SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM by Joan Didion

 

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM is the third Joan Didion book I’ve read in as many years. Her relatable voice holds its own unique place in journalism. I am awed at her use of language and her ability to beautifully sculpt a story out of seemingly ordinary beginnings.

The title, taken from a Yeats poem, represents a collection of essays written by Didion during the 1960’s. The essays are mostly about California (adding a personal benefit for me as a new Californian.) She talks about things like having dinner with John Wayne, growing up in the Sacramento Valley, and specifically about her journalism (…we would now say she was ‘embedded’…) during the Haight- Ashbury days in San Francisco. Among the many stoned-out hippies she encounters during her San Francisco travels she meets Susan, a five-year-old on acid. Susan tells Didion she’s in High Kindergarten. She lives with her mother and some other people, just got over the measles, wants a bike for Christmas, and particularly likes Coca-Cola, ice cream, and the beach. For a year now her mother has given her both acid and peyote.⠀

The chapter I connected with the most was: On Keeping a Notebook. She describes the odd and random things she writes in her notebooks. Things that wouldn’t necessarily make sense to anyone but her. Quotes that aren’t necessarily about the words, but the feeling evoked when she heard them.⠀

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it… Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed.”⠀

Oh how I understand this sentiment. My children will someday find my notebooks of phrases and desultory thoughts and may very well give up looking through them and simply toss them away. My hope is that they don’t throw them away in youth, pre-50’s let’s say. They’ll find more use for them as they age. So much of what didn’t make sense before will eventually begin to weave together their history. Their shared story.⠀

SLOUCHING has been sitting on my shelf for over a year. I am so grateful to have read it for #theunreadshelfproject2020. Grateful that the words have now soaked into my marrow, the way all Didion writings do. This also checks off the #mmdchallenge to read something from the decade you were born (I’ll save you from looking it up: it’s the 60s. -ha!)

The book ended up heavily underlined by the time I was finished; ideas and phrases I want to be able to look back and remember. I’m so sorry I haven’t read this collection sooner. I thoroughly enjoyed it…proving that you don’t have to read the ‘latest’ books. This 1968 publication was just as relevant today. (Hoping this 1965’er can be as well!)

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ABODE: Thoughtful Living with Less by Serena Mitnik-Miller and Mason St. Peter⠀

This book sits on our coffee table, not as a decorative piece (although it certainly falls into that category) but as a reference book. Since purchasing it a few months ago, I have come back to it again and again for inspiration and ideas.⠀

Serena and Mason are the owners of General Store in San Francisco. In Abode, they encourage their readers to live intentionally and in a gracefully simple way. Their home is filled with wood and stone and always with an eye to the outdoors. Their storefront celebrates artisan goods with warm tones and beautiful focal- point items.⠀

I also appreciate that they write about pieces they desire but cannot yet afford; this resonates with all of us to some degree. But keeping our eye on the ‘ideal’ is not a bad thing as it motivates us to hold the end result in mind even while using a ‘place maker’ until the final product can be acquired.⠀

Dual purpose items and editing your possessions are some of the common themes throughout this book. I am grateful for their approach to creating a welcoming home filled with beautiful items that doesn’t overwhelm the senses or the environment.⠀

I have been guilty of buying ‘pretty books’ because I liked the way they looked around my home. I was definitely drawn to the warm tones of this book cover, but its content is what sealed the deal. This will be an oft-used book of reference links and idea inspiration. (I also can’t wait to visit their California storefront!)

sea level: 0 ft

When we’ve had enough of the ‘bedroom community life’ of Sacramento, our first instinct is to drive over to Berkeley/San Francisco; it always feeds our urban-loving souls.

According to Google Maps, it takes us 1 hour and 31 minutes to get there. Piece of cake. Not to mention the fact that the west coastline is so much cooler than the middle of the state.

It feels good to get lost in the busy crowds of college students getting ready for the new semester as well as rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of revolutionaries past. Those sixties demonstrators that, surely, would be gobsmacked at the state of our political climate today.

Okay, so it’s a horrible picture – but I found a new Berkeley sweatshirt that I hope to wear to some Golden Bear football games this fall. Plus – it’s proof that I wore my Birks in Berkeley. (I think it’s a city ordinance or something.) 🙂

I’ve never been to a college town that doesn’t have a few fabulous thrift stores. Of course it’s always hit-or-miss but this time, I found a treasure.

I mean, their doorway caught my attention first. I have saved years and years of broken dishes to someday learn to mosaic. Someday!

I walked the aisles of this vintage shop, waiting for something to call my name (kidding, not kidding) until I ran across this soft, leather backpack. I checked it over really well but had a hard time finding a pricetag. Finally, I reached into a suede-lined pocket and pulled out a tag: $28. What?! It promised to carefully protect my camera for many years to come. A match made in….well, Berkeley!

Love and peace and bicycle racks.

Before leaving the Berkeley area, I met up with a person I’d met online who was interested in one of my favorite chandeliers. I used it in my shop down in the West Bottoms and was selling it on FB Marketplace. When she said she was interested in buying it and lived in San Francisco, I told her we come to the area often and would let her know when we were coming next.

