And It's Tuesday (and I lost Monday)

I've been thinking of walking in the mysterious footpaths and byways of San Diego .

I had a friend who lived near a footbridge that has become quite famous and has even been shored up to keep it going and has made the papers. It was off First and went west to a really incredible batch of houses...My kids and I used to park over there and walk over and back just for the thrill of it. And there was at that time (70's) another one nearby there, less imposing, but just as interesting.

When I'd walk in Mission Hills, I'd walk at night (early evening) and really enjoyed my hour or so out on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. I discovered oddities  too, as well as houses where the same four oldsters played cards in a window behind a semi-screen of cannas every evening, houses where there was never any sign of life beyond a vague blue flicker of light from a television screen, huge houses with every light on and you knew that a family of kids lived there...and I found a sidewalk that wandered along the edge of a mini-canyon with houses facing on it, that came out on another street--and you'd never have known it existed, in a car. Fascinating San Diego.

And there were the foxes.  To walk at night in San Diego was to know our neighbors, the ones who inhabited the great, sighing dark canyons that paralelled our civilized streets.  They might have been coyotes, but I believe that they were real foxes.  We'd meet unexpectly, bow, and part in mutual respect.  There were lots of them.  One night, and I would attest to this, I saw two foxes trotting slowly before me..and as I got closer I saw that the two were supporting another fox between them as they disappeared into some bushes.  I felt at the time that they were moving from one canyon spot to another,(we were between great rainstorms that winter), had to use the street to get into it, and were taking along grandma. Nice of them, really.

One afternoon I was standing in my back yard (canyon) and looked to the east where there was a big hill, warm and pleasant in the afternoon sun.  I couldn't believe my eyes as a fox appeared in broad daylight on the hill, made his round-and-round circle of a nest in the tall dry grass, and lay down for a warm nap.  I believe that that was the only time I ever sighted one in daylight.  You wouldn't have wanted to meet one in daylight because that would have meant he was ill probably.  Sometimes in the big Santa Anas, they'd get needy for water, and that is when I'd  put a big tub  a number of yards down the canyon and fill it with water from the hose, from above.  They needed it.

When I came back from my sojourn in Texas, I'd go to Mission Hills to walk in the evenings but that sense of solitude and invisibility never returned. People had established automatic sensor lights on the fronts of their houses, and instead of skulking by in peace and privacy, you got "lit up," and had to hurry on in search of shadows.

Life was good, in San Diego. And beautiful. YAZZYBEL

Sunday and no Church

As I re-read yesterday's blog, I was left with an impression that I want to correct.  In no way did I make any unselfish decisions.  All my decisions along the way have been selfish in that they were a path to the survival of me and mine.  And the positive tone at the end of the essay means to say: here I am, and thank God for it all. For the loss of what I had (if it can ever be lost) (and if I ever had it) and for what I have gained.

I am not happy to be living on Fairway Court in Chula Vista, particularly, for Fairway Court in Chula Vista is not a particularly great place to live if we compare it to living in Central San Diego. I miss the easy connection conversation in day to day matters with people who are educated and have a view of life that compares with my own.  They are hard to come by for me here; I know they exist, I just don't know them and I don't run into them at the grocery store.  I think I came here too late to make a place for myself that is comfortable.  I also think that Chula Vista (the old part, where we live) has been and is being sacrificed to the economic and political gears that are grinding away at our areas that border Mexico.  There are people (who don't live here) who think it's cute to have your main streets peppered with  persons who make their living by tossing heavy signs around in the air for advertising.  I happen to think that it is not quaint, but horrible to have to earn a living that way and it says little for our culture to tolerate it.  I don't think it is charming or funny for all our business signs to be en espanol as we drive along Third Ave. or Broadway. If I wanted to live in Tijuana I would move there.  Haven't had to; Tijuana has moved here.

That said, I will say that the bees and hummingbirds are happier in our yard than I have ever seen in other parts of San Diego.  Plants grow astoundingly well.  The sun is as benign and pleasant as it could be.  A very chill wind blows onto our high elevation lot, directly in from Point Mugu--or is it Point Conception--all summer long, lending us natural air conditioning that almost never fails us.

And if I hadn't moved here, I never would have been writing my magnum opus, One Hundred Views of Fairway Court (thank you, Hiroshige)...which I only discontinued because it seemed to be rather negative and carping instead of doing what I wanted it to.  It needs to be shaken out and dusted off.  It is time to be here, to be here now. YAZZYBEL

I'm All Agog

Good evening! These breakfasts are getting later and later.

I am all agog, because I have been set back today in many ways.  Set back in more than one way, in many ways.

My church, as I believe I may have mentioned, had a tea party today, to which I took four dozen little tea sandwiches...

The tea party was held in an old old San Diego house just off  Balboa Park, in the home of an old San Diego family, two of whom go to my church.  I'd never been in this particular house before, and it was stunning to behold, house and garden.  Not a pretentious house, just a perfect family house of the past century, of red brick and plaster and masonry and wide halls and rooms large enough to live within without feeling cramped.  It reminded me so much of the house I lived in for twenty-odd years a few miles to the north in Mission Hills.  Things like old moldings and old window sills and old floors and old doors...we don't realize the hold they have on our memories and our emotions.

