Fire-breathing dragons and go-go dancers at Glow

The Dragons of Eden, by Lucy Hosking, more info here

Among the aging hippies, LED-addicted Burners, and baby-toting Generation X/Y/Zers at last weekend's “Glow: A festival of fire and light”, the fan favorite had to be the dragon. It polled well among those less prone to caricature too.

The bus length shiny silver body like a segmented wyrm built on top of a mobile home chassis (and headed by a multifaceted glass ball where the driver sits like the villain in the end-of-level robo-monster) was certainly eye-catching when it came around the corner, but it was the seven sharp-toothed dragon heads that really got your attention. As if that wasn't enough, closer inspection revealed the open-ended propane canisters lurking like tongues in each head's mouth. That really, ahem, fired the imagination.

“Does the dragon breathe fire?” asked wide-eyed children throughout the night. Parents lifted speculative gazes to the heads, then ran worried looks over the surrounding flora and fauna, all of which looked suddenly flammable.

“I think so, honey. Let's not stand right here, okay?”

Casey Gerstle, the Lightwalker

Nervous parents edging away from draconic destruction got help from the magnetic pull of flickering flames, four-storey projections, and eerie sounds coming from the crowd clustered in the courtyard nearby. I followed them over.

Fire spun on brass pipes, dragonflies cut from Volkswagens looked at me with hubcap eyes, and a line of exuberant artists shot flames into the air on a surreal arsenal of flame throwers. The crowd migrated between the attractions brought together by the Museum of Art and History, joined by the “Lightwalker”, who peered down with relentless amiability at children, adults, and flocking photographers alike. And at an event designed to showcase the skills and work of Santa Cruz's resident contributors to the annual Burning Man phenomenon, there were as many cameras as flames.

Lucy Hosking playing Satan's Calliope

Explosions back on the street created a current of bodies to surround “Satan's Calliope”, a Jetson's-style car, pyromaniacal pipe organ, and marvelous means of musical mayhem, all in one. The same remarkable woman who made the dragon created it, and this one she got to play with. Literally. It was connected to a keyboard, and as her fingers tickled the ivories, flames and explosions blared from the trumpets and pipes with screams like the devil's bagpipes.

It was fantastic.

Some Dancetronauts observe, some boogie

Flames flare and die, but the sternum-popping bass of the Dancetronauts never dwindled. On their bizarre Bowie-esque trailer and rising spaceship thingy, the DJs stood in astronaut bodysuits while scantily clad go-go dancers (is there any other type?) did their thing to the sides... It was weird. Here were all these artists on one hand, and an instant neon frat party on the other.

It all seemed slightly scandalous until I passed one mother who stooped down, pointed her child's attention to the booty-shaking and said “Look honey, those are called go-go dancers.” Very educational evening. Besides, our inner monkeys love bass, and the world's even more multifaceted than the driver-chamber of the dragon-thing, where a succession of people sat and waved their hands in front of the motion detectors that snapped the heads' jaws open and closed.

Santa Cruz is a groovy town but it knows its bedtime, and not long after 9:00 the Dancetronauts played their last song...but there was one more act to go. Samba music, dancing on stilts, burlesque choreography, fire eating, and leather corsets. Maybe it was five acts.

Whatever it was, the Samba Stilt Circus was incredible. The crowd gathered around and four-thousand eyeballs could not look away.

I can't recall ever seeing as large a group of humans in so good of a collective mood, grins and shaking hips across the generations, and in the end, no one noticed that the dragon heads never did spew their fire. Rest easy, moms.

And bring the kids back tomorrow night, they're going to like Part 2 even more...

The system's out of order, this lad's opinion, and the fire hasn't even started yet.

“Well, I guess that's what we get for unplugging for a few hours,” said the businessman, relaxed on his bench outside the shuttered BART train station. “They must have decided to go on strike late last night. My office hasn't decided what they want me to do about it yet.” He leaned back, no frown on his face as it angled towards the morning sun, his loafers tapping slightly to a beat only he could hear.

Here was a man at peace with the problem. The bag lady down the row to his left looked at him without expression.

In a parallel universe I took them both out for breakfast, heard their stories and watched them fall in unlikely love (Joaquin Phoenix and Susan Sarandon for the movie adaptation?), but I was itching to get to Santa Cruz. The fire and light festival started in eleven hours, and I had plans for lunch, then aspired to a full afternoon helping without getting in the way.

