (not that I can't do that in Hoboken) but then walking a couple blocks further and being on the beach. An amazing huge wonderful beach by the Pacific Ocean and yes, Huntington is way more tourist-y and crowded in-season than Manhattan Beach but the housing is also much cheaper and there's a huge dog beach for Elie and it's like a 30-40 minute ride on the PCH between them, which I could do all the time, much easier than a flight from Newark. And I wouldn't have to be in Newark.

The novel I'm currently working on features scenes in Manhattan Beach and Huntington Beach. I don't want to spoil with more information other than it is a rewrite of a novel I had written some time ago, featuring some of the same characters in different situations (much like I WILL BE OKAY) and the California scenes are all new. And they are invigorating. The experience of writing about these characters' experiencing a place I've come to love is what is starting to convince me to move there, permanently, at some point in my life. Now I'm not sure what that point is because I still love Hoboken and still love Manhattan and Brooklyn and haven't been able to enjoy the latter two almost at all in 2020,. And of course, all my friends and family are within a couple hours of my home, which makes it a really tough decision to make. And I may not like it there, living instead of simply vacationing in SoCal, but I said the same thing when I moved to Hoboken 8 years ago--that this was simply on a trial basis and most likely I wouldn't stay but not only have I stayed I have not even remotely considered going back to life in the suburbs of Middlesex County, which--looking back now--was just not what I wanted or needed out of life. 

Anyway, when I started writing this post, I was listening to Real Estate's first album and taking a break from the novel and dreaming of the temperate weather we've had this weekend in Hoboken all year round and also -- really, really missing SoCal. My boyfriend is studying to be a nurse so at the very least we will be in NJ until he graduates, and that's a year and a half away so unless something shocking happens I will be spending two more cold winters here in the Northeast. But I will be back out there again, maybe in the spring, maybe next summer and next fall and hopefully enjoying a Covid-free spring in NYC a couple more times and then maybe, just maybe, I'll be ready to retire from the cold and head out to the west coast with Elie and Mike and a dog-friendly coffee shop in Huntington Beach, with that novel published and possibly coming out, and me and Elie enjoying the sun with Real Estate playing on my airPods in my mind. I really do want it to be real.

OMFG the official "It's Real" video is all about dogs! I literally had no idea as I was writing this. This must be fate. California here I come ! (date TBD)