Then, the people I go to church with at the early communion service every Sunday were there, all happy today in the bright clear sun of an afternoon on a blessed day between rainstorms.  Sometimes they all seem so privileged, and they seem different from this little Texas Mexican girl who just lucked into moving into this beautiful city so long ago.  But then, I am set back into realizing that they do not know how privileged I was to have had the unique life I had as a girl, in a unique town of Brownsville, with unique parents of intelligence and graciousness who could make a fine home under trying circumstances in a harsh climate like South Texas. 

 So here today were all of us, members of the Eight O'Clock Club, all so different, all drinking tea and sherry and eating little sandwiches and scones and sharing conversation...I learned things about lots of people today that I've not known before. I have learned how kind most all of these people are.

I walked out of the party with a young man who showed me a way to the path that will walk you east out of the park, across a hidden footbridge in the trees, and bring you out way over in Hillcrest not far from the Junior High School where my kids went to school, toward Essex Street and  Myrtle Way where this young man lives.  I mentioned that I'd lived for many years on a canyon in Mission Hills.  "Where do you live now? " asked the young man. "Chula Vista," I replied.  "Oh, my, " he said.  "How did that happen that you came down so far?"  A blunt thing to ask, but I did not mind because this is a day for setting back, in many ways.  "Oh, I wanted to live with my husband," I said.  "Well, I hope he is worth it for you to have given up so much."

My goodness.  What an astute thing for him to have said.  Yes, I did give up a lot. Yes, Chula Vista is a big comedown from what I had firmly within my grasp and loved.  "Yes," I said. "I love my husband and he is worth it," (said lightly.)  But the living of it has not been light at all, and it has set me back today a lot remembering all that, the home  I loved, the husband I loved, the sons I loved more than anything, the trying to hold them all together. Something had to be sacrificed, and the little Texas Mexican girl knows that I sacrificed the right thing. YAZZYBEL

Perhaps a Dull Day==who knows?

Good morning. It is seven, dark outside...well, as I turn I see it is getting light...and I am sitting here sneezing. Why am I suddenly sneezing this fall as opposed to the last few years, when I have hardly sneezed at all?

Now that's a dull first paragraph.  I guess I'll get duller and talk about grammar.  Yesterday's post about stars contained the sentence (more or less) "I doubt that either he or I have seen anything like (those stars) since."  Should I have used "has" or "have" there? Since it directly follows "I" , "have" seems to be an okay choice. But the real subject of that verb is "either", and  I should have written it, "I doubt that either of us has seen anything like...," to avoid choosing a verb so precisely.

I know English grammar, thanks to Mrs. Ellis of Ellis Private School in Laredo, Texas, in 1940.  Mrs. Ellis, then, was as old as the hills, and had learned her grammar in 1890, probably.  She really knew her stuff.
And sister No.2  and I were of the right mindset to take it all in right then, and we did. It gave us a four-square solid foundation with our language that we have used and appreciated all our lives. I find my everyday language corrupted nowadays, by laxity and carelessness, but the solid boards are there.  I could diagram any (correctly written) sentence that you could give me, right now. Just try it.

Well, I have been eating vegan-ly for a week or so, but I have been adding on some cake that I made for my no-show cousin, and a few nips of Halloween candy. The candy does not taste as bad as it did at first so that means that I have lost it as far as the advantage of the diet is concerned.  If I were still on the Path, those little peanut crunch-molasses bars with the stripes would taste quite alien instead of yummy. Note to self:  Improve. Go back.  Get with the program.

Last night I made a vegan stew.  I need to know how to make one that is more deeply flavorful. Perhaps browning the onions a bit would have done it. The dish was tasty but a bit weak and vegetable-tasting. It was made of carrots cut in big chunks, onions, green peppers, red peppers, tomatoes, corn kernels, and a sprinkle of herbs and dried garlic bits.  It was a bit watery because I wanted to be sure the carrots cooked long enough.  Instead of cut tomatoes alone, I could have added canned tomato sauce...Let's see...what else? I'll think.  More garlic. 

Today I have to weigh and thanks to the cake and candy I won't have lost anything and can only pray I have not gained.  See, I said this would be dull, right? And tomorrow I make and take tea sandwiches to the church tea party, and then sit there to be harangued into increasing my pledge.  Oh, I am resistant.  You guys don't know how resistant. YAZZYBEL

Thinking of the Stars

Hi==today I am thinking of the stars, and how people used to be so familiar with that glorious canopy over our sleeping heads...and how we can hardly see them any more.

When I went out to get the paper at six o'clock, there were about five or six stars up there.  The same ones that are always there, the biggest ones.  All the rest are obscured by a screen of reflected city light.

I remember when Alex was three or four, I went into his room in the middle of the night. He was sitting in his window sill, and when I asked him what he was doing out of bed, he said, "I was just looking at the beau-ti-ful stars."  I am glad there were still some middle of the night stars to be seen in San Diego in the early sixties.  The color of the night sky as I'll always remember it was rose-color.  When I wrote a story set in our neighborhood, I described the fox's water (a tub I'd set down in the canyon during the dry spell) as "gleaming like an opal" under the night sky.  A rose-colored opal.