Run back to house to check for alternate route. Bus leaves in three minutes, back at station. Run back, intercept bus partway, disembark downtown Oakland where local TV crews were interviewing commuters standing in line for the replacement buses across the bridge. I chatted in a Scottish accent with the guy next to me in hopes of hooking an interview, but the woman in front of us had boobs.

Boobs trump Scotland, apparently.

Too bad, because I was all ready to give a foreigner's (sic) view of contemporary American democracy. “What do you think of the strike?” They would ask.

“Well, it's an essential part of your country, isn't it? Your Constitution was designed to protect ye from the government, but they're not really the main threat anymore, are they? Not since Reagan privatized the lot of it. No, it's the businesses, yer employers that've got the axe over yer heads now. The idea was that if ye were abused, ye could vote them out, but you canna vote for a new boss, can ye? So you've got the strike, it's the modern equivalent of the ballot, isn't it?”

They were right to go with the boobs.

Packed bus creeping across crammed bridge, tankers below, then puking us into an unfamiliar hub, clicking of flats, where frantic employees in florescent vests answered rapid-fire questions and held heavy flashlights in defensive positions, clip board shields. Next transport medium: I didn't even know San Francisco had an underground train.

The uniformed woman with hair extensions and long acrylic nails called me “hun” as she directed this poor lost tourist to the train, her coworker joining us in a threesome of “have a nice day” grins and well-wishing.

The guy in front of me was asleep in his Hawaiian shirt, but woke when we passed the baseball park and shuffled to the train station with me. “Sir, I'm afraid you can't take pictures of the equipment, for security reasons” said the employee who I recognized as the nice one from my last trip's Good Cop/Bad Cop experience. I'd already given one (mental) speech, so opted against lecturing him about the chronic and egocentric paranoia of the United States, instead going with more smiles and well-wishing.

I reached San Jose an hour and a half behind schedule, but well on my way to catching up on my This American Life and Radiolab podcasts. (David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell are geniuses. Genae.) I was already entertained, educated, and frustrated, and the best part of the day was yet to come...

A precise patriotism

Today's plan kind of sucked. But I've had this rental car for too long already, so I'd drive one hour up to San Francisco Airport, then bring a good book or two for the four hour return journey, which I hoped would distract me from thinking about Europe's public transit network.

Not the most patriotic start.

Vehicles today? Sure. Freeways? No thank you.

But screw that, today is too beautiful to spend it all on buses. I extended the rental by three days and will return it on my way to this Saturday's Thanksgiving Party. That's right, Thanksgiving. Cuz I'm Amurikan, and we do Thanksgiving. And in August. Cuz I'm Amurikan, and schedules do our bidding.

Getting more patriotic by the moment.

So I drove my internal combustion vehicle to the gigantic grocery store, where individual aisles have more food than most entire stores overseas, and the building as a whole could be divided up into a neighborhood. I stood in front of a display case with at least two dozen different types of food ready and waiting, little yellow cards behind each meat dish displaying the independently certified “Animal welfare” rating.

Most were Level Three, meaning no crates or cages, “enriched environment”, and “enhanced outdoor access”.

I was ready for some enhanced outdoor access of my own, so I took a sandwich, chips, and a drink down to the beach. And not just any sandwich, it was smoked turkey, pepperjack cheese, bacon, avocado, spinach, and...was it “sun dried tomato” aioli? (All on a “Dutch Crunch” roll, which no Dutch person has ever heard of, because we're Amurrika, we'll tell you what you eat.) The chips: unsalted potato goodness, cuz we offer that here. The drink: kombucha, cuz we offer that too.

And they say America has no cuisine of its own. I've never seen a sandwich like that anywhere else, and here they're in the bloomin grocery store.

On the path down to the beach I helped a lady call the phone number on a lost dog's tag, then we all chatted up a lovefest when he showed up to collect Sammy, whose golden retriever smiles were wide and juicy.

Americans are nice.

One opalescent mussel shell was sunbathing where I sat down, and behind me played four year-old Taylor, all blond hair and enthusiastic statements, under the watchful eye of his grandma and grandpa. (Yes you literalists, they had one eye, it was a gorgon family.) He cajoled grandpa into filling a sandcastle bucket with water so he could make cereal (Raisin Bran!), though by the time they got back it was ice cream (chocolate!).

I ate my sandwich with sun on my shoulders, amid a pleasant scatter of affable folk who didn't notice the dolphins cruising east, the otters sliding west, or the pelicans diving straight ahead south, but did see the seal slurking around every which way just offshore. Taylor announced that it was the mama seal.

