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Wednesday, February 10
FROM THE ARCHIVES: REPORT FROM THE BEACH, 30 AUGUST 1998
by
Lloydville
on Wed 10 Feb 2010 06:08 AM PST
Yesterday at sunset two large Golden Retrievers ran down onto the beach
with their owner and proceeded instantly to two spots in the sand, as
though they were prearranged, and began digging furiously. They didn't
stop as long as I watched them. The holes just got bigger and deeper.
Occasionally the dogs would pause, step back and bark into the holes.
There was nothing in the holes.
This was almost as strange as a couple in their thirties I saw a few
days ago, strolling along the shore. The man had one arm around his
lady companion -- in the other he carried a golf club, a metal driver.
Every now and then he would stop, disengage, address an imaginary golf
ball in the sand and "drive" it into the surf. Then he would continue
on.
Some fantastic act of defiance -- like Cuchulain attacking the breakers
with his broadsword? A man who cares far too much about his golf swing?
When we know what the dogs were digging for we may know the answers to
these questions, and many others besides. Mysteries of the beach
revealed . . .
Saturday, January 30
FROM THE ARCHIVES: REPORT FROM THE BEACH, 24 AUGUST 1998
by
Lloydville
on Sat 30 Jan 2010 12:01 AM PST
Today, Cotty Chubb and I drove up to the marina in the man-made harbor
at Santa Barbara and rented a small twenty-foot day sailer. We had to
answer a simple questionnaire about sailing. The only question I knew
the right answer to was which buoys are conical (red) and which are
cylindrical (green). Cotty got this one wrong but all the others right,
so we were qualified to operate the vessel.
We cast off and went out onto the ocean.
A slight breeze took us down the coast as far as the Biltmore Hotel in
Montecito, where Cotty was staying, then the wind freshened
considerably and sped us back, rails almost to the water, spray in our
faces and elsewhere. (Fortunately, being an old sea dog, I had wrapped
my wallet in a zip-loc sandwich bag.)
From the water, there is nothing visible of Santa Barbara that could
not date from the Forties -- it must be what Los Angeles looked like
back then. Lines of palms along the curving shore drive and promenade,
exactly like Nice, Spanish-style buildings climbing the hills beyond to
the point at which the mountains rise very suddenly and sharply.
A seal appeared dead ahead of us, diving and resurfacing -- dove just
as we came up to him and reappeared in our wake. He looked at us
quizzically as we proceeded along, as though to say, "How did those
guys pass the sailing test?"
Still, we raced back, at the end, with flying colors, exhilarated after
two hours at sea. Twenty buck an hour. "In a world where a plate of
pasta can cost twenty dollars," said Cotty, "this is a bargain."
It was -- the mental equivalent of two days of rest. Because there is
only so far you can head up into the wind . . . if it blows against you
you have to tack -- and this is the shortest route you can take, even
if it looks like nothing but zigzagging on the chart.
Because there is no appeal to the ocean, you and all your problems are
quite irrelevant to its whims. Because everything you get from it is a
gift, which you don't have the power to repay.
We went swimming in the surf afterwards, and I felt a kind of preposterous cordiality with the waves.
Thursday, October 23
FROM THE ARCHIVES: REPORT FROM THE BEACH, 18 AUGUST 1998
by
Lloydville
on Thu 23 Oct 2008 01:05 AM PDT
The Ventura County Fair is over, the ferris wheel is gone. Yesterday a workman died from a fall in the course of dismantling
it. The accident was attributed to the mist.
Saturday, September 27
FROM THE ARCHIVES: REPORT FROM THE BEACH, 17 AUGUST 1998
by
Lloydville
on Sat 27 Sep 2008 12:15 AM PDT
[Image by W. L. Warner]
Yesterday
evening a deep coastal cloudbank was driving in across the whole
horizon, eating up the headlands beyond the Ventura County Fairgrounds.
It was the last night of the fair and the lights of the Ferris wheel
glowed spookily in the mist, miles away. Wild rays of sunlight, like
banners, seemed to flutter over the headlands at the edge of the cloud
bank.
The sun, a bright red viscous disc, appeared through the mists just before it disappeared into the ocean.
These
sorts of phenomena turn the blank landscapes of the sea and sky into
theatrical spaces, which seem both awesome and manageable -- a place
one might act in, given the appropriate role, mythological and
ritualistic. Conditions also in which gods might step down into our
world.
["Freedom Bulletin" No. 1 -- no more posts until Congress solves the credit crisis!]]
Monday, September 8
FROM THE ARCHIVES: REPORT FROM THE BEACH, 9 AUGUST 1998
by
Lloydville
on Mon 08 Sep 2008 01:30 AM PDT
For
almost five years I rented a small studio apartment behind a garage in
Ventura, California, half a block from the beach. My principle residence was still New York City, but I needed to spend part of the year in California, for professional reasons. I ended up in Ventura
because I wanted to be near the ocean, I wanted to be within striking
distance of Los Angeles, for business meetings and visits to friends and
to my sister and her family there, and I wanted to be near Ojai, where
a few other close friends lived. I triangulated those geographical
objectives on a map and Ventura was the only logical choice.
I sent
out irregular reports to friends about Ventura -- mostly meditations on
place, a record of my exploration of the town and an attempt to create
a myth about it for myself, as we always create myths about the places
we live.
Here's the first of those reports, from 9 August 1998:
The beach at the end of my street isn't wide. At high tide the waves lap up against the embankment of rocks designed to
keep them from the houses lined up like books on a shelf, facing the ocean.
Sitting
on one of these rocks at sunset I can look south and see the breakwater
and the masts of Ventura Harbor, basically a man-made marina. North I
can see the coastline for a few miles, curving inland in front of the city
of Ventura then back out again to a headland of tall hills.
There
is often a lot of coastal mist at sunset. Sometimes the tops of the
hills at the headland are covered in it. Sometimes the whole beach is
shrouded and it's hard to make out a surf-fisher fifty yards away. All
the permutations of the mist make for strange and shifting effects of
the light when the sun goes down.
The water I look out at is the Santa Barbara Channel, running between the mainland and the Channel Islands, which so far
have always been hidden by the mist.
The
waves at the beach are not large or long but there are always surfers
here. They wait out beyond the breakers, sitting still on their boards,
sometimes for twenty minutes at a time, hoping for a good wave. They
remind me of ducks then. Usually when a wave comes they are up and down
in seconds. I think this must be an amateur or novice surfer's beach.
Still, for those few seconds, riding upright on their boards, the surfers look bitchin', tuned into something awesome.
The ocean.
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