San Diego: the view from the balcony
San Diego: the view from the balcony
Carol and I sat sipping a not very good sauvignon blanc on the twelfth floor balcony of our room at the Hyatt Mission Bay, looking down at the boats and marinas of Quivira Basin, where I lived aboard in the late 1960s, kept CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE in 1978, and where GANNET should be tomorrow.
At the moment according to the uShip tracking page, GANNET is 120 miles north of here in Hesperia, California, as she has been since yesterday.
I am indebted to Dave who emailed me the explanation of the loss of the SPOT track. He found on the SPOT site that after tracking is initiated, the device sends out a signal every ten minutes for twenty-four hours, then shuts down until ‘track’ is reactivated. Twenty-four hours is exactly how long the SPOT signal from GANNET was received.
But that is minor, looking down on boats and sailors as others once looked down on me is major and strange.
In the late 1960s and even when I kept CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE here before starting the open boat voyage, this hotel was called the Islandia and there were only two marinas in quadrilateral Quivira Basin, a square whose northeastern corner has been severely cut off. Now there are four marinas completely filling the shore line.
We drove through Mission Beach today, then La Jolla, where we stopped to walk along the bluffs above La Jolla Cove with a magnificent seascape, before continuing on to one of the most acclaimed architectural landmarks of the Twentieth Century, Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute.
Carol and I have visited San Diego twice before, once when I was giving speeches, once for a conference she attended, and went to see the Salk Institute. As you approach the buildings there is a moment when you experience the perfect vision of Louis Kahn: on either side two rows of laboratories converge, directing the eye to an horizon of sea and sky in a perfectly balanced composition.
Today we found that iconic view inaccessible. A new, presumably post 9-11 fence blocks the general public from Louis Kahn’s vision. We could see the place you need to stand a hundred yards away, where we had stood before, but we could not get there. This is a real loss. As much as not being able to see one of the world’s most original paintings or read a classic book. A truly original vision is rare. The terrorists have won again.
On our way back, I told Carol I’d like to stop and visit where my grandmother’s house was if we could find a parking spot. Finding a parking spot in Mission Beach is almost like winning the lottery; but we did and walked a few blocks to 719 Ormond Court where my grandmother and her last husband, whom I thought of as my grandfather, bought a tiny beach cottage two houses in from the ocean for $7,000 in 1953, and where I spent my summers as a teenager.
After her death in 1982 I sold the property to a college professor and her partner, an aerospace executive, and they tore down my grandmother’s aging cottage and built an attractive two unit condo. We had seen it before. Today Carol wanted to walk around to view the back, and when we did a woman of about my age came out and approached us. I told her I had once lived there, not in that building, but the previous one, and it turned out that she was one of the couple I had sold it to. I commented that I thought I remembered she was a college professor. She was pleased and said that she had just retired. It was obvious that her partner has died and she is now alone. She asked if we would like to see the interior. We would. It is quite simply wonderful. An open main living area with a two story high ceiling, two bedrooms, two decks, one with a view of the ocean, even a fireplace which is not entirely out of place in San Diego during the winter and on foggy days. I have always though the property itself perfectly located in the middle of the two mile arc of Mission Beach, and better for privacy two steps back than those homes directly on the ocean front. I’d buy it back in a minute if I could.
San Diego brings back so many memories. I was young here. A teenager in the 50s. In my twenties and thirties during the 60s and 70s: The Golden Age of Sex, for both the world and me: after the birth control pill and before AIDS. I watched men and women today who are the age I was then and wondered about their lives.
The city is familiar, yet changed.
Looking down on Quivira Basin, I saw pelicans, one of whose ancestors’s wings I can still hear brushing the air as he flew past just beside my head while I was rowing a dinghy there more than forty years ago; I heard a seal bark; and watched sea gulls argue.
Heraclitus said life is flow: you can’t step into the same river twice.
Parmenides said all is one, change is not possible, it is an illusion of the senses.
I move through San Diego. I see buildings and places where women I knew lived decades ago. I look down at the very dock from which I rowed CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE in November 1978.
I have often noted that time is an uneven medium.
San Diego has changed, and yet it is the same. I have changed, and yet I am the same.
Though I favor Heraclitus, I do not know.
Except that tomorrow, GANNET, who was on Lake Michigan, will magically be floating on that water far beneath me, and I will be aboard her, and the way to the sea will be open.
Sunday, October 14, 2012