Friday I hung out and worked from SF from That Cafe, meeting Skud and some guys I work with (Matthew and Marc) and Zond-7 who showed up for an hour to rant about how much he hates the snootiness of That Cafe (pre-caffeination). I had the best tacos ever with Marc and Matthew who nicely drove me to La Taqueria on 25th and then Mission Pies which I had just described to them in glowing yet slightly mocking terms as a beautiful utopian thing. Then shovelled Zond-7 off to the dentist at 2 and got him around 3 from downtown. Our vacation cannot be stopped by mere mortal things such as traffic or lost fillings. I don't think *I* could get a novocaine shot and a crown replaced and then be in good temper for a drive and a vacation but Zond-7 can, or can fake it well! The coast was beautiful... there was no traffic once we were on the highway... all was magic and imaginary leaping dolphins with rainbow sparkles. We established with tenative pokings that we are both the sort of people who like to stop randomly and often on road trips. We got a smoothie and some fudge and .... holy grail (unused as yet) index cards as Zond-7 was fantasizing about how index cards were about to bring the molecules into alignment and in the correct chambers. Every once in a while over the weekend we would sigh out "Index cards!" pleased that they were there just in case. We stopped at the beach... we talked about so many things that I will never remember and cannot list... I did hear entertaining differences in me and Q's travel styles. Apparently my saying "let's fuck around in this random shopping center to buy fudge and eat it in bed later at midnight for energy" hit home as an elemental Difference from "we are in for the long haul and will pack much flat food wrapped in tin foil which will sit on the engine block and cook". Which strikes me as having a certain charm as an experiment (yet not a way) and I prefer convenient if overexpensive food, not fussing about things, midnight fudge, and crumbs in bed as a luxurious pleasure of life. The beach -- i think it was Bean Hollow -- was beautiful and nearly deserted but not quite. We didn't care and made out disgracefully as if completing a postcard of the beach with a slot for "snogging couple". After a bit we tried to move out of direct parking lot view. The sand was warm, the water freezing, we did not see otters, we rolled in the sand, there were pelicans galore; everything was fuzzed with a golden halo. Back on Highway 1 we saw a bobcat cross the road -- a cat, no, it is huge, its ears are tufted, and no tail. The drive into redwoods from the coast is always astonishing, gold and sage and dryness and dunes turn to furry post oak canyons then suddenly a cleft and you're 200 feet down into cathedral pillars and shadow. Among all the beautiful things we talked about I am suddenly thinking of Zond-7 breaking into a silence by remarking dreamily on the way the trees looked like they had dropped down not grown up because of how straight they are - like stalactites - and I felt so fond of him for this quality of reacting to any situation by looking at it and having a new thought, a sort of fertile improvisation, erratic - I just like how he reacts to the world in general. I do it too. By the time we got to the Secret B&B it was 7 or so. I was not as crippled as they had expected. D. welcomed us with absent-minded professorly concern. His partner's razor sharp observations made me want to hide a bit -- plus, I had to pee. The room felt very private, separate from the house. I like to think of myself as unfussy, and I am, but I do have aesthetic awareness and this room was the nicest I have ever been in, down to every detail. Things were where you would expect them to be, convenient things, beautiful and useful, extra things you don't expect but think OH how every sensible and good. The tub, enormous, stone, with a sort of bulgy part underneath the tap in a different kind of rock obviously fiddled in by hand on purpose to catch the water stream. We stayed up pretty late, I think, but I lost track of time... it's bizarre for things to be so amazing but to be also sure that they will continue to be more so and it is not some random peak of feeling or coincidence or new-love surge.
Breakfast in the morning was ... well I was feeling like oh will it be annoying and intrusive or what... but instead we walked into the living room of the house and the other 2 couples were there playing scrabble with coffee in fancy china cups quietly chatting and then we all had breakfast together at the table... and everyone was nice. and D. and S. and the other person served us breakfast in 3 courses complete with shakespeare anecdote about how D. felt like Prospero and his invisible spirit minions at the feast and Ariel saying we must think on our crimes... I loved D. and would not mind going back to talk to him and S. sometime. What a beautiful unexpected thing to say and image to give while shimmering in like a philosophical butler and placing honey and biscuits... I shall record the fantasticness of the food (forgive me) A wedge of pineapple that looked like an enormous piece of cake - perfectly ripe and sliced and in its shell - with slices of ripe warm banana covered in lemon sauce and cinnamon. Biscuits with butter and honey and apricot jam and another kind of jam but the apricot was the best. Eggs and spicy sausage sort of things and fried tiny peppers and potatoes, all perfect. And I drank about a gallon of coffee - still delirious from the night before - As I still am right now. We spent the rest of the morning in bed and in the giant giant deep bathtub. We thought about going to the shakespeare festival with them but ended up doing the redwood park instead and again finding a nice compatibility of liking to lie down in a quiet spot and stare at the trees.
Meanwhile we talked and Zond-7 entertained me royally with the History of J4vascript and then the 3 kinds of Object oriented programming with tangents on various actual people and with me interjecting my own experiences -- it is very fine to bitch about my encounters with hideous objecty code that didn't have any reasons to be that way. Observer; Aggregate or Collection; Commander, etc. explained as well as history of the architecture patterns dude and his books and the trends following them. My own counterlectures were shorter and more interruptive or disruptive; ocean surfing tips, rants on various topics, resolutions and organization, personal history, feminist internet controversies, whatever the hell else I usually talk about, (interrupt) but it's another day later now, so I don't remember anymore. We discussed what to do in another tenative establishing-of-norms-or-expectations conversation (trying to make sure we were not just saying what we thought the other person wanted or or expected in an endless round of doublethink) and concluded we did not want to waste more time sitting in a restaurant, or going to a town, or going to a place of crowdedness, or calling people we know, or going back, but instead would like to be somewhere else nice and space-outable, zennishly spacing out and talking and looking at things. This ended up being scott's creek beach, which had some very excellent warning signs about rip tides, sharks, water contamination, not breaching the lagoon, and many other forbidden or dangerous things. Walking in the sand was a challenge, but not impossible. I went halfway in the water until my feet stopped being numb and instead ached scarily - though I could have waited it out. Soon we should go to the beach with both kids, to the excellent place with tidepools!! We got back after dark and hung out with Skud and Rook and zdashamber for a while - I had to lie down a bit and so Zond-7 and I crashed out with computers as the others watched a movie (that was coincidentally my exact anti-pattern of a good movie, with extra hollywoodyness).
The rest of the weekend I stressed about my article deadline, helped Rook do prep for his trip, did kid things and domestic chores and made pancakes for everyone and drove Zond-7 to the train and picked up Moomin's friend, Hamster, who lives near the train station, and got to hang out with Hamster's mom in my yard eating tomatoes I grew and picked, and I also walked all the way to Hole Foods and bought things and walked back (!!!) and did not get to hack with Skud mostly b/c of catching up on domesticity and my deadline (alas) but it was a good, mellow, day.
Technorati Tags: daily life
about food on the engine block -- on my shelf of weird cookbooks is a copy of Manifold Destiny, which is full of recipes like "Wrap ingredients in foil - place on engine block - drive for 100 miles."
It's one of my favorites (to read, not to cook from), along with The Bad For You Cookbook, whose recipes are along the lines of "take a pound of lard and four pints of heavy cream...".
Posted by: Rick Keir | August 30, 2007 at 10:24 AM