Day 2 (continued)
As night set in, we didn't feel quite ready to quit our journeying, so we headed into the town of Trinidad. At first appearance a small town with little more than a Chevron station and a quick mart, a few blocks in, quaint houses and criss-crossing streets revealed a charming seaside town. Still, two minutes of driving got us through all of it, which was fine, as our final destination for the day was the water. Trinidad is regarded as among the finest sections of California seashore for combing tide pools—a favorite pass-time of my mother's. Pulling into Trinidad State Beach, we found ourselves looking down on a tucked-away, rocky Neverland. With enormous rock outcroppings looming out of the water, smaller ones scattered among the waves, and many nooks and crannies created in-between, the beaches in and around Trinidad (we also went to two just south of town) crawl with surfers, scenery-admirers, and thinkers. As the sky turned that lavendar hue it gets just before going black, a lighthouse winked at me from some distant point of land, and I thought I might just sit in this chilly night-time scene for a very long time. I'm quite sure it will become one of those visual memories I keep for life.
Day 3
Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park is the most northern section of California's Redwood forest. Driving north almost to Oregon, you can enter the park from Crescent City, a depressing little town that suffered at the hands of a tsunami back in the 1960s, and I have to imagine it never recovered. We stayed there only long enough to get a park map and directions to our first stop, Stout Grove. The day before, in Prairie Creek, we had entered the park on a smoothly paved road that led us from guided trail to guided trail. In Jedidiah, as soon as we turned onto the road, I knew we were in for a different experience. Once paved, the road surface is now rough and beaten, covered with a thin red glaze of dried Redwoods branches. Stout Grove is, in fact, the only stop on the road; the rest of the time, you glide slowly amidst massive trees that regularly encroach on the very pavement you'd like to roll your tires along. You can get out of the car anytime you want, but you can't enter the woods; you have to be content with being engulfed in them. I felt very deep in there, lost to the outside world, far from daylight (as the dense stand of 350+ foot trees blocks most of it) or from cities or even from time. It was magical.
Day 4
Driving home, we passed through the Humboldt Redwoods, traveling down the Avenue of the Giants for most of its 32 miles. I have to say that in comparison to the two Redwood parks I'd just seen, Humboldt truly does pale. But any Redwood is impressive, especially the fallen ones that seem to go on and on and on as you walk from root ball to tip. In Humboldt, some sort of calamity brought down a veritable fleet of massive Redwoods in one area. Some are so wide that, on their sides, they still stand two or three times as tall as me. Standing beside them feels like standing beside a grounded ship—its hull exposed, rising from the ground and looking like the whole thing should rock right on over. On some, crashing into a neighbor sent splinters up the wood, separating it into what looks like gaping hunks and shards of red flesh. On others, the ancient bark is beginning to roll off the fallen trunk and onto the ground—giving the impression of serpents slithering up the wood and then off. Needless to say, I enjoyed my brief visit to Humboldt and recommend that all of you venture into these beauties at some point!
I'll close by commenting that the drive south on 101 from Humboldt to about Santa Rose is absolutely beautiful. It's all farmland and wineries, hillsides covered in scrub oak and madrone and a variety of other decidious trees that seemed astonishingly petite and delicate after what I'd just seen. Passing through Healdsburg definitely put it next on my list of places to visit. And I'll be sure to report on that if I do!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Northern Redwoods, part 1
Reputedly, when I was four years old I hiked an entire Redwood forest without a grumble. The journey is said to have taken a full day. I, unfortunately, don't remember my good attitude or much of what I saw. But one of those mental pictures that occasionally floats into my consciousness—generally in response to a certain combination of air temperature and dampness dangling from greenery—is of a very large Redwood, which I believe I walked through, and which therefore left in my mind an association of Redwoods with wonderland. Add to that a fanaticism developed around the same age for all things Star Wars—and thus an insuppressible urge to look for Ewoks when I set foot among Redwoods—and you can imagine how readily I agreed when my mother suggested that after Thanksgiving we should drive to the northernmost of the Redwood forests in California and spend a few days exploring.
Day 1
We left early Friday morning on one of those crystal-clear, crisp days that make San Francisco a hard place to imagine not living despite the bizarre climate. We spent 9.5 hours (including a few small excursions) alternately traveling alongside the Pacific Ocean and dipping in and out of forested valleys and rises to finally reach the town of Trinidad around 6 pm. It had been a lovely day, but we were more than ready to get out of the car when we parked outside the Lost Whale Inn.
The minute we entered, I knew I would love staying here. A young couple sat at a large wooden table like you'd find in a kitchen, sipping tea and talking quietly. An older pair lounged on a sofa, flipping through magazines with their feet up as though in their own living room. A fire flickered behind the piano. (The piano!) As we shut the door, the owner greeted us with a hearty hello, handshakes that could have been hugs, and a glowing smile. As she led us around—showing us the tv room, the hot tub, the moon, the ocean, our bedrooms, the hallway table laden with packets of tea and cocoa, mugs, and hot water—it took all of three minutes for me to feel at home. Then she suggested we come downstairs for clam chowder, which we did—and which we enjoyed so much we had seconds. She also pointed out the open bottles of wine that we were free to pour from, the punch her husband had made, and the home-made cookies piled on a plate at the end of the counter. How often does one feel so content so immediately? And I haven't even mentioned how well I slept in that bed, or how the skylight in my room let me see stars just before I closed my eyes.
Day 2
Feeling about as refreshed as one can upon waking, I was excited the next day to get out into the trees. A number of large lagoons lie just behind the seashore north of Trinidad, and these we circled around slowly, enjoying watching the Pacific roll in to meet them. Shortly we entered the Prairie Creek Redwoods, where ancient trees rise with perfect verticality on all sides of you, wherever you are. You have to lean your head way back to see the tops of these 300+-foot-tall-monsters, and even then, you know you are fooling yourself to think you can really see so high. What is more readily conceivable is the girth of the trees, some of which have grown to 25 or 30 feet in diameter. Most impressive is the aptly named Big Tree, which is breathtakingly old at 1,500 years. I had a wonderful time wandering far below the tallest branches, studying bark patterns and tree groupings and wishing the sun would come out so I could take more photos. There is a magical geometry to the Redwoods that I could take in for days and days. Each trunk is vertically striated, and on the occasional tree, the channels in the bark run perfectly upward, as appallingly upright as the sun-loving trees. But on others, they twist around the tree, as though a large hand gripped the cylinder and gave it a turn; and on still others, the wales crisscross as though braided, and sometimes burls lunge out or stout branches shower a splay of needles off an otherwise barren trunk. Amidst the Redwoods, deciduous trees like alders and vine maples fill in the spaces between behemoths, and some of them drip with lichen impersonating Spanish moss. When occasionally the sun glints through the branches, the green outlines of these enshrouded trees glow yellow and capture that wondrous feeling that my mind always associates with the Redwood forest.