When we knew we were coming, we decided to meet up at Whole Foods in Oakland. She works for Google and guess where she’s from….

….Lee’s Summit, Missouri! -ha! It was nice to stand and chat about our favorite KC places – and the fabulous California weather.

While we were in Oakland we had to stop by our Arch Nemesis and show them who’s boss!!

(yessss……we brought this flag from home for this specific reason. -ha!)

Thank you for letting us crash your cool town, Berkeley (even though we’re boring suburbanites.) We’ll be back soon.

We decided to try a new-to-us beach in Marin County: Rodeo Beach.

It was a perfect day outside. There were some surfers and the beach was sprinkled with sun-loving families. We weren’t intending on lazing on the beach, but wanted to check out the beach and take some pictures. Scott said ‘take me to the ocean’ so to the ocean we went!

(He takes as many pictures as I do.) (Almost.)

I’m not sure I will ever get used to succulents growing all over the place like wildflowers do in the Midwest. It’s so bizarre for me to see. These succulents were everywhere.

I like rocks. I love to see their crags and formations from years and years of existence.

I love to see a girl in a pink tutu that doesn’t take it too seriously. Dirty and sandy and in perfect use. 😉

Rodeo Beach is also a dog-friendly beach. Is there any joy more pure than a dog playing in waves??!

Title: A Pug in the Pacific

Livin’ their best life. An old Jeep carrying surf boards and an old van equipped with camping pop-outs and cooking gear. Twenty-something and digging life.

Swimmers. Surfers. Sailboats. Fishing boats. Yachts….it really was a perfect day to be near the Pacific.

I can’t believe we get to live so close to the ocean’s shore. This is always a fun daytrip.  We’ve finally stopped doing only the kitschy touristy thing and branched out into the less-known areas of the shore. We continue to be tourists in our own state!

Semi-Stay-Vacation

Scott took a week of vacation this month and instead of packing it with the many activities we’ve done on vacations so far this year, we decided to have a more ‘quiet’ vacation week this time.

We decided to travel the breadth of Northern California. We live in the middle of this area, so we are spending a day on the west coast side, coming home, regrouping, then spending a couple of days exploring around Lake Tahoe on the east side – completely new territory for us! We’re very excited to make our Trial Run trip to Tahoe. It will be our first pancake. Our trial-and-error adventure so that next time, we’ll be even more prepared to know what to do and what not to do. We’re staying at an Airbnb in Carnelian Bay at the northwestern edge of the lake. I can’t wait to share it with you all!

But for today, some Pacific Ocean wandering along the Bay then over to Berkeley to reconnect with our hippie vibe. We love hanging out in Berkeley! I have a quick hook-up with an online friend in Oakland and then we’ll head back home – undoubtedly filled with more information about the Bay Area then what we’ve learned so far. In our other trips into San Francisco we’ve concentrated on all the touristy things to see. This time we hope to hit some more out-of-the-way places to experience the area in a whole different way.

It will be a fun adventure together. No pressures. No timelines. Just plenty of pictures and plenty of reconnection. We’ve needed the time together and are looking forward to being away from all the normal routines for rebooting and revamping our ways of communication and connection.

I hope you’ll enjoy discovering things along with us! Many more pictures to come, I’m sure…

grateful for a week of vacation…

Scott went back to work today after being off for a week. I am thankful for the week of vacation. I am thankful to be back to a routine. You know the feeling, right?

We all have different kinds of friends in life. It adds the spice to living. When we announced we were moving to California, almost to a person our friends said, ‘We can’t wait to come visit you there!’ It’s something you say, no? It just seems like the appropriate thing to lessen the upcoming distance in your friendship.

But not our friend, Rachel. As soon as we found a house here in California, she sent me a text with her available dates and asked, ‘When can I come?’ (big grin) For any enneagram followers, Rachel is an 8. She waits for no man! She strikes out and gets what she wants. A weekend trip to the west coast was what she wanted.

And we were more than happy to oblige!

Therefore, our week of vacation was spent preparing for Rachel’s arrival, the daytrips we took with her, and then spending some quiet evenings alone after she left – vegging and relaxing. It was the perfect week!

It was great having Rachel here. She is a bundle of sunshine and energy. But we were also glad to have a representation of Kansas City walking around in our California home. It was a nice connection to our home town and our first out-of-town guest.

We picked her up from the airport and drove to San Francisco – defying the rain to stop our plans. We ate seafood on the boardwalk and shopped at an adorable Marketplace on the pier that was filled with artisan cheese shops, meat and fish markets and everything in between. All local shops. Scott and I both want to head back there soon with a cooler in the trunk to buy some freshly caught fish and make – what I’m sure will be – the most amazing charcuterie board ever! We always look forward to going back to San Francisco. There’s so much to see and do. And there’s nothing quite like the smell of ocean air all around you.

I told Rachel my goal for the weekend was for her to be able to go home and say, ‘We saw the ocean and then the next day, we saw the mountains.’ That’s the greatest thing about where we live – we are a short drive to both extremes.

