I have been chastised
Jan. 19th, 2006 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanBy ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeem for not posting around my birthday. So hello! It's my birthday! I talked to my mother earlier. "Well," she said, "fifty-three years ago at this time, I was feeling fine. Later, it was not so great. I don't see how it can have been that long, I really don't. It's bizarre. But we don't really wish for the alternative, certainly."
David and Lydy and I went out for dinner to Taste of India, on about fifteen minutes' notice.
Thanks to everybody for the birthday wishes, whether in comments below or in your own LJ. I appreciate them absurdly much, and am so bad at proffering them myself.
Yesterday, I got home from a five-day visit to the Bay Area. I keep meaning to set up some kind of socializing with all the people whom I know there, but in the event I never feel that there is enough time for Eric and me just to get caught up, so I do nothing about it, creating a strange impression of stealth that I really don't intend. We had a cheap hotel room with no facilities for the preparation of food, even of coffee (the hotel served a continental breakfast of surpassing mediocrity, with bad coffee). Eric solved the problem of coffee by getting up earlier than I did and driving to the Peet's in Burlingame. This proved very satisfactory. For reading, I had Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Eric had a gigantic high-school biology textbook, which he was perusing for a number of reasons, including the getting of some of the information he would need in order to actually teach high-school biology in California. We talked a bit about my book and a lot about his, information being easier to convey out of context than the flavor of a complicated chewy memoir-with-literary-criticism-of-a-grotesque-regime. The bits of my book that I'd have read aloud to him all occurred near the end, which I read when I was home again.
I got in fairly late on Thursday night. I hate flying, but it wasn't too bad. I had a long layover in Denver, which enabled me to eat some pretty good Kung Pao Shrimp from the Panda Express, drop my little container of sauce for my eggroll almost on some innocent traveller's foot, and see the sun set and the lights come out. I had an interesting minor shift of perspective, too. When I'm in an airplane looking down at city lights, I always try to pretend I'm in a spaceship looking at stars and galaxies, but no city has been so gracious or foresighted as to actually set up its lighting and streets to provide the proper appearance to feed this fantasy. This time, as we rose over Denver, suddenly I saw it as a huge assembly of beads and jewellery, mostly made by Elise. That was pleasant.
Once Eric and I had found one another and collected my suitcase, and I had gotten the basic news about his very full day, which included an interview about his student teaching, we collected the rental car, which was a little alarming, though Eric figured it out quite quickly and later drove it with great intrepidity up a lot of very narrow winding roads with scary views of mostly air. Then we attempted to find the best sushi in Pacifica, since we were close to it and going into the city seemed problematic. We couldn't find the restaurant in question, falling victim to MapQuest's "arrive at X" locution, which often puzzles the people actually on the ground. The drive was in itself interesting, evoking a lot of memories of my last visits to California. Already I had smelled eucalyptus. We finally did drive into San Francisco, so late that parking was not a difficulty, and ate at Ebi-Su, near Golden Gate Park, where we had had good luck before, and had it this time too, snarfing down a vast array of appetizers and then slowing down for the main course a little. I never am sure if I enjoy eating sushi more than I enjoy watching E appreciate it. In any case, I had teriyaki salmon, which was stupendous, and came with an array of cold vegetables, including mashed potatoes with unidentifiable but tasty seasonings. Before and after dinner, I enjoyed looking at the row houses with their lit-up bay windows, some of the houses painted in colors so bright you could tell what they were even after dark, while Eric worked on taming the somewhat over-powered car.
On Friday, which was sunny and hazy by turns, we went back into San Francisco and had breakfast at The Herbivore, which reminded me pleasingly of the now-vanished Mud Pie. Eric took to referring to it as "the sign of the Red Pepper," since it had a traditional-looking inn or pub sign with a beautiful red bell pepper in relief on it. A better facade than the somewhat shambling one of The Mud Pie, in truth. But in either place, I love it when they bring you a little pitcher with your coffee and it's soy milk, as the default. I had a southwestern tofu scramble with vegan sour cream, guacamole, salsa, and a very intense slice of cornbread.
I have some sketchy notes, which I had intended to reproduce without much expansion, but by now the only remnant of that intention is an occasional failure to use a subjective pronoun, here and there. We went to Tilden Park, drove up as far as Inspiration Point, and walked along Nimitz Way. Heard chestnut-backed chickadees, saw a couple of birds that certainly looked like swifts. Golden-crowned sparrows on path verge, red-tailed hawk showing off in pine tree, turkey vultures, black phoebe, and a raven, croaking in a splendid Poeish fashion. Young sierra redwoods, completely conical and alien to one whose main experience of them is the grove at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. When we first arrived a group of young women with babies in strollers was assembling. Eric wanted to get well ahead of them; it had not occurred to either of us that they might do this regularly. They overtook and passed us very soon. We passed them because they had stopped just before the last haul for the peak, possibly because there was a gigantic patch of mud on the path and rolling a bunch of strollers around it through the bumpy grass was not feasible. But they beat us back to the beginning of the trail, too. Eucalyptus forest, flicker calling, a swampy area with cattails, where I heard frogs on the way back. Eric went all the way to the peak, but I had forgotten to bring water and was worried about dehydration, so I turned back before the last steep climb. When he caught up with me, he told me all he had seen, which was almost as good as having gone myself.
Then to the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Blooming: wild strawberry, currant bushes, a few redwood sorrel plants, manzanitas. Scrub jay grooming self in bare deciduous tree. Kinglet, eye-ring, under bridge. (We checked Sibley later and had recalled to us the fact that it's ruby-crowned kinglets that have eye-rings.) Wildcat Creek very loud. Prickly pear in fruit near entrance. Cliff daisies in bloom, also some short plant with broad leaves and big multiflowered clusters in pale yellow. Next to a sign that said it was an allium, but I doubt it. A number of the plants in that garden seed themselves around at random, blurring the tidy flow of information.
Eric retrieved from the lodge a pamphlet he had been reading on his previous visit, and showed me bits of it. I think it was that article that triggered our interest in baccharis. There were photographs of the places we had just been, back when they were still grassland, before the park trees were planted. On our walk Eric had pointed out to me the stark difference between the forested slopes of Tilden Park proper and the bare grassy slopes of Wildcat Canyon Reserve. I think it was the same article that complained that baccharis had overtaken a lot of the original grassland as well. I promptly said that it sounded just like buckthorn, only native; Eric said that the title of "the buckthorn of California" was already taken by Scotch broom. We saw a lot of that in bloom as we drove along narrow roads, and also a lot of acacias in full bloom. It's odd how in seasons of sparse bloom, beginning or ending, the predominant color is yellow. We saw a fair amount of oxalis as well, and more that was going to be in bloom soon.
