Not Making Sense
This page does not appear to offer a path out of my discouragement, but I’m going to type anyway. The morning is still new enough to hold the possibility of a shift. Thick white clouds are drifting slowly above the hills, now and then giving way to portals of blue, and the world is beaded with the remnants of raindrops glittering like rhinestones in the trees. I can already hear the madcap woodpecker boring into the stacks on the roof of our house, sounding like a power drill, evoking thoughts of concussion, obsession, and destruction. Everything seems precarious.
It is crucial not to succumb to self-pity or despair, but even in my own insular world, things have been in disrepair lately, with little progress toward a remedy. My wise husband often points out that the best news may be the absence of new bad news, but sometimes we crave a morale boost. In any event, it’s usually better to venture out than passively wait for one’s luck to change, so I embarked upon a few expeditions in the course of the week, mostly visiting friends and wandering.
One of my buddies, K, was passing through Santa Barbara on Monday, and we met up for lunch at what used to be a shopping plaza and is now a sort of ghost town. It’s a very pretty ghost town, to be sure, replete with fountains and tile adornments and a view of the mountains in the distance, but it was static and empty, either over or waiting to begin. There were very few people, no bustle of commerce, a surreal quiet. Everything felt peculiar and off-kilter, like an incoherent dream. There were many vacant storefronts blinking in the sunlight, but also some brave new tenants: galleries, studios, even a Museum of Sensory and Movement Experiences, which strikes me as a creative and ambitious endeavor, if a bit puzzling. A women’s apparel store that used to be the go-to source for classic ladies’ clothing of a decidedly tidy and conservative slant now featured floral prints in puce and fuchsia and lime green––an ill-fated attempt to summon 1960s fashion? A sort of nostalgia gone haywire? I couldn’t figure it out. There was a curious randomness to this mall: a Pilates studio adjacent to a storefront church, an office for the Girl Scouts of California, kitchenware, manicures, and a sprawling consignment showroom filled with the furnishings of affluent dowagers. “Dead people’s stuff,” is how K put it.
We could not resist going into Dream World Collectibles, a shadowy realm filled with comics, toys, and various weird figurines. There was something mysterious about it, like entering a museum after hours. There stood a vintage Barbie in her original box, GI Joes, tiny toy vehicles, stacks of comic books and graphic novels. Behind the counter was a jovial fellow named Jay.
“What’s going on here?” I asked him, referring mostly to the stillness of the mall.
“It started with the pandemic,” Jay replied. “People discovered how easy it is to shop online and never have to go anywhere.”
But he was refreshingly undaunted. “I’ve adjusted,” he said. “We’re getting by. This doesn’t even feel like work. I have a beautiful wife and family, and I love what I do. I’m a lucky man.”
His attitude made me feel hopeful.
And there was no one I’d rather wander through a weird dreamland with than my friend K, an artist to the core. She observed it all with a mixture of fascination and detachment, and we talked about heavy stuff without bringing each other down, maybe just sort of dragging it along behind us, and we laughed a lot, because somehow we are two East coast girls who landed here, implausibly, and we don’t expect it to make sense.
The next day I had my heart broken by my three-year-old grandson, who does not realize the power he has to do that. It was one of those FaceTime visits, during which he barely looked up and announced that he did not feel like talking, and I was reminded again how far away and irrelevant I am.
“Get over it,” is Monte’s advice.
On Wednesday I went to Lompoc to meet up with various people. I always have a pleasant time in Lompoc; it’s an underrated town, in my opinion. I stopped for coffee with extra shots of espresso and launched some schemes with my former colleague Donna, and afterwards we drove over to a friend’s house that is going to be sold. The place reverberated with memories. We felt the joy and poignancy of its long history as we walked through the rooms and stood around in the backyard talking while the calla lilies bloomed and the painted wood of an old shed peeled and blistered, and the various curves and arches of the house were as eloquent as poetry, and then the fog opened up into a silvery kind of sunlight that saturated all the colors.
I started to get that giddy feeling, that “everything-is-so-heartbreakingly-beautiful” feeling, and I knew I was still here.
The final flourish was a walk at a neighboring ranch yesterday with two other friends…yes, walks and friends keep entering into this. It may well be the most reliable cure for the blues. We climbed to a high point with amazing views, and it rained, sometimes hard, but we sat under a tree and sipped very hot tea from small porcelain cups, and we walked back through bumpy cow-pocked muddy earth, and my legs ached but my heart felt good.
There was a hailstorm yet to come. White pearls of frozen raindrops bounced on the ground; one landed on my hat and lingered, and I was disproportionately delighted. The squall passed through and the sunshine resumed, and this is my idea of a blizzard.
Now a new morning is upon us. We probably will not get call-backs from anyone about repair work needed, and it’s possible some new problem will erupt, and I don’t even need to look at the news out in the world to know things are dire. A good friend of ours is in the hospital, someone with whom we were young together, riding bicycles and camping and raising kids, and now we are waiting to hear how he’s doing, and it underscores the vulnerability we all feel.
The macadamia blossoms are in voluptuous bloom and the bees are humming and we are not trying to make sense of anything.