Though I could happily have stayed for many more hours, we ran out of trails on which to meander, and so we drove onward, exiting the main road and taking a gravelly coastal drive that I recommend to anyone even just passing through this part of the state. As the road rises, a seashore hides below; I did not know Gold Bluffs Beach existed until we stood many hundreds of feet above it—maybe even one or two thousand. Leaning over the stone wall of the overlook, we watched swells roll in from as far as a mile out. Perfectly spaced, perfectly timed, they gave the impression of choreography.
As the light dimmed, we drove back downward, exiting near the mouth of the Klamath River and returning to the Norman B. Drury scenic highway. I recommend always choosing this route over 101, which is longer and passes only new-growth conifers. The scenic highway runs right through the Redwoods and ends near a meadow positively filled with Roosevelt elk in the last light of day. As we drove home, we discovered that the elk live all over the region, grazing not only in protected areas but also in front yards and side yards and along the shoulders of roads. We enjoyed stopping every few minutes to admire them, and we were equally pleased at the opportunity the end-of-day viewings gave us to spot egrets dotting the trees and marshes.
Day 1
We left early Friday morning on one of those crystal-clear, crisp days that make San Francisco a hard place to imagine not living despite the bizarre climate. We spent 9.5 hours (including a few small excursions) alternately traveling alongside the Pacific Ocean and dipping in and out of forested valleys and rises to finally reach the town of Trinidad around 6 pm. It had been a lovely day, but we were more than ready to get out of the car when we parked outside the Lost Whale Inn.
The minute we entered, I knew I would love staying here. A young couple sat at a large wooden table like you'd find in a kitchen, sipping tea and talking quietly. An older pair lounged on a sofa, flipping through magazines with their feet up as though in their own living room. A fire flickered behind the piano. (The piano!) As we shut the door, the owner greeted us with a hearty hello, handshakes that could have been hugs, and a glowing smile. As she led us around—showing us the tv room, the hot tub, the moon, the ocean, our bedrooms, the hallway table laden with packets of tea and cocoa, mugs, and hot water—it took all of three minutes for me to feel at home. Then she suggested we come downstairs for clam chowder, which we did—and which we enjoyed so much we had seconds. She also pointed out the open bottles of wine that we were free to pour from, the punch her husband had made, and the home-made cookies piled on a plate at the end of the counter. How often does one feel so content so immediately? And I haven't even mentioned how well I slept in that bed, or how the skylight in my room let me see stars just before I closed my eyes.
Day 2
Feeling about as refreshed as one can upon waking, I was excited the next day to get out into the trees. A number of large lagoons lie just behind the seashore north of Trinidad, and these we circled around slowly, enjoying watching the Pacific roll in to meet them. Shortly we entered the Prairie Creek Redwoods, where ancient trees rise with perfect verticality on all sides of you, wherever you are. You have to lean your head way back to see the tops of these 300+-foot-tall-monsters, and even then, you know you are fooling yourself to think you can really see so high. What is more readily conceivable is the girth of the trees, some of which have grown to 25 or 30 feet in diameter. Most impressive is the aptly named Big Tree, which is breathtakingly old at 1,500 years. I had a wonderful time wandering far below the tallest branches, studying bark patterns and tree groupings and wishing the sun would come out so I could take more photos. There is a magical geometry to the Redwoods that I could take in for days and days. Each trunk is vertically striated, and on the occasional tree, the channels in the bark run perfectly upward, as appallingly upright as the sun-loving trees. But on others, they twist around the tree, as though a large hand gripped the cylinder and gave it a turn; and on still others, the wales crisscross as though braided, and sometimes burls lunge out or stout branches shower a splay of needles off an otherwise barren trunk. Amidst the Redwoods, deciduous trees like alders and vine maples fill in the spaces between behemoths, and some of them drip with lichen impersonating Spanish moss. When occasionally the sun glints through the branches, the green outlines of these enshrouded trees glow yellow and capture that wondrous feeling that my mind always associates with the Redwood forest.
Though I could happily have stayed for many more hours, we ran out of trails on which to meander, and so we drove onward, exiting the main road and taking a gravelly coastal drive that I recommend to anyone even just passing through this part of the state. As the road rises, a seashore hides below; I did not know Gold Bluffs Beach existed until we stood many hundreds of feet above it—maybe even one or two thousand. Leaning over the stone wall of the overlook, we watched swells roll in from as far as a mile out. Perfectly spaced, perfectly timed, they gave the impression of choreography.
As the light dimmed, we drove back downward, exiting near the mouth of the Klamath River and returning to the Norman B. Drury scenic highway. I recommend always choosing this route over 101, which is longer and passes only new-growth conifers. The scenic highway runs right through the Redwoods and ends near a meadow positively filled with Roosevelt elk in the last light of day. As we drove home, we discovered that the elk live all over the region, grazing not only in protected areas but also in front yards and side yards and along the shoulders of roads. We enjoyed stopping every few minutes to admire them, and we were equally pleased at the opportunity the end-of-day viewings gave us to spot egrets dotting the trees and marshes.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
The Darjeeling Limited: a subtly sweet ride
Owen C. Wilson is the type of actor who can either make a movie or make an audience want to toss things at the screen so he will shut his surfer-dude trap already. The Darjeeling Limited may have offered him the role of his life; I found him down-right endearing. The film is tender and sweet, and, with just a sprinkle of humor, inspires one to wonder if Wes Anderson had a real-life spiritual experience in India while writing this script.
