THE ARTICLE

Finally found this again, after losing it to a World Wide Web that doesn’t like it as much as I do:

Paradise
by Arthur Smith

I used to live there. Every morning
The downtown streets were cobbled with gold, honey
Flowed—all that stuff. I’m not kidding. Summers
Lasted a lifetime, broken by Christmas
And New Year’s.
Mornings were like waking to someone’s scent
You hadn’t yet met and married for life,
Though I didn’t know that then—the night-cooled
Muskmelons rolling belly up to the stars,
And by late afternoon the dusk-colored
Dust of apricots on everything.
From that earth, my body
Assembled itself, and when the veil dropped,
I tried to say what I saw. The light winds
Around me died, the sheers of summer wavered
As though all of it were mirage. Cantaloupes,
Grapes, clusters of ruby flames like champagne,
Though I didn’t know that then—
Nectarines like morphine—didn’t know that either.
Oranges, almonds, rainbows,
Tangs—rolling in all year long, that bounty.
You tell people that, over and over,
And it’s really crazy, they won’t believe you.
All that sugar coaxed out of clay, and you
Can’t even give it away—and each dawn
More is just piled on. I took in as much
As I could, like larder, and walked away.

In the PBS special they did about the Reisner book Cadillac Desert, for a few seconds they show footage of the Owens Valley before it was drained away by Los Angeles. Wonder if it was like this.

Even if it wasn’t. Great verse. Especially the end.

Bandit: “When you tell somebody something, it depends on what part of the United States you’re standing in as to just how dumb you are.”

Frog: “Mr. Bandit, you have a lyrical way of cutting through the bullshit.”

Bandit: “And you have a unique way with the English language, Miss Frog.”

The internet, and just the ensuing decades, have blown that up, but only mostly, thankfully.

A friend sent me this today. Going to go try to visit the gallery this weekend. Cool stuff.

Campbell Water Tower artwork by Stone Griffin Gallery.

After the book DAM!, about Hetch Hetchy, then reading this, it seems like San Francisco has an abusive relationship with water.

See also lots of other cities, but still.

There’s a tower crane in Campbell, on Winchester just south of Campbell Avenue. I thought I saw it on my run last Sunday, from the Percolation Ponds near Camden, but I wasn’t sure. Today I drove right by it. Wonder what they’re building.

Forty-Niners lost in overtime. Pro football is ridiculous in it’s expectations. Brings out the worst in broadcast radio, brodcast TV.  Watching the commercials during the game though, maybe it’s easy to bring out the worst in broadcast TV.

There’s been a playlist, lately–

Africa. Yes the Toto tune, but covered by the Wellington Ukulele Orchestra. Shut up. Just go to iTunes and dig it.

Josie, by Steely Dan. Watch the VH1 Classic “Classic Albums” episode about Aja, then try not to buy the album. I dare you.

Life On A Chain, Pete Yorn (The KCRA live thing, from the reissue). Saw this show last spring. Ben Kweller opened. It was all really, really, good.

Revolution, by Gil Scott Heron. “The revolution will not go better with coke. The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat. The revolution will not be televised, not be televised, there’ll be no reruns brothers and sisters, the revolution will be live.”

Twilight Zone, by Golden Earring. Great tune, but how the hell is it plus-seven minutes long?

My Sexual Life, by Everclear. Dig it. Sounds like the Beach Boys kind of, if you’re me.

Samaritan, by the Long Winters. “This is what they mean by standing in for the sane.”

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?, by Waylon Jennings. “Somebody told me, when I came to Nashville: “Son you finally got it made. Old Hank made it here, and we’re all sure that you will, but I don’t think hank done it this way.”

Billy Green Is Dead, another Gil Scott Heron thing. “Is that familiar anybody? Check out what’s inside your head. Because it doesn’t seem to matter, when it’s Billy Green who’s dead.”

Grease, by Frankie Valli. Yeah. Shut up again. “There ain’t no danger we can go too far, if we start believing now, we can be who we are.”

Hold on Loosely, by 38 Special. “And my mind goes back, to a girl I met, some years ago, who told me…”

I’m Impressed, by They Might Be Giants “When that gorilla beats his chest, I fall to bits. I admit, I’m impressed.” Great running music.

Ace of Spades, by Motorhead. Had a bunch of stuff on the Shuffle for 10 miles on Sunday, but just ended up blasting this over and over. Great run.

Happy new year.

Three runs last weeekend, chasing the end of the new year. Sixteen miles at Rancho San Antonio on Saturday morning, 6 more at Campbell Park Saturday evening, and the same 6 again Sunday morning, on New Year’s Day.

Rancho was as crowded as ever. We met there at 6:30 AM, and it was as if there was a race going on. Getting parking at Rancho in the early morning is getting more and more difficult. It used to be, five years ago, that we got there at seven to get parking. Then it became 6:45, and Saturday it was 6:30. We were more than early enough to get parking, but it was filling up. A friend who knows the park better than anyone else I know was there to run too, and when I asked he said the gate is opened at 4:30. I’m pretty sure someday there will be a line of vehicles waiting. The first time will be in the summer.