On Day 2 we drove to Calaveras Big Tree State Park to gawk at the enormous sequoia trees. For me and Scott, it was our first time seeing snow for the year. It was chilly but certainly not unbearable. Besides, the enormity of the sequoias and the immense height of the pines kept your mind off any cold. It was a beautiful, picturesque drive. We stopped to take the occasional picture (but never enough for me!) and even popped into a local donut shop in a small town along the way. After seeing the trees (and eating our picnic lunch in the middle of the park…but inside the warm car!), we stopped in a few antique shops in towns we passed on our way up the foothills. It was the perfect little daytrip.

(Scott is standing on the stump of a giant sequoia. For reference, Scott is 6’3″!)

We arrived back home in mid-afternoon as the Kansas City Chiefs were playing their play-off game against the Indianapolis Colts. We recorded the game so we could watch it a little later than the start time. We sped through the commercials and eventually caught up to the end of the game to watch with the rest of the world as the Chiefs decidedly, 31-13. We are now gearing up for the game on Sunday against the New England Patriots for the AFC Championship. All fingers and toes are crossed.

On Day 3 – and sadly the last day Rachel was here – we drove around our nearby town of Folsom. We spend a lot of time in Folsom as well as attend church there. We wanted to show her our little historic church where we attend as well as some area shops. We did a little shopping, grabbed some lunch, then drove by the Folsom Prison (made famous by Johnny Cash) before driving to the airport in Sacramento for her return flight home. It was a jam-packed weekend and it felt invigorating and adventuresome.

For the remaining days of his vacation, Scott and I worked on a few projects around the house and did the normal running around town for this and that. But mostly, we took it easy. We watched some favorite movies and we watched some new ones. We played card games (complete with thick banter and bullying) and Scott made some wood projects in his workshop (which I will blog about soon.) I worked on my California Adventures album (also, an upcoming blog post.)

Scott and I are good at doing hard things together and doing slothful things together… we are a good team and you know what? I really miss him when he’s gone back to work after being off for a week…

We continue to enjoy our life out here on the west coast. It’s also a lot of fun when others come and enjoy it with us. Thanks for a great visit, Rachel!

San-Fran-Giving

Since Scott has to work on Thanksgiving Day, we celebrated a few days earlier by taking a day trip to San Francisco. It’s what I like to call a Scouting Trip – checking out all the sites we want to visit when friends and family come to town. It’s about a two-hour drive so an easy jog over to the bay. It was a perfect day (except a little bit of smokey haze from the fires.)

It’s hard to not think about earthquakes when crossing the many bridges in and out of San Francisco. Still, they are breathtakingly beautiful.

Seeing this couple sitting at the Bay’s edge made me think of the song, ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’. I so badly wanted to know their love story…their life experiences. They were perfectly content to sit at the water’s edge and enjoy the weather, the people and the excited energy all around them.

We drove to the piers and walked around. While others saw seagulls and ships and tug boats and islands, I saw…

“Whoa!, look at these cool boards!!”

And Scott said…

“Those are awesome chains!”

We are a dorky couple.

Is this not a classic picture?! The water was literally feet in front of them. Ships and beauty was everywhere. And not one of them was seeing it.

Meanwhile we were all being side-eyed big time!

Fisherman’s Wharf was so wonderfully touristy. I loved it all!!

My last supper would definitely include crab. I am a big fan! And clam chowder? Gimme it alllll.

The Alcatraz Tour is definitely on our list of things to do in the near future. Looking at it, I couldn’t help but hear my son say he doesn’t buy the idea that no one could swim the distance to escape. He’s convinced it’s a definite possibility! 🙂

Total respect, cyclists. I might be able to swim to my escape from Alcatraz but there’s no way I could bike up these steep hills either!

I love, love, love, love brightly painted front doors. And even though we didn’t seek out the Painted Ladies homes (made even more famous in the Full House tv show) we did see beautifully painted homes along the waterfront. I wonder if their monthly mortgage payment is over $1000?? (hahahahahahahahahhahahaaaa)

And then we made it to the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s so amazing to stand at the base of such an iconic landmark of America.

The haze was a lens we saw everything through. But it was still mesmerizing. (I only took 6 zillion photos.)

At times, my camera had trouble focusing on anything because all it saw was haze. While some haziness is typical for San Francisco, the wildfire smoke wasn’t helping.

As the sun set, it was time for us to cross this beauty and head back home.

One of the biggest lessons we learned on our San Francisco Scouting Trip was to squeeze the day between rush hour traffic. Poor Scott – he drove bumper to bumper for hours. I’m sure some of it was Thanksgiving traffic as well but it made me wonder how many people must live and work between San Francisco and Sacramento. It took us almost double the time to get home than our quick trip out. That’s okay; it just meant more time in the car together. Music to listen to and reflections to be made.

This car made it worthwhile too. We saw it around Berkeley so I was hoping it was an English Lit professor making his way home after a trying day of lectures and student conferences.

Come visit us soon! We have a few ideas of where we can go explore together.