We're Taking Back California

My irrationally optimistic vision of the future Golden State

Write & Lift is an ethos of personal and spiritual development through conscious physical exertion and practice of the writing craft. Through this effort to strengthen our bodies and minds, we become anti-fragile and self-respecting sovereign individuals. Through this effort, we may stand against untruth and evil and create a new culture of vitality, strength, and virtue.

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We're Taking Back California

When you’ve traveled across the United States, you’re occasionally hit with moments of serendipity where you’re fully aware of the characters around you. The type of moment that reveals, in seconds, the reality of the hum-drum noise of a thousand disconnected thoughts. All before you. In one clear image.

I watched the flow of patrons in and out of the Kava bar and saw the spirit of California: A man with greasy dreadlocks and a shirt that said “It’s not right versus left, it’s you versus the state”, a young woman in a pantsuit—legs crossed on the stool—glasses on the edge of her nose as responding to Slack messages. Next to her, a man with a reddish pink neck, weathered wranglers, and a tucked-in stetson shirt leaned on the bartop and chatted with staff about new non-alcoholic drink options. Two young men, barefoot, with wire-wrapped crystals around their necks, slid up on the other side and ordered a “spirit-cleansing” tonic. A contractor, glazed with drywall dust, ordered an “extra-strong” Kava drink to get him through the rest of the bullshit job he was working on.

I paused my music and eavesdropped.

If they lied about the moon landing, what else are they hiding from us?

Do you think a strong winch will fell a fifty-foot pine if I can keep it away from my car?

When we go to the river tomorrow, bring your handpan and your weedpen. I want to talk about plans for the “Burn” next year.

The Ordained Golden Land

I am a California supremacist. But I am in an abusive relationship with my state.

She showers me with praise and cooks me good dinners and when she catches the glint in my eye she walks me into the bedroom and we make love. But the next morning she’s a monster. Angry and cackling and asking me “Why are you talking in that tone?”

And like all borderlines, California is difficult to leave. You still hold out hope. You still think you can fix her. It’s a real Syd and Nancy relationship. Equal parts doom and ecstasy.

My family moved from Anchorage, Alaska to California when I was ten years old. My Dad found a house on a foothill ridge and placed his finger on the map and surprised us all. I grew up in a small mining town. The winding rivers cut through the dry hills and the deep pools were flanked by warm megalith granite boulders. Our neighbors were hippie transplants who grew marijuana, retired forest service members, and government employees who wanted an escape from the “down-the-hill” life of the Sacramento Valley. Weirdos, artists, mountain men, and quiet families; people who wanted to protect their past or escape something; people who wanted to be left alone, walk alone, and listen to their own thoughts.

This state has always carried the spirit of transformation. The moment James Marshall found gold on the south fork of the American River the flywheel started to spin. The gamblers the degenerates the Chinese the Irish the Mexicans the failed business owners the bastard sons and the ambassadors of God busted down the doors of this state. They never left.

Until the last few years, the line to enter stretched around the world. And then it stopped.

California Supremacy

California is in desperate need of a misfit rebellion; a new counterculture. It’s already starting to seed; regenerative farmers are buying land, tech oligarchs are starting to push back against the anti-human policies that destroyed their cities, and families are homeschooling at record levels. High tide is rolling in.

What we’re going to see in the next decade is a cultural, spiritual, and political acknowledgment that the land of California—and the promises it’s continued to deliver on—will return. This is a sanctuary for dreamers. It always has been, and it always will be. California cannot stay a bastion for Orwellian wrong-think and social control forever. The birth rate is not favorable to climate change fearmongers or self-castrating liberal men.

I’ll be here when California returns to its rightful place in the imagination of the country—of the world. The hippies will build new solar-powered compounds and tan naked in the Sierra Nevada. Communities of Christian families will raise cattle farms and grow crops in the quiet and dew-soaked North-West corners of Mendocino and Sonoma. The entertainment industry will continue to hemorrhage relevance until its business model becomes so bloated and broken that real storytellers are forced to occupy the studio city flats now housing MFA-wielding socialist sycophants. With its tax base leaving, the Bay Area will be finally forced to reconcile its allowance of filth and decay, and a new generation of entrepreneurs will take the bull by the horns and make San Francisco shine again. The Mojave Desert will find a new generation of vagabonds, artists, and freaks to erect ramshackle walls behind which they’ll create their own visions of the future, away from the narcissistic machinations of the omnipresent fitness influencer.

We will build new homes, new cities, and a new identity for this state because we must. There is no place like California and there never will be. And like anything worth caring about, you can’t duck out when shit hits the fan.

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As always, thanks for reading

-Joe