L u n a t a l k

You wouldn’t think you could find the Ends of the Earth in California, but I think it may be there. Is that a good thing or not?

When I arrived at the Sea Ranch for a week’s escape and opened my suitcase I discovered I’d neglected to pack a single pair of undies. There’s a sleepy little tourist town nearby - Gualala. Gualala has not one, but two markets, a gas station, art galleries and several cafes, so it’s no ghost town. But when I asked one of the locals where one might purchase panties, she thought for a looooong while and then ventured, “Did you check at the bait and tackle shop?”

It turned out not to be a bad thing at all.

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Tokyo was rocked by a 6.8 earthquake followed by a 5.3 aftershock this week. No major damage or injuries were reported, but my attention was riveted anyway, since my son Alan is there now, studying (twister, karaoke and probably some Japanese as well).

Things are a tad different from when I was a 20-year-old student getting into trouble in Europe and the USSR (alone!). I’m sure my parents would have preferred I go with a nice safe group or at least with a girlfriend or two. If I had a lick of sense, I would have given myself a good shake and a firm talking to as well, but I’ve always leapt off cliffs and assumed I’d sprout wings before I hit the ground. I think I called home (with great difficulty and expense) twice over the course of three months. They have no idea to this day some of the, ahem, adventures I had. And it’s probably just as well, though now that it’s in the blog I may get interrogated.

But that was then. Alan blogs regularly and is in my IM window almost daily, so I didn’t have to wait too long to know he was OK. Not that I was worried, mind you - the news reports put even a mom’s mind at rest - but I grew up in earthquake country and there’s always the post-quake entertainment where you contact everyone you know and trade “how was it for you” stories. It’s part of the fun.

It reminded me that we’re still in earthquake country. We looked it up and the San Andreas Fault runs UNDER our vacation house. The San Andreas Fault is the longest and most active earthquake fault in the world. There’s a lovely interpretive trail just down the street. The fault moved 13 feet laterally and 10 feet vertically along 300 miles of its length during the 1906 7.8 quake. If you know what to look for you can sill see the effects.

We walked by, across and inside the fault. At one point i looked up the jumbled slope from the trough of the fault and about fifty yards straight up was a house. On stilts. I couldn’t quite see for sure, but I think it’s named “Hubris House.”

They’ll have a great ride one day.

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The Sea Ranch is a lovely, private community on the rocky, seal-scattered shores of the northern California coast in Sonoma County just south of the Mendocino County line. My in-laws live here and we visit at least once a year. I highly recommend getting yourself some in-laws who live in a place like this rather than, say, Myanmar.

It’s only taken us a quarter of a century to figure out how to do it up right though.

In the beginning, we’d strap the kids into their carseats after dinner, red-eye the 10 hour drive up from L.A. and collapse on the hilly sofabed in the studio downstairs.

This time we rented our own little Sea Ranch house for the week (called, appropriately, “Moonscape”). The best thing about it, aside from absolute privacy, is the hot tub on the deck. I know I’m probably going to Carbon Footprint Hell, but damn, 105-degree water, bare skin and open sky… Turn the jets up, honey.

There was a waxing crescent moon this week with plenty of earthshine on the dark side. We renamed the constellations. The new ones are: The Mousepad in the north. Straight overhead there is The Pencil, though one of the stars in that one moved over the course of the week, so it was a more like a pencil than we knew when we named it, getting stubbier each day. Just to the south of the Pencil lies the three stars of the Aeron Chair.

I think if we had another week the names would change to happier subjects. The Wineglass? The Hot Tub? The Silk Scarf?

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Just back from a week at the Sea Ranch, California - a lovely and much-needed escape.

There are a number of points where I tell myself “NOW I feel like I’m on vacation.” The first is the ride to the airport, but that’s not really it. The second is after running the security gauntlet, repacking, dressing and finding my gate, but that’s not really it. The third is treating myself to an extra-dark mocha from Dilettante (a latte from Starbucks will do). Closer, but still not really it. Getting on the plane? Wheels off the ground?

