Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Out From Under the Weather

The clouds have lifted from my brain and I'm wide awake trying to get some sleep for work tomorrow. Called in sick this morning and did some napping and lots of sneezing and coughing and sniffling, and some mailbox fixing and cookie baking and taxes.

I keep meaning to tell everyone about this ranch in Petaluma that I went to on Sunday, and somehow when I start trying to explain it, it just sounds like a cliche. Oh, a gorgeous ranch with rolling green hills and moody fog draped over the valleys and dairy cows and brown horses and mangy burros and wild turkeys. In Northern California? How unusual.

Actually I got lured there by my friend who simply said that he had been summoned to shuck oysters at this party that an old family friend was attending. It was at a ranch that was also an artist's commune. So off we drove to Petaluma. I braced myself for pretentious hippie-wannabes a la Arcata ("Hell is a Cold, White Place") and bland vegan food.

Turns out it was a bunch of aging hippie types, none pretentious, all over 50 and white as bunnies. There was a composting toilet, and three beautiful dogs, and huge fluffy cats, and lots of rustic architecture and old-style wood stoves, and a "tin house" high on the side of a hill with windows for walls, a bed swinging from the ceiling and an outdoor bathtub. And of course lots of art - sculptures and paintings and a poet's studio with a single wooden table facing a window overlooking a green meadow. And Michael Ondaatje in residence.

The rain came down while we slurped oysters and listened to gossip and sighed what a lovely getaway this ranch would be, but we sure wouldn't want to live here. It made me think about why I travel to the places I do, why I go backpacking on vacation instead of going to a beach resort, why I'm constantly seeking out solitude and pristine wilderness even though the idea of settling somewhere lacking in culture and art and diversity and gritty urban reality triggers all my worst urbanite snobbism. We all want to escape to places that we think will fill voids in the life we know. Otherwise, it's not really an escape, is it? Teenagers in rural Bhutan long to run off to America and become rock stars; thirtysomething American worker bees long to run off to Tibet and find spiritual rejuvenation at a mountainside monastery. Or to serve in the Peace Corps in Kenya.

My friends and I had dinner at one of those excruciatingly cute restaurants in downtown Carmel on Saturday night, capping off a scenic day in Monterey and Point Lobos. Call it a weekend of ending up around old folks, because we were easily three decades younger than the next youngest people in the restaurant, and at least five shades browner. An old deaf woman at the next table leaned over and said, "HOW LOVELY TO SEE SUCH INTERNATIONAL FACES HERE. WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" We said that three of us were from the Bay Area, and Savita was visiting from England. "WONDERFUL! IT'S SO UNUSUAL TO SEE SUCH INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATION HERE." Seriously? Did she ever get out? San Francisco was 2 hours away. San Jose was 1 hour away. Where was she from? "PEBBLE BEACH. ALMOST THIRTY YEARS NOW. MY HUSBAND AND I HAVE A HOUSE DOWN THERE. IT'S WONDERFUL."

"EH! DON'T MIND HER," said the old deaf man who appeared to be her husband. "WE'RE HAVING HER COMMITTED TOMORROW." They shuffled off, the old woman beaming and thanking us profusely for sharing with her. (Sharing what? Our international faces? Must be worth something.)

In the end I couldn't really fault her. Plenty of people never travel more than a 20 mile radius or 2 degrees of discomfort from the communities they know, even if they can afford it. I'm preparing for more of the same in Africa. "You're American? You sure don't look American." I suppose for the sake of my sanity that I will need to find a way to not flip out when every single person I meet in Kenya says that to me.

Notes of Remembrance:

Very few things are quite as breathtaking to me as a pack of fifty sinewey cyclists in a rainbow of spandex, puffing their way up a hill in the Marin Headlands. Or finding myself flying single-file down a winding road in the Oakland Hills with five other cyclists, hitting the curves almost silently except for the soft clicking of bike chains. Or watching drivers in Sausalito yielding--patiently--to the weekend invasion of cyclists, as if cyclists are just a fact of life rather than an obnoxious inconvenience for people who like to drive their SUV in the bike lane. Hats off to the bike-friendly drivers of Marin County...and to the guy in Tiburon who handed me and my friend Amy $20 for lunch. Rich people ain't so bad after all!

And...the lasagna from Pasquale's Pizzeria on Irving and 8th...it will be missed in Kenya.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"American? "You look Chinese!"
"Ummmm...I am Chinese...and Burmese. I was born in Burma...but I live in America...."

(Brain aneurism here)

http://www.livejournal.com/~girlcalledphil/3385.html

9:17 PM  

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