nextThe Golden StateIf she didn't stop traffic, she certainly slowed it down - the California Girl - long, blonde hair flew out behind her, her breasts bounced inside the black spandex jogbra and her slim, lightly muscled legs were barely covered by skimpy red running shorts. She was an icon health-and-fitness woman, right down to the sunglasses she wore while running. There were two incongruities to this picture: the first was that it occurred not on the jogging path on Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica, or on the wide streets of Beverly Hills, but on a two lane highway in a small northern California town, on which traveled large pick-up trucks driven by men in baseball hats, battered and broken down cars driven by university students, and the occasional luxury car with a mogul from the burgeoning wine industry behind its wheel. The second discrepancy is that as she ran she pushed a large stroller, built for two. It is this stroller, I believe, that kept male drivers in the trucks and cars from thrusting their heads out of windows or sunroofs and shouting yeehaaaahh, or great tits, baby, or do you want to suck it? The apparatus put her on a pedestal, encompassing the ideals of motherhood and physical perfection. From my bench at the bus stop across the road I watched cars slow and speed up again after their drivers had gotten an eyeful of her body, and the presence of the stroller registered. Several days a week I waited for the number 63 after classes at the university. On nice days I bicycled to school and en route home came face-to-face with the woman, who obeyed pedestrian traffic laws and ran facing automobiles and bicycles. . . . Whether on my bike or at the busstop, I'd slowly come out of the fog that overcame me whenever I was at the university. At eighteen I'd talked my parents, liberal and accommodating people, into allowing me to spend a great deal of my college fund traveling in Europe. The institution I eventually enrolled in was located in the area where I was living, and not expensive. The classes were not lecture halls, but interactive, meaning that the most bombastic, or most emotionally needy students dominated the sessions. A typical example was someone who, after reading Blake's "The Mental Traveller" took control of the seminar, contemptuous of Blake's entire oeuvre saying that since Blake never had children he didn't know what he was talking about. A regular in creative writing classes who'd apparently never read anyone besides Kurt Vonnegut and in the 70s, Carlos Castaneda, came to class reeking of marijuana and for the next several hours babbled whatever came into his head. The professor of the short story was not interested in any other workings in a text but symbols, and made students search for them, an Easter egg hunt for adults, and of course those who found the most received the top grade. Since we were studying the arts they wanted us not to think so much as to feel. I couldn't fathom any particular reason to share my feelings with strangers, so sat there. It was puzzling that only one of the professors knew and taught anything about postmodernism, and that no classes on Marx and Freud, two thinkers who certainly influenced the century, were offered. Before the huge budget cutbacks to state schools one of the librarians had ordered books on contemporary thought, culture and philosophy. A handful of us checked them out, read and discussed them in coffeehouses and inexpensive restaurants. . . . Whenever I saw the jogging woman I wondered what she did that allowed her to be out exercising daily at 1 p.m. Even if she were a homemaker, it was more than likely something would come up forcing her to be elsewhere, at least on occasion. . . . After graduation I found a challenging job with an arts organization. Although it wasn't lucrative, I liked what I was doing and worked my way up to associate director. I had owned a car while in college, but it was old and I only drove it when absolutely necessary. After I got the job I decided to invest in a new car and my work took me to a different part of the county. I didn't see the jogging woman any longer, forgot about her and the image she presented. . . . This area of northern California was once predominately farmland. Over the years more and more people relocated here as four hour commutes to well-paying jobs in the city and back no longer seemed unthinkable. Grapes became the dominant agriculture, and with them came attractive, well-designed wineries that served as tourist destinations. Three and four-star restaurants sprang up to accommodate the tourists' hunger. The university changed its emphasis from liberal arts to business and raised its fees. Students who wore tie dye, sandals and had been enrolling in classes for ten years because they liked learning things were suddenly gone. People died. Others moved in. As more and more gentrification occurred no one referred any longer to this place as the country, as in I'm going up to the country without the word wine preceding it, and the areas with vineyards had drunken people careening around in them every weekend. . . . I, in turn, began to crumble. It was not anything noticeable as it was not a physical malady, and when I saw my friends I tried to be entertaining and enthusiastic. I was in my 30s, numb and more-or-less uninterested in my existence, on bad days comforting myself with a quote from Schopenhauer: "Human existence must be a kind of error," reasoning that my attitude was just something that developed after being alive for a certain amount of time. I noticed Europeans did not come to this conclusion as readily, but many did here in the States. A boyfriend decided I suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder