| Walking up State Street from the ocean, Watching the sun rise over the ocean, The zoo, and the whole experience, The Sunday art exhibits by the sea, Staying in a motel on the beach with the kids at Christmas, Old Spanish Fiesta Days' parade in August, Hope Ranch, .The campus of the University of Santa Barbara, The train depot, Osborne's bookstore on State Street, Joe's Restaurant for ravioli or prime rib, The antique and second-hand stores, Aloha Restaurant for char-burgers, The Courthouse, its courtyard, and the view, J.K. Fripple Restaurant, The Art Museum, Walking all over town, The homes, The stores, El Paseo Restaurant where they roll back the roof for lunch, Cocktails at El Paseo, The shops at El Paseo, The clean air, people walking unhurriedly, culture, taste,class, creativity, Spanish architecture, Flowers, trees, lush foliage, The American Indian exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, The mountains, The Mission, Rocky Nook Park, (You call it your hospital). When life has gotten too much for you, you take a drive up the coast on U.S. Highway 101. The two hours from Los Angeles are beneficial to your decompression. When you get to the city of Santa Barbara you can see the Mission up on the hill. When you get up there you pass by the Mission, cross the stone bridge, make a quick right, and turn into Rocky Nook Park. The nineteen acre park was donated in l928 to Santa Barbara County in the name of Mrs. T.S. Oliver by friends. Although the park is well-attended, the wild atmosphere is retained. There are live oak, eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and sycamore trees inhabited by woodpeckers, titmice, flickers, rufus, towhee and crows. In addition to these wild things are some city comforts, such as picnic tables, a barbecue big enough to roast a pig, swings, a wooden jungle gym and toilet facilities. The park closes at dusk. But the best part is Mission Creek. When you get out of your car, you leave the city and its machines. In this wild setting a human voice is an intrusion. Wildflowers -- blue, yellow, orange, red punctuate your walk, and there is so much green, soothing green, and the smell of eucalyptus. You see nothing vertical, everything is curves and leaning, lazy permissive shapes more suited to your humanness than the perfect squares and exact perpendiculars of the city. The caw of crows and the tit-tit of birds decorate your auditory landscape, but they are secondary to the roar of the creek calling you to climb down to the water. You come to this place when your tangled mind needs healing. You come away with the knots relaxed and the strands separated, the impasses in your thinking are broken through by the white water as it pushes its way between the boulders. It carries your trouble with it and fills its place with peace, and in the pools and gentle ebbing at the shore, you watch the rhythmic reflections and something strong begins to possess you, something eternal. You sit on a rock and look down at the clarity of the water, unabashedly showing you what lies beneath. It is all beauty and perfection each stone, each root, each bit of green moss, there is order and harmony. There is cause and response, there is logic. You take your bare foot from its shoe and carefully place it among the stones. It's color is different, but the inner forms are definitely not foreign -- organic and organic -- roots and rocks and the structure of your foot and toes. Your foot seems to be eternal also -- until the cold water makes it ache and grudgingly you have to remove it, but as soon as it thaws you enter it again to admire its sameness to the rest of the organic matter. Ten crows gather in the white eucalyptus trees overhead, alternately swooping and roosting, calling Caw Caw Caw. Are you friend or foe? They line up on a branch. What have they come to say? Are they truthtellers? You ask the butterfly that waves silently between you. Maybe their message is for you to decipher in your dreams -- for after a short while they fly on to make other pronouncements in other locations. It's time for you to move on too. You walk up to your car and head down the hill. Your subconscious knows the destination -- McConnells Ice Cream Parlor on Mission and State Streets. They make their own. Sinful. You stop to savor a scoop of Brazilian Coffee Chip and think about the last time you were there with your friend Susan. She had just received her cone topped with a scoop of Vanilla Nut Supreme, when she started laughing at one of your wisecracks. It fell off the cone onto the floor. She almost cried. But they gave her a free one. That's the kind of place McConnells is. But this time you have come alone. With dread you walk toward your car, you hate to leave this place of healing. But as you drive back down Highway 101 you think, you don't have to leave it, you can take it with you -- the pictures, the thoughts, the feelings, and you can play them back when your stomach is knotted and re-remember the message of the crows, and the cleansing of the roaring water, you can close your eyes and eliminate all straight lines and come back to curves, caws and "tit-tit," and again you will be soothed by your favorite things in Santa Barbara. ***** |
| VACATION #11 A FEW OF YOUR FAVORITE THINGS |