My friend’s father is a vivid storyteller. When you meet him, you understand where she gets her ability to paint a picture so rosy you want to walk right in and never leave.

Her family splits their time between Silver Lake and Catalina Island. They really know how to live. We call him Captain.

Every time I see him, he impresses something indelible on me. Once it was “that every great city has to have a port,” and explained the geography of downtown Los Angeles. Recently, it was his belief that of the five human senses, each of us has a dominant sense that rises above the others. How differently each of us must process the world. He made it seem like a super power.

I knew what mine was immediately. Olfactory. Smell. Scent.

Frankly, while I love perfume and performing my best Ina smell test when heirloom tomatoes grace the bodega, this response can be highly inconvenient. I can barely make it through a trip to Whole Foods without getting knocked into a Nostalgia reverie. Smell triggers are everywhere!

Eucalyptus leaves in Santa Barbara made redolent by undergrads in sheepskin Uggs. The edge of Old Spice on cool hotel sheets. Lavender and rosemary. Bong water. Bacardi Limon. Bourbon, vanilla, and Marlboro 27s. Fine alkaline dust. Raw Garlic, fresh butter, and Rye bread. Cloves. Warm grass, burning palo santo wood, sunscreen, coco nuit. CK One and matte brown lipstick. Ponds cold cream, the shimmery floral of Covergirl Lipstick in Rose Gold. Sun and spliffs. Foamy Dr. Bronner’s Castille Peppermint Soap awash in the Feather River. Extra used to make a dark pink sugarfree gum that smelled like strawberries. Tiny tuberose dotting a haku lei.

Each of these schizophrenic parings jerks me viscerally to the past whenever I get a good waft of them in the wild. Sometimes it’s completely whimsical and heavenly, being romantically transported by someone spraying organic lavender hand sanitizer while waiting in line to pay $25 for a mound of Mt. Tam. Other times it’s a mortifying ugly cry at the DMV because I caught a whiff of my late grandfather’s aftershave.

There’s one scent that is so intensely imprinted on me, it’s like I was hypnotized with it in a past life or something. Like clockwork, it’s been my seasonal companion for about 16 years.

When I was in 6th grade we moved to Folsom, California from Virginia Beach. California was the compromise between my mother’s desire to remain in Hawai’i where she grew up, and my father’s cabin island fever. This Sacramento suburb was also where Dad was going to retire from his 30 year stint in the Coast Guard. We moved in early summer, driving across the country as a family in our carmel colored Volkswagon. I remember an air condition-less stretch through Arizona, the bravest of us in the Vanagon, wilting and moaning as hot air whipped our hair around.

We made it to Folsom, despite a little heat rash and teen angst. A Sacramento summer easily passes 100 degrees, a dry lizard heat, totally polarizing. You’re either the type that utters a small scream when you leave the barrier of air conditioning or you’re the lizard.

I’m a lizard. I was ripe with anticipation to re-emerge as a California girl, even if my new town’s most exciting contribution since the Gold Rush was Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” I was now a west coast baby, summer lady. My L.E.I denim shorts and I were thrilled.

I never talked to my parents about this, but I assume we were tight on money. A move with two children to California feels like it would be expensive. We were also for the first time since I was in kindergarten, much further than 10 minutes from the ocean.

So, for entertainment and a brief reprieve, my parents took us to the River. The American River. Where I caught this very specific smell for the first time: a Steinbeck June sun warming the wild blackberries growing along the river bank, just hot enough to release their sweet smell without bursting the flesh.

In Folsom, we took the blackberries. My dad corralled my sister and I into child servitude and we’d fill plastic bags from Albertson’s that he’d turn into pie or jam.

This wasn’t our first rodeo with roadside fruit heists. Our family’s nomadic military timeline plus the exotic coupling my parent’s heritage offered up all sorts of indigenous berries to pilfer. Strawberry guavas while hiking in Aiea Heights, green translucent gooseberries in a northern German village. Bountiful blueberry trees my Dad and I would fastidiously de-fruit into large red buckets while my Mom and Sister, bored, made up dances in between the bushes.