Perhaps “patriotic” is not the right word, but it's good to be back.

Caution: this info comes with a couple cuties

Animals have half the answer.

Snowy egret wonders what
you're worrying about.

They don’t worry, plan, or stress about abstract possibilities; they live in the present moment only, heeding past lessons but not dwelling on them. That’s humanity’s gift, and its curse. Our humanity, or at least our brains, is toxic to itself.

So take the animal’s half answer, and give up the worry, fear, and anxiety of these giant brains, but take humanity’s gamble and replace them with the positive potential of those big squishy lumps. Maybe that’s wisdom, maybe it’s compassion, peace, or oneness. Whatever else it is, I bet it’s Love.

And now that I’ve purged that train of thought that occupied me during my shower this morning, we can about animals.

Sea lions under Santa Cruz Wharf

West Cliff Drive’s swooping strip of strolling sweetness is anchored at one end by the Santa Cruz Wharf, which stretches just far enough into the chilly water to make swimming around it an impressive accomplishment.

Under the far end are platforms whose original purpose may have been as docks, but which are now property of the sea lions and elephant seals, who snooze down there in giant puddles of themselves. You can hear their barks for miles, especially on a still night.

Just west of the wharf is the calm inlet where surfing schools take hordes of wetsuited newbies out on their giant spongeboards to learn. It looks like a ton of fun. Next time…

I imagine a substantial portion of the lesson is spent warning them not to paddle too far out, because then they’d reach Steamer Lane. A world class surf spot, if the waves at Steamer don’t kill an inexperienced person out there, the other surfers will.

Surfers are generally a high-spirited lot, but man oh man, do not get in their way when they’re doing their thing. Apparently when they stand up the tranquility runs off them faster than the saltwater.

           

That's a small wave for Steamer, but enough to catch.

     (Jack O’Neill invented the modern wetsuit and leash at Steamer…and lost an eye out there. No, I’m not kidding, and no I don’t know how.)

Drifting among the surfers (and probably amused by them) are my personal favorites, the sea otters. I find few things as relaxing as watching an otter lazily paddle around with the ease that speaks of utter comfort with one’s surroundings.

And because I know you are thirsty for factoids, sea otters are the largest species in their Family, which includes weasels and badgers. Yes, it’s a swimming badger, so don’t piss it off.

I wish I had pics but my lens isn't that good. http://carinbondar.com/2010/
11/this-weeks-cool-biology-job-sea-otter-population-ecologist/

You may already know they use rocks to break prey like abalone or urchins off their perches and break open the shells, making them one of the few animals to use tools. But did you know they have a little pouch of skin under each of their forelegs where they hold food and their chosen rock while they’re swimming around? Me neither. And according to Wikipedia, they prefer to use the one on the left. Because if you’re an animal that amazing, you’re allowed to have eccentricities.

They are also rare among sea mammals in that they don’t rely on blubber to stay warm, instead they have the thickest hair in the entire animal kingdom, with nearly one million hairs per square inch. Yes you read that right. Even with hair that thick, the water out there’s a cold place to live, so sea otters eat 25-38% if their own body weight daily. Food can be digested and passed in three hours. And no, I’m not going to make a joke about Indian food now.

You're welcome. http://www.tumblr.com/
tagged/sea%20otters?before=18

And just in case you didn’t realize they’re adorable, they will sometimes hold hands while they sleep. Not enough? After hours of being groomed, a baby otter’s fur is sometimes so fuzzy, fluffy, and full of air that they “float like a cork and cannot dive.”

Every so often you can see a whale spout in the bay, though it’s hard to tell them from wind-whipped white-caps sometimes. Gray whales swim closest to shore, and March is the peak month for their northward migration. There are also humpbacks and blues out there, the latter being the largest animal to ever live on Earth.

Of all the living things in the oceans, which would you say are the most popular? Who sells the most posters, stuffed animals, and tickets to Sea World? (No, not Great Whites, though yes, we have them too, though you’ll never see one.) What marine species gives humans the strongest, immediate, and instinctive sense of reverence and joy?

You can always tell there’s a pod of dolphins when the people on the path stop, stare, then smile.

A lot of the time they’re actually seeing porpoises, which despite an inexplicably lower popularity are still amazing animals. As a matter of fact, I suddenly feel a tad defensive on behalf of these remarkable cetaceans. Just because they didn’t get their own TV show when you were a kid doesn’t mean they’re boring, you know.

