Echoes in a Hollow Space

And with his concurrence, I am posting some pictures I took in Lyme Regis in spring '04. I should warn you: they're a pretty pathetic collection. This was our first stop out of London, and I was just getting reacquainted with my SLR after a few years of taking no pictures whatsoever. I like to think the pictures got better as the trip progressed, but between jet lag, fatigue and technical malfeasance, these ain't much. Certainly Lyme Regis deserved better.

We drove from London (about 160 miles?) and stopped in Dorchester for lunch. A lovely little town! We booked our B&B at the Tourist Information center there, then decided to head a bit north to visit Cerne Abbas. For half my life I'd wanted to visit the giant etched into the chalk hillside there, the so-called Rude Man. You can read about him here. I had no idea that every picture I'd ever seen of him was an aerial shot. I had this vision in my brain, you see, that he was on a steep hillside and you could see him stretched out clearly, but alas, it was a crashing disappointment when I got there. Plus, I'd always had this idea that I'd walk up onto the hillside and traipse along up there with him. But it had rained heavily that morning and the hillside was sucking mud. Besides, after our lunch in Dorchester, my stomach was giving me fits so we cancelled the climb and got back on the road. I was depressed and cranky by the time I got to Lyme, hence I didn't do it justice.

We did book a lovely B&B high on a hillside overlooking the bay, but it was getting rather late in the day by the time we got there. Our hosts told us of a neaby river walk that would take us to the shore. It was quite lovely, a narrow footpath winding in and out amongst the buildings as the river itself does. Ducks everywhere riding the current, and charming buildings. But mostly too dark for decent pictures. When we reached the shore, the shops were much the same as you'd expect from any seaside town tourist destination. We also realized we were on the exact opposite side of town from the famous Cob, the landmark made famous by The French Lieutenant's Woman and other films. I'd wanted to see that half my life, too, and walk out there pretending to be Meryl Streep.

But we were tired, cranky, and quite hungry by that time. We turned around and headed back towards the river walk and a interesting restaurant we'd seen there. I felt quite dispirited at this point. Plus, at dinner there was this loud Australian woman at the next table talking about why she couldn't get any of her romances published in the United States (although she did quite well in the Commonwealth countries). "They're all so bloody ignorant and have no idea how to spell proper English. They wanted me to go through everything and change the spelling and the British English. I'd be damned if I would. They're just so ignorant!" Her friends kept trying to shush her because they'd realized we were Americans, but it did no good. I also wondered if they recognized us from earlier in the evening? They were staying at the same B&B. It made for quite and "interesting" breakfast the next morning.

I should say at this point that I've generally found Australians to be charming people. This woman was not one of them. And her reasons for not publishing in the US sounded like bloody feeble excuses to me. I'd bet good money she couldn't sell any of her books to American publishers, hence the vitriol.

The walk back to the B&B along the river walk at night revived my spirits, though. Water and night time have always been my friends. The water babbled beautifully, little ducks were talking in the water, and tiny bats swooped through the night, making a chirping sound. (Who knew echo location could be so lovely?) I'm not at all freaked by bats. I find them fascinating. And these were not even as large as my hand.

So we left Lyme Regis early the next morning for Bodmin, and I felt as if I cheated the place, I really did. What I saw of it was lovely, but we should have gotten there earlier in the day to do it justice. In the middle of the night, however, I had made some accommodation with my disappointment of the day. I woke up about 3 a.m., unable to go back to sleep due to the jet lag and decided to sit at the window and watch the sun rise over Lyme Bay. It was hushed, just me and the ghosts, and something inside me relaxed into the moment, letting go of expectations and letting this trip be what it was, not what I thought it should be. Gradually, the sky lightened, the gulls began to cry, the birds to chirp, and the dawn found me at peace. It turned out to be a really good trip.

Here's what I wrote while I watched the sunrise.

And here's the first postings of my new photo album. I had these posted at another site that went belly up and never got around to reposting them. I'll gradually be adding the pictures from the trip as time permits. As I said, I do believe the pictures got better as the trip progressed. These first ones are not that great, but I did get reacquainted with the SLR after awhile.

