Cali Called Me And I Listened: The Butterfly of The Boardwalk

To my Angels: thank you

Oh, dear Angels of mine, you must be exhausted. I learned of the land of Cali as a young being. Once I knew California existed in reality, it was as if the Ancients of All Existence had a direct pipeline to my brain, with a message on repeat: California, go to California.

I would go there some day, I knew it, was an undeniable pull my whole life.

Made up my mind,

make a new start.

Going to California

with an aching

in my heart.

~Led Zeppelin

So I did.

Was in my early 20s, with one suitcase, a purple backpack, my laptop, an old school flip phone (pre-smartphones) and no real plan other than bliss, a plane ticket, a hotel, a rental car and a credit card I used for it all. As if some gazillionaire was going to pay it off, when I traveled to California for the second time that year. This time on credit.

I’m going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali.

~the Notorious B.I.G.

Spoiler alert: There was no one who would pay off my credit card, besides me. And I knew, the whole time, I’d be the one who had to. But that was future me’s problem, and it was. Dear past me, my apologies. Present me, you rock, being all debt free!

At this point in my life, before I left University, three credits away from graduation, my credit is wrecked, without ever having used one myself. Ah yes, also past me, who opened a credit card for someone else, while in a past relationship. And oh sure, he’d pay me back.

Which he did up until I left him, and he left me with a three grand debt in my name on a giant box kind of flat screen television of thee ye old days. Only he kept the TV, and had me deal with the creditors once they caught on. Small claims court and have to see that fuck again, or pay it?

I paid for my freedom and will many a time after. My fuck ups.

But I was in the hole, blasted credit, and 3k was, and is huge money in my world. Yet, oh yes, Jenny you still have one credit card of your own!

With a $10,000 limit that I had never used.

You can see where this is going…

So, as I sat with paying that 3k credit mistake, I thought, well, my credit is already fucked, still have this untouched credit card I got at college (at 19) for a free shirt ugh, a free shirt. As an adult, I see how fucking predatory that was, kinda like American federal student loans, I’ll leave that one here.

Soapbox tucked away for the night.

Hmmmm, what the fuck do you want to do with your life?

Go to California and ease the heart.

And I don’t live in California now. I made it back alive, with only the purple backpack, debt I’d pay off for the next five years, my life, and a little black-headed dog, with black and white spots on her body and floppy ears, my Stellar.

Stellar, down the road, was eventually stolen by a different ex. Yikes stripes, again. Another story for another day. I hope she lived a happy life. She brought me such happiness. And she saved my life.

You could say Stellar was my savior then. As she got older and bigger I could no longer stash her away in that purple backpack. She eventually became the size of a medium lab.

She was so little, I’d carry her on top of my black hardcover sketchbook around Venice Beach and then sneak her into the apartment.

She grew every day. Then one day she was too grown and we were caught red-pawed. Her existence forced me back home from Cali. I wouldn’t leave without her.

I think my friend knew, if she gave me that puppy, I’d have to go.

My Stellar, who was given to me by the fortune teller of the Venice Beach boardwalk.

And after few months on Venice Beach, life was getting dicey.

The boardwalk had a palatable shift in energy. You could tell what energy it began with had certainly changed. Like the way leaves flip to the white green underside before a storm. So many things had started happening, scary things.

And after getting a gun pointed at my head in Venice, you think that was a great Universal sign, perhaps facing death, I needed to return to my opposite coast again?

Not yet.

It was eventually that beautiful Stellar though, not almost losing my life. I wasn’t going to lose her. I think my fortune teller knew.

I mean, she was a fortune teller after all.

I’ve been told all my life that my tragic downfall is seeing the good in all people. And I still do. Even after facing eyes that looked like a cellar smells.

I can still hear their goodness with every heartbeat.

I can still see their light.

Call me whatever you’d like, I do think redemption is possible for all lost. Maybe not in the way we experience life, but everyone deserves to live with the life they created. Do horrible shit, you can live, yet you must live with it.