Dall’s Porpoises are out in the Bay here, and they are one of the fastest, most maneuverable cetaceans in the world. I bet they could alert the authorities, catch a crook, and save a drowning boy every bit as fast as that Hollywood show-off…

But who am I kidding, there is something about dolphins. The awesomeness that comes to mind is the “common” dolphin. Common? There’s a sunset every day too, but I still stop and watch.

There, that one's mine. Natural Bridges State Beach

This blogging thing is particularly enjoyable tonight, since I just learned that there are Northern Rightwhale Dolphins swimming around out there, which are a species with no dorsal fin. I wonder if they are sometimes mistaken for seals…on PCP.

And more! Have you ever heard of Rissos Dolphins? You have now. And why will you remember them? Because they can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and be 13.5 feet long. Now that’s a dolphin.

After that I almost don’t feel I need to mention the killer whales…

And to think, I started this post intending to talk mostly about birds.

Where I've been living and what I've been loving

With only a week left in the US, and less than that in Santa Cruz, I have reached the time for goodbyes.  I'm eating last meals with friends new and old, and savoring finite excursions in this fine town. (No, I’m not ready to say goodbye to the cat yet. I refuse! I will not go gentle into that good night. Do cats need passports?)

One of the coves on Westcliff

One of the pieces of Santa Cruz I will miss the most is Westcliff Drive, the road and bike path that wind for three miles along the coastline from Natural Bridges State Beach in the west to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the east.

Nearly every picture I’ve posted since coming back has been from there, and in the last three months I have ridden and/or walked along it more days than not.

Benches carved with dedications are a great place to sit and watch the strollers, strutters, and stallers work their gradual way past low sandy cliffs and erosion-controlling rockfalls. A series of inlet beaches frame waves swirling into each other, tide pools scruffy with tenacious seaweed, and egrets grazing on sand crabs.

More about these guys later

Ice plant covers the slopes with its waxy spikes and martian flowers. There is a particular spot that is the favorite rolling spot of a particular pit bull, who thrashes on his back in pure canine bliss, long pink tongue hanging out the side of his muzzle. His owner is among one of the groups of middle-aged Santa Cruz men whose clothes and pot smoking habits remain unchanged since high school. (Santa Cruz is known for its “Peter Pan” style of adult manhood. It's one of the few places on Earth where a vagabond like myself looks positively mature.)

People go by foot, bicycle, roller blades & skates. There are skateboards, unicycles, and a daily segway tour at 3:00, whose participants demonstrate the appropriate level of embarrassment at being seen on a segway, though I've seen stone-faced people of all ages subtly sweeping back and forth in long curves, the way I do on a bicycle when the music, sun, and universe are all working in harmony.

It's a distinct sort of beautiful in the fog

Foreigners, Americans, and locals walk here, though the first two are much the same to the lattermost, in a town that honors and despises those who grow up here and stay.

(Santa Cruz is hard to leave, and some in the mob of those who come
for the university and never leave refer to it as “The Velvet Rut.”)

Expensive houses pack the nearby neighborhoods, but the front row with the view is nearly uninhabited. These must be among the world’s smallest multi-million dollar homes, and mostly belong to wealthy people who work too much to come enjoy them more than a couple weekends a year. One of them has installed fake hawk noises to scare pigeons off their roof, and it’s ridiculous enough to be more entertaining than annoying, though the squawking clashes with a beautiful sunset. The petulant egocentrism of the hyper-wealthy, on display.

But no one looks towards the houses, since the other side faces straight out on Monterey Bay. Just offshore the bottom drops off to a mile deep, but from there the Monterey Canyon delves an additional mile down, the depth of the Grand Canyon. So at its deepest, the bottom of the bay is twice the maximum depth of the Grand Canyon.

Given the geography hidden below it, the surface of the bay, for all its celebrated waves, seems eminently modest. But knowing what's down there makes the saltwater in my blood sigh in liquid awe.

This deep ocean conduit brings cold, nutrient-rich water into the bay and fosters the thriving kelp forest and marine wildlife that we take for granted by necessity, because fully appreciating it would take all day, every day, and druid robes besides. And they’d probably have to be made of kelp, which sounds heavy.

More on the wildlife in my next post...

I hope it doesn't come as a surprise

Yesterday I went for a walk on one of the dozen stunningly beautiful beaches a few minutes up the coast from Santa Cruz, where the majestic waves of the Pacific Ocean were roaring up close to the shore then getting embarrassed by a kelp audience and quieting down to softer white flows of water that slid humbly up the sand.