Stopped by E's place in Oakland, saw the fine orange cat, who reacted pretty much as if he'd seen me yesterday. It had been about a year and a half. Said hello to E's parents, arranged to take his dad grocery shopping later. Went to Middle Harbor Park, which is quite an amazing bit of the peace dividend. It's still under construction, but well into the process of restoring shallow water and sheltered coves for waterbirds. We saw avocets stepping through the shallows, including one that whooshed its bill through the water so vigorously that it lost its balance and had to flap its wings to regain it. Sun came out between two huge slate-gray banks of cloud, and shed religious-picture rays over San Francisco. E was very pleased to see SF so close; in absence of this park, would have to be on a boat to see it in this way. Scaups, buffleheads, Western grebes, all diving. Park is surrounded by containers, cranes, ships. Motifs in sidewalk like parking spaces for semi trucks, concrete benches like the stops for parking places, the mast of the U.S.S. Oakland, lines of old capstans painted brilliant white, and a jagged pattern of narrow strips of stone set in the pavement to represent the footprint of a building on the original Navy base. Sparrows with black caps. The east grew pink and hazy at sunset, the west slaty, orange, and red. Lights came on slowly in the city, and the Bay Bridge lit up. Saw one container plucked from trick, lifted, plunked down on pile aboard ship. Ship like gigantic steel drum cut in half lengthwise, with bow added. Names repeated on huge piles of containers: Hyundai, Evergreen, Sinotrans, Yang Ming, MOL. It was hard to see their scale; they looked like Legos. Wildflowers around cove restoration: yarrow, poppies, maybe celandine, and of course oxalis. There were telescopes into which you did not have to put a quarter, with which to watch the birds or anything else that took one's interest. By the time we left the lights on the giant crane had been shut off, but the entire city was lit.
Back to apartment, took Rick shopping. This was unexpectedly entertaining, as other people's family dynamics often are. Rick had just returned from a three-week trip to visit E's sister, so they were still catching up, and I got a miniature glimpse of their life together, which was very pleasing. We were offered curried oysters, but instead had dinner at Manzanita: glorious beet soup; collard greens; garbanzos with leeks, miso, and tahini; wild rice and millet with mushroom gravy; spring mix with balsamic vinegar; carrot, parsnip, burdock, onion, cabbage medley -- all with very good contrasts in basic flavors, sweet sour bitter salt and umami (thank you, carbonel). And cookies, chocolate chip and pecan cookies. Amused Eric by repeatedly intoning, "Cooooooookies" a la the well-known monster.
Saturday it rained. We had already decided to defy the weather and drive along the coast. This plan required us to go to REI and buy me a rain jacket. I had been making do with a cheap blue one, but its zipper broke just before I had to start packing. We found a quite spiffy green one on sale. It's surplus to my requirements, being, as E demonstrated that evening, a very superior biking jacket with all sorts of fancy touches. After REI we went to Whole Foods to find me some breakfast. I went slightly nuts and got both a huge breakfast burrito, rather like yesterday's breakfast rolled up in a tortilla, a mock chicken sandwich, both sheep and goat cheese, crackers, cherry tomatoes, almonds, pecans, Luna and Clif bars. While we were vaguely shocked at the cost, these supplies would turn out to provide us four meals for two, plus snacks. We had got two gallons of water at the bargain grocery store where we took E's father the day before (the hotel's water tasted and smelled like sulphur), and also some more energy bars. E snagged some plastic eating utensils and napkins while I waited in line at the checkout.
Thus fortified, we drove south. When it stopped raining, we would get out. The first time we did this, a raven croaked at us from atop a sign and then swept off. The drenched landscape was impossibly rich to look at, the green of the leafed-out shrubs and the trees on the heights very dense, the reddish rock almost glowing around its patches of pale green lichen, the green just coming back to the grass on the bare hills. There was stand after stand of leafless shrubs with vivid orange or red or red-brown new growth at their tips. E pointed out several valleys of redwoods with mist twining and drifting through. He told me to look for spouts, since the whales were migrating, but I didn't see any. The ocean was furious white and pale gray near the shore, darker gray further out, and a deep purple at the horizon.
Stopped at Ano Nuevo State Reserve, because the rain had stopped. Were interrogated sternly by guard about whether we had reservations to see the elephant seals. Yes, we could come into the park, but we couldn't go where the elephant seals were. We dutifully took a path in the opposite direction. The view was full of mist and spray, but there were several impressive cliffs visible above a large stretch of tiny-leaved shrubbery. ("Is that baccharis?") Flat hard gravel path overlaid with running trickles and some mud. Ring-necked pheasant in undergrowth. Sparrows on path verge, black phoebe working the area around the visitor center. We went on down the narrow path, past a historic house, down a flight of muddy wooden steps, down a gully scattered with squarish red rocks, to a creek mouth with a huge tumble of boulders and logs. And there, further out on the beach, asleep on its back, with spotty chest, whiskers, and the beginning of a proboscis, was a (we surmised) solitary juvenile male elephant seal. Nobody had sent him the memo. Went back for camera and lunch. Got several photos, after which a sudden shower got camera wet and lens cap jammed half open. Sat on odd bit of piping and ate lunch, looking at elephant seal all the while. Many stern signs had told us "All animals are wild" and "Do not approach within 25 feet of elephant seals," and we did not, but he snurfed and whuffled and vibrated his whiskers and did not awaken.
Drove on south, made side trip to Bonny Doon in honor of Robert Heinlein, but cut it short when darkness started to fall. The usual winding, narrowing road, with some huge redwoods and a liberal sprinkling of moss, lichen, California bay laurel (which was in bloom, in its shy way), and, perhaps, baccharis. Saw signs for the volunteer fire department, and one lone building, a wine-tasting establishment whose basic architecture looked as it would have felt happier in Arizona. Eric said that I was the only person he knew who was as interested in Heinlein as I was. This was a novelty to me, since while I am very much interested in Heinlein, a lot of the people I know, including David, are even more so.
Came back to the ocean for sunset, drove to Santa Cruz, had Japanese dinner (very good miso soup, a mixed quality of sushi for E, a somewhat frightening slab of lovely broiled mackerel for me), wandered around people-watching and marvelling at the large number of buskers; looked with great interest at the long line forming for a night club (every once in a while, somebody who looked exactly like a Boiled in Lead fan would pop into my vision), and with dubiety at a bunch of white guys in baseball caps and sweatshirts that said "Silent Majority." Sky was clearing; saw Orion and the Pleiades and Mars and Sirius and Procyon. Drove home on Highway 17 rather than braving the windy shore. Fell unexpectedly into an extremely tense emotional discussion, and had to defer it to our arrival at the hotel, a rainy drive over a mountain pass not being the best setting for it. At some point fell into a discussion of whether Procyon as well as Sirius has a white dwarf companion (Eric informed me after I got home again that in fact it does); this led to my confession that the only reason I know that Sirius has a white dwarf companion is that I have read Diana Wynne Jones's Dogsbody.
