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© 2004 Michael Grecco Photography, Icon International Introduction Essay for California 24/7 Inventing Reality By Diana Griego Through the window of a coffeehouse where a small cup of java costs $1.75 these days, I watch a Latino teenager gyrate vigorously on the corner, a Walkman stereo planted firmly on his head. In his hands is a huge arrow sign advertising a pricey new subdivision down the street. Passing motorists smile or ignore him. These are not homes this boy or his immigrant family can afford, but that's beside the point. Content to escape his father's seasonal work in the backbreaking tomato fields and pear orchards of the Sacramento Valley, the boy is part of the dream, the dream that has always been California. Ask about the future and the golden glow of hope in his eyes is as genuine as that of the two-income family who will buy one of the $450,000 look-alike residences or that of the fifth-generation developer selling the dream by the name of "community." The dreams of California's 34 million residents come in many shapes and sizes, few of them alike, many of them elusive, yet always, somehow, surviving. Observers from afar have claimed for years that the far west's golden era has passed, that the future is tarnished. A meltdown of the state budget with its $15 billion deficit. Voters turning to a muscle bound, action hero, movie star governor to save them. The shattering of the state's promise to its top students that a prestigious University of California spot awaits them-for the first time ever in 2004, that was no longer the case. While the issues and problems are real, the California state of mind is about the freedom to search out one's fortune, not the riches themselves. The search for what's golden is defined individually. The Salinas orchard worker presses for his children to become citizens. The teenager outside the Sacramento coffeehouse can one day own a home. The Malibu millionaire might chuck it all in search of nirvana. From Hollywood soundstages and Bay Area biotechnology firms to the aerobics room at Sun City, we are the land of constant reinvention. We choose our lives, and almost anything goes in California. Both the Frisbee and Barbie were born here. Like many Californians, I am a native by happenstance, not by history. My parents were 17 and 18 when they eloped here exactly 50 years ago from middle America. California represented sunshine and freedom, important for a couple melting before the frowns of a small town troubled to see a Mexican-American boy crazy over a blond he'd known since middle school. California was a haven and remains so. As these pages reveal, it is not one place or people, but many places and people, experiencing whichever California metaphor they adopt. While we live in particular places-Anaheim, Petaluma, Barstow-no one inhabits the state called California. Both physically and symbolically, it is too vast for any one individual to embrace in its entirety. That's all the more true now, at this moment, as Californians struggle between the dream and the reality. The boy on the corner shakes, hops, and dances. He works. He plays. He dreams. The future is now. This is his California. Native Californian DIANA GRIEGO ERWIN is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes news columns for The Sacramento Bee. Browse    View All    Inventing Reality    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    California at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 160 Photographers: 77 Towns: 89

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