The only negative: Adrien Brody's somber yet cartoonish face did not, for me, suffice to replace a larger role by Bill Murray, who is the master of quiet characters and the seeming embodiment of Anderson's outlook on the world. In my opinion, Brody has a lot of acting classes to attend before he will merge well with the Wilson-Schwartzman machine. Though what a pair of legs. His lankiness goes unrivaled.
The only negative: Adrien Brody's somber yet cartoonish face did not, for me, suffice to replace a larger role by Bill Murray, who is the master of quiet characters and the seeming embodiment of Anderson's outlook on the world. In my opinion, Brody has a lot of acting classes to attend before he will merge well with the Wilson-Schwartzman machine. Though what a pair of legs. His lankiness goes unrivaled.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Orion
I have had an attachment to the constellation Orion for as long as I can remember looking at the stars. I used to walk out into our driveway at night, round the corner of the carport, and stand beside a juniper that I had a particular fondness for because of the way it held the raindrops on the tips of its green fingers after a downpour. Right there at the start of the driveway, I was just below Orion and he above me. I would look up at him and count out the three stars of his belt before adjusting my eyes to the dark palette behind him and picking out one or two more. I knew other constellations—the dippers, of course, and Cassiopeia's chair was easy to find as well—but there was something about this hunter, this man leaping to action across the sky, that caught my attention.
There wasn't too much to the relationship back then; I just liked to leave the house at night and look up at him. Thinking about that makes me realize just how precious my home setting was, because I lived in a city, ten minutes from everything, and yet my house was surrounded by woods, and my sky was astrally lit. I lived in a city, and yet I could wander outside without my parents knowing and feel perfectly comfortable, no question of safety in my mind. I'd listen to an owl hooting or bats fluttering by; I'd watch a raccoon I knew slinking across the neighbor's lawn, heading toward cat food; I'd listen to all those trees around me shaking their leaves and soothing me toward sleep. I'd only spend five minutes out there, maybe ten, not long enough to be missed from the long, low house at the other end of which my parents slept. I'd come out and find him, take it all in, and then head for sleep.
When I was in high school, I spent a semester away from home, living on a farm in Maine. The night I arrived, I was terrified by the deep snow around me—four feet in places—and the frigid sub-zero air that made my nose hairs go rigid and turn to ice. I was nervous to enter the cabin that I would live in with nine other girls for the next four months. But it was only a few days into the experience that I realized a friend had followed me all the way to that northern forest. Walking back to the cabin one night, listening to the crunching of packed snow beneath my boots, watching the trees sway in the clear, blue light of snow-reflected-moon, thinking about a math assignment or an English essay or some science field trip we were about to undertake, I happened to look at the sky at the right moment and saw Orion perched just off the far corner of the hilltop home to which I returned. After that I took my nightly walk home slowly, often took it alone, so I could have those five minutes I used to waste just looking to whisper things to my night-time confidante.
I have never been a religious person; I have always believed that relationships with external agents—whether of the stellar or spiritual composition—are really just relationships with oneself. I may personify Orion, but I don't truly believe he is anything but an arrangement of fading gases that happen to have locked into relative place. Still, though, I appreciate the longevity of nature that constellations reveal; I appreciate the creativity of ancients—some as far back as the days of Sumerian (our first) civilization—who saw them too and named them after what they knew. But mostly I appreciate Orion for serving as one of those signposts in life that you cycle past here and there and, at each visit, are reminded to think about where you've been since the last pass.
I sometimes chuckle over what city people I am surrounded by in San Francisco, where I moved in hopes of regenerating my connection to nature, which suffered heavily from the chills of ten New England winters (during many of which I stayed mostly inside). It may be a green city, but it's a city! I tell myself, amused now by my earlier expectation. One night a friend and I made our way out of the city; how long, she commented, it had been since she'd seen a starry night. I smiled quietly, remembering something I read half a lifetime ago in a Neruda poem ("Las Estrellas"). I smiled not at her mistake but at my own knowing; you can see the stars in San Francisco any time the fog frees up the sky. And if you stand on my street, about two-thirds of the way toward the far sidewalk and two or three car lengths up the block, when you look at my house your eyes will rise, because above it Orion lingers, waiting for my next thought.
There wasn't too much to the relationship back then; I just liked to leave the house at night and look up at him. Thinking about that makes me realize just how precious my home setting was, because I lived in a city, ten minutes from everything, and yet my house was surrounded by woods, and my sky was astrally lit. I lived in a city, and yet I could wander outside without my parents knowing and feel perfectly comfortable, no question of safety in my mind. I'd listen to an owl hooting or bats fluttering by; I'd watch a raccoon I knew slinking across the neighbor's lawn, heading toward cat food; I'd listen to all those trees around me shaking their leaves and soothing me toward sleep. I'd only spend five minutes out there, maybe ten, not long enough to be missed from the long, low house at the other end of which my parents slept. I'd come out and find him, take it all in, and then head for sleep.
When I was in high school, I spent a semester away from home, living on a farm in Maine. The night I arrived, I was terrified by the deep snow around me—four feet in places—and the frigid sub-zero air that made my nose hairs go rigid and turn to ice. I was nervous to enter the cabin that I would live in with nine other girls for the next four months. But it was only a few days into the experience that I realized a friend had followed me all the way to that northern forest. Walking back to the cabin one night, listening to the crunching of packed snow beneath my boots, watching the trees sway in the clear, blue light of snow-reflected-moon, thinking about a math assignment or an English essay or some science field trip we were about to undertake, I happened to look at the sky at the right moment and saw Orion perched just off the far corner of the hilltop home to which I returned. After that I took my nightly walk home slowly, often took it alone, so I could have those five minutes I used to waste just looking to whisper things to my night-time confidante.
I have never been a religious person; I have always believed that relationships with external agents—whether of the stellar or spiritual composition—are really just relationships with oneself. I may personify Orion, but I don't truly believe he is anything but an arrangement of fading gases that happen to have locked into relative place. Still, though, I appreciate the longevity of nature that constellations reveal; I appreciate the creativity of ancients—some as far back as the days of Sumerian (our first) civilization—who saw them too and named them after what they knew. But mostly I appreciate Orion for serving as one of those signposts in life that you cycle past here and there and, at each visit, are reminded to think about where you've been since the last pass.
