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For almost five years I rented a small studio apartment behind a garage in Ventura, California, half a block from the beach.
I ended up there 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:
6 October 1998 (5)
Ventura and Oxnard, the city it bleeds into towards the southeast, are by volume mostly agricultural. Along the 101 Freeway
that bisects them is a succession of malls and outlet centers, and using only this artery one could supply all the needs of
life without ever thinking of these cities as anything other than highway sprawl. You could miss entirely the old downtown
of Ventura, that runs along Main Street for a few blocks near the restored mission, the tiny beach community where I live,
"on the lanes", as the older residents say -- the little lanes like mine that run off Pierpont Avenue and dead-end
at the sea.
But if you take the surface roads that lead from my lane to the backs of the shopping centers and malls, you drive through
a landscape of cultivated fields, some of which run down almost to the state beaches, and grow strawberries and mushrooms
and many other green things which I do not recognize.
Downtown and the lanes, like these open fields, seem frozen in a time-warp, images of the California coast towns long
ago. It can't last. Already one sees industrial parks and condo developments sitting preposterously isolated on the edges
of the farmland. In our lifetimes, probably, the fields will give way entirely to such things, as they have over the course
of the last century in Los Angeles and in the San Fernando Valley.
One navigates this dreamscape with a sense of loss already. One wants to photograph it all, just to prove it really exists
-- to be able to prove it once existed. The bright handpainted signs at the fruit stands near where Telephone Road becomes
a dirt lane, minutes from the great outlet malls of Oxnard, brood in melancholy gaiety.
They will not be preserved, like the Olivas Adobe, which sits surreally on the edge of the Olivas Park Golf Course, testifying
unconvincingly to the age of the Spanish land grants. The tiny beach shacks on Weymouth Lane where I live, where lower middle-class
families could once live within spitting distance of the golden coast, will not survive another generation.
Ventura is a strange place, culturally arid, hard to love for any obvious reasons -- but the quiet doom that invests all
of it makes it very sweet . . . charms the spirit.
17 November 1998 (6)
Autumn at the beach -- a season that has some substance here because the damp of the sea air puts a bite into the chill
of things.
Ventura beach is never what you would call a happening place. Even in high summer it's slow during the week, barely crowded
on weekends. Now it's left to the surfers, who never stop, the year-round residents, a strange breed, and the lost.
The McDonald's which I stop into often for a McBLT -- an excellent, if mushy, sandwich -- is virtually deserted after
dark, the Denny's across the boulevard hardly less so.
Down the coast, the fields near the ocean are always dotted now with imported farm workers, moving slowly along the furrows,
harvesting things. Always a truck parked at the edge of the field near the road, with racks where the workers hang their open,
woven-straw hand-baskets, stuffed with their personal effects.
You never wait in line at the Vons supermarket these days, amongst vacationers laden with twelve-packs of beer and soda.
Just us members of the Vons Club now, the regulars, with the discount card.
A beach town never feels desolate, though. The sound of the waves is a constant reminder that it's hooked up to something
vast and industrious. It's like having the T. V. on all the time . . . tuned to the Cosmic Channel.
12 December 1998 (7)
Where I live, the sounds of the night are romantic and consoling -- trains and waves. The coastal tracks run by about
a mile and half from me, but over the silence of the cultivated fields the trains sound very clearly after dark. Late at night
long freights roll through endlessly, the soft clacking punctuated by occasional organ-note whines from the diesel horn.
The waves are continual, of course, and low -- sometimes you need to strain to hear them.
But tonight they were thunderous -- they kept breaking into my consciousness as I worked at the computer. When I realized
I had to go out for milk, I couldn't help walking down to the beach to see what was going on.
This gave me a chance to examine the Christmas lights on the bungalows of my street, very intense in the misty air --
and only strung on the simplest houses, the one-story boxes owned by the oldest residents.
As I approached the beach it sounded as though the waves were crashing right into the houses facing the ocean, but they
weren't. The tide was rather far out and the waves were breaking in long explosions of foam across the whole length of the
beach -- something they very rarely do. Either the bottom has shifted and regularized or the winter swells are so large they
bring waves that just override the bars.
There was a very light haze circling the whole horizon, and low down to it. To the northwest, the haze made the lights
of Ventura sparkle -- they looked exactly like the Christmas lights on my street. Far out at sea, oil platforms showed their
lights just as festively, and a fishing boat with lights running up its tall net booms was anchored just outside the entrance
to the harbor, probably waiting for the tide to lift it over the bar there.
Above the ring of the mist the sky was crystaline, thick with stars. The first time I glanced up a shooting star burst
like a rocket -- so big and bright that it looked like milk being spilled from a glass. More shooting stars exploded as often
as I gazed up.
Milk -- of course. Then back home, drinking egg nog laced with very good Brandy. The waves seem even louder now, as the
tide comes in . . . as though they're breaking on the walls of houses just a few hundred yards away.
It's a call that always repays answering.
29 March 1999 (8)
Now that Spring is here, the days of bright sunshine seem to unfold with greater authority, no longer a promise but an
actual downpayment on the summer.
The vacation motels along Thompson Avenue, with names suggesting an intimacy with the beach (an intimacy which is betrayed
in fact by the unseen barrier of the 101 Freeway) look brighter, too -- the neon "Vacancy" signs, merely pathetic
in February, now have the quality of confidant, if insincere, smiles.
Yesterday I decided to spend one of these bright days inside a movie theater, watching "The Mod Squad" -- a
mistake I hope others will not make. Depressed by the spectacle of such wonderful actors mouthing such dull-witted dialogue
I came out into the late afternoon on Main Street and my spirits were instantly restored.
The ocean peeked back at me from the end of Chestnut Street, the slanting light made the small-scale buildings of downtown
Ventura look like toys. As I walked to my car I passed the old Ventura Theater, where the last evening of the Monster Swing
Weekend was already in progress. The Rumba Bums were on the bill, but I heard no music, just squeals and cheers from a crowd
inside, like the innocent echo of lighthearted evenings long past.