Sunday was brilliantly clear. We got up a little earlier than usual, in a bit of a flurry: it was Eric's week to arrive at meeting early and help to set things up. Eric and I have been to the Twin Cities Friends Meeting, which has its own building in St. Paul, twice now. His own meeting, Strawberry Creek Meeting, doesn't have a meeting house, and some of the discussion about this issue that has been related to me reminded me strongly of local discussions of whether Minn-Stf should have a clubhouse. In any case, Strawberry Creek Meeting meets at the Berkeley Alternative High School, in a pleasing barn-shaped room with high windows, through which that day one could see the red leaves of a sweetgum, swinging in the wind. I helped here and there to carry a table or roll a pile of plastic tubs containing all the materials necessary for the various First-Day School classes, but mostly I just marvelled at how the entire ambiance of a place like the Twin Cities Friends Meeting's permanent location was recreated by hauling items out of a closet: a library cart, a propaganda table, tables for refreshments, chairs for latecomers, a banner to put up outside, signs on magnetic clips to affix to doors, the tubs for classes.
I am, at this time in my life, deeply allergic to religion; but I love Quaker ambiance. Eric had expressed some surprise at, shall we say, the proportion of silent to vocal ministry at Twin Cities Friends Meeting, so I was prepared for more people to speak here, and they did. E and I were both still quivery from our previous night's discussion, and some of the vocal ministry was distressing, but it really did seem like a rock dropped into a pool that then grows still again. The last person who spoke told a glorious story of going out to the Delta to see the migrating birds, and of seeing sandhill cranes landing and dancing just at sunset. She described the sunset, and we had seen that sunset as well, from Middle Harbor Park. Then the clerk of the meeting (I think) made a very nice speech about how silent and vocal ministry were equal, and that visitors contributed as much as members. Strawberry Creek has a custom of asking everybody to say zir name at the end, and for visitors to say a bit about themselves. I said that I was visiting from Minneapolis. I was collared by the woman in charge of the refreshments, whose daughter had just received a job offer in Minneapolis, so I told her what I could about Twin Cities Friends Meeting. Some of Eric's compatriots had been late to help with set-up, so they let him take off early.
We had to stop at Marmot Mountaineering to buy me a sun hat. I had forgot my Tilley hat. Luckily some cheaper sun hats were on sale, it not being the season for them. Then we went back to Tilden Park, up Vollmer Peak. We had been once before on a cloudy misty hazy day. Now you could see Mount Diablo and all points between. Eric pointed out peaks and ridges and valleys and told me stories about them. Ravens swooped around the radio towers, croaking. A kestrel hovered over the empty air, at our eye level and not very far away, red-backed, blue-winged, like a gigantic hummingbird, and then stooped. We went down with some reluctance to the Botanic Garden belonging to UC Berkeley, but upon discovering that you had to pay to park and then pay ten dollars to get in, we ducked instead into the free Regional Parks Botanic Garden and ate our lunch (still the supplies from Whole Foods) at an overlook, enjoying the crowd there as well.
Then we drove out of the hills, looking at the fancy houses basking in the sun, down into the flatlands for gas and a map of Marin County. Then we went to Mount Tamalpais, over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and through many places we had seen from Vollmer Peak. Eric pointed out, among other sights, San Quentin, which thereafter dominated our view until we started up the mountain. One of the announcements at meeting had been that another execution would take place at San Quentin on the morrow. I hardly wanted to look at it. Eric told me the history of the condemned man. We talked a little about the death penalty, on which we are in complete accord. At last we drove up and up and further up, in tighter and tighter curves. Eric had to keep his eyes firmly on the asphalt, but I was torn between the turning distant views and the close sight of tree and shrub and stone.
There was one of those gates with the ominous notice that the park closes at sunset. It wasn't really possible to drive faster, so we just went on up the narrowing road, hugging the side of the mountain. The huge trees fell back, and there were only shrubs ("Is that baccharis?") and grass and rock. It all looked familiar, but the sequence was not in our recollection. We came around curve after curve, to see not the slanted parking lot but only another piece of the mountain. At last we parked and set off up the boardwalk and the rocky path above. We had been here before, on a cloudy misty day, admiring the seven ravens that were present then, and the foliage and rocks. I had not been able to make it to the top. Today there were no ravens; I climbed all the way up to the fire-watch tower to join Eric, who had gone ahead; and there was an unimpeded view 360 degrees around. We told over the places we had been, and the ones we had not. We had seen the Farallon Islands from Vollmer Peak, and we could still see them now, until they vanished into the sunset, while eastwards the shadow of the mountain stretched and stretched and stretched until it was laid against the dark-blue sky. We came down at sunset, comforted by the people still ascending, and were not in fact locked in. We went into San Francisco and had dinner at Belazo, and walked about after, once again looking at the crowd, so different from the one in Santa Cruz.
Monday was my last day, so we had a leisurely morning with our Peet's coffee, which Eric in a restless moment set off to fetch before sunrise, and our Whole Foods remnants. Then we went to Strybing Arboretum. I had conceived on previous visits a fierce fondness for the California section. We also dawdled in the Cape Province section, which abuts California. I pointed out one small beautiful tree that Eric said was Tolkienian, which it was, and we contemplated whether his fantastical landscapes had been affected by memories of his childhood in South Africa.
Quite a few alien plants were in bloom. California was quieter. All the manzanitas were rioting with bloom, as were the ceanothus. But the California buckeye we had admired before was, in a completely Tolkienian fashion, bare and shapely, a thick tree with lovely heavy curvy branches and pale gray bark. When we got closer we saw that it had buds and a few unfolding palmate leaves, still small, crinkled, and bright pale green. There was far too much green for it to look like spring to a Minnesotan, but details here and there emerged as springlike: the greening up of the bunching grasses from the ground, still overcast by last year's gray or brown or red foliage; the many emerging rosettes and shoots of wildflowers, the bare branches of deciduous shrubs and trees, the slant of the light. We saw one Douglas iris in full bloom. Forget-me-nots were blooming, and a tiny brilliant pink flower with finely-divided leaves that looked like a miniature cranesbill geranium.
Entirely by accident, we stumbled onto a grove of Dawn Redwoods. This is the third species of redwood, native to China (the others are native to North America), and it had been believed extinct until living specimens were discovered in the Sichuan Province of China in 1941. The three trees in Strybing's grove were planted from seeds that, after the discovery in China, were collected from those trees and sent to botanic gardens all around the world. These redwoods are fantastically shaped, with huge flat buttresses at ground level and twining spiralling branches. And they are deciduous. Soft new growth, hardly an eighth of an inch long, was just starting here and there; Eric found it. The whole structure of each tree was revealed, and the ground beneath was covered in a rich red duff of shed needles.
We saw golden-crowned sparrows, many ruby-crowned kinglets, which according to Sibley are year-round residents, and two Anna's hummingbirds. We also saw and heard several ravens, and another black phoebe swooped and darted and flirted its white bits at us. There were also mosquitoes. We went along to the small riparian area, which always makes us reminisce about a visit to it in June when a large dog jumped into the water, to the distress of the dog's owner and general delight among the other witnesses. We made a rather hurried pass through the redwood section of California, dawdled a little through more exotic plantings on our way to the gate, and then as evening neared we went to Stow Island, where I had never been.