I sometimes chuckle over what city people I am surrounded by in San Francisco, where I moved in hopes of regenerating my connection to nature, which suffered heavily from the chills of ten New England winters (during many of which I stayed mostly inside). It may be a green city, but it's a city! I tell myself, amused now by my earlier expectation. One night a friend and I made our way out of the city; how long, she commented, it had been since she'd seen a starry night. I smiled quietly, remembering something I read half a lifetime ago in a Neruda poem ("Las Estrellas"). I smiled not at her mistake but at my own knowing; you can see the stars in San Francisco any time the fog frees up the sky. And if you stand on my street, about two-thirds of the way toward the far sidewalk and two or three car lengths up the block, when you look at my house your eyes will rise, because above it Orion lingers, waiting for my next thought.
Pondering Prince Charming
All these discussions of men and dating led a friend to ask me about my notion of Prince Charming. She wondered if I think that way. And I do, in a sense. But boy have my thoughts on it changed over time! When I was younger—a teenager, in college, even recently graduated—I imagined "the guy for me" being someone with all these various traits that seemed important to me then. He would be into nature; he would be into poetry; he would have dark hair and tower over me and he'd occasionally crack a cheshire cat grin at me; he would be an extroverted introvert like I am; he would like to talk and to be together silently; he would be an explorer, have a sense of wonder--his inner child would be alive at all times. The list went on and on.
By my late twenties, I clued in a bit, realized that I could fall for guys who lacked half my requirements and find little zing flying between me and someone who fit me to a T on paper. I did take note of certain things that always mattered: if not a love of poetry, at least an appreciation of creativity; if not an extroversion, at least an ability to listen well and communicate about the things that matter; if not a deep-seated sense of whimsy, at least, for the love of god, the ability to laugh, and laugh often, and most importantly, to laugh at himself. Over time I fine-tuned Prince Charming, realizing that in most cases the things that make him right for me and not you are broad things, not specific predilections or inherent ways.
But as I settle into me thirties, I have to admit, my image of him has broadened beyond expectation. For at this point, I have days when all I really require is a backbone; a passion; an unshaken ability to pursue a woman whether he is sure he is interested or not. That is to say, following up on my previous post, it is possible that at this point in life ALL that makes a frog into Prince Charming for me is his stepping up, stepping forward, and exploring ME, whether or not he knows right away that I'm one heck of a catch.
By my late twenties, I clued in a bit, realized that I could fall for guys who lacked half my requirements and find little zing flying between me and someone who fit me to a T on paper. I did take note of certain things that always mattered: if not a love of poetry, at least an appreciation of creativity; if not an extroversion, at least an ability to listen well and communicate about the things that matter; if not a deep-seated sense of whimsy, at least, for the love of god, the ability to laugh, and laugh often, and most importantly, to laugh at himself. Over time I fine-tuned Prince Charming, realizing that in most cases the things that make him right for me and not you are broad things, not specific predilections or inherent ways.
But as I settle into me thirties, I have to admit, my image of him has broadened beyond expectation. For at this point, I have days when all I really require is a backbone; a passion; an unshaken ability to pursue a woman whether he is sure he is interested or not. That is to say, following up on my previous post, it is possible that at this point in life ALL that makes a frog into Prince Charming for me is his stepping up, stepping forward, and exploring ME, whether or not he knows right away that I'm one heck of a catch.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Wishy Washy
During my epic acupuncture session last week, Joseph the acupuncturist repeatedly whispered a phrase as he paddled my limbs and stretched me out. I am sure that the phrase was in a language other than English, but all I could discern each time he said it was "wishy . . . washy." And what a chord that phrase strikes in my mind when I think about dating in this town.
San Francisco has been, on the one hand, a hotbed for dating and fun for many of my female friends and, on the other, a real pain in the arse. In our first year here, we got asked out just about every time we met a new guy. California men seemed completely at ease with going on dates, and some of them seemed quite charming about it. But too many of us experienced something similar: though date after date occurred, though some of these guys professed how incredible we were, though action was gotten or romance seemed afoot, in the end, we were told, "I'm just not sure..." or "I can't do this..." or "I'm not ready...." What does such an epidemic of wishy-washyness represent?
A male friend said to me recently that any guy who says he's not sure whether he wants to date a woman or just be friends with her truly only wants to be friends. I lean toward agreeing with this analysis; but what of the part-time interest these men show? What explains that? I dislike generalizing about people; I dislike the practice of reading into one person's behavior lessons learned from another's. Yet I've seen such repetition of action here in SF, both in my own dating life and in my friends', that I have to start to wonder. Is it just an east-coast-girl/west-coast-guy conflict of interest? Or is there something about life here that keeps these guys from wanting to commit? Is the problem that California so well satisfies one's desire for the good life—one's desire to live to the fullest, experience everything, always find a new adventure soon enough—that people become restless souls, that "settling down" seems the antithesis of happiness?
San Francisco has been, on the one hand, a hotbed for dating and fun for many of my female friends and, on the other, a real pain in the arse. In our first year here, we got asked out just about every time we met a new guy. California men seemed completely at ease with going on dates, and some of them seemed quite charming about it. But too many of us experienced something similar: though date after date occurred, though some of these guys professed how incredible we were, though action was gotten or romance seemed afoot, in the end, we were told, "I'm just not sure..." or "I can't do this..." or "I'm not ready...." What does such an epidemic of wishy-washyness represent?
A male friend said to me recently that any guy who says he's not sure whether he wants to date a woman or just be friends with her truly only wants to be friends. I lean toward agreeing with this analysis; but what of the part-time interest these men show? What explains that? I dislike generalizing about people; I dislike the practice of reading into one person's behavior lessons learned from another's. Yet I've seen such repetition of action here in SF, both in my own dating life and in my friends', that I have to start to wonder. Is it just an east-coast-girl/west-coast-guy conflict of interest? Or is there something about life here that keeps these guys from wanting to commit? Is the problem that California so well satisfies one's desire for the good life—one's desire to live to the fullest, experience everything, always find a new adventure soon enough—that people become restless souls, that "settling down" seems the antithesis of happiness?
Monday, November 12, 2007
Lara's Man Blog: The Rules
Some of you are familiar with a long-ago proposal called Lara's Man Bar. Thoughts of it have recently revived, and we've discussed a more modern discussion forum for it; that is, Lara's Man Blog.
