llamas and peacocks

I spent the weekend on a ranch – or, as I like to call it, a "ranch." However, as Marc Antony didn't say, I come not to bury Caesar, but to praise him: This ranch included a pool, a hot tub, a ping pong table, a pool table, foosball, air hockey, tennis courts, basketball courts, two old video game machines, a jukebox, beds for twenty-some-odd people, multiple kitchens, more. Also the ranch was populated with horses, cows, dogs, chickens, burros, llamas, uncountable peacocks, and wild bunnies. I passed my time sleeping, eating, walking, talking to the llamas, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking to people, walking, drinking, sleeping, reading, and eating. I think that's a pretty comprehensive list.

I enjoyed talking to the llamas immensely, and yes I was anthropomorphizing them, but every time someone points that out, I think so what? They were obviously trying to communicate with me, too. If we both failed, that doesn't mean I can't have my own translation of it all.

It seems like it must be pretty nice to live on a massive ranch in Paicines, to make your own olive oil and host guests. To entertain your hobbies to your heart's content. How does one ever get here? we wondered. Not so much here but here in life. The quiet and the valley and the stars. I have trouble looking ahead into my life and planning backwards in this fashion, where would I like to be in twenty years and then think how to get there. But I also have trouble thinking where I'd like to be in five years. Or twenty months. And I was reading about the restlessness of Bruce Chatwin on this trip, his strong and genuine sense that surely we were not meant to be sedentary, that putting down roots was against his nature, and yes from that he extrapolated, so for all humanity, and wrongly so, but perhaps it is true for some of us, this difficulty of settling, this urge to move. That movement for the sake of movement is not at all bad. That there is a sake of movement.

yosemite

Until this past Memorial Day weekend, I hadn't been to Yosemite since I was in sixth grade. I remember that trip well: I bested my sixth grade enemy (as I would have described him then) in a snowball fight, and the valley flooded and everyone had to evacuate. 

This time, I thought I would do a lot of writing. I didn't. But I did a lot of other things that were equally necessary, such as stare at trees, and climb rocks, and cook with friends, and get a little raucous in the wee hours, and gasp ever so slightly.

And if I had to pick a song for this trip, it would be "This Will Be Our Year." And if I had to pick a color for this trip, it would be lime. And if I had to pick a food for this trip, it would be eggs. And if I had to pick a poem for this trip, it would be "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota".* And if I had to pick a sound for this trip, it would be laughter half-heard while sleeping.

*"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year's horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

grasses

I don't have a lot to say to flatter my hometown, but I do enjoy the train ride from San Francisco (really, from Richmond) up to Sacramento, along the bay and through the marshlands. 

The marsh grasses are unreal. I have seen the colors in all seasons. This being fall, there are tall and short grasses in colors ranging from lime and sage green to cranberry, burgundy, and lilac, and matte silver, and lion's mane gold. And pampas grass with creamy, feathery tufts that wave in the breeze. (This is all just before Fairfield, if you're heading northeast.) All set off by pools and slow, winding streams, slate blue. I'm not making this stuff up. Fairfield itself, of course, a terror of a town. Telephone wires and concrete block buildings and housing developments. Gas stations and storage units. But those fields, marshes, somehow unsung.

in new york

 

in Times Square

Didn't I just. Scott Joplin's "Solace," specifically; my favorite for a long time, now.

languidezza

My time in Cambridge and Boston could be considered an extended exploration of Leopardi's observation that

"...in fact, most human pleasure consists in some sort of languor" ("...anzi forse la maggior parte dei diletti umani consistono in qualche sorta di languidezza," from "Parini's Discourse on Glory," Operette Morali, Giacomo Leopardi, trans. Giovanni Cecchetti).

Consider that thesis well supported.

I would go to bed with at best a vague idea of what I'd be doing the next day, and wake up and form a very loose sort of plan. This is so far from my usual M.O., especially when on vacation, and I think it did me a world of good. Lounging about, while far from my permanent state, is not to be underrated. Of course, my idea of lounging involves walking all over town, but with nice breaks for coffee, for snacks, for reading in a pleasantly shady spot along the Charles. And eating. Frequently and well. On that, I think, more to come.

museum of fine arts, boston

My art education was always a gradual and ad hoc thing. Untaught in what is strangely called "art appreciation," I was somehow always a classicist (in form, in technique, in metrical scheme – I was writing sonnets regularly by seventh grade) and it wasn't until entering high school that an odd assignment for world history found me studying Picasso. With a hard heart and a harder head, I can admit it; I was convinced his art didn't interest me. But here of course is the wonder of immersion, the complete unseating, shifting, the changing of a heart; and that was the beginning of it all for me, as far as I can tell.