Eric explained to me that the whole affair was an artifice, an artificial lake made around a hill at a level that put the water above the roadway. He told me that the path to the top was a perfect spiral, which is also the simplest form of a labyrinth, so that the entire place could serve as a meditation. He told me that the place had sentimental associations. This made me feel deeply sentimental and also rather reserved. We parked the car, below water level, and climbed up to the path that ran around the lake. We saw people in rowboats and inflatable boats and, I thought, one canoe. There were a lot of mallards, so comforting and universal (the fist bird I saw in Stratford-on-Avon was a mallard), and also one gorgeous duck that turned out to be an American widgeon. Despite the word's use in Georgette Heyer's books to denote a particularly fluffly kind of stupidity, it did not look notably dumber than any other ducks. Eric had just told me that because access across the lake and amongg the various levels of the paths was intermittent, there was a lot of back-and-forthing necessary to get anywhere, thus increasing the resemblance to a labyrinth, when I realized I had once again forgotten to bring any water. We climbed back over the fallen tree we had just got beyond and, on Eric's recommendation, went around until we got to the boat-rental area, where there were drinking fountains and bathrooms. We availed ourselves of both, and filled my 20-oz plastic bottle, and set forth yet again. As we went past the boat area, the inflatable boat we had seen above our heads as we parked the car ame in to shore, full of a large family and two happy wet spotty dogs.
The artificial waterfall was turned on, which relieved Eric of a puzzlement, since he had only seen it dry and had wondered what it could possibly be. The light was beginning to fail. The place was fairly well populated, but green and quiet for the most part. We went around and around, pointing out plants and trees to one another and catching tantalizing glimpses through the trees of the views to come. At the top, a man was playing with his dog by hitting a ball with a hurley bat. The man was standing in a hollow that Eric told me had been intended to be another artificial lake. The man would hit the ball out of the hollow; the dog would race after, pick it up, run to the edge of the hollow, and drop the ball so that it rolled down the slope, where the man would pick it up and throw it again. We edged past this charming game and promptly disturbed a courting couple sitting on a log. There was a 360-degree view as there had been on Mount Tam, but there was so much growth that one saw only pieces framed in branch and leaf. We moved around the hilltop, disturbing the courting couple a second time; so we sat down for a while in a place where we could see the Farallon Islands against the sunset again, and had a few sentimental moments ourselves.
We came down in the very last of the light, round and round, and heard an owl hooting repeatedly in the dark trees above our heads.
We drove out to the ocean and stood in the wind for a while, watching the white water curl in. Off to the north a large boat was shining a searchlight around the shore, and we wondered what that was all about. At last we drove back into the city, and having found no parking near Ebi-Su, triumphantly parked back in Golden Gate Park and walked to the restaurant. They were very busy but let us in quite soon, since we were a small party. We had just settled down with our tea when a flurried woman asked us if we would mind moving. We were given a free bowl of edamame for our pains, and put at a small table against the wall and parallel to the sushi bar. It wasn't nearly as noisy as we had feared, and gave us a good view of the sushi chefs and also of the servers dashing back and forth. Around the corner behind me were some people with a small child. Overhearing them was very amusing. The child was quite well-behaved, and the parents, despite an early, "Could we get some sake?" that sounded a bit desperate, very good with him. The child didn't want to leave promptly, but after a moment said, as if reciting a nursery rhyme, "Because those people are WAITING." "They are," said a parent. "And they've been waiting SUPER LONG." "They have," said a parent. After that all was peaceful. This charmed me inordinately.
After our somewhat large dinner, we walked in Golden Gate Park a little and then drove home.
We packed, checked out of the hotel, and went to an early breakfast at the Squat and Gobble, which Eric had noticed the evening before when we were walking around. I wish there were more restaurants like it in Minneapolis. It was not predominantly vegetarian, but I had several choices of breakfast, and they had soy milk for the coffee. I had a tofu scramble that was like the kind I make at home: the tofu was in chunks, rather than being shredded and cooked dry to resemble scrambled eggs, and there were onions, spinach, mushrooms, and peanut sauce, as well as a huge pile of home fries and an English muffin. They gave Eric Eggs Florentine rather than Eggs Benedict, but he got a free orange juice in compensation.
We set out to walk through the Panhandle, since we had never done that, but Eric promptly found a hypodermic in the grass. After disposing of that, we decided we would prefer to go to Twin Peaks. We saw ravens as we were driving up; they seemed to like Sutro Tower. Eric had thought it would be pleasaing to look down on Golden Gate Park, repeating the theme of looking from a height at where we had been; but as it turned out the bulk of Sutro Peak hid all but a bit of the Panhandle from us. There was plenty else to look at. We climbed one peak, noting with approval the sign saying that it was being restored as a habitat for the Mission blue butterfly, with a stern admonition to respect all plantings. We stood on the peak for a long time, looking near and far, remarking on everything from the freedom of San Francisco's buildings to have flat roofs, through the comparative ritziness or lack thereof of various neighborhoods, to what various leaf rosettes would be when they grew up, and what we had seen and said the day before. While we stood there, ravens sailed closer and closer, making the invisible wind seem solid. At last one landed, a large and glossy bird. It was joined by two others. They pecked and poked about in the grass and occasionally dragged something out and engulfed it. From time to time one of them would simply step into the wind and be gone. As we climbed and as we stood at the top, I kept hearing a bird calling: a long whistle followed by a series of short notes. I finally said, "Am I hearing meadowlarks?" Eric reminded me that meadowlarks are icterids, like red-winged blackgirds, and that therefore they sound like R2D2. We never saw a bird, though western meadowlarks are not small, but we decided that we were indeed hearing a less buzzy variation of their song.
The airport was the airport, too full of farewells.
As Polonius said, this is too long, but I believe it is at least done.
P.
coffeeem for not posting around my birthday. So hello! It's my birthday! I talked to my mother earlier. "Well," she said, "fifty-three years ago at this time, I was feeling fine. Later, it was not so great. I don't see how it can have been that long, I really don't. It's bizarre. But we don't really wish for the alternative, certainly."David and Lydy and I went out for dinner to Taste of India, on about fifteen minutes' notice.
Thanks to everybody for the birthday wishes, whether in comments below or in your own LJ. I appreciate them absurdly much, and am so bad at proffering them myself.
Yesterday, I got home from a five-day visit to the Bay Area. I keep meaning to set up some kind of socializing with all the people whom I know there, but in the event I never feel that there is enough time for Eric and me just to get caught up, so I do nothing about it, creating a strange impression of stealth that I really don't intend. We had a cheap hotel room with no facilities for the preparation of food, even of coffee (the hotel served a continental breakfast of surpassing mediocrity, with bad coffee). Eric solved the problem of coffee by getting up earlier than I did and driving to the Peet's in Burlingame. This proved very satisfactory. For reading, I had Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Eric had a gigantic high-school biology textbook, which he was perusing for a number of reasons, including the getting of some of the information he would need in order to actually teach high-school biology in California. We talked a bit about my book and a lot about his, information being easier to convey out of context than the flavor of a complicated chewy memoir-with-literary-criticism-of-a-grotesque-regime. The bits of my book that I'd have read aloud to him all occurred near the end, which I read when I was home again.