Here are the rules:
1. I will tell funny stories about dating. My own dating. Which is sadly less full of romantic stories than terrible—but-later-deemed-funny—stories. This is my pitcher full of lemonade made from those lemons.
2. Sometimes I will be need to abandon my good humor and be reflective. I will channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw. This will be the sprig of mint in my lemonade glass.
3. I will not share full names so no one finds oneself being advertised as the tool on the other end of the my dinner table.
4. I will take inspiration from your comments. Egg me on. Ask for more details. Ask for favorite tales. But remember: we have a mission. We still have to build Lara's Man Bar (in some form). SUPPORT THE CAUSE. This girl needs to get her groove on.
More soon.
Founder, Sponsor, and Public Relations Manager, Lara's Man Bar
Here are the rules:
1. I will tell funny stories about dating. My own dating. Which is sadly less full of romantic stories than terrible—but-later-deemed-funny—stories. This is my pitcher full of lemonade made from those lemons.
2. Sometimes I will be need to abandon my good humor and be reflective. I will channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw. This will be the sprig of mint in my lemonade glass.
3. I will not share full names so no one finds oneself being advertised as the tool on the other end of the my dinner table.
4. I will take inspiration from your comments. Egg me on. Ask for more details. Ask for favorite tales. But remember: we have a mission. We still have to build Lara's Man Bar (in some form). SUPPORT THE CAUSE. This girl needs to get her groove on.
More soon.
Founder, Sponsor, and Public Relations Manager, Lara's Man Bar
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Ode to Driving
Living in the Bay Area, I’ve never met so many people who frown on driving. I notice it because I’m a driver—both here, where public transportation doesn’t get me everywhere I need to go very quickly given where I live, and in general, because I grew up in an all-driving city, Atlanta. If you’ve never been to the South, you don’t know just how car-reliant people can be; but when it’s as hot as hot gets and extremely humid, you’ve got no desire to walk, so public transportation is unnecessary; and when you’ve got no geographic boundaries on your expansion, and when you’ve got a city built largely in the woods, you can just expand the city, take down forest and lay down road after road, build fourteen-lane highways, and enjoy cruising down beautiful streets and speedways at high speeds or low ones—whatever you fancy.
I grew up knowing no other option than the car, so I never questioned its use. When I moved to the Boston metro area, where I lived for a decade, I loved being able to take the T places, to walk a mile or two to get somewhere and pass stores and eateries along the way. But I still used my car to get to different parts of town, to get to the coast, the mountains, the rest of New England. I do that here, too, but it’s different because here I work for myself, at home, and thus have no commute. Suddenly, I live a life in which driving is something I do once or twice a week and generally for short distances—to go to the grocery store or the movies, to go to Target, sometimes to go to the East Bay.
Recently, I’ve been going to Palo Alto once a week for work. I hate the time it takes from my life to drive this route at rush-hour, adding up to two or two-and-half hours roundtrip, and I do sometimes wish I was sitting on a train so I could be reading. But highway 280 is beautiful, and when I get out of traffic, I find myself feeling elated by once again soaring down a highway and seeing what I pass by.
When I was a child, my family went hiking many weekends. We would drive north, through towns and open spaces that are now the metro area, and up to the mountains, the Appalachians. Sometimes we’d hike near Dahlonega, an old gold-mining town, and I would daydream about striking it rich (forgetting, every time, that thousands of people had already sifted the soil, leaving now only the glitter of thin sheets of micah poking out of the dirt). Other times, we’d go to Panther Falls, where we once saw a bald eagle perched at the top of the waterfall and were thrilled when he lifted his wings and flew away overhead. My dad’s favorite was Sweetwater Creek, where the remnants of an old mill blend in with the scenery, the cut-stone walls the same color as the large rocks he liked to jump to and from, trying to reach the other side of the sudsy river without falling in.
I grew up seeing a rich fabric of places in Georgia and got to all of them by car, often on many-hour journeys. On those car rides, while my mom and brother talked, I generally sat quietly, cheek pressed to the windowpane, and watched. It may seem remarkable to people who know me now, but I sat without saying anything on yearly driving trips to my grandparents’ houses in Miami and Rhode Island, on six-hour drives to the coast of Georgia for long weekends, on most every roadtrip we took. It wasn’t that I was anti-social; I was just engrossed in absorbing America. I had grown up in a city that wasn’t really a city; it was residential and wooded, and I had a swamp and a creek in my backyard. But it was not the small towns in south Georgia where people’s cars rusted in their front yards, propped up on metal rims without tires, near metal trash bins in which tomatoes grew or flowers blossomed. It was not the small towns in south Georgia that had streets named Settin Down Road and Jottin Down Road or, less cutely, Jim Crow Lane. Nor was it the Okefenoke Swamp or the Everglades, the homes of alligators and ospreys that we watched for hours; nor was it the transition from southeastern woodlands, dense with thousands of types of deciduous trees, to boreal forests, in which an oak or a maple might be the dash of color in an otherwise coniferous landscape. As we drove in every direction, there were so many changing details for me to see that I didn’t want to miss a single one.
I have often met Americans who have never been outside the part of the country they come from. Some have rarely left their own state. I, on the other hand, had parents who drove us everywhere, having little money for plane tickets. So it was out of necessity that we took long car trips, but I think my parents enjoyed being able to show us so much. Maybe if I hadn’t had such parents, I would have gotten restless spending such long stretches in the car; maybe I would have needed the DVDs and other distractions that kids these days get to enjoy just to drive up the street. But my sense of curiosity had been piqued at a very young age, and I think it is from the first big trip we took that I developed such an attention to detail on all the ones that followed.
I had been one month from turning four when we left Atlanta for my dad’s sabbatical in Davis, California; we had arrived on my birthday. Over the course of the weeks in between and the additional month we later took to drive home—in one direction crossing the country on a southerly route and in the other crossing toward the northern border—I had seen Anasazi ruins in Arizona, Redwood forests in California, gold country (I even found a little nugget in a stream on my dad’s friend’s property, though I don’t think he let me take it home), Canon Beach in Oregon and banana slugs in Washington, bison in Yellowstone, as well as moose and big-horn sheep and Old Faithful. I had seen things so far from the reality I knew that I would never forget them.
