Monday, August 04, 2003
back from the front
It wound up being something like 1,400 miles when we disembarked last night - or this morning - at 1:00 or so. Miles I regret: zero.
A few details: I left work early on friday to see my dear friend Andy in his incarnation as my Primary Care Physician. His new office is much smaller and the decoration process is ongoing but it’s much friendlier and more pleasant than his old digs, plus his staff is attractive and he’s just one quiet block off of a great part of Berkeley. And also, he’s Andy, whom I love like a brother. His overall assessment of my condition was “fantastic” and I was approved for another year of corporeal integrity. I can’t wait to see him again, and this time he won’t ask to grope me. And I won’t have to let him, if he does.
I strolled Shattuck waiting for Kel. We made contact, she collected me and we’re off - to Pleasanton for an In-n-Out burger, which for those of you stuck in WWB (world w/o burger) In-n-Out is truly a fine burger and a reasonably decent corporate citizen. Not the best burger in CA but high marks all around, plus lots more for convenience. We must have seen 50 of them during the weekend - that we noticed. It got to be a little spooky. “Honey, there’re here too. I - I don’t think that we’re gonna be able to get away.”
Dinner was done by 6:30 and we headed east, then south. The compressor for our a/c is not working and will take a week and $650 to repair so screw that, we drove with the windows open. The temp varied from 68 to 88 as we went through the valley, fluctuating inexplicably. We listened to a lot of music, talked, zoned… the 5 is a long straight shot with some featureless low bare hills to the west and bang squat nothing to the east but america’s favorite farmland, a 100 mile wide alluvial plain stretching from Sacto to San Diego. We were at the Grapevine by 11:30 and felt pretty good about our progress. We made Riverside around 1 am, in time for some of mom’s extraordinary brownies and our own burgeoning supply of restful slumbers.
Saturday we had smoothies and bagels at mom’s for breakfast and then she took us over to Glen Ivy where I: soaked in the hot mineral bath, smeared clay all over my swimsuit clad person and then let it bake dry in the sun and showered it off in mellow communal tiki showers, went to the steamroom (a really nice one), got a “back of body massage” (for future reference: tension is being stored between shoulderblades and up shoulders as anticipated, but also in my thunderous calves, which surprises me), went back to the mineral baths (got one of the little private compartments this time, very key), went to the sauna, the the roman baths, then the back to the steam room, and then a shower with some surprisingly nice-smelling soap and shampoo. I read a bunch of my new goofy science book and I relaxed enormously. This place is as nice as anywhere I’d ever want to be. Anyone who gets a chance should check it out.
We were done at 2 and went back to mom’s to change clothes and grab lunch at the Mission Inn’s new mexican restaurant. I have rarely seen Kelly so excited about her lunch as she was about that chimichanga. It was huge and beautiful and both Kel and my mom (who got one too) were forcing themselves to overeat so as to leave as little of it behind as possible. And every bite seemed to give them the same kind of eyes-closed satisfaction. I stuck with my carnitas, which were phenomenal. Kel tried some and opined, “they’re okay, but yours are better.” Which is very sweet of her, and of course the holy truth, but even I can’t replicate the magnificent tiled patio of the Mission Inn. It was a gorgeous day in a beautiful setting, and a very satisfying and memorable meal.
Back to mom’s to hug and hit the road to Dad and Con’s place. We arrived five minutes before our announced window of punctuality to find my father in the driveway waiting for us. We thus nailed the punctual arrival and from then on it was nothing but gravy. I had a small glass of some magnificent 20-year Irish singlemalt - intensely bright flavor, color like liquid sunshine, so intense I couldn’t even finish it. I’m a bourbon drinker, I guess. I should just own up. He had some excellent bourbon too. We had a lovely dinner at a neighborhood spot where the owner was overtly solicitous and accomodating to us, which was great; my monkfish was delicious and my apple pie with vanilla gelato for dessert was everything I wanted it to be. Two big glasses of Seghesio Zin lubricated the evening nicely.
By this point Kel and I were pretty zonked, and we fell asleep by 11. We awoke the next day at a leisurely pace and breakfasted lightly on our traditional favorite cottage cheese ‘n’ toast, which is exactly what it sounds like, and then we all went to the water treatment facility in Van Nuys. It was great to drive there through the valley, into the Sepulveda basin where I played and escaped in my childhood, the big dam from all those movies, the model airplane fields, and then to get to the water treatment facility, with the small enclosed bonsai garden of tiny heartwrenchingly austere ageless wonders, and then the main gardens with the zen stone river landscape, the wisteria arbor, the extensive network of lilyponds lotus blossoms and waterfalls and brooks and fish, the japanese tea house where an asian boy played baroque classics on guitar and several hilarious non-asian and probably jewish alderkakers (respected elders) tried to negotiate a transaction in which we gave them seven dollars and they gave us four drinks and four plates of cookies.... They were so cute in their little semi-japanese outfits, and so very earnest. When one came over to give Con and Kel little fans (it was already in the 90s in the valley) she described them as little “purse calendars.” They inquired into her meaning, she realized she had meant to say “purse fans”, hugged Connie and asked, “Please don’t tell them I said that, they’ll fire me from my no-pay job...”