I got in fairly late on Thursday night. I hate flying, but it wasn't too bad. I had a long layover in Denver, which enabled me to eat some pretty good Kung Pao Shrimp from the Panda Express, drop my little container of sauce for my eggroll almost on some innocent traveller's foot, and see the sun set and the lights come out. I had an interesting minor shift of perspective, too. When I'm in an airplane looking down at city lights, I always try to pretend I'm in a spaceship looking at stars and galaxies, but no city has been so gracious or foresighted as to actually set up its lighting and streets to provide the proper appearance to feed this fantasy. This time, as we rose over Denver, suddenly I saw it as a huge assembly of beads and jewellery, mostly made by Elise. That was pleasant.
Once Eric and I had found one another and collected my suitcase, and I had gotten the basic news about his very full day, which included an interview about his student teaching, we collected the rental car, which was a little alarming, though Eric figured it out quite quickly and later drove it with great intrepidity up a lot of very narrow winding roads with scary views of mostly air. Then we attempted to find the best sushi in Pacifica, since we were close to it and going into the city seemed problematic. We couldn't find the restaurant in question, falling victim to MapQuest's "arrive at X" locution, which often puzzles the people actually on the ground. The drive was in itself interesting, evoking a lot of memories of my last visits to California. Already I had smelled eucalyptus. We finally did drive into San Francisco, so late that parking was not a difficulty, and ate at Ebi-Su, near Golden Gate Park, where we had had good luck before, and had it this time too, snarfing down a vast array of appetizers and then slowing down for the main course a little. I never am sure if I enjoy eating sushi more than I enjoy watching E appreciate it. In any case, I had teriyaki salmon, which was stupendous, and came with an array of cold vegetables, including mashed potatoes with unidentifiable but tasty seasonings. Before and after dinner, I enjoyed looking at the row houses with their lit-up bay windows, some of the houses painted in colors so bright you could tell what they were even after dark, while Eric worked on taming the somewhat over-powered car.
On Friday, which was sunny and hazy by turns, we went back into San Francisco and had breakfast at The Herbivore, which reminded me pleasingly of the now-vanished Mud Pie. Eric took to referring to it as "the sign of the Red Pepper," since it had a traditional-looking inn or pub sign with a beautiful red bell pepper in relief on it. A better facade than the somewhat shambling one of The Mud Pie, in truth. But in either place, I love it when they bring you a little pitcher with your coffee and it's soy milk, as the default. I had a southwestern tofu scramble with vegan sour cream, guacamole, salsa, and a very intense slice of cornbread.
I have some sketchy notes, which I had intended to reproduce without much expansion, but by now the only remnant of that intention is an occasional failure to use a subjective pronoun, here and there. We went to Tilden Park, drove up as far as Inspiration Point, and walked along Nimitz Way. Heard chestnut-backed chickadees, saw a couple of birds that certainly looked like swifts. Golden-crowned sparrows on path verge, red-tailed hawk showing off in pine tree, turkey vultures, black phoebe, and a raven, croaking in a splendid Poeish fashion. Young sierra redwoods, completely conical and alien to one whose main experience of them is the grove at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. When we first arrived a group of young women with babies in strollers was assembling. Eric wanted to get well ahead of them; it had not occurred to either of us that they might do this regularly. They overtook and passed us very soon. We passed them because they had stopped just before the last haul for the peak, possibly because there was a gigantic patch of mud on the path and rolling a bunch of strollers around it through the bumpy grass was not feasible. But they beat us back to the beginning of the trail, too. Eucalyptus forest, flicker calling, a swampy area with cattails, where I heard frogs on the way back. Eric went all the way to the peak, but I had forgotten to bring water and was worried about dehydration, so I turned back before the last steep climb. When he caught up with me, he told me all he had seen, which was almost as good as having gone myself.
Then to the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Blooming: wild strawberry, currant bushes, a few redwood sorrel plants, manzanitas. Scrub jay grooming self in bare deciduous tree. Kinglet, eye-ring, under bridge. (We checked Sibley later and had recalled to us the fact that it's ruby-crowned kinglets that have eye-rings.) Wildcat Creek very loud. Prickly pear in fruit near entrance. Cliff daisies in bloom, also some short plant with broad leaves and big multiflowered clusters in pale yellow. Next to a sign that said it was an allium, but I doubt it. A number of the plants in that garden seed themselves around at random, blurring the tidy flow of information.
Eric retrieved from the lodge a pamphlet he had been reading on his previous visit, and showed me bits of it. I think it was that article that triggered our interest in baccharis. There were photographs of the places we had just been, back when they were still grassland, before the park trees were planted. On our walk Eric had pointed out to me the stark difference between the forested slopes of Tilden Park proper and the bare grassy slopes of Wildcat Canyon Reserve. I think it was the same article that complained that baccharis had overtaken a lot of the original grassland as well. I promptly said that it sounded just like buckthorn, only native; Eric said that the title of "the buckthorn of California" was already taken by Scotch broom. We saw a lot of that in bloom as we drove along narrow roads, and also a lot of acacias in full bloom. It's odd how in seasons of sparse bloom, beginning or ending, the predominant color is yellow. We saw a fair amount of oxalis as well, and more that was going to be in bloom soon.
Stopped by E's place in Oakland, saw the fine orange cat, who reacted pretty much as if he'd seen me yesterday. It had been about a year and a half. Said hello to E's parents, arranged to take his dad grocery shopping later. Went to Middle Harbor Park, which is quite an amazing bit of the peace dividend. It's still under construction, but well into the process of restoring shallow water and sheltered coves for waterbirds. We saw avocets stepping through the shallows, including one that whooshed its bill through the water so vigorously that it lost its balance and had to flap its wings to regain it. Sun came out between two huge slate-gray banks of cloud, and shed religious-picture rays over San Francisco. E was very pleased to see SF so close; in absence of this park, would have to be on a boat to see it in this way. Scaups, buffleheads, Western grebes, all diving. Park is surrounded by containers, cranes, ships. Motifs in sidewalk like parking spaces for semi trucks, concrete benches like the stops for parking places, the mast of the U.S.S. Oakland, lines of old capstans painted brilliant white, and a jagged pattern of narrow strips of stone set in the pavement to represent the footprint of a building on the original Navy base. Sparrows with black caps. The east grew pink and hazy at sunset, the west slaty, orange, and red. Lights came on slowly in the city, and the Bay Bridge lit up. Saw one container plucked from trick, lifted, plunked down on pile aboard ship. Ship like gigantic steel drum cut in half lengthwise, with bow added. Names repeated on huge piles of containers: Hyundai, Evergreen, Sinotrans, Yang Ming, MOL. It was hard to see their scale; they looked like Legos. Wildflowers around cove restoration: yarrow, poppies, maybe celandine, and of course oxalis. There were telescopes into which you did not have to put a quarter, with which to watch the birds or anything else that took one's interest. By the time we left the lights on the giant crane had been shut off, but the entire city was lit.