Twenty-four years later I would finally retrace our steps, getting in my own car and traveling all the way across the country on wheels for the third time ever, to settle myself on this western coast. In the intervening years, I frequently dreamt of two things: the American frontier—true wilderness—and driving through it. When I was eighteen, I hiked for six days on mountain goat trails in New Mexico, seeing no other humans than the ones I was with, and I summitted at 13,100 feet. I could see four states; I could see the amphitheater-like ridge we had come in on and the path we would take back out. This was the frontier alright, and we had driven straight from Atlanta to it. This would quell my urges to see the unknown for nearly a decade. But some six years later, I would begin writing a piece of fiction in which a character woke up one day and, spur of the moment, got in her car in Boston and drove to New Mexico, seeing all she could on the way; and my wanderlust would reawaken; and I would feel the need to do it all again. To see that changing scenery—to see the way both the natural world and the people within it vary as you pass from place to place.
“La libertad es alas,” the Mexican poet Octavio Paz once wrote. “Freedom is wings,” he would have said in English. I understand the impact of the car on the environment; I respect the need for more of us to walk and travel by train or bus than do now. But the sentimental side of me will never let go of that love of traveling across a vast and changing universe with watchful eyes and learning all its pieces and parts. You might think it’s a funny route to enlightenment, but for me, driving IS freedom. It is both momentum and a moving vantage point.
I grew up knowing no other option than the car, so I never questioned its use. When I moved to the Boston metro area, where I lived for a decade, I loved being able to take the T places, to walk a mile or two to get somewhere and pass stores and eateries along the way. But I still used my car to get to different parts of town, to get to the coast, the mountains, the rest of New England. I do that here, too, but it’s different because here I work for myself, at home, and thus have no commute. Suddenly, I live a life in which driving is something I do once or twice a week and generally for short distances—to go to the grocery store or the movies, to go to Target, sometimes to go to the East Bay.
Recently, I’ve been going to Palo Alto once a week for work. I hate the time it takes from my life to drive this route at rush-hour, adding up to two or two-and-half hours roundtrip, and I do sometimes wish I was sitting on a train so I could be reading. But highway 280 is beautiful, and when I get out of traffic, I find myself feeling elated by once again soaring down a highway and seeing what I pass by.
When I was a child, my family went hiking many weekends. We would drive north, through towns and open spaces that are now the metro area, and up to the mountains, the Appalachians. Sometimes we’d hike near Dahlonega, an old gold-mining town, and I would daydream about striking it rich (forgetting, every time, that thousands of people had already sifted the soil, leaving now only the glitter of thin sheets of micah poking out of the dirt). Other times, we’d go to Panther Falls, where we once saw a bald eagle perched at the top of the waterfall and were thrilled when he lifted his wings and flew away overhead. My dad’s favorite was Sweetwater Creek, where the remnants of an old mill blend in with the scenery, the cut-stone walls the same color as the large rocks he liked to jump to and from, trying to reach the other side of the sudsy river without falling in.
I grew up seeing a rich fabric of places in Georgia and got to all of them by car, often on many-hour journeys. On those car rides, while my mom and brother talked, I generally sat quietly, cheek pressed to the windowpane, and watched. It may seem remarkable to people who know me now, but I sat without saying anything on yearly driving trips to my grandparents’ houses in Miami and Rhode Island, on six-hour drives to the coast of Georgia for long weekends, on most every roadtrip we took. It wasn’t that I was anti-social; I was just engrossed in absorbing America. I had grown up in a city that wasn’t really a city; it was residential and wooded, and I had a swamp and a creek in my backyard. But it was not the small towns in south Georgia where people’s cars rusted in their front yards, propped up on metal rims without tires, near metal trash bins in which tomatoes grew or flowers blossomed. It was not the small towns in south Georgia that had streets named Settin Down Road and Jottin Down Road or, less cutely, Jim Crow Lane. Nor was it the Okefenoke Swamp or the Everglades, the homes of alligators and ospreys that we watched for hours; nor was it the transition from southeastern woodlands, dense with thousands of types of deciduous trees, to boreal forests, in which an oak or a maple might be the dash of color in an otherwise coniferous landscape. As we drove in every direction, there were so many changing details for me to see that I didn’t want to miss a single one.
I have often met Americans who have never been outside the part of the country they come from. Some have rarely left their own state. I, on the other hand, had parents who drove us everywhere, having little money for plane tickets. So it was out of necessity that we took long car trips, but I think my parents enjoyed being able to show us so much. Maybe if I hadn’t had such parents, I would have gotten restless spending such long stretches in the car; maybe I would have needed the DVDs and other distractions that kids these days get to enjoy just to drive up the street. But my sense of curiosity had been piqued at a very young age, and I think it is from the first big trip we took that I developed such an attention to detail on all the ones that followed.
I had been one month from turning four when we left Atlanta for my dad’s sabbatical in Davis, California; we had arrived on my birthday. Over the course of the weeks in between and the additional month we later took to drive home—in one direction crossing the country on a southerly route and in the other crossing toward the northern border—I had seen Anasazi ruins in Arizona, Redwood forests in California, gold country (I even found a little nugget in a stream on my dad’s friend’s property, though I don’t think he let me take it home), Canon Beach in Oregon and banana slugs in Washington, bison in Yellowstone, as well as moose and big-horn sheep and Old Faithful. I had seen things so far from the reality I knew that I would never forget them.
Twenty-four years later I would finally retrace our steps, getting in my own car and traveling all the way across the country on wheels for the third time ever, to settle myself on this western coast. In the intervening years, I frequently dreamt of two things: the American frontier—true wilderness—and driving through it. When I was eighteen, I hiked for six days on mountain goat trails in New Mexico, seeing no other humans than the ones I was with, and I summitted at 13,100 feet. I could see four states; I could see the amphitheater-like ridge we had come in on and the path we would take back out. This was the frontier alright, and we had driven straight from Atlanta to it. This would quell my urges to see the unknown for nearly a decade. But some six years later, I would begin writing a piece of fiction in which a character woke up one day and, spur of the moment, got in her car in Boston and drove to New Mexico, seeing all she could on the way; and my wanderlust would reawaken; and I would feel the need to do it all again. To see that changing scenery—to see the way both the natural world and the people within it vary as you pass from place to place.
