Work in Progress: Bobcat Gold Rush
Life has gotten increasingly busy and it feels like someone is stealing my minutes. Work. School. Homework and thinking about work on the weekend realizing I am a slow reader. Apologies for a week sabbatical. Ironically, going to school now for writing the spare time I had devoted to these weekly pieces has gotten eaten up. Any who, sometime next Tuesday evening I will have to hear what my fellow peers think of what I write. This is a part of something that is not whole yet. Potentially a future version of this will become the headline essay of my thesis, or potentially not— I just like the title Bobcat Gold Rush because I love California. Thank you for patience and attention— Lulu and my Mother, my only two dedicated readers!
Bobcat Gold Rush:
“Bobcats are small to medium-sized cats with muscular bodies, distinct markings, and a short bobbed tail (4-6"). Bobcats are sometimes confused with other cat species. Once you know what to look for, it is easy to identify them. Bobcats are known to be solitary and elusive. Bobcats can be found in diverse habitats throughout most of California.” -California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“The discovery of gold in California in 1848 was like gasoline on a fire.” - California National Parks
Early elementary memories that remain cast in concrete chalk lines are megaphone warnings about returning inside. Doors locked and pencils sharpened while we waited for the mountain lion, that turned out to be a bobcat, leave the playground premises. Another day somewhat similar in Californian tendencies was a late fall morning where even the ocean air reeked of smoke and dusty ash fell to our ankles. We pledged allegiance only for it to be determined we should be sent home. There are no snow days in Southern California. There are heat waves with wildfires, bone crushing ocean swells, and hills with bobcats and blonde panthers we call mountain lions.
My life has been spent walking the line between the edge of the continent and the lip of the Pacific. This path leads to an understanding that the ground is shaky, as well as sandy, and purple mountain majesties exist somewhere else in the background. Being from a place populated by manifest destiny dreams makes the microcosm of this place seem important and questionable. This is a state that stretches the western facing coast with gold in the ground so special the sun ends everyday on this side of paradise.
It is hard to articulate what exactly it is about this place that leaves me slacked jawed. If I had to tell you what it looks like–the meaning and essence of this California place, I would tell you to look at Ed Ruscha’s triptych at the DeYoung. The museum describes the work’s meaning aside from it being nice to look at, “[Evokes] historical perceptions of Gold Rush California as an earthly Eden filled with infinite potential—and the site for the fulfillment of the United States’ supposed “manifest destiny” to settle the entire continent up to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.” An oil painting of what would be a sunset on the Pacific, and text over the scene reading “A Particular Kind Of Heaven”. It seems to suggest that California is a certain place that maintains certain qualities. It is sort of like how you can only walk uphill in the San Francisco sun, in San Francisco when the sun is out. Kind of like how you can only drive down Sunset during sunset, on Sunset when the sun is setting in Los Angeles. Certain things belong to certain places, and that is why we send postcards. Living in San Francisco is something that I never really figured would ever happen to me, like winning concert tickets by calling into a radio station. I thought Southern California was in my blood; staying in the same fifty mile radius. But then I left, and left, and left again and then moved away.
California is where I am from and where I exist. Eureka is the state motto, suggesting the Californian way is striking gold and making it big. I have yet to find the gold and feel convinced by my current status. Being a twenty something girl is learning how to exist in the gray areas that are like the liminal space between the peak and a crash of a wave.