I was with one of the many friendly and kind-hearted Americans I know, comfortable in our conversations about what engenders happiness and a good life, Buddhist principles and finding the balance between individualism and community. As we walked the length of the beach, a couple tiny pieces of plastic caught my eye, since we have an admirably widespread aversion to littering that leaves our coastline impressively clean.  The only thing on the beach besides footsteps of humans and canines were little jelly caps of mysterious oceanic providence, but sure looked like mermaid slippers to me.

On the way back we stopped by a locally owned and operated restaurant for a snack of fresh local calamari. We ordered the chicken and vegetable soup, and when it turned out they had quoted the Soup of the Day wrong, they gave us the tomato-basil bisque for free. America reliably has by far the best customer service I've ever seen. Then we returned to a town by the sea where an hour's walk along the shore provides good odds of seeing seals, otters, and dolphins.

I thought to myself "I really love this land." And shortly thereafter "one probably wouldn't guess that from my last blog."

So yes Lady America, you fair damsel simultaneously insecure and arrogant, wise and foolish, I love you. You are beautiful, noble, ridiculous, inspiring, disappointing, and at the end of the day, one helluva nice place to live.

I am deporting myself. (And fair warning, a lot of sex talk.)

Note: This is not my favorite of my posts, nor typical, so if anyone finds it via Lisa's reblogging of my other post, skip this one and read any of the others for a better representation.

I remember thinking that eating in a restaurant or seeing a movie alone were the loneliest, saddest things on Earth.

Nothing to do with the blog, just lots of Santa Cruz pics.

I got over the first one many years (and many passport stamps) ago, but I had never actually seen a movie alone until this week. I wanted to see The Hobbit before he put on his ring and vanished…from theaters. So I biked into town for the Tuesday matinee.

I can happily report that I didn’t feel lonely, awkward, or out of place for being there alone. But I did feel lonely and out of place…in America.

The preview to the previews  was commercials, but fine, show me ads. But they showed this one. I don’t like linking to an advertisement, but in case you’d like to see what I’m talking about.

Ugh. More digitally animated baby humans and animals. Yawn through the pastiche.

But worse than dull, I find this ad irresponsible. It’s an implicit endorsement of a culture whose parents are too immature to talk to their kids about sex.

“Where do babies come from?” Asks the kid. The parents evade. Chuckle chuckle. Then the kid goes home and learns about sex from the internet. We have an entire generation (or two…or three?) who have learned about sex from pornography. That is a crime against ourselves.

Why talk to kids about sex even if it’s uncomfortable? Because otherwise they’ll get their sexual miseducation elsewhere. I presumably got mine from a 70’s era informative book of the “When a man and a woman love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug” variety, with drawing of the fuzzy pencil type that I associate with advent calendars. Illustration more appropriate to missionary handouts than the missionary position.

But I really got my info on the playground, which was cute in a clueless adorable way, but man oh man am I glad there was no internet back then.

Of course, neither kids not parents enjoy that process (though judging from my experience in college, Jews do a much better job of it) so my advice to parents: delegate the job to an uncle/aunt/godfather/godmother.

My family’s rather progressive-for-the-era plan was for our godmother to buy us a Playboy when we turned 14. Or as it 13? I don’t know, because years before that my folks caught us with a Hustler. We didn’t know why we wanted it, but we knew we weren’t supposed to have it, since sex was this big secretive thing that was the focus of 90% of pop culture, and that was good enough for us.

Part of America: urban gas guzzlers saying "B educ8d."

I am sooo tired of television, and our mass culture, performing for our weaknesses. And it’s not that I think I’ll find a country that does it any better, but it’s harder to tolerate when it’s your own. We fancy ourselves such cultural pioneers, but even after all these decades we’re even still fighting about gay marriage? Really?

Ok. Breathe. Thank you for letting me rant. I feel much better. Did you know you were a therapist? What do I owe you?

After my tirade played itself out in my head, I sat in the theater feeling out of place while everyone else cracked up. I deeply envy those who can just laugh at a cutsie commercial and not overthink it, I really do, but I can’t help it. Television, advertising, the media, all that stuff is way too powerful to waste on easy outs and inane fluff. And if I start thinking about the messages it sends women…my vision is already hazing towards red.

It’s enough to make me flee the country.

So I think I will.