Back to apartment, took Rick shopping. This was unexpectedly entertaining, as other people's family dynamics often are. Rick had just returned from a three-week trip to visit E's sister, so they were still catching up, and I got a miniature glimpse of their life together, which was very pleasing. We were offered curried oysters, but instead had dinner at Manzanita: glorious beet soup; collard greens; garbanzos with leeks, miso, and tahini; wild rice and millet with mushroom gravy; spring mix with balsamic vinegar; carrot, parsnip, burdock, onion, cabbage medley -- all with very good contrasts in basic flavors, sweet sour bitter salt and umami (thank you, carbonel). And cookies, chocolate chip and pecan cookies. Amused Eric by repeatedly intoning, "Cooooooookies" a la the well-known monster.
Saturday it rained. We had already decided to defy the weather and drive along the coast. This plan required us to go to REI and buy me a rain jacket. I had been making do with a cheap blue one, but its zipper broke just before I had to start packing. We found a quite spiffy green one on sale. It's surplus to my requirements, being, as E demonstrated that evening, a very superior biking jacket with all sorts of fancy touches. After REI we went to Whole Foods to find me some breakfast. I went slightly nuts and got both a huge breakfast burrito, rather like yesterday's breakfast rolled up in a tortilla, a mock chicken sandwich, both sheep and goat cheese, crackers, cherry tomatoes, almonds, pecans, Luna and Clif bars. While we were vaguely shocked at the cost, these supplies would turn out to provide us four meals for two, plus snacks. We had got two gallons of water at the bargain grocery store where we took E's father the day before (the hotel's water tasted and smelled like sulphur), and also some more energy bars. E snagged some plastic eating utensils and napkins while I waited in line at the checkout.
Thus fortified, we drove south. When it stopped raining, we would get out. The first time we did this, a raven croaked at us from atop a sign and then swept off. The drenched landscape was impossibly rich to look at, the green of the leafed-out shrubs and the trees on the heights very dense, the reddish rock almost glowing around its patches of pale green lichen, the green just coming back to the grass on the bare hills. There was stand after stand of leafless shrubs with vivid orange or red or red-brown new growth at their tips. E pointed out several valleys of redwoods with mist twining and drifting through. He told me to look for spouts, since the whales were migrating, but I didn't see any. The ocean was furious white and pale gray near the shore, darker gray further out, and a deep purple at the horizon.
Stopped at Ano Nuevo State Reserve, because the rain had stopped. Were interrogated sternly by guard about whether we had reservations to see the elephant seals. Yes, we could come into the park, but we couldn't go where the elephant seals were. We dutifully took a path in the opposite direction. The view was full of mist and spray, but there were several impressive cliffs visible above a large stretch of tiny-leaved shrubbery. ("Is that baccharis?") Flat hard gravel path overlaid with running trickles and some mud. Ring-necked pheasant in undergrowth. Sparrows on path verge, black phoebe working the area around the visitor center. We went on down the narrow path, past a historic house, down a flight of muddy wooden steps, down a gully scattered with squarish red rocks, to a creek mouth with a huge tumble of boulders and logs. And there, further out on the beach, asleep on its back, with spotty chest, whiskers, and the beginning of a proboscis, was a (we surmised) solitary juvenile male elephant seal. Nobody had sent him the memo. Went back for camera and lunch. Got several photos, after which a sudden shower got camera wet and lens cap jammed half open. Sat on odd bit of piping and ate lunch, looking at elephant seal all the while. Many stern signs had told us "All animals are wild" and "Do not approach within 25 feet of elephant seals," and we did not, but he snurfed and whuffled and vibrated his whiskers and did not awaken.
Drove on south, made side trip to Bonny Doon in honor of Robert Heinlein, but cut it short when darkness started to fall. The usual winding, narrowing road, with some huge redwoods and a liberal sprinkling of moss, lichen, California bay laurel (which was in bloom, in its shy way), and, perhaps, baccharis. Saw signs for the volunteer fire department, and one lone building, a wine-tasting establishment whose basic architecture looked as it would have felt happier in Arizona. Eric said that I was the only person he knew who was as interested in Heinlein as I was. This was a novelty to me, since while I am very much interested in Heinlein, a lot of the people I know, including David, are even more so.
Came back to the ocean for sunset, drove to Santa Cruz, had Japanese dinner (very good miso soup, a mixed quality of sushi for E, a somewhat frightening slab of lovely broiled mackerel for me), wandered around people-watching and marvelling at the large number of buskers; looked with great interest at the long line forming for a night club (every once in a while, somebody who looked exactly like a Boiled in Lead fan would pop into my vision), and with dubiety at a bunch of white guys in baseball caps and sweatshirts that said "Silent Majority." Sky was clearing; saw Orion and the Pleiades and Mars and Sirius and Procyon. Drove home on Highway 17 rather than braving the windy shore. Fell unexpectedly into an extremely tense emotional discussion, and had to defer it to our arrival at the hotel, a rainy drive over a mountain pass not being the best setting for it. At some point fell into a discussion of whether Procyon as well as Sirius has a white dwarf companion (Eric informed me after I got home again that in fact it does); this led to my confession that the only reason I know that Sirius has a white dwarf companion is that I have read Diana Wynne Jones's Dogsbody.
Sunday was brilliantly clear. We got up a little earlier than usual, in a bit of a flurry: it was Eric's week to arrive at meeting early and help to set things up. Eric and I have been to the Twin Cities Friends Meeting, which has its own building in St. Paul, twice now. His own meeting, Strawberry Creek Meeting, doesn't have a meeting house, and some of the discussion about this issue that has been related to me reminded me strongly of local discussions of whether Minn-Stf should have a clubhouse. In any case, Strawberry Creek Meeting meets at the Berkeley Alternative High School, in a pleasing barn-shaped room with high windows, through which that day one could see the red leaves of a sweetgum, swinging in the wind. I helped here and there to carry a table or roll a pile of plastic tubs containing all the materials necessary for the various First-Day School classes, but mostly I just marvelled at how the entire ambiance of a place like the Twin Cities Friends Meeting's permanent location was recreated by hauling items out of a closet: a library cart, a propaganda table, tables for refreshments, chairs for latecomers, a banner to put up outside, signs on magnetic clips to affix to doors, the tubs for classes.