The man who pointed a gun at my head, while I sat on the concrete edge of a flower bed, under the stars, on a street running vertically to the beach, was someone I knew. One of the homeless, with whom I had sat with, laughed with and listened to his life stories many a time. He was someone I called a friend.

Yet, in his meth movements, this day we were strangers. What he thought I had could get him to his next meth movement. He no longer saw me then, he only saw me as a vehicle for his next hit.

Sam approached me, as he would, asking for a lighter. Yet, it was like his soul had checked out. He was tweeking hard. (Sam, not his real name.) I fished into my pocket for a lighter.

I turned to face him, and he pointed the gun at my face.

Me: Sam? Sam? What the fuck are you doing? (very quietly spoken)

Sam: Give me your bag.

Me: Sam, it’s me, you know I’m almost broke. It’s me, Jenny, I pleaded. Desperate for recognition in that moment.

I handed him what cash I had, as if I were reaching to pet a baby bunny. No way I was going to lose everything by giving him my bag. Lucky I am. Thinking about it now.

I’m not even sure if Sam recognized me or not, but I’m still alive, so there’s that.

Thank the Universe my head was running clear during the Cali times. Because anything else, and it would have been a whole bunch of fun house mirrors reflecting into fun house mirrors I shouldn’t face.

As I look back on that time in Venice, nearly twenty years ago now, I can see as if I were a mother listening to the stories of her own wild child.

This is the first time I have ever written about it. I tucked it away for nearly two decades. The details, the scary stuff, the joyful stuff because it was all shrouded in shame.

Shame for going against the grains of society. But I guess that’s what society is for? To shame us into conforming, even if it’s killing us.

That time was trippy and surreal enough without any drugs.

A reoccurring character those days was a white haired, long white bearded Willy (not his real name) a bright, colorful old hippie dude in bright, colorful old clothes. A man who had definitely done way too much acid back in the day.

And he would often make appearances in Venice, a kind man with a beautiful sense of humor. He walked around the boardwalk often, with quite the accessory around his waist he found in the dumpster…a dildo. Good dude, just toasted beyond toasting.

See why it’s not a good idea to do too many drugs kids?

You only get one brain per lifetime.

Oy, me and my brain were in hot water. I can see that version of me without judgment, with blessings she made it back home with Stellar. And kept saying “no” to the things laid out before me.

Like the mountain of cocaine party.

Which made me absolutely solidify the choice to never ever do cocaine. Cocaine is the devil. I am convinced, after seeing what it does to people over the years. It’s like that parasite that takes over ants’ brains, not dead but possessed by it enough to not quite be alive.

I watched soberly, over the course of the cocaine mountain party, my peace loving hippie musician friends of the boardwalk turn into raging assholes.

But I am wandering into yet another story. Let’s stay on the path the best we can.

There’s definitely something, someone, somewhere keeping an eye on me. Because this wasn’t the only brush with death I’ve encountered.

All in. It was usually because I am one of those “all in” people. I wanted to experience southern Cali, after the ashram adventure and had returned home, all in.

I nearly flew from Northern Cali to Southern Cali, one place to another. But returned home from the ashram experience knowing I’d never be satisfied spending forty years in the same classroom teaching the same thing. That was not my path. Am not one for routine, obviously. I was going back to Cali.

And nothing could stop me.

So, there I was, returning to Hollywood a couple weeks later. Wild child.

I’m starting at a swank hotel, ordering room service every night, living life like a 1950s starlet on a seven year contract with Paramount.

What a different life it feels like now.

Spending my days, not on a hot movie set, but driving up and down Pacific Coast Highway in my rental car, blasting music. Completely blissful without my fully formed pre-frontal cortex (Executive functioning, who cares! Be quiet brain, I’m in Cali!) Fulfilling a long held dream. Smelling the Pacific Ocean of California days I had imagined since I was a young one.

