2013 In Review

I always knew I would have to rewrite my life. I just didn’t know how soon I would have to begin doing it.

I’ve only finished the first chapter of my novel, but lack of fame resulting from it is already a great concern. 

—Kendall Hailey, The Day I Became an Autodidact, and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies that Befell Me Thereafter

  

2013 was our first full year in Carmel Valley. Hot air balloons flew overhead, and we shared fruit with little friends on the ground. 

We have been welcomed by many neighbors, and got together as often as we could. Almost everyone is a parent here, so their schedules are full.

Painting

Full size

Many of you asked about my painting, how it's coming along. I have been working on the same project for several years, a picture of the San Francisco Bay. The most difficult parts of the picture—and perhaps the most interesting to work on—are the water and the sky. I wanted to color these areas first, before completing the land. 

Full size

I painted the water and sky several times. Each new layer was an improvement, but but they still didn't look 'right.' I painted a study of the entire composition, in order to make each look the way I wanted.

Study, 1/4 scale

Study, 1/4 scale

Study, 1/4 scale

Study, 1/4 scale

Looking at the same composition for so long, it becomes difficult to remember the desired effect, to hold it in mind and bring the picture closer to it. To clear my head, I went to Coronado Island and painted studies of San Diego Bay and the city. 

I applied the experience outside to more sky and water studies, taken from the San Francisco composition.

After all this study, I concluded that I'd taken the big picture in the wrong order. Instead of painting color in the sky and water first, I needed to color the land first, then sky, then water. The sky had to offset the land features, and the water must reflect the sky. I painted white over the water and started over on the land.

It often happens that the most important work on a picture is scraped off or painted over. The scraping off and the painting over are critical.

Max

Max grew taller this year. He had many trips to the beach and many get-togethers with guys in the neighborhood.

In the fall, Max ran for Student Council Representative from his class. He did not win, but we were proud of his campaign.

Hawaii

We hadn't had a real vacation in two years, so we counted our pennies and took off for Kauai. We stayed in a resort in Kapa'a, on the eastern shore of the island.

When Max goes to the beach, he is mainly interested in moving sand. Max says the sand on Kauai is of very high quality.

Misa

Misa dealt with 'health challenges' this year, that prevented her from teaching dance. They did not prevent her from keeping the house running and the son in motion at English and Japanese schools.

In October, my brother Mike and mother Lila got to visit us. We were thrilled to see family in California, which doesn't happen often.

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition, which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable. —Primo Levi

Good-bye, Summer

September marks our year, forcing reflection. I remember a Friday night in late August, many years ago. I was still single in San Francisco, living in a dark burrow of an apartment, on the slope of Nob Hill.

August 22, 1997   Friday

Silent, vacant days. 

Work was a joke, everyone plotting their escape. I sent out an e-mail about meeting for drinks after work. Most people didn’t get it or were on their way out of town or didn’t care. I went to the bar in North Beach anyway, in case someone showed up. Drank two glasses of wine, the room spinning elegantly, ordered dinner. No one came. I was neither surprised or disappointed in them, except for a new Chinese girl whom I have a crush on. 

Other young, pretty people infiltrated the bar. One woman sat with her long hair flying, her tummy exposed in the current fashion, expecting her boyfriend any minute. Voices grew louder and turned with the spinning room. Underneath them the sustained hammers of Joaquin Nin-Culmell sang a dirge for the summer of 1997.

August is exhausted. The last rose of summer lies limp, dilated, consumed by the ministrations of her eager lovers. A gold blade of evening sun cuts through the window glass. It’s over. Whatever we thought this summer would be, whatever we hoped for, dreaded or deserved. It came or it didn’t. Whatever we had—in thought or reality—is lost now, sealed up and closed down, frozen in memory, ended for all eternity.

Think of all the young Americans, teenagers and college students, on their way to Europe in June, their identical blue jeans bursting with libido. Tireless lovers, aspiring drug addicts, warriors against adulthood, victims of sun and bad food and nights sleeping on crowded trains and too much great art, searing their innocent blue eyes. 