I had the sensation of being on a movie set, but the feeling wasn't alienating, because it was my movie, set on the streets
of my little town, Ventura . . . an imaginary location somewhere on the coast of California.
5 April 1999 (9)
The advent of these bright, mild days of April means only one thing to the Ventura resident whose soul burns for adventure
-- the rollerblading season has begun.
There is nothing quite like strapping on the blades and gliding out of the carport onto the smooth gutter that runs down
the middle of Weymouth Lane, turning left on Pierpont and navigating its bikepath to the end of the avenue, where it runs
into the entrance of the San Buenaventura State Beach.
A wide bike path there, divided by a row of tall palms, runs behind the dunes, which offer only brief glimpses of the
ocean to the rolling traveller -- but already the waves sound clearer and the wind comes off the ocean unmitigated by the
houses of the lanes.
Up past the lifeguard headquarters the dunes fall away and you are travelling in view of the surf, across a wide flat
expanse of beach, staked out with volleyball net posts, unstrung as yet.
Then under the Ventura Pier and along the beachfront esplanade, as far, if you want, as Surfer's Point, the legendary
surfing spot that starts at the end of California Street, or just "C" Street, as the surfers used to call it.
It's pleasant to pause for a while then, take off the blades and climb the stairs to the pier, for a little refreshment
at Eric Ericsson's restaurant on the pier.
You can sit at one of the tables out front, braving the chill that still comes in on the wind at this time of year, and
have an iced latte and a plate of fresh, steamed Santa Barbara mussels, prepared with an astonishing amount of garlic, and
chopped tomatoes and basil.
Behind the pier you can see the cars whizzing along the 101, and on the ridge behind that an Amtrak train will likely
roll by. In front of you is the reliable incantation of the waves, the sun hitting hard on the deep terraces of sets at the
point. Beyond these, depending on the light and the mist, is the shocking closeness, or mysterious distance, or utter invisibility
of the Channel Islands.
All this whets the appetite, not just for the mussels, which turn out to be delicious, but also for the dreamlike gliding
home.
The view from the back of a horse is one of antique magnificence, in which honorable deeds seem inevitable and glory within
mortal grasp. The view from rollerblades is not quite so lofty, of course -- but still, how one towers over the ungainly tread
of the joggers, with their slightly embarrassed smiles distorted by anguish and despair.
You realize the truth of the maxim that all exercise which feels like exercise diminishes the soul to the exact degree
that it improves the body.
On rollerblades your feet are winged, your spirit flies out ahead of you, and it's all you can do to keep up.
23 April 1999 (10)
REPORTAGE DE LA PLAGE
En Californie, le printemps n'existe pas. Entre l'hiver et l'ete, l'annee souffre une crise d'identite. Les jours sont
entres dans une folie d'oscillation entre une chaleur luxurieuse et une melancholie d'automne, brouillee par les nuages.
On a l'impression d'habiter un film assemble par un monteur derange, sous la direction d'un metteur en scene dement. Votre
role dans la drame est morcele. Quelquefois on parle Anglais, quelquefois on parle Francais. Quelquefois, la mer parle dans
la voix d'une femme -- et alors l'ocean interromps le discours tendre dans la voix d'un homme.
On a l'envie des longeurs de la saison d'ete, monotone et stupide, mais fixee, lorsque elle vous dirai "Cowabunga,
dude!" et on repondra avec le sourire d'un idiot.
7 June 1999 (11)
After a two-month sojourn on the Planet Eden (the setting of a newly perpetrated screenplay,) I have returned to the earthlike
environs of Ventura. As a largely fictional location, Ventura is subject to change without notice, but I must say it seems
more or less the same. The resurrection of Main Street downtown proceeds -- new businesses move in around the magnet of the
Century Downtown Theater, which already looks old, as though it's always been there, its pastel paint-job faded by a dozen
summers.
The revitalization is not happy in all respects. The used bookstores are going fast. The Book Mall had already moved away
to a new location on Oak Street, after the fire that evicted it from Main. The Phantom Bookshop is no more -- at least, it
is no longer visible in its old location. (It may, of course, still be there, merely living out more truly the destiny of
its name.)
The Calico Cat remains on the corner of California Street, and the bookstore on the corner of Oak is still going out of
business . . . and will still be going out of business, I suspect, long after all of us have been remaindered to that big
Crown Books in the sky.
In the Vons here at the beach, the grocery dividers at the check-out stations still announce the coming of "The Mummy",
reminding us that "The power will be unleashed May 7!" The nostalgia is pleasing to us, remembering the grandeur
of that first weekend's box office.
All is as it was -- shifting, bygone, existentially unstable, but familiar.
Sometimes I wonder what happens to the mirage of Ventura when people leave it, cross the line into the outlet malls of
Oxnard and Camarillo, enter Malibu driving south on the Pacific Coast Highway, penetrate the dense cuteness of Santa Barbara,
city of credit cards and trophy wives.
Does it collapse into undisplayed code, like the computer-generated environments of video games after you move out of
them?
At times like this, I listen for an answer in the wind -- and it's always there . . . the sound of waves. I put some hot
tea in a thermos cup and wander down to the end of Weymouth Lane and look out towards Hawaii.
A blazing sunset tonight. In the mist on the horizon, the ghostly tops of the Channel Islands, which for all the evidence
now might be the edge of another continent, a few miles away. Far out at sea a sailboat, and seabirds fishing. And a big surf.
"La mer toujours recommencée" as some French poet called it -- the waves looking as though they're just getting
started, just warming up for eternity. An anchor in the now, barely begun. Except you can't say it fast enough to fix it in
words. I could say, it's always tomorrow at the beach, but by the time you read this, it will be the day after that.
21 July 1999 (12)
I walked to the end of the street at last light. The sea was there, the narrow beach, the stone jetties tearing up the
waves. The Channel Islands were half hidden in the mist on the horizon.
