Returning to California

In searching for California’s infamous cultural diversity, my return to California has been a gamble that has paid great dividends. The added wonders, the “sublime and the scenic, the spiritual and the commercial” of California’s assorted tourist areas are just a secondary attribute that I have come to enjoy in my new home state(Ott). In the process of renewal that I am experiencing by reacquainting myself with the State of my birth, I have discovered the many attributes of California that I missed in my earlier state of dissatisfaction. There is never a want for things to do here. The progenitors of this great state, having a “sense of …exceptional destiny” have laid out an amazing land of opportunity for anyone with the imagination and desire, to succeed in any enterprise they might dare to dream up (McWilliams 61). With the “mixed mass of human beings” and the diversity of customs, cultures, ideas and activities to participate in, living here is like visiting a realistic Disneyland (McWilliams 42). The “naturally fostered spirit of independence and self-reliance” sustained by the early population during the period of the Gold Rush, is still lingering in a large part of the citizens of today and may be contagious to anyone who feels it. Some might say that I am lucky in the situation that I am in, but I would argue that point. I agree with Cary McWilliams as he states in his book California: The Great Exception, “belief in ‘good luck’…becomes a positive, independent factor in the preservation of (ones) good fortune”, but I believe that it is more a belief in ones self that is the force that will command success (62).
Works Cited:
McWilliams, Carey. California: The Great Exception. New York: Greenwood Press. 1949.
Ott, John. “Landscapes of Consumption: Auto Tourism and Visual Culture in California, 1920-1940”. Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-
2000. Eds. Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein, Ilene Susan Fort. Berekley. University of California Press. 2001. 61.

Comments

[Pacita]

I agree that the California dream of renewal slightly overlaps with the California vision as a place full of "opportunit[ies] for anyone with the imagination and desire". Your post also made me think of California as a land of unique flavors, in which Californians, in general, are the mixture of such flavors. The large diversity found in the Golden State serves as product for the symbol for THE cherished Californian dream (of success) in America.