How I loved them! How I wanted to be with them and to be one of them. Now they drag home. They sit in airport lounges, or stand in long lines, phoning their parents in the New World with a final plea to send more money. And whatever they wanted from this summer, whoever they lusted for; it happened or it didn’t. The happened and the unhappened are both put away, into the same oblivion. 

So, too, in my North Beach bar, the young and pretty clientele don’t know how late it is. The summer is over, only they don’t realize it. In Texas, my nieces and nephews are in school already. And the first niece—whose grandfather held her up at Rylie Church 19 years ago this fall—is at college and settled in her dorm room, busy becoming an adult. 

The girl with bare belly worries over a pay phone in the front of the bar. He isn’t coming. He was never coming. Pull your blouse down, my Sweet. No one is looking. It’s over.

2012 In Review & Film on Matt McGoff

Year-end greetings to each and all. In 2012, life came on thick and fast. I couldn't live it and write about it at the same time. 

On Christmas Day, I received notice of a new film about my art school roommate, Matthew McGoff, who died in 2010. The film was created by my friend John Thornton. Matthew lived an intense, messy and short life, much like the painter Amadeo Modigliani. 

The film is masterful, John's best work to date. Matthew would have loved it, and this is quite a distinction. Matt was a focused, driven man. Only 2% of life on earth met with his approval.

Okay, back to the almost-present. We began at our house in San Francisco, doing the normal stuff.

Max built this robot. He wanted it to follow him around the house, so he taped it to an electric car [bottom].

Max's school lunch, a Misa production.

Max inside the Space Needle, Seattle, Washington

Our big change this year was to try living in a new city. In January, we visited Seattle, Washington.

In February we visited the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento.  Max is still crazy for trains.

In April, Misa became a citizen of these United States, in a ceremony at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. This building is quite dramatic, and the ceremony moved me. 

On this day, a thousand people from more than one hundred countries took the oath of citizenship. 

The Master of Ceremonies greeted the new citizens in more than eight languages. They stood and recited their oath, then watched a taped speech by President Obama. 

Shadows, Yerba Buena Park, San Francisco

We decided to move to San Diego. The rest of the spring was spent getting ready to go, and saying good-bye to San Francisco.

Francis Scott Key Elementary School

Christian Wignall stops all cafe conversation by mounting his Penny-Farthing.

Max and a friend from Japanese school

We arrived in San Diego on July 1. The environment was radically different for us. For one thing, it was warm in summer. Max and I swam in the ocean at La Jolla Cove and Torrey Pines Beach. 

We explored Carmel Valley on our bicycles. Max began at a new elementary and a new Japanese school. He adjusted well and made many friends.

In November Misa voted in her first American election. We held an open house party for our neighbors and school mates. It was a great success, and we hope to do this again in 2013. 

Misa has done well driving new roads; she has always found her way home. She is teaching one regular Zumba class and filling in for other teachers.

San Diego has been good to us. The people at Max's school and at my job were especially supportive. We continue to adjust and explore and settle in. I'm working on the same art project, and I'll post more in-progress photos later in 2013. 

Happy New Year to you all. Please stay in touch. 

White Cathedral

The house we are renting in Carmel Valley is different from our house in San Francisco. It has high ceilings and lots of space. 

The greater difference is the atmosphere here, warmer and greener. The house came with an automatic sprinkler system and a gardner. This is a good thing, since both Misa and I are lousy at taking care of plants. We have the "Black Thumb."

There's a small park behind the house, where people run their dogs and throw frisbees. I'd forgotten that summer could be pleasant. In San Francisco, we ran the heat almost every day of the year, even in August. That may be hard to believe, but San Francisco has an unusual climate. Warm weather in the inland valley pulls cold fog across the city, so you only get a truly warm day a few times a year. It's like living with the thermostat stuck on 65° F.

I'm sitting in the back yard, shaded by palm trees. The fresh grass cools my bare feet. We've been here one month now. I can't be sure this place is going to work for us, in the long run. This time, here and now, may be worth all the money and work it took to get here.