The air was cool and heavy with salt.
I thought about Papa, his appetite for all things seen and touched and heard and tasted, his reticence in the presence
of all things unseen and unspoken.
There were secrets in my heart.
I walked back to the apartment behind the garage and opened a beer, a cold Amstel Light, and felt grateful for all of
it.
2 August 1999 (13)
Yesterday, the local Ventura radio station interrupted its regular programming to report that Monica Lewinsky had been
involved in a minor traffic accident. The report stated that the accident took place in Los Angeles but that Ms. Lewinsky
had been on her way to Ventura.
This struck me as very strange. Unless she had a sign on her car reading "Ventura Or Bust!" why would she volunteer
this information to the police, and thus subject herself to public ridicule? God knows she's had enough of that.
Later it was reported that the accident actually took place on the 101 Freeway just north of Ventura, and that she had
been taken to a Ventura hospital for treatment, then released. This bulletin said she had been driving north at the time.
On her way to Santa Barabara or Carmel, perhaps. This made sense.
Still later, it was reported that the accident took place in the southbound lane of the 101, while Ms. Lewinsky was reaching
for something (unidentified) in her purse.
The mystery just kept deepening. Was she fleeing Ventura, racing towards some portentous rendezvous here, or merely passing
by?
After many hours trying to parse the fragments of the dilemma, hours of deep doubt and mental anguish, I decided that
the game was not worth the candle. Monica Lewinsky's relationship with Ventura will probably never be known with any degree
of certainty, any more than we will know for sure just exactly what she needed from her purse while travelling at high speeds
somewhere near this coastal city.
Suffice it to say that she was within sight of the ocean when she rolled her car. That many people come to Ventura, spend
whole lives in Ventura, without ever knowing precisely why. That the siren call of this town is untranslatable.
Fate is strong here, but meaningless.
The lady was not seriously injured, and neither was the mystic reality of Ventura. A close call perhaps, for all of us,
but no lasting harm was done, and the ocean took no notice of the affair.
11 August 1999 (14)
Down at the beach this evening I notice the lights on the Ferris wheel at the Ventura County Fair, about a mile up the
coast. It's been a year since I saw it turning there for the first time, and I realize that this sighting marks my anniversary
in Ventura.
The fair has been a great success this year, attributed to the perfect weather and to the new and varied attractions.
These include:
The Little Pavilion -- an exhibit featuring a race of tiny people recently discovered hiding in caves on the Channel Island
of Anacapa. Only twelve inches high when fully mature, though perfectly proportioned otherwise, these little survivors of
the Stone Age are on display in glass terrariums, and seem frightened beyond imagination.
The Tunnel Of Fools -- couples start out together in the floating love seats but are switched without warning in the dark,
often in mid-embrace. There are always fist-fights at ride's end, but many new relationships have been born, and it's all
in fun!
The Decapathon -- a wild roller-coaster whisks visitors between razor-sharp rotating blades . . . and woe to those who
don't duck fast enough!
The Hall Of Tears -- visitors wait for hours to enter an empty shed, where the disappointment elicits childlike weeping
from old and young alike. Says fair director Bobby Carson, "It's a nostalgic throwback to the days of childhood, when
regret marked the hours like clockwork. Folks just can't seem to get enough of this one!"
Veteran fairgoers will feel right at home, though, despite the novelties. The chlorine sno-cones, the raw ears of corn,
slathered with butter, and the traditional seaweed-in-a-bun, still wet from the surf, fill the air with familiar smells, and
the damaged art auction that closes the festivities each year is expected to raise a record sum for the county's boogie-board
orphans.
3 October 1999 (15)
There is a chill in the air now, sharper than the cool breezes of summer. The light has lost its clarity -- the sand at
the beach is duller, the ocean grayer. The sheets take longer to warm up under the covers, the floor tiles in my cinderblock
bunker stay cold all the time. There are still days of high heat inland, but here at the beach it's Autumn, genuine October.
There are pumpkins stacked up inside the supermarket, and around the produce stands on Olivas Park Road. One house on
Pierpont Avenue already has Halloween lights strung up, anticipating the season.
Suddenly Christmas doesn't seem improbable, February is a distinct possibility, Springtime unthinkable. And it's as though
it's always been this way, as though the Autumns of the past constitute the only authoritative episodes of our lives.
"Ripeness is all," says the Bard -- now we know what he means. What then? The waves answer the question remorselessly,
in a language we can't quite comprehend.
16 October 1999 (16)
I was up late -- very late -- reading "The Two Noble Kinsmen" when the earthquake hit.
I first noticed the joints where my walls and roof meet creaking, then the bed undulating, as though it had suddenly liquified.
It was impossible to read this motion as a physical fact -- instead, I had a sense of dizziness. I knew intellectually what
was happening but it was so odd that I couldn't process it experientially. I got up and stood on the floor and the floor,
too, seemed to have liquified.
I could hear joints in the garage attached to my apartment groaning, and I heard water in a pot in my sink sloshing over
its sides.
The undulation of the fabric of the world seemed to go on for along time -- much longer than the Northridge earthquake,
but not as sharp. I started to get worried about the building collapsing, as I had in that earlier quake, and decided to get
out of doors.
When I opened my front door I put my hand on the door jamb and felt it, too, vibrating slowly.
Walking down the hallway to the carport beyond the garage was like navigating a corridor on a ship in a heavy sea. I tried
to think of it exactly that way, in order to clear my head, which was still telling me that I was dizzy, refusing to comprehend
the earth behaving in the way it was.
When I got out to the street the pavement was vibrating -- as though I were standing on a floating object. Suddenly all
the lights on the street went out and there was a bizarre flash of light over the rooftops in front of me, seeming to come
from the direction of downtown Ventura, or the fairgrounds. The sky turned a strange electric blue above the flash, there
was pause -- and then the lights came on again.