I was an oddly serious and competitive berry picker, proud of my previous accomplishments, particularly in blueberry, and eager to further my reputation now that we were in California.

Maybe it was that picking felt important and chic to me, I loved pie, or because it was a such a formative summer going from girl to child woman on the West Coasts—but sun-warmed blackberry is my forever Eau de Summer.

Every time June rounds the corner into 90 degree days and my father is happiest on the river, we flock. Paddle boards, single and double kayaks, 4 dogs, Sierra Nevada IPAs, and whoever wants to come. Can you hear the train a’comin?

So much has changed since that first girlhood season: high school, divorce, car crashes, facial piercings, college, sister fights, Dad’s new girlfriend, our new boyfriends, bad break ups, Santa Barbara, no work, graduate school, plenty of work, new houses, San Francisco, Kundalini, marriages, Los Angeles, Burning Man, best sister friends, Ocean Beach, an ending, leaving home, and coming back again.

Generations turn over, my sister and I became women, and the world looks different today in this permeable moment. But the blackberries remain unchanged, and each year when they release their scent for me, I know exactly who I am.

Last week we went on a bike ride along the river. The blackberry bushes are flowering.

The scent of summer is coming. I believe I am ready.

Honestly, breaking up in the era of Social Distancing has been weirdly easy. You break up, leave, and literally can’t go back. Ha! What a troll. It also helps when you break up with a kind, capable human who respects the process.

But who cares about the reality of the situation! This blog is about the memory, looking back. My take. And it’s frankly been tricky! Who wants to hear about all the fights and therapy and drama and infractions? Ugh so boring. But apparently I need to process, to have a takeaway, learn a lesson, feel the feelings if this break up is going to canonized in the archives of my personal history. Which is the ultimate goal of break ups.

So I have been thinking about it. Meditating even. It really started when I was all sleepy high on ZZZZZZQuil and re-read T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” I whipped myself up into a frenzy about the Multifoliate Rose and wrote the following incomprehensible line:

I had assumed he was uninterested in exploring the unfurled potential of my infinite petals. I was wrong.  For him, they simply were not there.

Then I waxed poetic about multiple undulating realities simmering underneath my surfaces. Yikes.

My weird sleep drunk—albeit a huge drama queen—had uncovered the primary issue: the current reality of our life was the only discernible future that existed to him. Waking up in our beloved rented Ocean Beach 2 bedroom, grinding coffee beans, me resentfully slamming the toilet seat down. Watering plants, watching HBO, wiping down the coffee table, sprinting out of the bed so I didn’t have to make it. Sunset beach walks, $5 happy hour margaritas, holding hands, matching mumus, laughing about work.

The banality of domestic partnership was a comforting, hypnotic Bossanova beat that filled my ears and heart with just enough oxygen to keep treading water. We paid our rent, went on dates, and didn’t talk about babies because it made him nervous and I gave up therapy in 2020.

The cracks were highly visible, but the music was louder. Think any song during a Nancy Meyers montage. One does not panic when “The Girl from Ipanema” fills the room with her soothing tones. Are you kidding?! Absolutely zero panic. You pour yourself a icy cold glass of pale pink Whispering Angel, don a white cashmere turtleneck, and stare wistfully at the ocean. Smug, shivering, unchanged, but decently satisfied.

So that’s how it played out for me for a while. I just didn’t hear the beat of my own desires anymore; I tuned that bitch out. Instead, I’d put on white silk, chug Sauvignon Blanc, listen to Seu Jorge croon and poach an egg or something.

And you know what? It was pretty freaking great. Fabulous even.

However, unlike the crescendo of a Nancy Meyers film, my inner voice was violently awoken by a series of intense, staccato events. Basically I ripped off the cashmere, smashed the wine glass against the wall, smeared yolk all over my face, beat my chest and screamed into the void “I want more!!!!!!!”

