I re-read what I wrote and I hated the writing. I didn’t land the point because love is not something that advice can be given on. Love is a personal story shared between two. Love is a bond that feels so unbreakable only hearts could endure its dark side.

I’m driving around Favours Drive, something that’s become a favorite passtime of mine. I live on a street at the end of the world. My life in Los Angeles, doesn’t feel like it’s mine. It doesn’t feel like a new beginning, it feels like the ending of everything I knew. I should’ve known in January, I was being washed clean. Drowning in the slings and arrows of New York City’s misfortunes. Grieving the life I knew, mourning the life I dreamed of when I set out to sea and embarked on my cross country journey. There’s really no other way to get from the east to the west than to travel through miles of centuries past, saying hello to the towns that paved the streets that led to the road that would walk you to Los Angeles, California. It’s ethnicity is in the name. Universally built, California didn’t need to be named twice, it speaks multiple languages.

The blinding lights of New York City and the shining disco balls of The Great Gatsby have more in common than one may think. They are images of hope, the promise of a party after a hard day of work, the glory to come if you work at it, day in and day out. Hunting for a thrill. New York, New York is the american dream you were persuaded to seek the riches of. The epicenter of industry. Sky scraping careers. Glass ceilings and drinks on rooftops. New York promised us a lot.

It’s the first day of light after the Sun has sunken back into the earth. The fall of autumn, a celebration for the dark half of the year. Venusian season of black and white.

I’ve got my blue jeans on, ripped at the knees and loose at the hips. A blue shirt with blue lace wrapped around the neck. A pink and orange sweater wrapped around my shoulders. I spent the morning cleaning out the summer’s Sky scraping webs in the corners of my haunted apartment. I hadn’t realised how much time had passed since I last felt alive. I’ve barely brushed my hair since September began. I find it troubling to be a woman who sees herself as beautiful despite the ugly rumours of scorned lovers. Men have a funny way of making women feel apologetic for things outside their control. A womanly figure is bestowed upon the body who holds a womb for new life within her stomach walls. 

Once the world sees how beautiful you can be, it’s you the want to watch. Beauty is a sickness of hierarchy. And if she says she’s going through a bad time but she looks fine on the outside, she must be a liar. Because beauty is always the first to go when our minds abandon us. I buy the pretty blue dress sprinkled with a pattern of pink and purple flowers. I take my time blow drying my hair. I curl it and twirl it until it looks beautiful. I use this as my armour. Who needs swords and weapons when you know womanly magic? You know, the greatest witches were fired for dying their grey hair. Women do not have the luxuries of men,  women cannot be mysteries. Women must tell us their sins at first sight, the first test of god. Errors and arrows, witches knew alchemy. The swirling of emotions, the pouring of invisible potions. Witches knew, the evil of beauty and the beauty of seeing it’s inevitable undoing. Witches held space for the destruction of womanly figures.

I was tired of feeling small. I wasn’t searching for pity parties. I was looking for voices who cared. I thought, the revolution will not be televised and neither would my descent. I hid behind four walls and I scratched at my eyeballs. So scared to see clearly, terrified I already was.

I haven’t learned how to dress for fall in California yet and I wasn’t ready to put away my summer wardrobe. The light blue pants and turquoise tank top I wore all summer long. The dresses I wore to weddings on the right coast of America. I held my composure beneath the ribbons in my hair. There’s nothing more disturbing than being at your lowest and having to look like a morning star. I didn’t want my failures and defeat to smell discouraging. I wanted the guests in attendance to know that style and grace can be purchased at town malls and paired with your mother’s pearls. A fool’s errand, everyone just thought I was playing a part. 

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The car in front of me takes a right turn. I push on the gas and bend with the road, a Bruce Springsteen song comes on shuffle from the spotify playlist I’ve recently put together. I think of my father’s old BMW and my days spent in the passenger seat. Driving around California will make you feel like every lifetime you’ve ever lived intersects while you’re waiting for the green light to appear. I hear Bruce’s words and the ideas he has about love. I wonder how old he was when he wrote this song. If he was married, in love or going through heartbreak, when he admits to the audience “I wanna know if love is wild. I wanna know if love is real.” I wonder if the woman that inspired the song remained the love of his life or if that too, passed by. I’m too nervous to search for the answer. I’d rather leave the idea open in my mind. 

By this point in the song, the saxophonist has begun to play his part. A smile I can’t avoid fills my face. It’s my favorite part of the song. An interlude of breathtaking instrumentation in the middle of a man wanting to feel loved by the woman he loves. Desperate preaches of an altar boy’s sweet relief - everything will be worth it in the end if I just get love right. The bruises and aches of a nation being built for the masses, won’t hurt so much if true love is the band-aid that stops the bleeding and the pot of goal at the end of the rainbow.

Isn’t love why we believe in anything at all? 

My father and I spent a lot of time together when I was growing up. I loved team sports and that meant long weekend drives, listening to music before parking the car and sharing mindless chatter with the other parents on the sideline. When it came time to split up the parental duties, more often than not my father got me. My parent’s are not divorced but when you’re one of four with only two parent’s - strategy must be employed. Carpools arranged. Favours done and blessings offered. The town took care of the children. The network of mother’s, an underground alliance, kept the kids safe and secure. Someone was always around to help when another mother needed it. I grew up in the suburbs of Columbia, Maryland. A diverse city, 30 miles outside of one of the deadliest - Baltimore. 

The saxophone solo was a favorite of both mine and my father’s. We always knew when it was coming. As Bruce steps to the side of the song, my father would give me a “hit it” signal before I air-played the saxophone part like I was on a stage playing it for an audience.

As the rest of the lyrics play through the car’s speakers I think about how we are the daughter’s of the father’s who believed in Bruce Springsteen’s idea of love. How the power of his voice transcends the height of his emotion, as he begs the earth and sky to let him live long enough to experience the greatest love possible. How he uses music to will an idea about love into existence. How one man taught us all how to dream like an American boy. He told us how to see. He believed in a love greater than the. 

My father’s old BMW was silver. It was an old car. Once he made his money, he chose a classic to drive around. Back then, whenever the car was made, the CD player was set up in the trunk of the car. Multiple rows to keep your seven favorite CD’s, ready to go, without a skip in the track. No matter where my soccer games or basketball tournaments took place, we always timed the set list to play Badlands as the grand finale. It was my send off song. The one that was still playing as I jumped out of the car and ran to the team already warming up. My family was notoriously late. Who could blame us? There were four children and only two persons in charge.