Once when Ben was very small, perhaps a year old but no more, we went camping at Ocotillo.  He was sleeping in my sleeping bag, as protection against the mountain lions and scorpions. Hah.  I woke in the night, and he was sitting up beside me.  When I said hi, he said not a word for he could not speak yet, but he pointed his baby pointer finger up at a night sky too glorious for any words. I am not sure that either he or I have seen anything to compare with it since.

When I was a girl, the young used to run around barefooted at night, playing massive games of hide and seek that might span blocks...when we got tired we threw ourselves down on the Faulks' carpet grass and watched the stars until it was time to go home.  I am glad we had a familiarity with that wonderful phenomenon then.  Now, it's so nearly gone from our lives that wise people are trying to set out "parks", intentionally darkened areas from which watchers can get some glimpse of the glory overhead.

They say that our infrastructure is going. That will surely take some getting used to, but I am secretly comforted to know that  Wakan Tanka has a pleasant and profound surprise for us when the grid is gone. YAZZYBEL

No Cousin Coming

Hi, folks.

That headline's right. No cousin is coming this weekend.  That freak snowstorm that hit the northeastern US this past weekend hit his town in Connecticut, and brought enough disturbance in his property that he decided not to go to his conference in LA, and, by extention, not to come to see us.

I accept it, but I am disappointed. I know he is too, because he is Family, and Family wants to know Family as much as we can when separated by miles and years as we are.

Well, today is Nov. 2nd.  Halloween was day before yesterday, now, and we did not have the large throngs of little kids from Mexico that we have had in years past.  The costuming was just as great, however. It's incredible how much people are putting into garbing their kids at Halloween. 

In fact, we had very few kids at all.  Theo and I closed down about an hour earlier than we usually do, but nobody was coming around anyway.  We had bales of Bad Wicked Candy left over. I wrapped it up, tied it up, and added it to a pile  of stuff I put out for the AmVets to pick up today. So, I'd say that Halloween was a dud. C'est la vie.  Another year....

Today Patricia and I played the piano. I gave her a vegan lunch of bean soup, slaw, guacamole, and home made tortilla chips.  Very delicious.  The doctor (whom we saw yesterday) has instructed Theodore to eat a wider variety of foods, so our menus will be looking up if I can make him eat some of the stuff. And I will continue to make meat patties for him. Tonight: baked potato, sweet potato, last of the slaw, and--who knows? Maybe baked carrots. Zzzzz....but good. YAZZYBEL

A Vegan Breakfast and a Vegetarian Second Course

Good morning.

I had a delicious vegan breakfast today. I toasted a tortilla, and as it lay on the gas flame I opened and mashed an avocado, added a dash of vinegar and a dash of pink pre-historic salt, and finally put it all together and ate it.

It was great, but not enough. I am vexed at these Walmart avocados, though I should be honored that they are close enough to their antecedents to be small and have strings. Yes, strings!  After all the homage I have paid to strings, I should not be offended at having to take them out.  But it's like anything else--I am lazy and want no trouble.  It was a pretty tasty little avocado, though, even though there was little meat after I removed the strings and black spots.

After I ate that delightful vegan breakfast, I found myself ready to eat something else as I fried up Taterton's bacon and eggs, so I took a "waffle" out of the freezer and toasted it up in the toaster, spread on a little jam, and ate that too.

I can tell that my innards are all roiled up from indulging in Halloween candy (though moderately) yesterday.  It is really strange that just a few days on the vegan idea of eating sharpens up one's body so much.  So the indulgence in Halloween candy becomes a penance of Halloween candy. Who'd want to punish herself enough to eat it? It is really nasty. 

The Hershey Corp. is getting a lot of negative publicity for having moved its production lines to Mexico, where child labor is supposedly employed in putting out those strange-flavored little bars which bear little resemblance to the Hershey bars of my childhood. This ends my association with Hershey forever, and that includes a lot of candy bars, folks. In fact, all of them, as practically all the makers of US candy have moved "offshore" to Mexico, including Brach's, makers of Candy Corn and Indian Corn, which also don't taste much like they used to.  The alien quality of those substances is pointed up to the maximum by the sharpening of one's taste buds as one cuts way down on animal products and tries to eat the natural plant foods that God instructed us to, back there in the Garden of Eden.

Of course, chocolate and sugar are, in themselves, vegan if anything is.  But--there is something wrong with that candy. It's too sweet, for one thing. Way over processed for another.

How long can I stay on this eating plan?  I do not know. When my cousin comes this weekend, I plan a wonderful chuck roast along with the beans and rice of the Divine Plan.  What if my cousin turns out to be a vegan?  Nah...he won't....but, surprise, one of my own sons is experimenting along those lines and finding remarkable results in the lowering of his blood glucose readings in a very short time.  Isn't that wonderful? And I did not nag.  He discovered it all on his very own. The best way. YAZZYBEL