He listened. He was raised well. And that was that.

People have been checking in on me, but there’s not a lot to report. The majestic irony of a global pandemic is I have literally seen like 3 people, so there’s not a lot of faces I have to explain my new status to.

Well there is one face. Really just one. Me. I have had to explain this break up to myself over and over. And, I think I fully get her now. It was the best decision she could have made.

Once upon a long con to move in with my slow and steady now former beau, I moved into his room in a house with 5 other young men in the Outer Sunset.

The boys had named the house “The Citadel of Excitement,” often simply referred to as The Citadel. I surreptitiously called it The Surf Hostel, primarily when having margaritas in the suburbs with my Mom’s friends, where I knew the joke would land. The Citadel was a 2 floor, pale salmon single family sunset home with 5 bedrooms and 2 baths. The bathroom on the upper floor, which incidentally was the one I used, definitely took the most abuse.

Even though our bathroom was often in mortal peril, I was pleasantly surprised at how lovely it was to live in this slightly bohemia, surfer Neverland with the not-quite-lost boys. There was a flourishing money tree, a dishwasher, freshly ground coffee, cool girlfriends that would drink Sancerre with me, and bi-monthly Brazilian housecleaners. I’d get home and say hello then go straight to our room, never come out, and not have to explain it. If anything, these boys made me want to move out sooner and start my 1:1 life with my boyfriend. This is cake. Living with men is so chill.

After we did eventually move to our own place, we invited everyone over for drinks. One of the guys looked around, impressed, slightly nonplussed. “Very clean,” he said as my new live in boyfriend rounded the corner, chomping a hulk handful of Have’A Corn Chips.

“Right?” BF said, through a maize mouthful. His hand went back in and grabbed another 5 or so chips. I watched as he smashed them into his mouth; the triangles splintering into infinity. Inevitably, some of the splinters didn’t make it down the gullet and rained down around us like salty confetti.

“Come see the backyard,” BF motioned, tromping down our stairs, wiping his hand on his jeans.

My former roommate, a man I would brazenly ask to marry BF and I when I was on mushrooms, raised his eyebrows at me ever so slightly, taking in the chip crumb massacre.

He started after BF, making a whistle-like firework sound, miming the motions of a flower girl at a wedding or someone picking up a bunch of trash and throwing it in the air. I knew exactly what he meant.

A psychotic, nervous giggle escaped me as I realized that living with men was never chill. Living with those particular men was one of the luckiest circumstances of my life.

All this time, the Citadel boys had wiped down counters, returned glassware to the cabinets, swept the floors, and watered the Money Tree. They’d somehow concealed the The Trail of BF: any manner of salsa slashings, avocado casings, greek yogurt spoons, tin cups, sad bunny sneakers (Allbirds worn paper thin with holes), sad bunny sweatpants (old SDSU pants with pocket holes and just a permanent light crust), damp bath towels, iPhone chargers ordered in bulk from Amazon, and endless loose papers with doodles of his initials or the logo for a clothing company if he ever started one.

I was lucky enough to get caught in their orbit, and they just let me in and let me be.

We were only supposed to be there for 4 months or so. That turned into 5. Which turned into 8. Which doesn’t really seem long looking back. But it felt like so much happened.

The Citadel had sort of a family soul bond with another crew of five that lived down the street. Or in the sewers. Or in the trees? In the trash maybe. They were a gang of raccoons, and their leader was a fearless yet handsome monster called Won Ton. Won Ton and his feral band ran that hood, and we all knew it.

They’d jump on the roof, screeching and war whooping like raiding Comanches. If they found you alone at night in the backyard, say smoking a cigarette, they’d charge at you by running the top length of our fence. We used to throw empty beer cans at them to chase them out of the yard and you’d swear you could hear them laughing as they lumbered into the night.