Discovering SoCal on my Discover card.

Until that one fine day, I found the Venice Beach Boardwalk. There was no other place I wanted to be. Immediately, it felt home like. This was where I felt I needed to be.

It was art. It was artists. It was stretches of sand to get to the ocean, a concrete “boardwalk” that runs along the beach, and the man-made canals to which Venice got its name.

It was grand human beings, drum circles on Tuesdays when the sun went down and bustling selling of art all week on the boardwalk. But money to be made for real by the bougie on the weekends. It felt so familiar. So like home. I made many friends.

What a dream I was living in. Even though it was the first time I had ever been there, everything felt like a recalling a memory of my own life.

Meanwhile, I was nearly broke at one point. Sustained on iced coffee, a meal a day and plenty of food for Stellar. A good, warm, safe roof, thankfully, (definitely not the swank hotel by this point) and all the time in the world to meet the people of the Venice Beach boardwalk.

Me and Stellar.

I was as close to homeless as one could get. And accepted by all the strata of the boardwalk, the very well-off, and the not-so.

They called me the “Butterfly of the Boardwalk.”

I flitted from one grand human being to another, and listened all day long to their stories. How they got to be where they are, from all walks of life.

Every human being deserves compassion and reverence for their existence.

Many houseless artists, living out of tents and cars, shopping carts, and travelers. I knew them all.

I often think about where all the characters I became friends with are now today.

Here I learned more than any of my years of schooling.

How beautiful all people are. No matter where they’re at in life. No matter how much money they had, or if they hadn’t showered in a week. How much we all need love. Everyone deserves love and compassion.

Treat everyone you meet as if they are God in disguise.

You see, in my late teens, early 20s, I barely had any care for life really. While caring so much about it at the same time. It was this weird mix of I must live it all now, with who the fuck cares.

Because, after a traumatic incident at newly 18 and the resulting pits of a cold, wet bottom of the well deep depression for a couple of years; then getting back to life, as if I had another chance. While simultaneously not caring what was to come. I did want to live again. And live all the moments.

My early 20s were a mash up of pure practicality and pain, excelling in college, having three jobs. The front facing me. And the me that had been strapped down by darkness for two years, haunting this resurrected version, constantly reminding the one who had crawled out —

Now you really have to live, enjoy all the moments!

And when you lose two years, beginning at 18 because of someone else, it’s an enormous section of your life so far. It’s a big deal. And coming so close to not even wanting to be alive anymore. It changes you.

I’ve always been good at putting on a brave face. I was the one others came to for help. But I didn’t need help. Oh yeah, I really did. I was going through PTSD flashbacks, deadly depression, panic attacks and still managing all the responsibilities on my plate, until I couldn’t anymore.

So, here I was losing more life, classes, unpaid practicum in a classroom, a controlling relationship and full-time hours plus OT, without the actual overtime (cause ‘Merica — three part time jobs.)

And none of it felt right. It felt like I was, once again, being dragged onto a path not even remotely resembling any of what I saw for myself.

At 17, I was alive and bright. Filled with color and love, creativity and me. I had always felt like me.

Hope.

After 18, I was only a body, barely functioning, barely alive. Me no longer existed. Stolen. Emptiness.

At 19, I could be directed to do pretty much anything, because even my thoughts had decided this existence wasn’t for them.

Autopilot.

Never mind writing, or creating. I’m lucky I made it out alive, which is a sentence you’ll see me write many a time.

The haze nearly completely lifted by 23. I returned to a pastel version of the bold I once was. The years from 20–23 were reconstructing, shedding the heavy pains and heavy memories. Pouring actionable energy into rebuilding what I had allowed myself to abandon.

But not without a lot of help, therapy and love. Help that pointed to the stones of my walls that could hold and balance. And help in looking into every aspect of other stones that would topple the rock wall in my peaceful woods.