The shaking had stopped. I listened to see if my landlords had been awakened, but there was no sound from their house.
I heard the voices of people coming out of their houses down the street, but they seemed cheerful enough.
I went back inside, and it took a while before I felt clear-headed again. My senses had revolted in their inability to
respond to what the earth had just done. It was like a violation of nature -- the ground beneath my feet turning to water
. . . as though everything had become unmoored suddenly and floated off to sea.
30 October 1999 (17)
There are many spiders in my little bunker by the sea. They are very sensitive and painfully shy, but also very proud
of the magical webs they weave, and of their own odd grace. I never kill them -- except one that I thought might be a black
widow -- and I give them a lot of admiration, and I believe that they appreciate it. (And I'm convinced that they are deeply
humiliated, devastated really, by all the ill-will directed towards them on Halloween. I am especially nice to them at this
time of year.)
When I first moved in they would sometimes crawl on the bed, and I would always remove them gently to some other place,
and now they know that I don't like this, and respect my wishes. They wait in their own little corners but always seem happy
to see me. They are lonely creatures, and hopeful that they have set their webs in a good place, and they get rid of really
bad insects, like mosquitoes and flies, who are rude and dangerous.
There are some beautiful long-legged spiders, airy and delicate, who live above my shower. Sometimes they forget and drop
too far down, so when I take a shower I have to turn the water on slightly to remind them that it's about to rain. They scurry
back up to the ceiling on their invisible threads.
Learning to love spiders has been one of the best things about living here . . .
19 November 1999 (18)
A slow roll on the blades down Pierpont today . . . overcast at the beach, cool, the smell of woodsmoke in the air, from
the fireplaces of Californians lucky enough to live someplace where it sometimes feels like Fall.
At the San Buenaventura State Beach, past where the dunes drop away to reveal the ocean, I stop and look seaward for a
while. leaning on the rail of the bridge over Sanjon Creek.
The ocean is gray, silverplated here and there by the white sun, a flat disc in the mist. For some reason all the Channel
Islands are visible through the haze, even the low-lying Anacapas. The surface of the sea is calm, the waves coming in almost
imperceptibly, only to rise up hugely at the shore, as though raising their white banners gallantly for one last assault.
The word gallant once meant beautiful, even as applied to a woman. Now rare in that sense, as the dictionary says, except
when referring to horses or ships. The Greeks understood the logic of this. Aphrodite was born out of sea foam, and Neptune
was the God of horses as well as of the sea.
The triad of women, horses and ships represents the irreducible grandeur of this world, and the sea somehow speaks for
them all.
A slow roll home in the twilight, my mind refocussed on essentials . . .
5 January 2000 (19)
There has been a lot of debate about when exactly the new millennium begins. To those who worry about such things I am
happy to report that the 21st Century began officially at twelve noon today when new tires were put on my Corvette.
No one driving the car now could doubt that a new age has dawned. The spirited little roadster hums with new purpose,
embracing the road tenderly and passionately, and communicates silently its timeless vow: "I will take you anywhere."
The possibilities open up like clouds parting over the entire continent. Driving back from "The Tire Man" in
Oakview, my first urge is to proceed instantly to New York. I trace the route happily in my mind, through the open stretches
of the West, the sleepy, fragrant fields of the South. The crowded, ugly landscape of the Northeast Corridor exhausts me,
however, and the dinginess of the roadside motels begins to tell. I feel wired, haunted, overwhelmed by white line fever,
and abandon the trip.
Las Vegas beckons, and I thrill in imagination at the first sight of the lights of that hideous dream penetrating the
desert night to impossible heights. The inevitable relapse into programmed gaiety follows too quickly, though, and I leave
the 101 abruptly at the Seaward exit and head home, to ponder all this in the quiet of Weymouth Lane.
Santa Barbara would be nice. Yes, perfect. Perhaps tomorrow. For now, there is still time to catch the last bargain matinee
of "Any Given Sunday". Only five minutes away, it's true, but with a few intervening curves on Olivas Park Road
on which to test the new intimacy between rubber and asphalt.
Tomorrow, though . . . tomorrow I might go anywhere. Up Route One along the sea to Carmel, down to San Antonio, New Orleans,
a bookstore in Westlake, Vons . . . just up the street. I need lemons, milk. Vons. Vons. Vons . . . or perhaps Cody, Wyoming.
Let's face it -- the 20th Century was never this exciting. The Vette never ran this well, even when it was brand new.
The waves at the beach at the end of my street never broke with quite this degree of crispness and exclamation.
Everything has changed.
25 January 2000 (20)
Rain on the California coast -- unfamiliar, spooky . . . falling all day . . . pouring off the carport roof as I go out
to get mail.
Lying on the bed listening to Neil Young, a song from the rehearsals for his Northern California Coastal Bar Tour from
the Seventies, I think about the romance of the Pacific Coast Highway, from the time when it was a route to remote surfing
spots to the time it carried me up and down the coast by thumb, with my long hair and sandals made out of tires . . . to the
present time, when I'll stop at my second favorite restaurant in the world, the shack known as Neptune's Net, near the Ventura
County Line, and watch the ghosts travelling up and down the old road, within sight of the waves.
Long may they run.
18 February 2000 (21)
Recently the local radio station reported that a young boy had sprained his ankle falling into a four-foot deep hole.
He was running down a hill in Foster Park when it happened. "One minute I saw him," said his mother, "the next
minute he was gone." The boy was able to pull himself out of the hole by himself.
This sort of thing certainly does give one pause. We know there are holes in the world. The truth is, they're everywhere.
We know that people fall into them. We know that sometimes, out of desperation or courage or just sheer luck, they are able
to climb back out of them.
But how often are such incidents reported?
In Ventura, we acknowledge and accept the mystery of holes. We mourn when people fall into them. We rejoice when they
climb back out of them.
And life goes on.