We flew down from Seattle to Santa Rosa on a small turbo-prop plane run by Horizon Air. A friend commented to me once that a boarding pass is an interesting device. One moment it’s the single most important piece of paper in the world and in an instant it’s useless. I assert it’s not entirely useless. Boarding passes make the best bookmarks.

One nice surprise from Horizon: Free local wine and microbrew beer in coach. They give refills too.

NOW I’m on vacation.

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Any frequent hiker knows about the all-important 10 essentials for surviving your walk in the woods. Silly things like water, map, compass, first-aid kit, knife, light, fire, food, extra clothes, emergency shelter. Sure you can lug all that crap along. Wimp.

Here’s an alternative list I developed snowshoeing near Mount Rainier yesterday.

1. STEALTH – You want to be in and out of your hike before trouble figures out where to find you. Don’t let anyone know where you’re going. This is much easier if YOU have no idea where you’re going. Just drive until you see a likely turnout.
2. IGNORANCE - Knowledge and education are overrated. They just lead to worry, effort, inconvenience and hours of time spent NOT hiking. Never used snow shoes before? How hard could it be? All the signs at the trailhead covered with plastic garbage bags? Probably for a good reason. Why question it?
3. DEAD RECKONING - The importance of maps and compasses is touted by neurotic whiners who are consumed by an obsessive need to know where they are and how to get back to the car. Let it go. Use the Force. It’s about the journey, not the destination.
4. CAR KEY - I didn’t see this on ANY of the so-called “official” 10 essentials list. And it’s so obvious. Who’s feeling a little stupid now?
5. IMAGINARY BEER - My husband adheres to the extreme version of ultra-light packing. The car key is almost too much extra weight to bear. Liquids of any sort are right out. Heavy and cumbersome, they throw off the delicate balance of the well-honed hiking machine that he is. We’ve found that you can be sustained for hours by the mere thought of an ice-cold brewski at that creaking tavern you saw driving in - the one with the parking lot full of rusting pickups with a foot of snow on the hoods.
6. IMAGINARY FOOD - See above. A steaming plate of grease (clam strips and fries on the menu) plopped on the sticky bar at the tavern. Close your eyes. Can you smell it? Taste it? I’d offer you an antacid, but it would have made a heavy lump in my pocket that would have thrown off my stride (which can lead to serious injury!)
7. LUCK - I’ve been hiking for YEARS and I’ve never needed any of those essentials (much). Why should today be any different?
8. LAZINESS – After luck, this is perhaps the idiot’s best hope for winter survival. Things like walking a long way, climbing over crap or taking steep, difficult-looking trails are hazards that simply don’t face people who are too lazy to make that kind of effort. Better yet, rent “Into Thin Air” and spend the time in the congratulating yourself on your strategic avoidance of peril.
9. CELL PHONE – Important cell phone safety tip: Your cell phone will be much safer on the hotel nightstand than in the pocket of an idiot lost in the snow.
10. CAMERA - A little memento for the easel in front of your casket at the funeral:
    

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Here is a link to the photos from our trip.

There’s something wonderful and important about being in another place at least once in a while. You get a new perspective, a piece of the puzzle - the realization that there IS a puzzle and your corner of it is not only small, but doesn’t really make sense without all the other pieces.

If every person spent even a short time in another part of the world, draped him or herself in the fabric of another life, drank down the spicy brew of an unfamiliar culture, even once, think how many bridges might span gulfs.

Where to next?

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A key in a lock
a darkened hall
two wary cats
one scolding, one sulking
in the end forgiving

The film and grit of
trains and planes
transit hours silting my veins
spiral down the bathtub drain

The slide of skin at last between
the skin of cool familiar sheets
to let the body’s weight
sublimate
into a pillow that smells like
home

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Today is our last day in London before winging homeward. We’d saved the Tower for last. It was impressive - crown jewels, armor and all that - but I found myself wishing I’d seen it earlier in the trip. At this point, I’m a bit overloaded on antique architecture and I’m afraid it made it seem just a tad less special. Still, it was an absorbing three and a half hours of wandering through history. One of the highlights was the graffiti carved into the walls by prisoners held in the towers - dating back to the 1600s. They must have had a lot of time on their hands. Some of the graffiti is quite elaborate and skilled.

