RUDIMENTS, pt. 955
(nowhere to sit, at the bottom of the sea)
So, this foray into California
amounted to a lot of nothing.
I did see President Carter,
entering a limo and being
driven out, at the Francis
Drake Hotel. Inside the car,
once settled, to me he appeared
a small-sized man with a really
large head; it seem to not be
proportional to the rest of
him. I never checked up on
that. It seems the higher up
these guys get, in any case,
the more oblivious to the
world around them they
become. He seemed as
unaware and blissed out
as possible of the world
around him and of any sense
of where he was and what
he was doing. It's too bad,
losing that immediacy
about things. You think
you're only always thinking
on all that big, important
stuff, yet somehow your puny
little human mind loses the
reality that the 'big' stuff is
made up of the thousands of
tiny small things and matters
around you.
-
The rest of San Francisco, at
the time I was there, was just
about losing its remnants of the
old, as most everywhere else in
the major parts of the USA were.
The past was all quickly being
removed, except for locations
where they could charge the
goofballs 10 or 12 bucks to come
and be told 'what' those places
supposedly once had been like.
The Presidio. Alcatraz. The
old S. F. Mint., and any one
of 20 other places. You could
drop a ton of money to learn
about it all. They had just, also,
ringed the city with some new
freeway stuff, elevated ramps
highways, etc., which only
added to the angered confusion
of the locals, who had thus lost
their waterfront, docks, and
edgings around the city. Locals
were still mad about that. They'd
thrown around these overdone,
half-tourist-fancy joints too and
expected people to lap it up and
pay for it - Ghiardelli Square,
some faux satrap of nostalgia
and chocolate for the honeymoon
crowd, (yeah, you'd see them
limping around, back then. Now
everyone's already broken in
before they get married), Pier 39,
The 'National Maritime Museum.'
It was pretty much endless.
My concern was the San Francisco
Art Institute, and I wasn't much
n awe of anything else. We'd had
a few Art Institute people over
at the Studio School, as I've
mentioned, and they were all
fairly interesting people. In
addition, they ranged from the
crazy-physical, drunk-maniac
types like Jim Tomberg, my
best friend there, to some sorts
of fey, hippie types who seemed
afraid of the air. The girls were
always pretty and light and
fleet, the guys, mostly limp
of wrist, but who cared anyway.
This was their home-base, and I
wanted to see it. What surprised
me, first off and immediately,
was the Spanish-influenced
everything at the Art Institute.
It was laid out like a quaint
Spanish villa, Mexican maybe,
whatever the local bleed-through
would have been : tiles, courtyards,
arches, open spaces, a sort of odd
almost adobe-look brick and mortar.
Coming from the rugged, harsh,
and mean east, all of this influence
really surprised me. Basking in
the sun for what was to come....
Plein-air studying was cool.
-
There was this old boat in the
harbor. It was called The Balcutha.
The harbor, as I said, had been
usurped by the Authorities and
all turned into tourist crap,
including the Balcutha - which
I went on in spite of, just to get
the freaky tour and see all the
old, marine, appointments and
fixtures. It was some old sailing
vessel for somewhere out there,
I don't remember now, and
was old and a real veteran. I
can't ever recall what it used
to haul : slaves, prisoners, freight,
casks of wine, bales of cotton,
or lumber and timber. No idea.
But I 'paids the money' and
went aboard. The other cool
thing done, down in Monterey,
was at Cannery Row; they had
a bathysphere there, and for
something like ten bucks I
think, you'd get ti go down
in it, for like a half hour, 6 or
8 people at a time. I dd that one,
and it was cool. The day itself
was rainy, which was a bummer
because it affected the light that
filtered down through the water,
but the idea with this diving
vessel (basically a glass walled
tub, white, with thick sight-glass
and interlocks and all), was that
for oceanographic research it was
used for observing and viewing
the sea-floor life and the lower
depths of the watery environment.
I forget how deep we dropped, but
it was very interesting - seeing
all sorts of the sea creatures and
sea-weeds and things, lazily
moping around, swimming or
darting, feeding or sleeping,
or whatever those sea creatures
do. Probably just looking for
food mostly, at any and all
times, and also being wary of
predators and, I guess, bigger
fish. Really a crummy life.
And nowhere to sit either!
-
No matter, I got a kick out of
seeing all that, even though,
because of the crummy day, it
was murkier and darker down
there than usual - our ten-dollar
know-it-all told us. Also, the
old John Steinbeck book
entitled 'Cannery Row' was
also in my mind, thriving up
the whole scene even though
it had nothing really to do with
this bathysphere thing. But the
rest of the place, town, area,
to my mind, was still rife with
the dirty, sexy, seediness of
those old waterfront and dock
days. I wanted to pass right
through something and
re-enter all that old stuff;
screw the present, once
again. On the whole, to say
the truth, California perplexed
me very much; I know it was
long ago, an older time and
place, but many of the headings
and direction-points for the
way most things ended up
were starting right there and
then, and leaving their own
smoke-signals clearly, for
all to see.
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