17 March 2000 (22)
A pale moon high over the Burger King, just before sunset, as I waited outside Papa John's Pizza for my order. ("Twelve
minutes . . .") I had a discount coupon which came in the mail -- as though a man like me needed any such excuse.
The young Papa John employees were coming out into the parking lot and affixing the magnetized Papa John signs to their
car roofs, in preparation for the night's deliveries. Inside, empty pizza boxes lined one wall, piled to the ceiling.
Driving home with the fragrant pie on the seat beside me, the smell of melted cheese and sweating pepperoni suddenly mixing
with the smell of the sea as I came down the rise on Sanjon Road and saw the ocean, the Channel Islands looking large and
distinct, floating in a broth of mist.
Slamming on the brakes as the light changed at Harbor Boulevard, staring into the face of a breaking wave, whose momentum
made it seem closer than it was. The sky darkening around an increasingly nacreous moon.
The pizza is pretty good, once taken home and reheated and eaten -- generic and comforting. Good cold, too. As I write,
small, inexpensive cars with lots of miles on them are delivering the same comfort to all parts of Ventura -- their magnetized,
illuminated signs blazing through the dark streets like beacons of hope.
26 March 2000 (23)
Friends disappear into darkness, vanish like smoke into bright air. Mysteries descend like snowflakes and collect into
drifts six feet high -- then melt without a trace.
There are times when I think the ocean offers an answer to unanswerable questions -- where do virtue and goodness go when
they're lost, where do they come from in the first place, so preposterous and inconvenient . . . ou sont-elles, Vierge Souvraine
. . . les neiges d'antan . . . les vagues d'hier soir?
At other times I think the ocean only offers an accompaniment to all this -- no answers, only consolation . . . a consolation
that is itself a mystery.
Be quiet anyway, and listen . . .
4 April 2000 (24)
It's easy to make oyster stew. Here's how you do it. Get a lot of oysters, medium sized, the sweetest and freshest you
can find (hard on the West Coast, where they're most often big and bland). It's o. k. to get them in jars, fresh and raw,
because you want them out of the shell anyway.
Put some whole milk in a saucepan and start to heat it and when it's just barely tepid put the clean oysters, minus their
juices, into the pan. You don't want the milk to cover the oysters -- you need to be able to observe them.
When the milk starts to steam just the slightest, slightest bit, sprinkle in celery salt, a fair amount, a dose of regular
salt, ground pepper, paprika and three drops (in the name of God no more!) of tabasco. Don't mix all this stuff in, just sprinkle
it on top, well distributed. Then quickly put in two chunks of unsweetened butter and just when the butter has all melted,
pour the whole thing into a big bowl and let the pouring itself do the mixing.
Eat it with a light, dry white wine and have lots of French bread handy for sopping, which is sublime.
If the oysters are rubbery, you didn't get the seasonings and butter in fast enough.
I pass this along from Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher, slightly modified, because it's a miracle that something so wonderful
is so easy to make.
The secret, of course, is the oysters, complicated and strange, bringing with them such tales of currents and tides and
the mysteries of the not so deep, that they only want a simple setting to recount them in, and a hungry heart willing to listen.
14 April 2000 (25)
The thing about the Pacific Ocean, about any ocean you could name, really, is that it's connected to every other ocean.
So theoretically you could launch a rubber raft into the surf of the beach at the end of my street and, by a combination of
luck with the currents and furious paddling, end up at the Piazza San Marco in Venice . . . or the Battery in New York . .
. or more likely the marina in Oxnard.
For that reason, all seaside places have a common air about them, the feel of being open directly to all other seaside
places. So when I look out at the Channel Islands and beyond, I have sense memories of other times by the ocean:
My first memory of the sea, when I was two or three, and a wave shoved me down to the bottom (possibly six inches underwater
at that point) and WOULD NOT LET ME UP. (It did let me up eventually, in a matter of seconds, but it conveyed an intention
in those seconds which seemed inflexible and eternal. I have never learned more about the ocean than I did then, though I
have sometimes forgotten the lesson.)
Leaving Cherbourg at night for an Atlantic crossing, standing at the rail of a freighter with two ballet dancers, connecting
suddenly with the romance and grave seriousness and joy and terror of every long ocean voyage ever made by a mariner in the
whole history of seafaring.
Sailing in a dhow, as Sinbad once did, in a choppy sea on the Indian Ocean, as jet-black Kenyan sailors demonstrated with
exhilaration how they shifted the big stones in the bottom of their keel-less craft to keep the boat steady in the water.
When I dip my toes into the part of the ocean that washes up against the beach at the end of Weymouth Lane, I disturb
currents that run through every ocean, even the ones I've never seen, and especially the ones I've set out on, or under, or
crossed, or seen from a window in a beach house, cleaning fish, or boiling shrimp, or just looking.
17 April 2000 (26)
How often do we take a moment from our busy lives to think about Gruyere? Not very often, I suspect. And yet it is a cheese
of deep philosophical interest, simple, distinctive and useful.
There was a time when I thought of it only in connection with French onion soup, for without the Gruyere melted on the
piece of thick toast that floats on top of the soup, it is not French onion soup at all. It's just brown stuff made out of
onions.
I began thinking about Gruyere seriously and appropriately due to a chance remark by Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, speaking
of dining alone. She observed that it's just as easy to eat a piece of Gruyere with a loaf of crusty sourdough bread as to
down some fast food alternative, and more nourishing to the soul, more respecting of one's dining companion -- you.
By a simple taste test, I discovered that she was right. Rarely has a philosophical observation been so easy to prove.
I began reading other gastronomical observations by Fisher with a keener interest. Of course, I could not test all of
them practically, since my kitchen is limited -- no oven, just two electric burners and a toaster oven.
But then I read about the first kitchen Fisher presided over, in Dijon in 1931. It had no running water, which had to
be carried in from the landing, or ice box . . . and two gas burners and a tiny gas oven that could be fitted over them. My
excuse vanished, and I decided to make one of her specialities from that time, for which she gives no rule, just a vague description.
