Take Me to the Place Where Time Goes to Die

San Francisco Bay as seen from Buena Vista Park, the oldest official park in San Francisco. Looks much different now. And it kind of doesn't. All at the same time. Go ahead and develop some of that green land the two bewhiskered men are appraising, and build an International Orange cable-suspension bridge connecting the two peninsulas, and it might not look so different. I can actually see where I live, north of there, once, you know, the whole industrial complex thing kicked in. Now the park, one of SF's most notorious hikes and hills, allows for some spectacular views of downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate, and the surrounding bodies of water. And nowadays it also tends not to feature monochromatic renderings. It's funny to think: when black and white photography was all there was, I wonder if anyone ever thought that if and when color photography had been around for a while people would actively attempt to chalk up their photos into something like this. What a travesty that we can't access the thoughts of people in photographs from eras of yore; what a shame we can't listen to them think as they beheld the inchoate world; what a terrible affair that the only person we can ever come close to fully knowing and understanding--and barely even then--is ourselves, the body and the mind within which we're entombed. 

Attendant to the mood, naybe a little Former Ghosts? "Hold On" from their 2009 debut, which they'll be following up on soon.

Washed Out

If I were to compile a list of all the great reasons to live in California or why living in California is--at least for me--the greatest locale in the contiguous 48, it would run on and on and on. But it's true: living here is a dream piled on top of a fantasy. This is true for all three of California's major cities (okay, maybe not Los Angeles, which feels somehow inverted and hollow, but roll with me here) but I don't think you fully experience the broad range of all California has to offer in the southernmost two. One of my particularly favorite aspects of living in San Francisco is that while you are indeed deeply embedded in a dense, locomotive city and one of the major urban centers through the world, you're only a half hour away from some of the most serene and peaceful and majestic sights of wilderness and oceanic dreamscapes, where at the drop of a dime (or in this case a flip of the wind) a gritty, steely city is the farthest thing from your mind.

Some friends and I took a trip out to Stinson Beach, which is just a little north of the city, across the Golden Gate, and northwest of Sauselito. Snuck in at the westernmost edge of Muir Woods and Mount Tamalpais State park, Stinson Beach is riddled with curving hills and mountains, snake-like roads that finally burst you out into the open cliff-side coastline. Stinson Beach reminded me very much of the small beach towns you find on the east coast, somewhere along Maine or New Hampshire, except, of course, the food and the culture here is still heavily influenced by all that California is known for. 

On Tuesday, we're heading south to camp out for a couple nights at Big Sur; given the predicted weather and what I've already seen of Big Sur in the past, my expectations are towering. Driving down California Highway 1 is one of the most striking experiences ever; the sheer natural beauty is almost overwhelming. What I love the most, though, is the truly undisturbed feeling of the Old West: the wood-paneled shanties, the slowed down movement, the dirt paths, all contribute to removing you from whatever ridiculous sense of hurry, self-importance, and life-is-so-fucking-serious dreariness you left behind. If I'm never heard from again after this, it's safe to assume I was at the center of one of those grisly campground tragedies where a wandering psychopath stumbles upon a group of campers and throttles their lives short; in that case, may this blog live on! One more picture of Stinson, assuming it may also be my last:

Proclamatory!

I've decided to make the unofficial, non-meteorological declaration that winter in San Francisco is officially (get it?) over! Plausibly, a valid argument could have been made any of the past couple weeks, but in my estimation there was a pinch too much rain and too many sudden, temperamental dips in the weather, who was behaving kind of like a spoilt child. Now, on the other hand, after a glorious and sunshiny day as today, I doubt there's much supportable opposition. If there's one thing that NorCal (SF in particular) has over SoCal (and there are many) it's the blooming season. Such gorgeous colors everywhere! Actual verdure! Actual flora! Spring has arrived, folks. That's as much a mindset as it is a literal moment in time. 

The sun was a masterful force; the clouds were either paper-thin or pillow-fluffy and scattered like designs on a soft powder-blue wallpaper; the streets were thronged with assortments of people, some whose heads were buried in maps, others who knew their destinations all along; the air strewn with traces of delicious outdoor food being cooked away by vendors; and there was a noticeable lilted quality to the entire mood of the day. Factor in that it was the Chinese New Year Parade and the day was more or less an inflating balloon of anticipation until the big event, which is regarded as one of the top 10 parades in the world. You could sense it, though: there was a palpable buoyancy out there today, as if all at once everyone had concomitantly come to the agreement that, "Yes, right now, this instant, is spring. We are a people in need of spring. Let's get sprung and enjoy ourselves." Rooftops were packed, music carried from all over, and when it all ended, when the sun sunk below our horizons (aren't they cruel?), a great big moon rose up in the crystalline eastern sky, as though in earnest approval. Even now, early Sunday morning, firecrackers are still popping off. 

I could never--and especially cannot now, after living in the West--fathom how people can voluntarily submit themselves to winters on the East. If I'm going to endure brutally chilled winters and onslaughts of snowstorms, I'm going to be living in Stockholm or somewhere similarly magical and with European quality of life, like healthcare. The only way it's worth putting up with self-abuse like that is because you're living somewhere not only desirable, but a place that strokes you back apologetically during these harsh winters, not some hyperbolic shell of a city that stares back at you with two black eyes and wired jaw. Prague, I'll take snow in Prague. Or Vilnius or Berlin or Vienna. Snow in America is a terrible punishment for a crime as benign as birth.

Many thoughts go out to Okinawa and Santiago in these tough, quake-ravaged times. If you can afford to donate a bit, please do. This is a planet that does not care about us, so we must take notice and care about each other. 

Monthly Explorations. January 2010

Every month MSNBC Technology & Science puts together a slideshow collection of the month's most stupefyingly beautiful photographs taken of space. This one might be my favorite: Saturn and its immensity dwarfing Rhea, one if its uncanny sixty-one moons. The shadow of another moon is visible to the bottom left of Saturn's ring at the edge of the planet's disk, a small dark dot. 

This too: a painfully detailed and intense image of the Tarantula Nebula, the largest stellar nursery considered to be part of our "local neighborhood" of galaxies. The Tarantula Nebula has such magnitude and ferocious luminosity that if it were any closer to us--as close as, say, the Orion Nebula--the nebula would indeed cast canvassing shadows down on Earth. Contained within this nebula (those blue sparkles) is a star cluster, the most massive of which have already long since exploded. Taken here is arguably the most detailed image ever of Tarantula.

And for a quick rundown of recent news: Obama's budget dastardly crosses off any hopes for near-future trips to the moon, giving Russia and India the go-ahead as we direct our focus elsewhere despite the sizable chunks of money already spent in Bush's ill-conceived 2020 return to the moon plan; dinosaurs (yet again boosting dino to bird linkage) had slight red plumage; nuclear fusion is looking more and more possible; and I for one don't give a damn about an iPad or any further extraneous developments in too much technology. Go for a walk, people. And to quote the Jack Forkheimer, "keep looking up."