One pink and orange dusk, one of the guys was outside in our front driveway when he spotted Won Ton and crew ambling up a container wall across the street, prepping for nightfall and hijinks. He said he caught Won Ton’s gaze, and the two locked eyes for the briefest moment. Maybe Won Ton even raised up on his legs in recognition. You have 5 and we are five. We are you. You is us. We are one.

From that moment Won Ton and his trash pandas were a a spirit totem for the boys. I don’t know if there were any girl raccoons at all, but I didn’t feel left out. We even have shirts with Won Ton and the gang drawn on thanks to one of our talented guys.

Won Ton fervor aside, I think the moments I will most treasure from my time were the infamous house parties. Citadel parties were special, a true love letter to the Outer Sunset, Ocean Beach, and each other.

Somehow San Francisco managed to bless the day of the event with sun; it was miraculous and uncanny. The foundation of the party was always fresh coconuts, bought in bulk. Coco Kyle would machete them live and hand it off to you. You’d then take a giant gulp and were rewarded with a solid rum floater and tropical drink umbrella.

I would make giant, 20 avocado bowls of guacamole and fuss over it the whole party, making sure there were enough pits and acid to keep it from going even slightly brown. Kegs of lavender kombucha, California Kolsh, and basically Gus’s Market’s entire selection of local craft beer abounded generously, thrown into one of three ice buckets.

People started to roll in, old school OB surfers in denim jackets and Danner boots or friends of friends who gamely observed the Aloha attire suggestion. Girls with sun streaked blonde hair in vintage 501s and crop tops and stacked their woven raffia tote bags from Mexico at the bottom of the stairwell. Someone rolled a joint, someone passed a joint. I, for some reason, bought clove cigarettes and handed them out like party favors.

A friend’s surf rock band set up shop and played a Sunset set then transitioned to a funky DJ set once night fell. BF and my best friend Soleil has a dance off, which she dominated to my immense loving satisfaction, after whipping out her gymnastic skills.

Her husband also offered up a moment I will never forget. He looked around at one point in the late afternoon and reflected, “This is the most California thing I have ever witnessed.”

It was pretty fucking Californian. Even in the wake of the “costal elites” being renounced by, oh just the rest of the nation, I’m pretty proud we created something that could have been parodied by SNL. It means we did a cool thing. It was also simply a group of relatively normal, ambitious and kind roommates coming together, sharing parts of themselves, and then the community amplifying our heartfelt efforts to infinity.

It taught me the power of gatherings, how to give of yourself and expect nothing, and that if you did so with the right intention, you’d be rewarded tenfold.

I also learned one of my most important lessons: what it means to feel like you belong to something bigger than yourself, but also requires your participation.

For me, that community, that vibe, that energy, those people–it’s the Revolution. Even if was technically just a super rad Citadel party in the Outer Sunset.

I wanted to feel, for the first time in a while, real glamour.

After all, living in a city like San Francisco should offer crevices seeped with my particular craving. My apartment, while admirable for a young woman trying to go at it solo, is not full of sumptuousness. It’s a bit like a well dressed lady of the night, without the drift of melancholy.

I looked up a couple of spots for vintage designer resale and took off for BART. Downtown was taking on that sunny tropical mugginess that promises rain soon. Sun is usually cause for wine on rooftops, but the steamy bus windows aren’t ideal for city traipsing.

I whooshed into the vintage store with half my hairdo left on the bus, the roots lifting off my head with abandon. Raincoat slung over a wilted fringe shoulder bag, I was a wild haired virgin to this store and it’s breed of romance. And it must have showed.

The scion came forth silently, like a recently gassed Prius.

“Hello,” he said with velvet, trailing over me quickly. “Welcome to the store.”

I said thank you and shifted my droopy bag nervously. I needed time to take in the scene, it was heaped with jewels. I felt like Aladdin coming upon the mountainous gold in the genie’s lair. Street rat, indeed.