I am, at this time in my life, deeply allergic to religion; but I love Quaker ambiance. Eric had expressed some surprise at, shall we say, the proportion of silent to vocal ministry at Twin Cities Friends Meeting, so I was prepared for more people to speak here, and they did. E and I were both still quivery from our previous night's discussion, and some of the vocal ministry was distressing, but it really did seem like a rock dropped into a pool that then grows still again. The last person who spoke told a glorious story of going out to the Delta to see the migrating birds, and of seeing sandhill cranes landing and dancing just at sunset. She described the sunset, and we had seen that sunset as well, from Middle Harbor Park. Then the clerk of the meeting (I think) made a very nice speech about how silent and vocal ministry were equal, and that visitors contributed as much as members. Strawberry Creek has a custom of asking everybody to say zir name at the end, and for visitors to say a bit about themselves. I said that I was visiting from Minneapolis. I was collared by the woman in charge of the refreshments, whose daughter had just received a job offer in Minneapolis, so I told her what I could about Twin Cities Friends Meeting. Some of Eric's compatriots had been late to help with set-up, so they let him take off early.
We had to stop at Marmot Mountaineering to buy me a sun hat. I had forgot my Tilley hat. Luckily some cheaper sun hats were on sale, it not being the season for them. Then we went back to Tilden Park, up Vollmer Peak. We had been once before on a cloudy misty hazy day. Now you could see Mount Diablo and all points between. Eric pointed out peaks and ridges and valleys and told me stories about them. Ravens swooped around the radio towers, croaking. A kestrel hovered over the empty air, at our eye level and not very far away, red-backed, blue-winged, like a gigantic hummingbird, and then stooped. We went down with some reluctance to the Botanic Garden belonging to UC Berkeley, but upon discovering that you had to pay to park and then pay ten dollars to get in, we ducked instead into the free Regional Parks Botanic Garden and ate our lunch (still the supplies from Whole Foods) at an overlook, enjoying the crowd there as well.
Then we drove out of the hills, looking at the fancy houses basking in the sun, down into the flatlands for gas and a map of Marin County. Then we went to Mount Tamalpais, over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and through many places we had seen from Vollmer Peak. Eric pointed out, among other sights, San Quentin, which thereafter dominated our view until we started up the mountain. One of the announcements at meeting had been that another execution would take place at San Quentin on the morrow. I hardly wanted to look at it. Eric told me the history of the condemned man. We talked a little about the death penalty, on which we are in complete accord. At last we drove up and up and further up, in tighter and tighter curves. Eric had to keep his eyes firmly on the asphalt, but I was torn between the turning distant views and the close sight of tree and shrub and stone.
There was one of those gates with the ominous notice that the park closes at sunset. It wasn't really possible to drive faster, so we just went on up the narrowing road, hugging the side of the mountain. The huge trees fell back, and there were only shrubs ("Is that baccharis?") and grass and rock. It all looked familiar, but the sequence was not in our recollection. We came around curve after curve, to see not the slanted parking lot but only another piece of the mountain. At last we parked and set off up the boardwalk and the rocky path above. We had been here before, on a cloudy misty day, admiring the seven ravens that were present then, and the foliage and rocks. I had not been able to make it to the top. Today there were no ravens; I climbed all the way up to the fire-watch tower to join Eric, who had gone ahead; and there was an unimpeded view 360 degrees around. We told over the places we had been, and the ones we had not. We had seen the Farallon Islands from Vollmer Peak, and we could still see them now, until they vanished into the sunset, while eastwards the shadow of the mountain stretched and stretched and stretched until it was laid against the dark-blue sky. We came down at sunset, comforted by the people still ascending, and were not in fact locked in. We went into San Francisco and had dinner at Belazo, and walked about after, once again looking at the crowd, so different from the one in Santa Cruz.
Monday was my last day, so we had a leisurely morning with our Peet's coffee, which Eric in a restless moment set off to fetch before sunrise, and our Whole Foods remnants. Then we went to Strybing Arboretum. I had conceived on previous visits a fierce fondness for the California section. We also dawdled in the Cape Province section, which abuts California. I pointed out one small beautiful tree that Eric said was Tolkienian, which it was, and we contemplated whether his fantastical landscapes had been affected by memories of his childhood in South Africa.
Quite a few alien plants were in bloom. California was quieter. All the manzanitas were rioting with bloom, as were the ceanothus. But the California buckeye we had admired before was, in a completely Tolkienian fashion, bare and shapely, a thick tree with lovely heavy curvy branches and pale gray bark. When we got closer we saw that it had buds and a few unfolding palmate leaves, still small, crinkled, and bright pale green. There was far too much green for it to look like spring to a Minnesotan, but details here and there emerged as springlike: the greening up of the bunching grasses from the ground, still overcast by last year's gray or brown or red foliage; the many emerging rosettes and shoots of wildflowers, the bare branches of deciduous shrubs and trees, the slant of the light. We saw one Douglas iris in full bloom. Forget-me-nots were blooming, and a tiny brilliant pink flower with finely-divided leaves that looked like a miniature cranesbill geranium.
Entirely by accident, we stumbled onto a grove of Dawn Redwoods. This is the third species of redwood, native to China (the others are native to North America), and it had been believed extinct until living specimens were discovered in the Sichuan Province of China in 1941. The three trees in Strybing's grove were planted from seeds that, after the discovery in China, were collected from those trees and sent to botanic gardens all around the world. These redwoods are fantastically shaped, with huge flat buttresses at ground level and twining spiralling branches. And they are deciduous. Soft new growth, hardly an eighth of an inch long, was just starting here and there; Eric found it. The whole structure of each tree was revealed, and the ground beneath was covered in a rich red duff of shed needles.
We saw golden-crowned sparrows, many ruby-crowned kinglets, which according to Sibley are year-round residents, and two Anna's hummingbirds. We also saw and heard several ravens, and another black phoebe swooped and darted and flirted its white bits at us. There were also mosquitoes. We went along to the small riparian area, which always makes us reminisce about a visit to it in June when a large dog jumped into the water, to the distress of the dog's owner and general delight among the other witnesses. We made a rather hurried pass through the redwood section of California, dawdled a little through more exotic plantings on our way to the gate, and then as evening neared we went to Stow Island, where I had never been.
Eric explained to me that the whole affair was an artifice, an artificial lake made around a hill at a level that put the water above the roadway. He told me that the path to the top was a perfect spiral, which is also the simplest form of a labyrinth, so that the entire place could serve as a meditation. He told me that the place had sentimental associations. This made me feel deeply sentimental and also rather reserved. We parked the car, below water level, and climbed up to the path that ran around the lake. We saw people in rowboats and inflatable boats and, I thought, one canoe. There were a lot of mallards, so comforting and universal (the fist bird I saw in Stratford-on-Avon was a mallard), and also one gorgeous duck that turned out to be an American widgeon. Despite the word's use in Georgette Heyer's books to denote a particularly fluffly kind of stupidity, it did not look notably dumber than any other ducks. Eric had just told me that because access across the lake and amongg the various levels of the paths was intermittent, there was a lot of back-and-forthing necessary to get anywhere, thus increasing the resemblance to a labyrinth, when I realized I had once again forgotten to bring any water. We climbed back over the fallen tree we had just got beyond and, on Eric's recommendation, went around until we got to the boat-rental area, where there were drinking fountains and bathrooms. We availed ourselves of both, and filled my 20-oz plastic bottle, and set forth yet again. As we went past the boat area, the inflatable boat we had seen above our heads as we parked the car ame in to shore, full of a large family and two happy wet spotty dogs.