I continued to carry around tiny pockets of art knowledge until later in high school when my involvement in Academic Decathlon (the Olympics of nerd-sports) found me studying art again, with a truly incredible art teacher. The way the competition works is this: each year, the selection committee (whoever they are) choose several pieces of art from a specific U.S. art museum, and the lucky contestants study the pieces, their makers, their eras, techniques used, &tc., &tc. And the first year that I was on the team, the pieces were selected from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

I took a redeye from San Francisco to Boston and arrived on the 15th, beat tired and kind of hazy in my mind. I dropped my bag off at the hotel, took a nap in Boston Common, and headed over to the MFA, a place I'd been hoping to get to for about ten years now.

By now of course, things are somewhat different than they were when I was sixteen. I moved from the Sacramento suburbs to la città dell'Arte, and have had the ridiculous good fortune to spend time in some of the best art museums of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England, the U.S., and the Netherlands. And yet the MFA was one of the pleasantest art museum experiences I've ever had. I would enter a room, look around at its contents, and then find myself startled to see something so familiar that I'd also never seen before, in person at least. A bit like meeting a pen pal, I imagine.* It was surprisingly soothing, comforting, casual.

My thanks forever to Ms. Jill Pease for her inspiration and infectious enthusiasm.

*when I was a child, I had a pen pal for about four years. His name was Karthik and he lived in India. We have never met.

holiday

I have too much to say. I was asked today, what were the three highlights of your trip? I thought that was a good question. "Tell me about your trip" is so broad, and "what was the best thing" is so narrow. A perfect solution, no, but a nice middle way. Yet without a doubt, the main highlight was seeing my good friends. Deeply affirming. People who've known you a long time remind you who you are. I think a lot about Florence, where I could in ten or fifteen minutes walk to the house of anyone I wanted to see. I missed a lot of my friends in the states, of course, but while I was there, all of my friends there were so conveniently located. Someday I'll found a town. It'll be an invitation-only town, a curated town. Only people I like. If you're reading this, the odds are pretty good that you'll be invited to come live there. (Say yes.)

More details shortly.

slide ranch part II

Some late pictures from last weekend at Slide Ranch.

It's almost disgustingly pretty.

All that washed-out California wood.

And I found that there is nothing more strangely touching than a small child, very still, petting a chicken with utmost solemnity.

Also, dead shark!

Dadaism.

And a final cliché (I just couldn't help myself).

water oliphants

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee...

                       – John Donne

 

Elephant Seals at Año Nuevo

 

California is so strange. 

But I don't care what they say.

I like it anyway.

(my camera died this weekend, exhibiting a surprisingly spectacular sense of the inopportune. All photos courtesy of CS).

evidence

of a kind. Before my camera batteries died, at any rate.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

I know I'm biased. But I don't care. There are time when I simply adore California.

Amtrak in four conversations

One 
8:15am Sunday morning, San Francisco 
grumpy

Because they rearranged the bus stop, I almost missed my shuttle to Emeryville, which would have caused me to miss my train to Sacramento.  "Didn't you see the signs?" the Amtrak employee asked me as he gave me directions to the new, temporary bus stop, "They're everywhere."  I had not.  I looked around.  I did not see the signs which were everywhere.  I expressed my fear that I would miss the train to Sacramento.  "Don't worry," he told me "there's another train right after it going to Sacramento, back to back."  But I've read well and I said "You mean the one that gets in over half an hour later?" (this is a quintessential Amtrak paradox: two trains leave the same stop at almost exactly the same time, they arrive at the same destination but one arrives a half an hour later and both cost $26) 
"Yeah," he responded, "you don't want that one?"
"No," I affirmed, "I do not."
I walked to the temporary bus stop.  I continued to not see the signs.

Entre'act
At the coffee shop in the Emeryville Station, a sign:

Now Available

Smoothies

Different Flavors

Two

8:50am Sunday, Emeryville

sleepy

A small boy, I'd guess about five years old, sat down across from me, stared, smiled, and launched.  "Hello," he said.  "Hello," I answered. 

"Some of the kids in my class, they're bad."

"Really?"