And if I was Aladdin, then he must have been my genie. Only it was clear he was here to grant me no wishes, that I’d be granting his instead. Black combat boots, textured black ensemble, with a sharply manicured beard. His eyebrows communicated excellent design. He looked like a nineties club kid drowned in a vat of Clive Christian and reborn into an Onyx Prince.

A Whiting and Davis metal mesh halter the color of a disco sunset adorned one of those headless half mannequins on the cashier counter, draped round the collar with a monkey fur. This place was no joke. Here is not where glamour came to die, it’s where glamour came to get a sex change so it could become even more fabulous.

I immediately started sweating, and made my way to the back, labels flashing. Dior c. 1968, Irina Roublon, Bill Blass, Maude Frizon. Decades of parties, drunken cab rides, 7 course dinners, illicit kissing, snobbery, passion, and madness flitted by me. My eye caught on a gold and black jacket, Chinese silk with a pattern of bamboo leaves. The sleeves trimmed in black and tan alpaca fur.

Whhhhaaattttt was this. Whaaaattttt what this!

The Prince emerged behind a Missoni mumu.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” He flicked it off the wrack with a spell. Flipping it back and forth the hangar like a weather vane.

“That’s Alpaca,” he intoned meaningfully. “This piece runs about $800”

Ah, the price check. A weird noise threatened to come up my throat. How do you explain to a Prince you just came for glamour and hi-jinx? That you won’t steal anything but does he have time to tell me a story about hand rolled chiffon hem?

I decide I have to buy one thing, out of pure pride, the proverbial “Sonia Was Here.” I am struggling not to buy the jacket. It would be a ridiculous purchase, I picture myself on BART, unable to grasp the ceiling hand hold because my Alpaca sleeves would tickle a neighboring rider.

The sweats come again. Nothing has price tags, so I am assuming everything is $1,200.00 (My expensive number). I pull a heavy chained baroque 80’s cross off.

“I’ll take this!” I announced, to no one. The Price has returned to the cash register.

I purchased the stupid necklace. It’s actually not stupid, it’s fabulous, I am like an uncool rapper with it on. I bade farewell to the kingdom after having paid my toll, and the Prince’s goodbye was so musical it played in my ears long after my sweat cooled. I quickly found him on Instagram.

I wasn’t sure one could put a price on shame, but as it turns out, mine costs $258.00.

When you start going to music, art, or transformational festivals, a few things happen.

One, you enter into a land of wonder and dimension you weren’t sure existed before. It’s dirty, golden, and fabulous. Have you ever seen a full wheeled clothing rack inside a Coleman? Sequins, vintage fur, and iridescent ponchos. Music happens in various forms, and you participate. Plumes of burning Palo Santo wood filter down onto ancient Persian carpets and inflatable furniture. You get to see the quirks and thoughtfulness of your neighbors in the creation of these temporary weekend dens. Tan oiled arms in the air, coconut breeze in her hair; we are simply supposed to be right here.

Also, get a Yeti cooler.

Sometimes, you get a festival moniker. I didn’t get one until my second year at Burning Man and she is called Nala. She’s a mother and a fighter–day drinker, night sinker. Cowrie collar, lion leotard, red fringe. A leopard beret, mild pink hair, a catsuit.

But this story is not about Nala. It’s about a girl named Moon Jelly.

The second year of High Sierra Music festival, I ambled up there with a crew comprised of a variety of men and women who were a mix of best friends, future roommates, future married-s, San Franpsychos , and fire women.

Most of them came to Quincy in a silver van named Silvia. High Sierra is on the cusp of July and it is hot–during the early part of the day we usually nurse our dehydration in the Feather river’s cooling waters.

This first ride out that year we went to the Rope Swing, 15 minutes away with just enough time for a naming convention. Rattle Snake, Moose Juice, Indigo, Wild Rabbit, and finally, with zero fanfare, as if she had already known her whole life: Moon Jelly.