But it was enough.
You take a head of cauliflower and split the fleurs apart, in clusters that are not too small or too large -- enough of
them to cover the bottom of a baking pan. Boil them for about three minutes, no longer, drain them and lay them in the pan.
(Fisher doesn't say whether you should first grease the pan with sweet butter or not, but I think you should. I don't know
why.) Pour heavy cream over each of the fleurs, enough so that the cream covers the bottom of the pan to a depth at least
halfway up the sides of the fleurs, and then perhaps a little more if you feel reckless.
Put a lot of fresh grated Gruyere on top of the fleurs and the cream, enough to make a somewhat less than solid layer
of cheese over the whole thing, part of it floating, part of it on the fleurs. Then grind fresh pepper over it all.
Bake it in an oven at maybe 350° (she doesn't say, because her little oven probably didn't have a thermostat.) Certainly
no lower.
When the top of the thing is toasty brown, take it out. (Fisher wasn't quite sure why her little oven browned the top
of the dish. It must have been because enough of the Gruyere stayed on top of the bubbling sauce to get toasted, and it worked
the same way in my toaster oven, but in a real oven you might need to place the pan on a high rack or something.) Eat it immediately,
with some full-bodied red wine of whatever simplicity. A Cahors would be cool, if you could find it.
Have some good bread to dunk in the strange, rich sauce in which the Gruyere has and has not quite merged with the cream.
This is the meal -- barring some salad or desert afterwards, if you care about those things.
When you eat this meal, the word elegant will not spring to mind. The words perfection, miraculous and inspiring will.
First of all you have a connection with certain evenings in Fisher's long-vanished life in Dijon -- a connection which
can only be described as complex. It makes you feel sad and hopeful, all at once.
Second, you will never think about cauliflower again in quite the same way -- and I say this as someone who almost never
thinks about cauliflower at all.
Third, you will discover a new aspect to the complicated personality of Gruyere. As with French onion soup, its flavor
will make you feel like a virtuous old peasant. In this dish, it will make you feel like a virtuous old peasant whose kindness
has touched the lives of heroes and saints. (This is the inspiring part.)
I am perhaps diluting the absolute virtue of the experience by sharing it here, but really, how can I keep quiet about
a thing like this? Any more than Fisher could?
5 May 2000 (27)
I'm going home to New York next week, so coming back from Los Angeles this morning I decided to drive the PCH, to take
a good parting look at the Pacific Ocean.
Heading down the California Grade from Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica I felt the release and exhilaration I always feel
dropping down to sea level and getting that first look up the wide, long beach.
It was an overcast day, the sea was very calm, with just light ripples on the surface. The waves were soft and small --
they seemed to be speaking in a whisper. Up past the Ventura County Line, it was very misty -- the hills above Point Mugu
were hidden in mist.
Then, when the highway turns inland to by-pass the military bases on the coast, the fields of the Oxnard Plain were dotted
with workers picking strawberries, their cars parked in long lines at the edge of the fields, the bright red boxes stacked
out in the rows of plants.
This reminded me to stop at the little roadside stand nearer Ventura, across from McGrath State Beach. It sells strawberries
from the adjacent fields of the Coastal Strawberry Company, which come right up to the road that runs beside the beach there.
I picked up a basket and when I got home I cut some of them up and ate them with whipped cream. They confirmed once again
the truth of the antique maxim: "Undoubtedly God could have created a better berry than the strawberry, but undoubtedly
He did not." And they came from my backyard, practically.
In the afternoon I went to see "Gladiator", to remind myself why I live in California. It's not a great film,
but it's big and wonderful, in ways movies ought to be, and it made me feel lucky to be doing what I'm doing.
It was magic hour when I stepped out of the theater on Main Street, and Ventura looked like a movie set, as it often does
when the light is right. The strip of ocean visible at the end of Chestnut Street seemed digitally composited into the scene
-- but very well done.
So all in all it was a good au revoir to California -- surprising me, but not too much, by all there is to miss.
6 January 2003 (28)
Sometimes after a long day of writing here at the beach my mind is gripped by strange ideas about food -- strange in the
sense that they don't involve Swiss cheese and crackers or peanut butter sandwiches or frozen meatloaf dinners.
Today, as it happened, I was reading a piece by Mr. Ernest Hemingway about trout fishing in Europe. In it he described
a method of cooking trout he had encountered in Switzerland at rural inns. It involved boiling the trout until it turned blue
in a liquor made of water, white wine vinegar, bay leaves and red pepper -- not too much of any ingredient in the water, says
Mr. Hemingway, without further elaboration.
This is not the blue trout described by M. F. K. Fisher, which involves placing the trout live into boiling water, unless
the Swiss innkeepers were holding out on Mr. Hemingway, but it sounded fine.
I remembered that my local Vons supermarket sometimes offers fresh rainbow trout, so I headed over there late at night
and found one handsome specimen in the fish department. I brought it home, filled up a large pot with water -- it was a large
trout -- emptied about six ounces of white wine vinegar into the water, added six fragrant bay leaves and a light sprinkling
of cayenne pepper, and set it all to boil. When it was bubbling I slipped the fish in.
My stovetop coils are inefficient, and I could not bring the water back to a boil quickly, so I simmered the trout for
about fifteen minutes. In boiling water, ten or less would have been more than sufficient. I tested the fish using a method
recommended by an old edition of "The Joy Of Cooking" -- which is to separate the meat from the bone of the spine
at the thickest middle section of the fish. When the meat there is tender but no longer translucent, the fish is done.
I ate the fish with drawn butter, as Mr. Hemingway says the Swiss did. "They drink the clear Sion wine when they
eat it," adds Mr. Hemingway," but THEY don't depend on the beverage department of a California supermarket for their
wine. I made do with a perfectly respectable Pinot Grigio by Bolla, cheap, dry and light.
