Desert Reset

On November 6 I woke up to a world where Donald Trump had been re-elected president and I might have been elected to the City Council of Malibu.

Mixed emotions, to say the least. I needed to get out of town for a while.

I was feeling depressed and confused. Confused about why I was feeling depressed, when it appeared I had won something I worked at non-stop since filing in early August.

Someone I know calls this a form of PPD = Post Project Depression. When you’re intensely focused on something you want to achieve and then you achieve it, there is a letdown as your mind and body relaxes.

I guess what I had was PPVD = Post Possible Victory Depression. I wasn’t sure if I had won, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to win, because the level of nastiness and rumor and backstabbing I encountered while running for City Council might continue into actually taking a seat at the table.

And to paraphrase the Beach Boys: “I wasn’t digging those bad vibrations. They were giving me the palpitations.”

So it was that, but also the uncertainty that I had actually gathered enough votes to finish third behind Bruce Silverstein and Steve Uhring.

So, as Jimi Hendrix said, “Depressioin had captured my soul. I knew what I wanted, but didn’t know if I had gone about getting it.”

So I headed east with my daughter who had a horse show in Thermal near desert.

Again another song: “We went through the desert with a horse named Sierra.”

Sorry.

It was good to get away from the trouble and strife of Malibu for a while, but now as an almost-anointed member of the Malibu City Council, everything I see I see in terms of Malibu.

Solar canopies. Why not in the Malibu? We have lots of sun. Photo: Brook Lynn.

Improving Malibu.

In Palm Springs I saw the kind of wide, safe, sidewalked and bike-laned boulevards I would love to see in Malibu. Now of course Palm Springs is a desert with lots of space, where Malibu is a tight ribbon of land between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Deep Blue Sea.

I saw those wide, safe boulevards and thought “Dream on!” but I also saw lots of what I learned are called “Solar Canopies.” These are solar panels raised up to allow people to park underneath. Space is scarce and valuable in Malibu, but it seems like these solar canopies are something Malibu could benefit from.

A weird place to go for a surf during a weird week.

And then I went surfing at the Palm Springs Surf wave pool. It was cool, but it was cold, I guess they don’t heat it in the winter. Same deal with Kelly Slater’s Wave Pool.

The combination of the weirdness of surfing a wave in the desert - 60 miles from the nearest ocean at Lower Trestles - and the sharp snap of the cold cleared my head.

My friend calls surfing The Reset Button - the exertion and the cold and the thrills and the fun can clear all the free radicals orbiting a human head, and encourage clear thinking.

And that’s what happened, I rode several waves for 60 minutes in 60+ degree water, 60+ miles from the nearest ocean, and when I came out of the water I was feeling good again. Thinking good again.

I surfed, my daughter horsed around and then on we drove back to Malibu - the possibilities of which were looming ahead of me like the Emerald City.

And Malibu was shining from the Red Tide. The deep and dark blue ocean was lit up in phospherescent blue at night.

A lovely welcome home.

Malibu is a beautiful place - especiallyin the golden light of November, and a place I want to serve and protect.

If the next four years are as emotional as the four-month campaign from August to November, I’m going to need to soak my head in cold water for that Reset Button.