"Yeah.  They don't listen to the teacher."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

"Do you listen to the teacher?"

"Yeah."

"Good for you."

"I get a sticker everyday."

"You must have a lot of stickers."

This child spoke quickly and with energy but he was focused.  He was watching me.  He asked permission, then took my picture with his cell phone.  My train arrived first.  "I've got to go," I said.

"Goodbye!  My name's Javier."

"Goodbye Javier.  My name's Margaret."

"Goodbye Margaret!"

Three

7:40am, Monday

caffeinated

The conductor makes the usual announcements about seating, the location of the snack car, etc., then: "Ladies and gentlemen," she said "if you look out your window in the direction we're moving, there's a huge, beautiful rainbow."  There was.  It lasted all the way to Richmond, which is almost an hour and a half of rainbow.  Forward in hope.

Four

9:30am, Monday

I was the first person to get on the shuttle from Emeryville to San Francisco and so I moved partway back.  No one else got on.  "Looks like you're my only passenger," said the driver.  "You're a princess today!"

"In that case, I'm going to move up and keep you company."

We nattered all the way to San Francico.  He told me about when he met Michelle Obama at a fundraiser, and we both admired her for awhile and agreed that the White House mattresses must be getting a better workout since god only knows when.  We talked about education and communication and tourists and being a stranger in a strange land.  The driver's name, I found out eventually, was Rufus.  He used to operate a cable car.  "You must have met all kinds of people doing that," I said.  "Yes," he remarked, "but of all the people I've met, you're the most interesting."

I bet he says that to everybody.  Still.  I'll take what I can get.

auf weidersehen, Deutschland

My route back to San Francisco was Munich to Dublin to Boston, (one week stop-over of seeing friends, odd gadding about, and art & architectural fun), to San Francisco.

Having just gotten off the plane in Dublin, I bump into a woman accidentally. "Entschuldigung," I say, automatically. "Entschuldigung," she replies, then goes back to speaking Spanish with her friend.

Meanwhile I try to cosy up to the notion that I may never truly feel I "belong" anywhere. (not as angsty as it sounds)

Switzerland is not a small country

It's a small town. At least if you live there. On a glorious excursion conducted entirely via public transit with my relatives Gottfried and Rosemarie, we encountered someone they knew everywhere we went. The bus, the train. A town an hour away. Hands were shaken, greetings exchanged. I was introduced as the Californian. This elicited smiles. Everyone inquired after everyone else's relatives. On our roughly 12-hour journey, through Lucerne, Interlaken, into the foothills of the Alps, this continued with astounding regularity. I suppose it's practically a pun to talk about anything occurring like clockwork in Switzerland. Nonetheless. What would it be like, I wonder, to live in a place that is so small. The tops of the mountains are regularly obscured by the clouds. The lanscape dips and soars, as does the dialect.

Having spent only about four days there, I still feel certain that it's almost impossible that Switzerland will ever join the EU. Not, as is widely supposed, because their are loath to give up their independence, their isolation, their neutrality. Nor out of snobbishness. No, I think it is partly due to a strong sense of tradition - 700 years of continuous civilization and general prosperity are enough to make anyone wary of something as newfangled as the EU. But perhaps even more than that, I think they wouldn't want to give up their close-knitness. They've seen Paree, and they'd like to stay down on the farm. It's not provincial. But it's at times pastoral, and decidedly cosy.

A Supposedly Romantic Thing Which I Did All By Myself

Neuschwanstein castle (New Swan Stone, for the curious) is perhaps the most popular tourist destination in Germany, and easily the most famous castle in the world. So I suppose I was asking for it, in a way, but it seemed ridiculous to live in Munich so long and not go.

So, there I was, sitting on the train Monday morning, horrified by the hordes of noisy, nasal USAmerican tourists, and bemused by my horror. Who do I think I am, repulsed by my fellow countrywomen and -men? But there I was, as I sometimes find myself when confronted with Americans abroad, hiding my book so they wouldn't see it was English. Because then they would talk to me. Somehow, they always want to talk. The novelty of meeting a fellow American abroad seems to astound them as much as it appals me.

When I arrived, there was a three and a half hour wait for the next English tour, a four hour wait for the next German tour, and a two hour wait for the next audio guide tour. Was it available in English? No? German? No? Italian? Rusty, but it'll have to do.