“La libertad es alas,” the Mexican poet Octavio Paz once wrote. “Freedom is wings,” he would have said in English. I understand the impact of the car on the environment; I respect the need for more of us to walk and travel by train or bus than do now. But the sentimental side of me will never let go of that love of traveling across a vast and changing universe with watchful eyes and learning all its pieces and parts. You might think it’s a funny route to enlightenment, but for me, driving IS freedom. It is both momentum and a moving vantage point.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Acupuncture gets more than just my qi flowing.
I wasn’t expecting acupuncture to put me into the introspective mindset that it did today. When I did it a few years ago, my acupuncturist would regularly set me up in a dimly lit room, lodge into me almost unfelt needles, and then leave me for an hour to float in what seemed like a fully conscious form of bodily sleep. I rarely thought about anything specific; instead I lay in what felt physically like a comatose state and let my mind rest; just listened to noises in my surroundings; just processed the sensation of being utterly still and yet feeling energy throughout my limbs. When she roused me, it felt like being ripped out of deepest slumber, which I ached to get back to; I generally felt miserable for the rest of the evening. But the next day I would awaken like a newborn; I would awaken more energized than I could remember feeling.
Today’s session was entirely different. Before lying on the acupuncturist’s table, I was seated in a jointed chair-bed and asked to lie back. Before I knew it, he had whipped spring-bound stirrups out of the wall and was slipping them over my socked feet, letting them tug my legs gently upward. “This is lazy yoga,” he told me, arranging one of my legs in a pose in mid-air and then beginning to gently pat and shake it. “Gravity is one form of god,” he also told me, nodding toward the unattended leg, which was bending deep at the knee and sinking groundward. He explained that before he started acupuncture, he wanted my body to release the fatigue that has been giving me headaches. “Breathe deeply, yawn very big,” he instructed many times; “let the exhaustion out of you.” My previous acupuncturist had said something similar; had explained that my migraines might get worse before they got better because balancing my qi was a bit like an exorcism. I would have to expel my migraines before I would move past them. To expel them, I would have to have them.
That first time, I had gone in with a completely open mind. I knew nothing of how acupuncture is thought to work biologically, and, as someone raised by scientists, I would normally have wanted to know that. But I needed to go in without expectations; I needed to just try it and see if it worked for me. I have had severe headaches and migraines for most of my lifetime; I have tried prescription drugs for treatment and prophylaxis; I have tried everything doctors have thought to tell me to try. Little has ever changed. I still have headache season every so often, and during such times, I get severe headaches every day for weeks and weeks. Last time, three months of acupuncture seemed to cure me; I had very few headaches for more than a year afterward. I hope the current sessions will go as well. But as I wait to see that, I am already marveling at what they have done to me.
Today, after more than 30 minutes of lazy yoga and heavy yawning, I finally lay in the dark on a padded table, settled into stillness under layers of blankets, let the spring-loaded stirrups hold my feet in place, and felt the tingle and subtle electrification of such skinny needles you can hardly see them dipping their sharp tips into my bloodstream. The acupuncturist stood over me and explained that the breathing exercises I had just done were qi gong; “gong,” he told me, “is artfulness.” He was teaching me the art of breathing. And I was floored by how overpowering so much yawning could be. As I turned each breath into a yawn, opening my mouth wide, what had started as inhalation seemed to change—it felt like a wave of oxygen flooded some part of my body not normally filled with air, and, repeating this action so long, I had become light-headed and my eyes dripped with tears. “Now you are ready for acupuncture,” he told me as he turned out the lights.
In this state—body gently paddled and stretched, limbs light, joints airy, head sinking like lead into the pillow—he left me. Only the sound of trickling water kept my attention. But as I shut my eyes, my mind immediately flickered through a curious pattern of thoughts.
Image: the face of someone I wonder if I will eventually fall for. Then a scene of us together, my envisioning of what it is like if that happens. I watch this on my mind’s movie screen for what seems like many minutes. That my mind landed here seems very reasonable; I am feeling, in the scene, those same sensations as my body is feeling now—floating yet stimulated. But eventually, my mind moves on.
Image: the view of a long bridge from the passenger seat of a car; sunshine and water in the background. This is a static image, but momentarily my mind fills in the other details. The song playing is Enigma's “Return to Innocence,” which is eerily fitting; the driver is my mother. We are leaving the town of Wiscasset, Maine. I have just lived for four months in an arctic daydream, working on a farm, trudging through snow to study forest ecology, learning to spin wool and knit and even to practice meditation. I am in high school. I have just spent four months away from the school I’ve attended since kindergarten, four months away from my parents’ divorce. I have just lived in a frozen climate, which once was unimaginable, and I have loved it. My cheeks are soggy; I am not ready to go home. As my body floats, as my qi begins to circulate, my mind has gone from something very present to something long past, and now the stimulus is sad, which surprises me. And yet I am just viewing it. No emotions arise.
Image: a windowsill, pane pushed upward, warm air flowing in. Branches block my view of the sky, but it is up there; it provides a dark backdrop, and when oak leaves rustle, one or two stars glint through. This is my windowsill. This is my bed. I have slept beneath this skyscape every night since I was seven. This is the image that, for all my childhood, I have seen just before going to sleep. This is my metaphorical treetop hiding place; my sanctuary. Sometimes I get in bed ridiculously early because this is where I do my thinking-things-through.
Image: I am in a hammock. Indoors, by a bay window. The air streaming through the glass panes is frigid, but I have what might be the worst of all migraines, so I am too numb to move. I watch snowflakes patterning the blue sky outside and picture a spider, thick like a tarantula, wrapping its legs around my skull and digging the tips of its feet into my skin. This image will inspire poetry when I feel better, but for now the only poetics in my presence are the sudden strumming of guitar strings behind me and the quiet—quietest ever—singing voice the body attached to the fingers emits. He is seated where I cannot see him, but I know that he has never sung in front of anyone. I take this fulfillment of a promise to let me hear one song, and one song only, some day, some time—I take this fulfillment of his promise right now as a sign that he loves me. In a year or two, I will find out that he does but not in the way I thought. In this moment, however, I am frozen, aching, and feeling like I might puke; this gesture of his is such that later I will allow myself to hold onto just this one memory even after I let him go from my heart. This migraine is hell; but he has allowed me to have it in his room, and he will sit with me through all of it.