It’s not that I don’t understand why. We ran to the top of Black Mountain and back, and all but the last two miles of ascent was perfectly run-able, and the whole descent, even the steep stuff near the top, was a great cruise back to the farm, and then the cars. I’d never run all the way up Black Mountain before, but I had hiked from the Rhuys Ridge entrance off Moody Road, up the hill a little from Foothill College and Highway 280. As a 16-mile run from the Cristo Rey entrance, it is a friendly uphill challenge and a perfect cruise back down. Explains the crowds.

Six more co-leading a TNT run hurt, on Saturday night, but it was a nice way to keep the new year’s blues away. Sunday morning, another sparsely attended TNT run, that hurt a little less.

January 1 was Sunday, so the world ignored it in favor of Monday. Today Guadalupe Parkway headed to work was empty like I’d made a very, very bad mistake, but no, everyone was at work except the folks who had been smart enough to take the day off. Impossibly light traffic coming home too. Gym closed at 6:00, so no mental-health cardio tonight, writing here instead. I bought a bike trainer used on Friday, but I haven’t tried setting it up yet. It’ll be interesting to see how loud it is. If I can get away with it, neighbor-wise, I’m going to ride a lot at home on days like this, when only I’m pretending it’s Monday.

Thank you notes, new year’s resolutions, trying to make things new, and keep things new. The leaf-trap that is my balcony is still catching some holdouts. No snow in the sierra, no rain in Lexington, and the d-word made the papers a few days ago.

2012. Insert sarcasm about the Mayan thing here. Every year sounds more like a science-fiction movie than the last one, and looks less like a science fiction movie than the last one. There’s some things to do though. Like writing here. So.

Bird can’t handle Coleman Hawkins lip synching for the film take. It’s kind of fantastic. And a little inspiring, if you’re me.

Here’s to only tolerating the BS when we really must, in 2012.

Follow Lonelysandwich on Tumblr. (Or just go there and read it like a blog, it’s not complicated.) Thanks to him for the YouTube link.

While I’m explaining Tumblr, I’m there too. Shorter form than here, mostly reposts of other people I think are interesting or funny. It’s called Nobody Reads This But You. Link in the sidebar.

From DAM!, by John Warfield Simpson, on conflicting concepts for the creation of Golden Gate Park:

In his report outlining his plan, [Frederick Law] Olmsted wrote, “The special conditions fixed by natural circumstances, to which the plan must be adapted, are so obvious that I need not recapitulate them here. Determining for the reasons already given, that a pleasure ground is needed which shall compare favorably with any in existence, it must, I believe, be acknowledged, that, neither in beauty of green sward, nor in great umbrageous trees, do these special conditions of topography, soil, and climate of San Francisco allow us to hope that any pleasure ground it can acquire, will ever compare in the most distant degree, with those of New York or London.” Olmsted saw an alternate character for the park that would still place it and the city among the ranks of the world’s elite. “The question then is whether it be possible for san Francisco to form a pleasure ground peculiar to itself, with a beauty as much superior to that of other such grounds, in any way, as theirs must be superior to what it can aspire to in spreading trees and great expanses of turf. I think it can.”

Instead, Olmsted proposed an alternate site toward the interior of the city, to be designed in harmony with the topography and climate using indigenous, drought-tolerant species. There the park could offer the same social benefits to the crowded masses of city dwellers as did his Central Park model. Did the idealistic landscape architect try to entice Billy [William Chapman Ralston] to the plan by appealing to his base instinct—money? After all, Central Park had quickly and dramatically increased the property value of land around its perimeter. Olmsted’s report addressed at length the many social and economic benefits of his plan. The implication was clear. Billy and his partners could profit handsomely when the park was built, whether directly by buying up property surrounding the proposed park beforehand, or indirectly by the city’s enhanced growth and development. Hence the project could benefit both the public and the prominent, making it a good deal for everyone.

But without having resolved the issue, Olmsted returned to New York in 1865 to resume work on his beloved Central Park and his burgeoning landscape architecture practice. The Las Mariposas estate had gone bankrupt despite his efforts, and opportunities in New York beckoned him more than the variety of possible design projects in the Bay Area. Billy immediately scrapped the Olmsted park plan and pursued his original scheme for an English-style park on the western flank of the peninsula.

I wonder where Olmsted saw the park, instead of where it is today. I wonder what the Sunset would look like without the big green rectangle. A pleasure ground peculiar to itself. I keep seeing it where Golden Gate Park is today, but like an outsized version of Asilomar down in Monterey: still home somehow to the de Young, and the California Academy of Sciences, but with big open views of the ocean.

The problem with the internet (yes, it has a problem) is the fatal overdose of irony. Here’s some completely unironic, yet kind of awesome, things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZa0CwBzubo

and this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FECFb1_YdII

Social media is the new disco, the floor is lit up like squares, and we’re all dancing in lines. Wait, you’re right, it’s not all like that. Some of it is like the Kingston Trio, playing at UCLA, in 1950-something.

It’s all so hip it can’t eat a square meal. I’m just saying.

I love it. Still. Can you dig how this is just the next thing? Someday photos and we’re all wearing bell bottoms and digging the new grooves.