There was very little on display from the era we are researching (1200). I did get a chance to pull a longbow. I can pull it well enough two or three times, but the thought of doing it for the length of a battle is humbling. I also tried on a gauntlet (more flexible and comfortable than I expected, but heavy) and hefted a few swords (a well-balanced medieval sword was not as heavy as I expected - only about two pounds) Those big lances from the lists aren’t as heavy as you think either. They were hollow and weighed about 20 pounds (after all, the lists were games - better to shatter a hollow lance than a trained knight).

After the Tower we grabbed some absolutely dreadful fish and chips on the street (never again!) and headed for the Tate Britain for a final dollop of art. It’s a great museum with an impressive collection. I especially liked the portraiture. I’m convinced that history will not look back so kindly on 20th century art - at least on what I saw there (the Tate modern collection was excellent). I can’t imagine how future art historians could see them as anything other than charlatans or deeply disturbed.

Deeply weary now and ready for the slog home tomorrow morning. The trip was the perfect length. If it had been shorter we couldn’t have seen all we wanted to see, another day and we’d fail to enjoy ourselves. Today would have been close if the sights had been less special.

Ta ta!

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No way.

That was my first thought on seeing the title “Boeing Boeing” on the list of theatre offerings at TKTS. I’m a third of the way around the world from Seattle - the last thing I want is to be reminded of home. But nothing else was looking too appealing and the last round of theatre going had turned out disappointing. I looked it up.

It turns out that Boeing Boeing has nothing to do with a Seattle company. It is a French farce, translated to English and performed off and on in London since 1962. It’s the very silly story of a three-timing Lothario who lives right by Orly airport in Paris and has landed a supposedly perfect arrangement of three flight attendant fiances on three different flight schedules that keep one heading out the door as the next arrives. Of course, the perfect arrangement crashes spectacularly and hilariously after a bumbling old friend from the country shows up at the door. It’s a period piece for sure. It has that dated (Oh you know those girls - you can pull anything over on them and they’ll fall for it) feel that doesn’t really fly anymore, but it was so charmingly done with such amusingly dreadful French covers of 60’s pop songs that you can’t help but go along with it.

The play’s current home is an elaborately-iced four-tiered wedding cake of a little theatre. We were in the second row of the bottom tier and had a great view (those cute little 60s stewardess uniforms had short skirts). Jean Marsh (Upstairs Downstairs) plays the crotchety maid and stole every scene she was in. There was a movie version of the play made in 1965 starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis that I have no desire to see.

It was a complete piece of fluff, but just the thing after all the heavy pomp of the day.

Picadilly Circus, near the Theatre District

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A day of wanderment.

Left the hotel with no particular plan, but ended up heading to Buckingham Palace. As luck would have it, we arrived just in time to get a nice spot to view the procession for the changing of the guard. Neatly executed. I think they’ve done it before.

After that, we wandered towards Parliament and again found our timing to be fortuitous. It was just five minutes to noon. I used the video on my camera to record Big Ben striking the hour, but foolishly turned the camera sideways (Big Ben is rather vertical) and have no way to rotate the video. It will still be nice to be able to listen to a little bit of London later on, even if the tower is recumbant.

Wandering through the government district we encountered a staged media event… oops, I meant to say spontaneous public protest: Free Burma. There was singing, chanting, marching, sign waving. I was given a red headband and numerous flyers.

Wandered to Leicester Square for theatre tickets (more about that later) and then to the British Library.

The Treasures of the British Library are unsurpassed and too numerous to mention, but I’ll list a few. The hours spent there were a treat. I saw the original manuscripts of work by Jane Austen (a short story, unknown to me), Jane Eyre (”Yes, reader… I married him”), Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Paul McCartney, The Lindesfarne Gospels, a Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare’s first folio, musical notation of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner. The international collection is just as amazing. Sacred texts from every corner of the world. Eventually we burrowed back up out of the dim recesses, blinking in the late afternoon sunshine like unearthed moles.

Wandering off to dinner and the theatah!

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