The acupuncturist picked that moment to whisk the blanket off me and loosen my feet. I didn’t think it was time, but the clock showed that half an hour had passed. “How are you feeling?” he asked me, a hint of curiosity mixed with bashfulness in his voice. “Other-worldly,” I whispered, rubbing my eyes. Physically I was feeling elated; I would have liked to stir up my qi a little longer. But my mind had to wonder: where else would this exorcism have taken me before it was done?
Today’s session was entirely different. Before lying on the acupuncturist’s table, I was seated in a jointed chair-bed and asked to lie back. Before I knew it, he had whipped spring-bound stirrups out of the wall and was slipping them over my socked feet, letting them tug my legs gently upward. “This is lazy yoga,” he told me, arranging one of my legs in a pose in mid-air and then beginning to gently pat and shake it. “Gravity is one form of god,” he also told me, nodding toward the unattended leg, which was bending deep at the knee and sinking groundward. He explained that before he started acupuncture, he wanted my body to release the fatigue that has been giving me headaches. “Breathe deeply, yawn very big,” he instructed many times; “let the exhaustion out of you.” My previous acupuncturist had said something similar; had explained that my migraines might get worse before they got better because balancing my qi was a bit like an exorcism. I would have to expel my migraines before I would move past them. To expel them, I would have to have them.
That first time, I had gone in with a completely open mind. I knew nothing of how acupuncture is thought to work biologically, and, as someone raised by scientists, I would normally have wanted to know that. But I needed to go in without expectations; I needed to just try it and see if it worked for me. I have had severe headaches and migraines for most of my lifetime; I have tried prescription drugs for treatment and prophylaxis; I have tried everything doctors have thought to tell me to try. Little has ever changed. I still have headache season every so often, and during such times, I get severe headaches every day for weeks and weeks. Last time, three months of acupuncture seemed to cure me; I had very few headaches for more than a year afterward. I hope the current sessions will go as well. But as I wait to see that, I am already marveling at what they have done to me.
Today, after more than 30 minutes of lazy yoga and heavy yawning, I finally lay in the dark on a padded table, settled into stillness under layers of blankets, let the spring-loaded stirrups hold my feet in place, and felt the tingle and subtle electrification of such skinny needles you can hardly see them dipping their sharp tips into my bloodstream. The acupuncturist stood over me and explained that the breathing exercises I had just done were qi gong; “gong,” he told me, “is artfulness.” He was teaching me the art of breathing. And I was floored by how overpowering so much yawning could be. As I turned each breath into a yawn, opening my mouth wide, what had started as inhalation seemed to change—it felt like a wave of oxygen flooded some part of my body not normally filled with air, and, repeating this action so long, I had become light-headed and my eyes dripped with tears. “Now you are ready for acupuncture,” he told me as he turned out the lights.
In this state—body gently paddled and stretched, limbs light, joints airy, head sinking like lead into the pillow—he left me. Only the sound of trickling water kept my attention. But as I shut my eyes, my mind immediately flickered through a curious pattern of thoughts.
Image: the face of someone I wonder if I will eventually fall for. Then a scene of us together, my envisioning of what it is like if that happens. I watch this on my mind’s movie screen for what seems like many minutes. That my mind landed here seems very reasonable; I am feeling, in the scene, those same sensations as my body is feeling now—floating yet stimulated. But eventually, my mind moves on.
Image: the view of a long bridge from the passenger seat of a car; sunshine and water in the background. This is a static image, but momentarily my mind fills in the other details. The song playing is Enigma's “Return to Innocence,” which is eerily fitting; the driver is my mother. We are leaving the town of Wiscasset, Maine. I have just lived for four months in an arctic daydream, working on a farm, trudging through snow to study forest ecology, learning to spin wool and knit and even to practice meditation. I am in high school. I have just spent four months away from the school I’ve attended since kindergarten, four months away from my parents’ divorce. I have just lived in a frozen climate, which once was unimaginable, and I have loved it. My cheeks are soggy; I am not ready to go home. As my body floats, as my qi begins to circulate, my mind has gone from something very present to something long past, and now the stimulus is sad, which surprises me. And yet I am just viewing it. No emotions arise.
Image: a windowsill, pane pushed upward, warm air flowing in. Branches block my view of the sky, but it is up there; it provides a dark backdrop, and when oak leaves rustle, one or two stars glint through. This is my windowsill. This is my bed. I have slept beneath this skyscape every night since I was seven. This is the image that, for all my childhood, I have seen just before going to sleep. This is my metaphorical treetop hiding place; my sanctuary. Sometimes I get in bed ridiculously early because this is where I do my thinking-things-through.
Image: I am in a hammock. Indoors, by a bay window. The air streaming through the glass panes is frigid, but I have what might be the worst of all migraines, so I am too numb to move. I watch snowflakes patterning the blue sky outside and picture a spider, thick like a tarantula, wrapping its legs around my skull and digging the tips of its feet into my skin. This image will inspire poetry when I feel better, but for now the only poetics in my presence are the sudden strumming of guitar strings behind me and the quiet—quietest ever—singing voice the body attached to the fingers emits. He is seated where I cannot see him, but I know that he has never sung in front of anyone. I take this fulfillment of a promise to let me hear one song, and one song only, some day, some time—I take this fulfillment of his promise right now as a sign that he loves me. In a year or two, I will find out that he does but not in the way I thought. In this moment, however, I am frozen, aching, and feeling like I might puke; this gesture of his is such that later I will allow myself to hold onto just this one memory even after I let him go from my heart. This migraine is hell; but he has allowed me to have it in his room, and he will sit with me through all of it.
The acupuncturist picked that moment to whisk the blanket off me and loosen my feet. I didn’t think it was time, but the clock showed that half an hour had passed. “How are you feeling?” he asked me, a hint of curiosity mixed with bashfulness in his voice. “Other-worldly,” I whispered, rubbing my eyes. Physically I was feeling elated; I would have liked to stir up my qi a little longer. But my mind had to wonder: where else would this exorcism have taken me before it was done?
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