We also traversed a fascinating zig-zag bridge through a sea of reeds and tiny furious fish. The legend is that evil spirits can only travel in a straight line so zigging and zagging will mess them up. I have questions about the functional application of this information to the kind of bridge they built, but aside from that it was fun. The path led us out through an observation lounge that was futuristic and glassy and the floor was water; it was a real jewel of a place squat in the middle of the midsection of the country’s archetypical suburb.
Next we drove downtown to see the Cathedral. I’d seen it from the outside and though it to be harsh, crude, monolithic… We came out of a parking garage into the plaza of the cathedral itself and the portal towered in front of us starkly but invitingly. The very realistic sculpture over the door was rather creepy. The space was dark and tall, with a flat roof and alabaster windows that cast an ethereal glow with a very pure visual impact - no elaborate imagery in the windows or anywhere else to embellish the words of the liturgy. The space was modern in design and ornament but it felt very old - old in an indigenous sense, a western and native sense. I’ve been in some of the old missions and they are not so very different in impact as this cathedral, though on a very different scale. The spanish language mass being held while we were there heightened the feeling that both Kel and I got of architectural choices that hearkened back to pre-gothic, maybe pre-european influences. It gleamed and cradled and soared as a big city cathedral is supposed to do, but it felt very human. By contrast, San Francisco’s Maytag cathedral, so known because it looks like the agitator in a washing machine, is a clearly sacred space - it’s tall and cross-shaped and lifts right off the planet surface to the heavens - but people clutter it up, they don’t look like they belong there. The LA cathedral looked like it was alive when the people filled it. That’s pretty good architecture.
It was there that I had my only known “Hollywood sighting”: Gregory Peck! Yes, that’s the one, the fellow who died earlier this year. The crypts downstairs are well-lit, light, inviting, and beautiful for a vault full of human remains. In the smooth stony walls, also unadorned by imagery or decoration, there are occasional niches with elaborate stained glasses from the old cathedral. It was a peaceful and comforting place. I particularly liked the way they were described on the sign leading to them from the main floor: “Mausoleum / Rest Rooms.” Yes, they were very restful. It seemed that many tense people were lining up to get in.
But we didn’t have time for those shenanigans. (If that’s what they were. I always feel a bit out of my element where catholicism is concerned.) Kel and I took a brief foray to see the Disney Concert Hall, which is getting ready to open; it’s a triumph of whatever it is Frank Gehry is doing these days. I have always liked his work (he even designed my whole law school campus!) but this goes a lot farther. Your eye just can’t sit still on it. I hope it weathers well; it looks really cool. I hear it’ll have unparalled acoustics and unaffordable prices. Seems a shame such a treasure can’t be made more accessible.
We all then drove through funky skanky parts of midcity - which I loved seeing roll past the windows - to the Grove, a relatively new shopping zone adjacent to the Farmers’ Market. It’s like Disneyland’s Main Street meets the typical upscale mall: an outdoor street with a few cross-lanes or intersections, lined on both sides by detailed, somewhat cartoony three-story pseudostructures that look like some fantasy shopping village. Books and clothes and toys and chocolates and all manner of mainstream cultural offerings are available, surrounded by gardens and fountains and a two-story open-top trolley that tools back and forth along the main street. It was mobbed with a significantly young and cute crowd. That’s when one of the young cute people picked me out and gave me a warm hug - I finally met Anna Julia, and it was like meeting an old friend for the first time. She really did great in that she was suddenly confronted by me, Kel, and Dad and Connie - a juggernaught of epic conversational proportions - but she did great, as I knew she would somehow. It was so much fun to reify that relationship, and then another young cute person leapt out at Anna - her old Austin roommate was waiting our table at the little cafe we’d wandered into, old friends who hadn’t seen or heard from each other in years, brought to the same table by fate, coincidence, or - shall we call it by its real name? - the Chucklehut, a proud moment for cyberreality complementing analog reality.
The meal was delicious and over too soon. I got another hug off of Anna and we said goodbye. We headed back into the Valley (over Laurel Canyon, one of my old favorite streets), back to the house, and then Kel and I got back in the car and headed home. Instead of taking the 5, which is about an hour faster but neither turns nor varies for 400 miles of heat, cow pastures, and freshly manured fields, we opted for the 101, which wends through coastal mountains and hills, encounters the occasional nice little town, stays cool, smells nice, entertains the eye. The ride was beautiful up to San Luis Obispo where we had some really good BBQ for supper and then got lost; I drove up onto the grounds of the Mission but I think Jesus forgave me because eventually we found the freeway. By this point it was dark and 9:30 and I was ready to be home. By 1 am I was, decyphering the note from Dave and Kim who watched our diabetic cat and generally reorienting myself. It took me a while to feel like I was on my bed and not driving around. But once I reached that point I slept like a man who drowned in nyquil.
Which brings me to today. So how’s by you?