I spent an hour rowing myself around the nearby Alpsee in a small wooden boat. I got some gorgeous blisters, and it was very, very quiet, and wonderfully solitary out in the middle. A large chunk of the freshly-developed antipathy and misanthropy melted away.

I walked up the hill (c. 20 minutes?) to the castle, catching up to and passing one of the horse-drawn carriages on the way (walking = faster and free!).

The tour lasted, I believe, just under half an hour. We were herded about like exceptionally dumb cattle, and chastised if we attempted to take pictures. The major advantage of being on the Italian tour is that everyone tried to take pictures anyway. Italian lackadaisicality battled German hideboundness for about 25 minutes. In general, the Germans won.

What interested me the most was the competitiveness of it all - the pushing and shoving to get on trains, buses. We all wanted our share of beauty, glamour, romance, and we were bound and determined to get it. The cut-throat pursuit of pleasure.

the doorbell saga, exhibit C

I have a premonition that this will succeed in pleasing no one.

Of course, when my roommate took the one surviving screw to the hardware store, the hardware store lost it. These were the closest replacements available. Frankly, I think it looked better before, with the two screws of matching size and color, even if one did have the wrong head (sorry, no photo available, it was too brief of an interval).

the end, question mark

the apparent nonchalance of prostitutes

(Amsterdam)

It was more striking than the prostitutes themselves. Sitting or standing behind their floor-to-ceiling windows, lit in pink and red. Dyed blonde, tanned, tattoed, lingerie- or bikini-clad. The same idea of attraction, conformity and repetition. And palpable disinterest. Eating, talking on cell phones. I suppose I expected some kind of show. Dancing on poles, come-hither nonsense. But you get nothing for free, besides the hammering if somewhat inexplicable guilt of voyeurism. The sameness of it all was what hit me hardest. And the heteronormativity. No men in the windows, and I was told that prospective female clients would be turned away. This from a city with a reputation for the largest Pride party in Europe.

How many, if indeed any, are there truly of their own volition? How many had better options that they turned down? The more I read about human trafficking, the more terrified I am that we never abolished slavery. We just pushed it underground.

the doorbell saga, exhibit B

We took it off to try to match the screws.

the doorbell saga, exhibit A

this was the cause of earlier trouble. The screw pictured below has since been replaced with one of proper size and color.

Unfortunately, of the wrong type. We have again received complaints. Stupidly, we used a screw with a slotted head when we should have used a Phillips. It does clash dreadfully.

ring my bell

It always surprises me when people live up (or down?) to their cultural stereotypes.

I live in a "WG" (pronounced "Vay-geh;" short for Wohngemeinshaft, or shared apartment) with two other people. Our WG is in a four-story apartment building. There are eight flats. In Germany, or at least in Bavaria, there are no apartment numbers. Instead, the building has a number and each person's mailbox in the hallway has their name on it and that's how we get our mail. Outside our apartment building we have a shiny brass plate sort of thing with everyone's name next to their respective doorbell. The names are not engraved; rather, your name is on a little piece of paper inside a sort of slipcase. In January, when I moved in, we updated our nameplate and mailbox accordingly. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so we lost one of the tiny brass screws that affixes our nameplate to the wall. We tightened the other screw, though, and the name plate sat quite correctly in its proper position, nicely parallel to the one below it. However, about three weeks ago, one of our neighbors stopped one of my roommates on the stairs and said we really should replace the screw. (Did I mention that we are by far the youngest people in the building? The next closest in age are in their late thirties, I suppose. The oldest is probably around seventy.) As of just over two weeks ago, the screw has been replaced.

We received a hand-written note today in our mailbox. Dear WG, it said, It would be nice if you would replace the screw on your name plate with one that matches...It would be so nice if it didn't look "messy." Kind regards, Your Neighbor.

I find the anonymity amusing. And it's true, the screw we used to replace the one that disappeared (despite much searching!) amid the tiny stones and dirt of the flowerbed doesn't match. It's silver and it's slightly too big (this was a tiny, tiny screw), so it sticks out from the frame by about one centimeter. Clearly, this is an eyesore.

So, my plans for Monday (every single store is closed in Bavaria on a Sunday) include going to the hardware store to search for a tiny, tiny brass screw.

I won't ask for a cup of sugar anytime soon.

the eternal battle for dominance

sure, grey squirrels are bigger, stronger, fatter, maybe even smarter, who knows - but red squirrels are a hell of a lot cuter.

This one lives in my backyard.