I am going to C*lifornia.
“If the you of five years ago doesn’t consider the you of today a heretic, you are not growing spiritually” is something I read on a poster once. It only returned to my consciousness a few weeks ago as I purchased an airplane ticket from JFK to LAX and an Amtrak ticket on the Coast Starlight to S*n Fr*ncisco. Except it’s not just the me of five years ago — it’s the me of every moment in my entire life leading up to now. The Ian of December certainly would have considered me a heretic. He would have sent the Ian of today straight to Bellevue.
C*lifornia (which will, I warn those of you reading with children, be uncensored in its future appearances in this text, along with city names) is not the sort of place I have ever considered going. In truth, I have made every effort to avoid it for years. I have several reasons for this. First, I refuse to believe that California (or any place, for that matter) has anything I need that I cannot already find in Michigan or New York State. Second, if California is such a marvelous wonderland of joy and pleasure, going there would ruin my morals. Finally, I am terrified of earthquakes and do not care to be in places where they are common — or even possible, for that matter.
There is a scene in Annie Hall in which Woody Allen’s character, faced with the prospect of going to Los Angeles, declares, “I don’t want to go to a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.” Even if I was intent on making right turns on red lights, that void in my life is already filled by the state of Michigan. Most such voids, in fact, are already filled by one of the two states in which I have carried a driver license. There are beaches (Coney Island and Lake Michigan), mountains (the Adirondacks), old-growth forests (Hartwick Pines), and even Los Angeles equivalents (Long Island and Oakland/Macomb County).
On hearing the news of my coming journey, a friend in San Francisco expressed that she had never known me to travel outside of the Northeast or Midwest for non-business reasons (how soon she forgets that just last year I spent nearly two days in Atlanta!). Perhaps she did have a point. In the pre-plague days, I would visit fifteen countries in Europe in the course of two weeks and take elaborate train trips across the United States. In the last three years, my personal travels have only brought me as far west as the Minnesota State Fair and as far east as New Hampshire. I have been perfectly satisfied with this longitudinal range of about 1,100 miles and have derived from it such pleasure that I am unconvinced that the returns from traveling much further afield would be worthwhile.
Let us suppose for a moment, though, that California is indeed the happiest and most splendid place on all the earth — that everyone there spends all of their days in total bliss. Let us imagine that the possibility of going outside without a coat in February makes up for the threat of earthquakes, the sprawling urban development, the amoral tech culture, and the fact that nobody else on the airplane to LAX will be wearing a necktie. Is that — the possibility of total happiness (however unlikely it may be) — not the most frightening thought of all?
In Michigan, there is no happiness from early January until Tigers opening day. There is only gray. This is good for people. In New York, the skies are clearer in the winter, but the city punishes joy. A morning of strolling down the sunny side of the street with a fresh bagel and waving to acquaintances in a crosswalk portends coming illness or other misfortune. This is for the best. People behave better when they are accustomed to misery, and their threshold for joy is lower. A Californian might have to spend a week on an expensive mountain yoga retreat to experience the same dopamine levels that the average resident of Lansing would get from five minutes of direct sunlight.
California, of course, is not without its share of punishments from nature. Instead of the slow burn of a gray February or a rainy weekend in July though, they have fires, mudslides, and — worst of all — earthquakes. They have the possibility of eating outdoors in winter, but the cost is the occasional biblical calamity.
I do not care much for earthquakes. When I was a child, I was made to visit the West. My most distinct memory from the trip was looking around the Portland airport upon landing and noting the terminal’s lack of sufficient doorframes in which passengers might stand when The Big One struck.
Scientists tell us that there is no good way to predict earthquakes on a practical timescale. They can tell us of the probabilities in the next century or warn of shaking that is to begin in the next few seconds, but the wide span in between has little to show in the way of prediction. I do not care for this one bit. I like predictability. I like railway timetables and long-range weather forecasts. If my reaction to a brief interruption to my building’s steam service with a week’s advance notice is any indication, a few seconds of warning about the pulverization of the nation’s west coast is not going to cut it for me.
I have spent so long preaching to everyone I know about The Big One that I am concerned I have tempted fate. It is one thing to accept the risk of a natural disaster when traveling. It is entirely another to know that, if The Big One were to strike you down, your death would be the funniest thing ever to happen to every single person at your funeral. There would not be a dry eye in the place, and every tear would be from laughter. “It’s a terrible loss,” people would say to my parents, “but after all these years he spent rattling on about it, you do have to admit…”
My parents are both California sympathizers. I broke the news about the trip to them in person when I was briefly home last week. We were eating takeout (“so we don’t have to cook but the dog won’t feel left out”) at the dining room table. I slid the airline confirmation across the table. My father offered travel advice for the Bay Area and remarked on the state’s natural beauty. My mother pointed at me across the table in indignation. “Something is wrong with you!” She cried, “Something is different!”
“What I’m most concerned about is that it will be great — that I’ll like Los Angeles somehow,” I told them.
“Don’t worry,” my mother assured me, “you won’t.”
Distractions
Things I have been reading, watching, and listening to this week.
“Happiness 2.0: The Path to Contentment” from Hidden Brain.
On the eve of this trip to a supposed paradise, Hidden Brain reminds us of the cruel irony that people who intentionally seek happiness are the least likely to actually find it.