The artificial waterfall was turned on, which relieved Eric of a puzzlement, since he had only seen it dry and had wondered what it could possibly be. The light was beginning to fail. The place was fairly well populated, but green and quiet for the most part. We went around and around, pointing out plants and trees to one another and catching tantalizing glimpses through the trees of the views to come. At the top, a man was playing with his dog by hitting a ball with a hurley bat. The man was standing in a hollow that Eric told me had been intended to be another artificial lake. The man would hit the ball out of the hollow; the dog would race after, pick it up, run to the edge of the hollow, and drop the ball so that it rolled down the slope, where the man would pick it up and throw it again. We edged past this charming game and promptly disturbed a courting couple sitting on a log. There was a 360-degree view as there had been on Mount Tam, but there was so much growth that one saw only pieces framed in branch and leaf. We moved around the hilltop, disturbing the courting couple a second time; so we sat down for a while in a place where we could see the Farallon Islands against the sunset again, and had a few sentimental moments ourselves.
We came down in the very last of the light, round and round, and heard an owl hooting repeatedly in the dark trees above our heads.
We drove out to the ocean and stood in the wind for a while, watching the white water curl in. Off to the north a large boat was shining a searchlight around the shore, and we wondered what that was all about. At last we drove back into the city, and having found no parking near Ebi-Su, triumphantly parked back in Golden Gate Park and walked to the restaurant. They were very busy but let us in quite soon, since we were a small party. We had just settled down with our tea when a flurried woman asked us if we would mind moving. We were given a free bowl of edamame for our pains, and put at a small table against the wall and parallel to the sushi bar. It wasn't nearly as noisy as we had feared, and gave us a good view of the sushi chefs and also of the servers dashing back and forth. Around the corner behind me were some people with a small child. Overhearing them was very amusing. The child was quite well-behaved, and the parents, despite an early, "Could we get some sake?" that sounded a bit desperate, very good with him. The child didn't want to leave promptly, but after a moment said, as if reciting a nursery rhyme, "Because those people are WAITING." "They are," said a parent. "And they've been waiting SUPER LONG." "They have," said a parent. After that all was peaceful. This charmed me inordinately.
After our somewhat large dinner, we walked in Golden Gate Park a little and then drove home.
We packed, checked out of the hotel, and went to an early breakfast at the Squat and Gobble, which Eric had noticed the evening before when we were walking around. I wish there were more restaurants like it in Minneapolis. It was not predominantly vegetarian, but I had several choices of breakfast, and they had soy milk for the coffee. I had a tofu scramble that was like the kind I make at home: the tofu was in chunks, rather than being shredded and cooked dry to resemble scrambled eggs, and there were onions, spinach, mushrooms, and peanut sauce, as well as a huge pile of home fries and an English muffin. They gave Eric Eggs Florentine rather than Eggs Benedict, but he got a free orange juice in compensation.
We set out to walk through the Panhandle, since we had never done that, but Eric promptly found a hypodermic in the grass. After disposing of that, we decided we would prefer to go to Twin Peaks. We saw ravens as we were driving up; they seemed to like Sutro Tower. Eric had thought it would be pleasaing to look down on Golden Gate Park, repeating the theme of looking from a height at where we had been; but as it turned out the bulk of Sutro Peak hid all but a bit of the Panhandle from us. There was plenty else to look at. We climbed one peak, noting with approval the sign saying that it was being restored as a habitat for the Mission blue butterfly, with a stern admonition to respect all plantings. We stood on the peak for a long time, looking near and far, remarking on everything from the freedom of San Francisco's buildings to have flat roofs, through the comparative ritziness or lack thereof of various neighborhoods, to what various leaf rosettes would be when they grew up, and what we had seen and said the day before. While we stood there, ravens sailed closer and closer, making the invisible wind seem solid. At last one landed, a large and glossy bird. It was joined by two others. They pecked and poked about in the grass and occasionally dragged something out and engulfed it. From time to time one of them would simply step into the wind and be gone. As we climbed and as we stood at the top, I kept hearing a bird calling: a long whistle followed by a series of short notes. I finally said, "Am I hearing meadowlarks?" Eric reminded me that meadowlarks are icterids, like red-winged blackgirds, and that therefore they sound like R2D2. We never saw a bird, though western meadowlarks are not small, but we decided that we were indeed hearing a less buzzy variation of their song.
The airport was the airport, too full of farewells.
As Polonius said, this is too long, but I believe it is at least done.
P.
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Birthday! Happy!
Date: 2006-01-19 06:41 am (UTC)Glad you had a good visit here in the Bay Area,
Date: 2006-01-19 06:42 am (UTC)/Gordon
in Sunnyvale, in the heart of Silicon Valley
Re: Glad you had a good visit here in the Bay Area,
Date: 2006-01-26 06:55 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:48 am (UTC)Would have loved to have said hello while you were here, but definitely understand the lack-of-time thing. Sounds like you had a wonderful visit!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:58 am (UTC)sounds like you had a lovely trip!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 08:31 am (UTC)Oh, and happy birthday.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-26 06:57 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 08:32 am (UTC)We have lots of buskers because if you can get dry you can survive outdoors all winter: because there's not much work, and what there is does not pay well: and because once you start having them, you have more of them. And a few relatively well-known folks got started on the streets here: The Flying Karamozov Brothers, Tom Noddy, like that, so there's this precedent that you could do that and make a living at it and stuff.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 11:37 pm (UTC)I should remember that many apparently cultural differences really come down to weather. I had no idea that the Flying Karamazov Brothers got their start in Santa Cruz; that really adds flavor to my impressions.
P.
Happy Happy Birthday!
Date: 2006-01-19 09:46 am (UTC)Re: Happy Happy Birthday!
Date: 2006-01-19 04:18 pm (UTC)happy birthday, pamela!
Re: Happy Happy Birthday!
From:no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 10:33 am (UTC)Like the other Bay Area natives here, I wouldn't have minded hearing from you, but I understand.
I thought we didn't get ravens around here, only crows, but I just googled it and it looks like we're meant to have both. I'm not sure how to tell the difference between them.
Have you ever visited the bird sanctuary at Lake Merritt? It sounds like something you'd find interesting.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 12:39 pm (UTC)Also, happy birthday again!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-26 07:01 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 12:50 pm (UTC)So glad you had a good visit with your sweetie. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:48 pm (UTC)And happy birthday!
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Date: 2006-01-19 01:49 pm (UTC)I hope this will be a year of good words with momentum for you.
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Date: 2006-01-26 07:01 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2006-01-19 02:53 pm (UTC)How much does the restaurant usually need?
B
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Date: 2006-01-19 02:57 pm (UTC)