There's something remarkable about the sunlight in California. It's not so much the constancy or the intensity, though it is of course both constant and intense. Somehow the light pitches sideways, highlighting in its rotation all manner of natural and artificial So-Cal phenomena '” it winds sultry-like around the curves of Porsches and outlandishly large breasts, and slinks through cracks in palm fronds. The very best time for the light isn't the swell of midday, but when the sun rises and sets '” every visible edge is smudged and dreamy, which is just how it should be. It's truly strange to live and work and sleep somewhere like this, where my life becomes so feeble and tiny when contextualized by epic California. Seriously: CALIFORNIA. Say it with me.

Figuring I'd try my hand in an industry I have no real training for, expertise in, or business being involved with, I decided it would be preferable to do so where it was not only warm but free (merci, expatriate Eldest Sister). For now and a short while longer, I live in Laguna Beach, a veritable emerald on what is generally and aptly known as the American Riviera, the southern Californian chain of moneyed coastal towns.

A few months ago in this space, Kate McGee wrote a love letter to Toronto music from the choir trenches of Germany. My dispatch is surely rooted in the same sentiment. Nonetheless, what I feel most jacked out of isn't these things specifically, but the general sense of camaraderie found amid masses of people just as young, earnest, stupid and pretentious as me. What I've noticed whilebeing away is the absence of what had come to seem like my elemental place in the world. It is odd to have left behind this sense of purpose and steadfastness before I knew it existed. It seems that all the hackneyed guidance counselor idealism about the merits of side-stepping out of your life for a while have proven true. I mean, while I realize that dicking around in Cali is hardly challenging, especially while my comrades at home curse their soakers and wind-chapped cheeks, my trip has been thus far enormously edifying, even in the familiar North American environment.

Certainly, the darlings of the office in East L.A. where I spend my days, and the denizens of the far-flung bars of Orange County where I spend my nights, are inspiring, convivial and appropriately idiosyncratic in their own rights. (Most bizarrely, they collectively think nothing of driving forty-five minutes across the county for shows every night. I will never complain about the Opera House ever again.) It's not with them that I feel like an imposter, except when they talk about congressmen and preferred freeway routes. It's the rest of my time, when I exist in a fucked-up binary of the very poorest citizens of the county and the very richest.

My long-ass commute to work on the bus consumes my waking consciousness. California is ultra-obsessed with cars, and only those on the very lowest, most cracked rung of the social ladder don't have them. Not being insured here equals not driving on the freeway, so every day I join the legions of men and women characterized by either well-justified scowls or doleful inertia. I'm usually the only whitey. I'm often asked by my co-passengers if I live on the streets, as if being a runaway is the only possible explanation for my use of public transit. When I answer in the negative, they look genuinely confused. The bus meanders through parts of Orange County that Seth and Summer likely don't check out too often, cities that are a whole five minutes away from the affluent coast and as such are composed of mostly slums, stucco gun shops, cash advance joints, and liquor stores. I try to talk to everyone who sits with me, but I don't speak much Spanish and they don't speak much English, and I sometimes get blasting mental images of my imperialist forebearers and how condescending the 'œCanadian Girl Reporter'? thing must come off, so I mostly just look out the window.

I roll to another extreme every night and weekend like so many games of pinball. I live in what is meant to be the nanny's quarters in the basement of my Eldest Sister (also her nickname, as I am younger and mean) and brother-in-law's home. Eldest Sister lives well, dresses well, drives a luxe car, employs maybe four or five people part-time, and will likely never work for money again. My sister enjoys the things she has, but remains (thankfully) the quirky and whip-smart girl who sees through me with exacting and frightening precision. Because we're two bananas in a bunch and she is very kind, E.S. has totally ingratiated me into her social and economic life. I have found myself on an overwhelming number of occasions with an overwhelmingly unoriginal Starbucks latte in hand and cellphone in ear, wheeling a Saab all kamikaze-style to overwhelmingly pricey clothing stores, organic food shops, and celebrity-dotted cafés.

Sometimes, when I'm lolling around on a bajillion-dollar couch after my third (eighth?) Gatsby-ish gimlet, I come to my senses and consider how, for the haves, the have-nots, and the have-somes, money is a constant and inescapable fixture here. Not just money, big money. Someone once said that who we are is a matter of our desires '” we're defined by what we want, not by what we do or what we like. I used to really subscribe to this definition, because in my estimation, it concluded that I was remarkably interesting and fun and smart. And, I think, so it would about the whole of our community in the Toronto I was digging before entering the U.S. I like it here, definitely, but all the mental energy spent being so far out of one's element can really make a girl crave some Sneaky's specials.

Love y'all '” xoxo.
By Kate Carraway