I Remember California Well, Even Though I Have Never Been There

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I remember it the way one remembers a dream overheard through a wall—half color, half rumor, but certain in its weather.

There are cliffs that rise like paused decisions, green where the mind expects dust, and the ocean is a patient blue that keeps its promises without explaining them. Houses stand along the edge as if they arrived early and decided to stay, their colors softened by salt and distance. They look like thoughts you didn’t choose but kept anyway.

I remember the plants best. Cactus that seem to have learned restraint, holding water the way some people hold grief—quietly, for a long time. Around them, impossible pinks spread across the ground, like laughter that refuses to behave realistically. Nothing argues with anything else. The dry and the lush share the same sentence.

The air is always late afternoon. Not the dramatic kind, but the forgiving kind, where the light slants low enough to make even mistakes look deliberate. Wind moves through the grass as if reading it aloud. The sea listens, nodding, repeating the lesson back in waves.

I remember roads I have never driven, curving just enough to suggest there will be another view if you keep going. I remember standing still while the land does the moving—cliffs leaning outward, water pulling inward, hills folding themselves like blankets that know when you are tired.

This California does not insist on being true. It allows memory to do the work geography usually demands. It exists somewhere between postcard and pulse, between color correction and confession.

If I ever arrive, I suspect I will recognize it immediately, not because it matches what I imagined, but because it will feel slightly smaller, like something finally contained by edges. And I will think, with mild disappointment and great affection: yes, this is it—but I remember it better.