Moon Jelly and I have been friends since we were 19 years old. She’s seen me though some of my worst behavior. Truly vile yet harmless 22 year old shit. I once, in a fit of passion about a boy I can’t remember, high kicked an Orange County glass shop window in stiletto Topshop over-the-knee faux suede boot. Unsurprisingly it shattered, big time. We looked on, shocked. THEN WE RAN.

We ran way the hell away and she never held it against me. I felt like a criminal. She nursed me back to equilibrium without judgement, even if it was there. I also cut out any more Topshop boot acquisitions.

I’ve seen her through a bit of a longer, less violent phase. When Moon Jelly found a new tribe.

This new lot of tow-headed smart boys in flannels and rust colored pants who worked for big companies but rarely wore shoes, ate goji berries, and probably took philosophy confounded me.

Names I could never remember but really didn’t try to: Reetman, Bartac, Tallow, Saphran, Ziggy. Young, Californian men like this have connections to magical lands. A ranch in Bolinas, private ocean coves in Carmel, dewy plots in Sea Ranch, mountain tops in Big Sur, high ceilings in Marin.

Moon Jelly took to these spaces and band of brothers like she found her name, with a grace and enthusiasm that should upleveled me to what she was uncovering. Moments like the most psychedelic, rarified sunset. Above the clouds. Red wine from the box in a clay cup. Knee high socks and hiking boots. Long, tawny blond hair. And that goddamn light up frisbee.

My ego interpreted this as loss; loss to these unfathomable mountains of an in-crowd and lifestyle and crew I couldn’t seem to touch or be a part of. Had M. Jelly forgotten all our vodka grapefruits at Club Deluxe and fervent declarations of sisterhood despite all odds?

No. But she had found a family and built it from love, nature, planning, sharing, time, appreciation, and her own blend of kinetic energy. And I was still welcome. I just had to show up and pay attention.

Then one evening in Santa Cruz, I was shown the light in way I could have never anticipated. Moon and I were having beers when her two friends joined us: Tiger and Diego. My mother and sister were meeting us shortly; we do a weekly family Aptos beach house trip every year.

We played the thing where you throw bags at a holes at breweries. I could truly not be worse. It’s not an exaggeration. I may as well have closed my eyes and gagged myself, spun around, shibari rope tied my tits, and tried to throw. It’s just a nightmare.

Tiger was my victim and teammate. He was a knight in shining Patagonia. This kind, smart, effective man let me throw bean bags into the sun for all he cared as he held my beer and asked me gentle questions. Diego ribbed us from across the way, and Moon rested her elbow on his shoulder. I took stock of this sweet family I had felt excluded from. My heart painfully bloomed in that pleasurable way when you know you were wrong but it still feels so great.

This was the shift for me. And it also was for Moon. That summer she ended a 7 year relationship with a great love. She also bought a cobalt blue truck and turned it into her new home. She got a promotion at work–saving the tuna. She spent months in Puerto Rico, the island of her origin, dancing salsa and eating tostones. She backpacked into green jungles by herself. She wrote it all down in a book. She sat with strangers in a sacred circle and shared what was going on.

She was wild, brave, and free. She was single. She didn’t have an official address.

I realized all of this recently, when Moon Jelly and I went hiking in Butano State Park. There’s a bat sanctuary, and I was really looking for the bats.  It was day, so no bats.

Freed from my bat burden, it finally dawned on me the enormity of what she had accomplished. She could have stayed in the cave but she chose to walk through the fire. She’s at this highly specific moment of her life–stunningly beautiful, professionally accomplished, geographically liberal, and manifested into a powerful form.

I didn’t know it then, but it’s a uniquely Moon Jelly move to go through a break up and decide to take on a solo van life. She did it completely her way.

Oh and the crew I spent 6 paragraphs explaining? They are totally still around. I find they tend to manifest wherever Moon’s fabulous blue truck is parked.

Because home is where the heart is, right?

Well, the inaugural month of 2020 is coming to a languorous end. What a spell.