( And here's just the pix of Lyme Regis, such as they are. )

Quote of the day:

"In the sweaty, passionate, filthy embrace, in all of its delicious and time-dissolving power, in the midst of that embrace there is no difference, no separation between the spiritual and the profane. But it's reached through the profane rather than through the spiritual, at least in my canon. That is the portal, that is the door into the whole affair. In that moment there is no separation, there is no spirit and flesh, there's no conflict, there never was."

—Leonard Cohen

Favorite sight of the day: As I was driving to work yesterday morning through Venice, heading up Washington to Pacific, I passed the Grand Canal. The ducks huddled together on the walkways or waddled up the street, and the water actually looked sparkly for a change instead of brownish. The sun was out, but the streets crisp from a stray shower of rain. Folks wandered in and out of coffee shops, dressed in that funky off-beat Venice style—a million miles from the suburbia I've moved to—a million miles, and no distance at all.

The drive in was easy, but horrible the day before, and I'd thought perhaps it was time to try the freeway instead of surface streets. But seeing this sight, mellow ducks and water, humans living on a human scale, I knew I wasn't ready to give up those streets for the inhuman efficiency of the highway.

In that moment, no expediency mattered, just the moment that fed my soul, regardless of the meandering route I took. There was no conflict, there never was.

Quote of the day:

"A flower falls, even though we love it, and a weed grows, even though we do not love it."

—Dogen Kenji

Memory of the day: Just this morning I was thinking about the place where we stabled our horses in my before-I-went-to-school days in conjunction with a discussion sartorias had.

We weren't wealthy by any means and these stables were pretty run down and tired—but of course to me they were the most wonderful place in the world. We had to sell the horses when the stable closed down because my parents couldn't afford to board horses anywhere else.

Anyway, I was thinking about the open fields that lay north and south of the stables, how I used to love to play in them. I was not allowed to go to the one in the north unsupervised because it was as vast as the whole wide world and very little girls might get lost. The one on the south side of the stables was smaller and since that's usually where my mother was, I could wander into those and lay beside the little stream that ran there in the spring. I loved to watch the tadpoles.

In the north, though, there were ducks. And I so loved to visit the ducks! I'd beg to be taken over there. At the close of the day when the stalls were mucked out and we were ready to go, mom would take me to visit the ducks. These were big white ducks that belonged to someone at the stables, I think, and he let them wander around. I can't remember anymore if he had them in a pen or not, but they weren't locked up or anything. I used to feed them.

One day I asked to be taken to the ducks and my mother said they weren't there anymore.

"What happened to them?"

"Somebody stole them."

"But why?

"They probably had them for dinner."

Mom was always a straight shooter, I'll give her that.

It's funny I should think of this story this morning because I read in kmkibble75's blog about the disillusionment of a five-year-old by a parent. I think it's a tough call, deciding how much to prepare your child for the real world and how early. I'm not sure I'd know what to answer when the tough questions started...

Movie review of the day (NO SPOILERS): I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Wednesday. I thought it was deeply strange, deeply goofy, and deeply hilarious. Kind of Great Expectations Meets Airplane! Meets The Wizard of Oz Meets Swinging Sixties London Mods Meets The Simpsons. Lots of sly movie and TV references.

I probably wouldn't have thought of Michael Jackson if folks hadn't mentioned it so much. As Le Depp himself said when asked if he based his performance on Michael Jackson, "It's interesting how people can express opinions that are so horrifically wrong." He said he was playing it as if Mr. Rogers were actually terrified of children.

I laughed a lot at Le Depp's performance (as I was intended to!), and I think Deep Roy needs to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor this year. He plays the oompah loompahs (all of them) and absolutely steals the show. Some great performances with Charlie and his family, too, and a nice cameo by Christopher Lee. Of course the visuals are boggling. Some great stuff there.

I'm not against progress. I don't think things were better in the old days; I believe science has given us the potential to live stronger, longer, healthier lives. Being human, of course, we don't always avail ourselves of that opportunity. We reserve the right to do as we will, despite the blandishments of cancer researchers, nutritionists, and other preachers of the Word. No, progress isn't the culprit. But I don't necessarily think development is always progress. Often development is more about greed and vulgar pride.