and during the particularly long rainy months began seeing a woman who was more affluent and cheerful. A man I dated for a short time afterward only wanted to get together one night a week-to have dinner, drink a bottle of our local wine, followed by sex, telling me that he was doing me a favor, for on the other six evenings he was leaving me time to get things done. While visiting friends in another part of the state I found myself having sex on a park in Santa Monica with a man I'd had a crush on in college. He'd moved away to work for one of the studios, and I remember thinking that my naked buttocks was parallel to the horizon line of the Pacific Ocean as I straddled him, and whether or not this was of any particular importance. Several trips back to Europe rekindled my zest for life, but when I returned so did my lassitude. Despite my persistent efforts to find employment in London or Paris, nothing materialized in either place that would a allow me to support myself. . . . The arts organization I worked for gained in prestige and I was appointed executive director. With its prestige and my position came acquaintances I'd known for years who called me up and read their poetry over the phone while I was trying to work. Casual friends with whom I'd lost touch invited me out to dinner, and although the places we met were crowded and noisy, they pulled out stories or novel excerpts and decided to give a reading. That I was only able to hear a sentence or two now and again and told them so did not stop them. Just a few more pages, they'd say. Two burly, bearded painters of around fifty whom I'd met at a party crashed into my office one Wednesday afternoon sweating and out of breath. They were carrying half a dozen 6 x 5 foot canvases, oil paintings of groups of burly, bearded men dancing around a campfire wearing loincloths and antler headpieces. In the background more burly men in fringed buckskin pants beat drums in a forest. They lined the canvases up against one of the office walls and tried to insist I give them a show, saying if I didn't like these they had other paintings-beautiful landscapes of our county's green, rolling hills, dotted by Holstein cows with black-and-white markings. I saw my social life shrink as the tenor of my friendships changed. Nearly everyone I knew wanted me to read something they had written, or view something they'd painted or photographed. When I did not react in the way they had imagined, didn't give them exhibits, or recommend their work to publishers, they became hostile, distant and stopped calling. The advent of the internet made it possible for me to work out of my home and only go into the office once or twice a week. Meetings usually took place after lunch and I came to discover after being twice late that one could not take the freeway in the early afternoon. It was built in the early '60s and had never been expanded to accommodate the current population. Mangled cars, tow trucks, highway patrol officers filling out reports and stopped traffic had become a daily scenario. It was while taking one of the back streets to the meeting and passing the university that I saw the jogging woman. Her long hair still flew out behind her and she ran while pushing the stroller, looking exactly the same. I didn't pay much attention because I was thinking about the meeting, but when it concluded and I was having coffee with a co-worker, it occurred to me that those babies would now be around twelve years of age and at least five feet tall. . . . I continued to see the woman jogging with the stroller when I occasionally passed the university. Sometimes I speculated that she must operate a day care center, taking the youngest infants out during her daily exercise, while a co-worker stayed with the older children. At other times I thought that when she discovered the stroller's protective properties and her children grew too large, she placed dolls in it, or small dogs that stayed put. Since the stroller had a large canopy partially concealing what it contained and drivers passed by at speeds of around 45 mph or faster, it was entirely plausible that the stroller was empty. Strange, I thought, that she should continue to run on the main thoroughfare. Many sub-divisions had sprung up around it and there was no need for her to do something aerobic with wide open lungs while simultaneously inhaling carbon monoxide and other automobile emissions. She could have taken the many meandering side streets named zinfandel or chardonnay, which were devoid of people and automobiles since most who resided there needed double incomes to pay the mortgage and had driven to work hours earlier. . . . The French have an expression, les croulants, meaning the crumbling ones, but it refers to aging, decrepitude and impeding death. This was not my problem, not yet, although the generation preceding mine was the first that had decided to resist getting older, to combat gravity's effects. It was especially true of those who lived on the west coast-to such an extent that men and women in their late twenties and thirties stood under bright lights and peered into mirrors, bemoaning each infinitesimal line. It was so insidious that it infiltrated the minds of those who were not shallow, vain or stupid. Life is not kind to most people and they wanted to look as if they had never suffered any of life's defeats. Being in my body, in this skin, perhaps I didn't see myself the way others did. A friend of mine who also worked in the arts warned me that I should do something pretty soon-by which he meant marry and settle down. When I said there wasn't anyone I was interested in, he said I should settle for a Mister Not-So-Bad because my eggs