The result was a meal of almost unimaginable delicacy. Trout is delicate anyway, and the light seasonings in the water
only emphasized the subtlety of its taste. It all resonated on the tongue like a memory of food -- insubstantial and fleeting.
21 January 2003 (29)
Everybody talks about French onion soup -- it comes to mind unbidden on cold winter nights, or in the middle of a bad
case of the flu. But almost nobody does anything about it. My sister Lee is a notable exception. Yesterday, after much wheedling
and outright begging, I got her to pass along her recipe, modified from a rule in "The Joy Of Cooking" with her
own refinements. She would not actually send me the recipe, thus committing it to writing, but gave it over the phone while
I took notes.
Today, I did something about it.
To make this soup you first slice up three moderately large brown onions, as thinly as possible -- don't chop the slices
up. (Now is the time for your tears.) Put three quarters of a stick of butter into a big pot that can hold six cups of liquor,
plus the onions, and melt it.
Now, as my sister explained, in hushed tones, a terrifying game of chicken with the onions begins. Your goal is to saute
them slowly, patiently in the butter until they turn a dark, a very dark brown. When they have turned the darkest brown possible
they will be just seconds away from burning and turning black -- at which point all your slicing, all your tears, will have
been in vain. The onions will try to fool you, by leaving black deposits on the side of the pot, so you will think they are
as brown as they can possibly get -- but they aren't. Not yet. Not quite yet! Bonne chance, mon vieux!
When the onions are browned to perfection, remove them from the heat and add into the pot six cups of beef broth. Beef
broth can be over-salty, especially the cubed kind, so it's good to use a mixture of low-sodium broth with the regular stuff.
I used two cans of low sodium and one of regular broth. Grind some fresh pepper into the pot.
Simmer this slowly for about half an hour, adding a dash of sherry at the very last moment if you want.
To serve, place the soup in an oven-safe bowl. Take thickish slices from a baguette of French bread, toast them lightly
and then float them on top of the soup, grate Gruyere generously over the surface of all this and bake it in the oven until
the cheese melts.
Eat it with a strong, simple red wine and feel the flu, the chill of the night, the melancholy of the day recede. Rejoice
in the fact that, by following this recipe, you will have plenty of soup left for the days and nights ahead, when it will
only taste better.
24 February 2003 (30)
Loup grille au fenouil, translated precisely from the French, means wolf grilled with fennel. Those familiar with Mediterranean
cooking will recognize, however, that the wolf, the loup, referred to here is loup de mer, the wolf of the sea, or sea bass.
Sea bass grilled with fennel is one of the glories of southern French cuisine.
I first encountered it in one of the restaurants facing onto the harbor of Villefranche, a small town just east of Nice
-- a restaurant called Mere Germaine. There are several restaurants just like it facing the harbor, and loup grille au fenouil
is not prepared better in Mere Germaine than in any of the others, but Mere Germaine is where I first had it, and so that
must remain the center of my nostalgia for the dish.
It has certainly never tasted better anywhere else -- except perhaps on a terrace barbecue in Seattle once. A friend living
there had discovered wild fennel growing near him in a vacant lot, and used its seeds to season the fish, its stalks to fuel
the fire beneath, resulting in a wholly satisfying sensory experience.
Nostalgia is a potent spur to culinary ambition. Yesterday, peeking into the tiny seafood selection at my local supermarket,
I noticed a tempting fillet of Chilean sea bass. I bought it, along with some dried fennel seeds from the spice racks, and
decided to see how close I could come to recapturing the taste of those long ago nights on the Cote d'Azur.
Grilling was out of the question -- I have no grill. I don't even have a proper oven -- just a small toaster oven. But
it was enough.
I coated a small pan with olive oil, salted and peppered the bottom of the pan, then covered it with fennel seeds. I placed
the fillet of sea bass in the pan and made two slits in the fillet. I coated the top of the fillet with olive oil, salted
and peppered it, and covered it with fennel seeds, filling up the slits with extra seeds.
I set the toaster oven to broil, preheated it to 450 degrees, then put the pan in. The olive oil collected in the bottom
of the pan soon started to boil, obviating the need to flip the fillet over during cooking, and I broiled the whole thing
for about 20 minutes until the fennel seeds were brown and thoroughly roasted.
I ate it with a respectable Chardonnay from the Coppola vineyards, and the wine was fine, but a drier one would have suited
the taste of the fish better. The taste of the fish was miraculous -- light but flavorful -- and the toasted fennel seeds
gave a pleasant reminder of the dish as it's prepared on the shores of the Mediterranean.
It was not by any means loup grille au fenouil as you'd encounter it there, cooked on a real charcoal fire, seasoned with
fresh fennel. But it was poignantly close.
19 March 2003 (31)
Today, an hour before Saddam Hussein's deadline ran out, I went up to Main Street in Ventura to get a haircut at Phil's
Barber Shop.
Phil is in his eighties and has been cutting hair in Ventura since just after the Second World War, in the same location.
He was at first just an employee of the original owner, who used the shop basically as a front for the gambling operation
he ran in the back. Phil, a straight-arrow, just cut hair out front and never looked into the back room when it was hopping.
Once he cut the sheriff's hair while a noisy craps game was in progress -- the sheriff looked uneasy but said nothing.
The rule seemed to be "keep it quiet and no one will care" -- but there came a day when some city administration
or other decided it was time to clean things up and Phil's boss was arrested. Phil was able to testify, truthfully, that he
had never seen gambling going on at the shop, and his boss was acquitted. But by then Ventura was too hot and his boss decided
to move on to the greener felt of Vegas. In gratitude to Phil, he left him the business.
These days, Phil's business is slow during the week. He was asleep when I showed up for my haircut but seemed pleased
to see me. As he settled me into the chair and draped the plastic sheet over me, he said, "What do you think about this
war?" I said it looked inevitable and I hoped it would go well. Phil said he just hoped nobody decided to use those chemical
weapons.