So, I succeeded outwardly by societal standards, inwardly I had found myself in a relationship dripping with jealousy and control.

I mean, being actually raging jealous of a dead musician, pretty much sums him up. So, I left him (the guy with the TV) after he thought I was sleeping with a fellow teacher at a Writer’s Retreat.

No, just no.

Found solace and meaning on an ashram after the end of that relationship. Returned home for those couple of weeks and then found chaos and meaning on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

It was a year of great meaning. My Cali year.

I not only jumped off the practical path, I took my machete out and slashed a whole new path, through some pretty dangerous terrain.

Upon returning home from California for good, I went right back into practicality. I had to, I was just those three credits to my BA when I had left school.

I am not one to give up on anything I’ve started. I finished my degree, but after that California year, my whole perspective changed about life.

After graduation, jobs I didn’t like, jobs I loved. Another relationship with a chameleon who 180ed. Then, I was thirty in the blink of an eye.

Today, as I write this, I have reached level 42. Thanks, my Angels.

Up until 18, I had been protected from as much as my parents could.

No MTV, no watching anything with violence, no dating till 16, no makeup, no going anywhere without them until 15. As a child, I lived in a bubble of safety and overprotection on that street on the lake, with only love intentions. I know what it means to be loved thanks to my parents. I have always known what it feels to be loved deeply and fiercely because of them.

My parents weren’t even religious, they just wanted to keep me from seeing the underside of the world.

Until one night, I saw there was pure darkness personified on the underside.

When we shelter our children to the discompassion of the world, when we as young adults finally step into it, it comes and smashes into us like an out of control eighteen wheeler truck. Which also happened to me at 19, literally got hit by an out of control eighteen wheeler truck. I survived that one too.

Seriously, my angels must be exhausted.

When you see the darkness of the world so young, it does, it feels like the end of everything. Feels like nothing can ever be right again, will never be the same as it once was. I guess as with all dark moments.

But once you get to the other side it all seems so much brighter and the situations that would debilitate another, maybe don’t for you.

The dark situations have grey hues with light because you know you’re capable of facing great darkness, and still coming out to the light side. You know you can handle so much of what life throws at you.

And I have been infusing the throws of life with as much grace, acceptance and self-compassion as I can because to others, my choices will be received with judgment.

But I infuse them from this perspective at level 42, in deep gratitude. For they have helped me gain irreplaceable treasures in the wisps of wisdom only learned through living through all the happenings.

All in, really living in every moment the best I can remember to.

My time in Venice Beach, California I will write more about someday, because it was utterly transformative to the person I am today, as was the ashram. Two polarized opposites of learning.

So here is the beginning of some of the stories in my life that have shaped the human being I am today.

With no shame, only self compassion for the person I was becoming.

The Ancients of All Existence still send soft messages about California, but these ones are the whispers of sweet reminders of remembering.

So I write and they smile.

With radical love,

Jenny Lane

PS: For real, Angels, thank you. :)

My joyful gratitude to KiKi Walter and The Memoirist for us to have this space to share these stories of our lives. It is in our unique stories we can rediscover ourselves. A place where we all can connect together in words through our shared stories. Where we can feel a little more peace doing this thing we call life. In sharing our experiences we can feel little less alone out here in this beautiful world.

Thank you Kiki, for this opportunity here to share a part of my hard learned lessons in life.

This piece is respectfully and happily submitted for Memoirist Idol. If you’d like to also be a part of this opportunity the guidelines are here. Thanks Ki! : ) You inspire me to share my story that has been quietly living in my heart for many years.

If you’d like to read a slice of beauty of another’s timeline for the Memorist Idol, Here I guide you to the path of the talented Deb Groves Harman and her piece for The Memoirist Idol called, We Were Teenagers Learning Night Moves. You too will be moved.

And also special thanks to my friends, The Sober Vegan Yogi & Reece Reid for their continued support on this journey of writing!