The developers couldn't wait to get their hands on one of the last stretches of unexploited land along the Southern California coast—the Ballona Creek wetlands near Marina del Rey. It'd been protected through most of the high-development decades of the 20th Century by crazy ol' Howard Hughes, who owned a vast chunk of it. He preserved it because he'd built Hughes Aircraft on the part of the property east of Lincoln Boulevard. He liked to fly experimental things off his runway there, and kept the lands vacant on the west side of Lincoln almost down to the beach at Playa del Rey in case he crashed one of those somethings. Plus, he was a stubborn old coot. Long after he'd stop flying things, he held onto the land despite developers salivating and the urging of the money men to sell it off. Maybe because they insisted, but who knows? Howard moved in mysterious ways.

Then Howard died and the developers saw their golden moment come at last. They purchased the land from the Hughes estate, planning to rip it all up and build a shiny new planned richfolk community called Playa Vista. Only the dedicated and persistent yelling of environmentalists slowed that process down. The County of Los Angeles owned some of the parcels on both the west and east sides of Lincoln. Under pressure from environmentalists, the County got the developers to swap some of the western parcels for the eastern ones. The developers could put in their shiny new Playa Vista in the east, the wetlands would be preserved in the west. Everyone huzzahed—a rare victory for the forces of conservation.

But every silver cloud has a dark lining. What the County didn't tell the environmentalists, at least not at first, was that they planned to "improve" the wetlands.

It used to be when you'd drive up that stretch of Lincoln, about a mile from Los Angeles International Airport, you'd see the incongruous sight of wildlife in the middle of a sprawling city: wild ducks, pelicans, hawks of many varieties constantly circling in the sky, a plethora of doves, songbirds, finches, and most miraculously to me, herons. I mean, where else could you drive through the heart of an urban landscape, just a few miles from a major airport, and suddenly be in the heart of the country?

The parts of the city directly before and directly after the wetlands are especially blighted pieces of urban landscape—chock-a-block with storefronts and parking lots. But you passed under the bridge from Culver Boulevard to Jefferson and magic happened. You were suddenly on the bridge over the vast flood control of the Los Angeles River and open fields and wild things were just on the other side. It only lasted a couple of blocks, this countryside, but there it was, a miracle of survival. In inclement weather, the fog hugged the ground like a blanket, in the springtime the fields blazed with wildflowers: yellow and orange, pale blue, purple and white. And the view from the bluffs was clear all the way to the sea, a vast wave of green in springtime, golden in the fall and winter.

Two blocks, in the heart of the city: changed now. My favorite hillock, rising up to hold the Culver Boulevard bridge in place, a glorious crown of orange and yellow in the spring: cement now. Buildings line the whole eastern side of Lincoln where once farmers planted crops. One particularly hideous nouveau apartment block looks rather more like a prison or a mental institution than someplace to live.

Since they started grading and dredging and making nice in the wetlands, I haven't seen much wildlife. The doves and finches are ubiquitous everywhere in the city, so they haven't gone. I still see wild ducks flying overhead now and then, on their way to roost elsewhere. There is the occasional pelican, but I almost never see hawks circling in the sky, waiting for an intemperate mouse to show itself far below and provide it with supper. And I haven't seen a heron in years.

But the County has made lots of sparkling pathways for the humans who inhabit the Playa Vista development to tourist through the wetlands on; the County made nice-nice so the people who have live in McMansions on the bluffs above the wetlands don't have to look down on that tatty, chaotic mess that teemed life. They're currently grading the last bit of undeveloped bluff--no more poor folk allowed up there for a view to the sea. They're putting up more of what architectural writer Susan Susanka calls Starter Castles, perched precariously on the hillside on stilts. And when the next powerful earthquake jiggles through those bluffs and turns that beachy soil bubbly with liquefaction, I expect the richfolk will be imposing themselves upon the wetlands below in yet another way.

Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. The world is an illusion. But some illusions nourish the soul. Others don't look much like progress to me.