were getting old and would eventually rot, even if I was a vegetarian. . . . My greatest disillusionment working in the arts was the fact that many of the participants had the same approach to life and their work as businessmen and women-the only difference was that they made much less money. Not content to let their art propel their careers, they connived, manipulated and struggled for power with as much fervor and determination as anyone on a corporate ladder. While alone in a café having dinner and waiting for my food, I saw an up-and-coming photographer enter through the glass doors. I waved and he came over to my table, asking if I wanted company, which I did. After the meal, he asked he if could show me some solarized prints, which were in a portfolio in his car. I liked him and accompanied him to the parking lot. Although it was quite cold he unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis, holding it in his right hand. It took me about a minute to process that a man I was walking next to was holding his penis on a cold December night while supposedly about to show me some photographs. I wondered if his intention was for me to take it in hand. I have to go I said, and without another word walked to where my car was parked. He hadn't followed me. As I drove away I wasn't frightened or angry because his gesture did not seem the least bit threatening. I was confused. Was he trying advance his career, did he want my organization to give him a show-or was my loneliness so apparent that he trying to be helpful? . . . Get out of here, go to New York, my friends said. At one time writers, artists and those who worked for arts organizations could move to New York, rent a reasonably priced apartment, meet those with similar interests, discuss art, philosophy, literature, go to readings, exhibits, theatre and so on. Today, the only artists I knew who lived in New York City were ones who had lived there a long time, with controlled rent, or those with trust funds. Almost every one of my acquaintances lived in Brooklyn or the Bronx and worked fifty hours or more per week, not on their art but at the jobs they needed to survive. They never got near a theatre because tickets were too expensive and what was staged was venerable, since rents were so high no theatre company could take risks on new, innovative productions. When my friends arrived home they were so exhausted that many projects were put on indefinite hold. These were well-respected poets, writers and visual artists, with a history of publication or exhibits, positive reviews, who had been awarded grants, prizes and other signs of affirmation. Another way people in the arts survived in New York was to marry a non-artist and attempt to be a nurturing housewife or househusband in between pursuing their careers. These arrangements did not usually last long, for those in the arts became too involved in their work, forgot about their domestic duties, frequently went out drinking or had sex with those of similar aesthetics-which resulted in their spouses throwing them out. . . . You cannot drive down a main street in any of the small towns in this county without coming across a wine bar, and so this is where we were, a friend and myself, drinking merlot and trying to talk above the din. On a mirror behind the bar were this evening's wine specials, written in black felt pen, but we could see ourselves behind the print. A terrible thing to happen to a girl she said when we observed our images. From our life in the margins and the wine county we exchanged several books. While my friend was reading the dust jacket of one of the titles, I thought about the jogging woman and wondered if she ran in the rain. It had been raining all day, had continued into the evening. My friend had just arrived freshly showered and with her hair still damp from the gym, her face flushed from jogging on a treadmill, becoming more so after she'd had some wine. Did the jogging woman create the life she wanted, fighting to keep everything static, and given her appearance and routine, succeed? It is not unusual here that many try to make time seize up. The leisure and financial security of being able to repeat activities over and over again is considered the good life, while having any sort of victory in staving off time and change is regarded as a triumph-for people sometimes refer to this place as God's country, because of the hills, vineyards and the Pacific ocean only twenty minutes away, but with god in absentia-a heaven with wine bars lit to make everyone appear just a little more attractive, laughing and happy voices intermingled with soft jazz, wine bottles lined up, and the clientele in reasonably good health, but not much else. The following morning I woke up fuzzy-headed but made myself a pot of coffee, went to the computer and began working. I did several hours of good, solid work which I should have been pleased about, but instead they were just more tasks I was able to cross off the "to do" list. I decided to run my errands in the early afternoon and deliberately went past the university. There she was so predictably in the distance, running past the university's main entrance. After all these years I couldn't decide if I found her compelling or annoying as she raced west, her brain and body saturated with endorphins, as if her salvation was held within their chemical components. I watched for several seconds until she became a spec of red-and-black spandex, moving in the bike lane in between and line of cars and a row of eucalyptus trees, then turned my attention to the road as traffic suddenly became dense and the driver ahead of me decided to repeatedly speed up then hit his brakes, for no apparent reason. next |