The State I Am In

I remember I was tired on the day that started 2006
I was not drowning, but waving in my attempt to say goodbye to 2005
My mother had confessed that she was buying a jeep
I tried to talk her out of the fact
She said it made her feel safe
Who was I to argue with that?

I gave myself to sin
And I've been there and back again
I gave myself to Providence
The state that I am in

I remember thinking a lot about the Belle and Sebastian song The State I Am In as I was getting ready to spend my winter break in Pennsylvania. The chorus of the song is so obviously not about a territorial unit of a nation as in the state of California, but instead was about the condition of mind or temperament of being. And as I was ending my first semester, singing the song in my head, the two definitions of state became one.

To me, the state of California became a state of being. It was just as much where my head was as where my body was.

When January began, the state I was in was Pennsylvania. And my state of being was definitely east coast. I remember spending a lot of time on the train. There and back again from Yardley to West Chester, stopping in Philly in between. January in PA, despite the cold, moved so fast. Like being inside a train car, I was going places without really feeling like I was moving at all. I had time to read and get things done. The speed of time that separated January 1st from the 12th (the date I would return to California) was something I was not consciously aware of. It was something I had to be reminded of. Still, there was no time to dwell. My winter on the east coast was hectic to say the least. I was not there to rest; I had to make the most of it. I had to see as many familiar faces as I could. I had to eat cheese steaks, soft pretzels, and tasteycakes. I needed to spend quality time in Wawa, Rex’s and the Pub. Memories were something I wasn’t putting in my suitcase; I could take as many with me as I wanted.

When I returned to California, I was not off the plane more than a few hours when it started to feel like I never left. The transition I made back in December, from California to Pennsylvania was much more difficult. Coming back was west was a different experience. The moment I saw palm trees and The In & Out sign, it was all over. I remember breathing. Almost in sighs, it wasn’t short and quick. Time moves much more slowly out here.

I will remember January as the month my sister and I were both reading Joan Didion. She pointed out to me an essay on bicoastal living. And I said that was me. I compared it to a split personality that I can turn off and on with the passing of time zones.

On the plane ride home I highlighted a phrase in Didion’s essay The White Album: “another transplanted Californian”. This was my new identity. I took to this identity like another transplanted Californian. I felt comfortable in the solidarity of the phrase that I was another in a long line of us. And the transplantedness gave me reason and purpose in that I was here for a reason, but I still belonged some place else. And the last word in the phrase was probably most important because it made me give up something that I thought I needed to be out here and that’s my east coastness. I was now a Californian; albeit a transplanted one.

California owns me.

By Joey