Phil was an Air Force medic during WWII, stationed at an air base near Norwich in England. He mainly had to care for sick
soldiers but once he got assigned to identify the dead from an airplane which had crashed on English soil while returning
to base. The bodies were badly burned and could only be identified from dental records. Phil said they had to slit their cheeks
open with scalpels to check the fillings.
Phil only had two close calls himself, once on the way to England and once after the war in Europe was over.
On the way to England, the engine on his troop ship died. The troops woke up to find the ship just sitting still in the
water, like a duck, with none of the rest of the convoy in sight. The men lined the rails and searched the waves for signs
of a German periscope, but none appeared, the ship got going again and caught up with the convoy the next day.
After VE day, Phil signed up for a bomber tour of Germany -- a chance for the ground personnel to see what their work
had contributed to. They flew up the Rhine, with its bridges almost all destroyed by the Germans, and over Cologne. On the
way back another plane flew dangerously close to them and sucked off the air from their propellers. Their plane, already flying
low for sightseeing purposes, plunged almost to the ground. "This isn't supposed to be happening," Phil thought,
incredibly annoyed to be dying after victory had been achieved. But the pilot got the plane back under control, and Phil came
home . . .
. . . only to be told that he and his unit would be shipping out soon for Okinawa, to participate in the invasion of Japan.
Phil said there was a lot of grumbling, because there were plenty of soldiers at home who had never shipped out at all, but
the Air Force wanted the expertise of veterans for the last phase of the Japanese conflict.
Then Truman dropped the bomb, and Phil went back to Ventura.
He had learned to cut hair in the Air Force -- discovered he could do a better job of it than the base barber and found
that his fellow G. I.'s would pay him a little for the service before going on furlough to London, their heads filled with
dreams of romance.
Phil got married soon after coming home -- he's still married to the same woman, he has triplet great-grandchildren in
Texas, whom he's going to visit soon. His favorite place to go on vacation is Vegas, where he likes to play the slots.
Phil gave me a good old fashioned haircut, for ten dollars. I went home and listened to the news of the opening of the
war in Iraq.
Except for his time overseas, Phil has spent his whole life in Ventura, the vast majority of it now as a barber. He has
never been back to England, but he'd like to see it again one more time. "Those people treated us real good," said
Phil.
30 June 2003 (32)
Last month I gave notice to my landlords in Ventura and today I came back to start packing the place up. Mostly this involves
throwing out piles of newspapers and magazines that I was sure I would get around to reading one day -- and now won't.
The waves down at the end of the street have a mournful tone tonight -- Ventura seems to be drifting into a fog, shrinking
to a speck of sand beside the vast ocean. Its mythic nature, when I could project some of my future into it, dispersed long
ago -- it became part of my past even as I wandered around looking for the old magic I conjured here. That's all gone -- into
the books I read here, the game, Texas Hold-'em, I learned to love here, the stories I spun here, like a silent spider in
the damp night.
It was impossible to leave, though, until another vision tempted me, and it was eventually vouchsafed, as many visions
are, in the desert. I dreamed of a city of light arising from nothing, a naked woman with wild hair flying over it, beckoning
me, asking me to match her courage -- the courage it takes to fly.
That's a dream, and a command, worth following.
Places in my life have adhered to one element or another -- earth, in North Carolina, fire in New York, the sea here and
everywhere. Now I'm going to a place from which the sea has long receded, where fire is piteous beneath the desert sun, where
the earth is bleached and unfertile. It is a place of air -- of flying.
28 July 2003 (33)
Today after a trip to the post office, before getting back to packing, I stopped in for my last meal at Duke's. Duke's
is on the block of Seaward Avenue that dead-ends at the beach. It's the only real commercial area near the water between the
Marina and the Pier. On this block are a couple of motels, a couple of real estate offices, a surf shop, a liquor store and
several cheap restaurants.
There used to be a bar but it's gone now, probably a victim of California's barbaric smoking laws, which is why I never
went there -- it didn't have a terrace. It was a funky place in a funky part of town and probably did not list a single socially
hygienic yuppie among its regular customers.
Duke's is a sort of glorified clam shack, with surfboards hanging from the ceilings and big stuffed fish on the walls.
It's motto is "Bitchin' Burgers" and they're o. k. It also serves o. k. fried seafood. Today I had a Sloppy Joe,
and it was o. k., too. I have a feeling that Duke's Sloppy Joes are probably made out of the bits of hamburger customers leave
uneaten on their plates -- it's that kind of joint. I love it.
Duke's offers several beers on tap. On this visit when I asked for an Anchor Steam I was told that the draft beer wasn't
cold today. I have never gotten any other response to an order for draft beer in the five years I've been going there.
Duke's has a pool table and a ping-pong table and is always filled with very cute, very young girls wearing very little
clothing. Like the surfboards I guess they're there to remind you that you're at the beach, because Duke's doesn't have an
ocean view.
What can you say about a place like Duke's? It's not the first place I think of when I think about getting something to
eat in Ventura. It's close to the last. But I already miss it.
31 July 2003 (34)
I never experienced even a moment of ecstasy in Ventura. There were no episodes of transcendent joy. It was a place I
came to rest in a dark time, and I made the best of it.
It made the best of me, too. Its quiet eccentricity resonated perfectly with my own, and I never felt alone here.
My best times in this part of the world happened up in Ojai, eleven miles inland, or in Santa Barbara, twenty-five miles
north, with the friends who live in those places, and especially with their kids. Emma, who grows more beautiful and mysterious
every day. Mary, the vixen, whose critique of the world is so profound and good-natured. Isabel, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Alice, the enchanted heroine of a million fairytales. Miles, who in an alternate reality would have played piano with The
Animals. Flo, the changeling. Corinne, the sailor. Lily, the reluctant angel.
However big they get, I'll remember their astonishing childhood faces.
So the time here comes to an end. There's so much I never wrote about Ventura. Now there's nothing more to write.
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