12x12 Acrylic/ Glitter/ Art Resin. Ready to hang. 

The first time I saw her was with a complicated person who told me to visit to escape my life. “I’ll buy you the plane ticket” was always the line, which never ended well. San Diego was unreal to me when I first saw it. I can still feel walking down the stairs of the plane and directly onto the tarmac at sunset because the airport was so small back then. The houses were hard to believe, each one more intricate, colorful, and grand than the last. I sat on a cliff watching the sun set over the ocean and prayed to the ocean that someday I would be able to live there. That I would be alive, and well. Like all of this peace and beauty would be normal, not some fictional movie set I was stepping into and ruining. I was twenty years old. It is the only time in that period of my life that I can remember wanting to live. 

The sunset in La Jolla was the biggest thing I had ever felt. But I had to go back to the desert. Back to the heat, and the rage, and the patterns, and the drugs that cut a lot of life short. 

The second time I saw San Diego I was visiting my sister 7 years later. She was in town and suggested I join her from Las Vegas. We walked around the beach at the Hotel Del Coronado. The moisture in the air was bizarre, as were the amounts of plants that seemed to be everywhere. Like a jungle. When we were walking to The Del I saw an old woman outside of a coffee shop. She had long, wavy gray hair, and everything she wore and had was a dusty purple color. She looked like a famous writer, just having a cappuccino in a cafe by the beach. I was awe-struck by her. 14 years later I still remember every line on her face, the turquoise ring on her finger, and the clear hazel of her eyes. 

When I’m teaching my yoga classes these days I’m facing the Hotel Del and the ocean behind it, as it is right in front of me out the giant windows, opposite the yoga studio. I laugh with my students a little about what it felt like the first time I ever saw that hotel, or felt the magic of Coronado Island. After I teach my class I walk across the street and up the beach. The beauty is normal. The peace is normal. In those tiny instances all alone with the wind, I know that I’ve already made it. 

I’ve been deep in thought a lot lately, editing the last few chapters of my book and deciding what to keep and cut. Keep or cut keep or cut keep or cut we say it over and over back and forth. The West Coast will always be a keep for me. 

I wanted to paint that feeling in a way that was childlike, sparkly and textured. This painting is a portrait of dreams. The dreams that became my home. 

“All that time you were throwing punches I was building something. And I couldn’t wait to show you it was real.”