Oh, the Places You'll Go - Picture of the Day

Torrey Pines State Reserve as seen from a bus stop in Del Mar, California. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Yesterday, you may have read my post about the costs and toll book-related research takes. If you haven't yet, please do, and if you like it, or me, or the project I'm working on please click the contribution button and share a few dollars with me. 

But today, when I started my research day, I was twice reminded why I can't complain too much. First, the photo above was where I waited for the bus. I'm staying with family up Highway 101 from the UCSD campus. I couldn't even really complain that the bus was significantly late.

Then I ended up here:

The Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

That's the Geisel Library at UCSD. It's the home of the Mandeville Special Collections, where I've been examining the papers of Frank Tillman Durdin and Peggy Durdin, who were friends of Mel's in China  and Australia. But that's not why I'm sharing it right now. Rather, I was excited to discover as I walked through the library a wealth of artifacts from Dr. Seuss, AKA Theodore Seuss Geisel, who made the library possible. 

This is one of the perks of research. While it may take quite a while to recognize where my research is taking me, the unexpected finds and things I see along the way make the journey a pleasant one.

Oh, the places you'll go.

Upon an L.A. Arrival

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Downtown Los Angeles

Every one of these valleys houses a story of mine. Everywhere, as far as the eye can see, a recollection. Every hillside crease, every orchard row, every meandering backroad, every freeway lane, every island in the blue distance. Each stirs a memory. 

More than anything else, the expanse below me is familiar, forever within me, whether I want it to be or not. Even the city exploding over the hills and suffocating in the haze is home. Hundreds of miles north above that Bay and over the hills, across that fertile but sweltering valley, I still feel it, this sense in my blood. Down below, the pure Californianess of it all, the golden hues, the marching oaks, the wrinkled mountains and the blankets of concrete. All of it.

Other lands have their airborne beauty. Portland is a welcoming toy wedged between volcanoes and rivers. New York is grand, inspiring and forever, but it simply isn't mine. The Midwest is something hidden on forgotten highways between the quilted fields. 

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The Conejo Valley

 But my heart still eases above California. My mind wanders some line between memory and dreams. California is so very much a place created, remembered, and reconstructed, forever. It's almost as if these towers and ballfields and warehouses store pieces of me, shards of identity shimmering and vibrating as I draw nearer. 

So, it makes sense as I settle in here that I re-imagine myself yet again, that, once more, I reintroduce myself to the world. For nothing is more California than starting over again. Once again.

California isn't everything. California isn't even home. But California is, for me, the beginning.

Again.

Of course, I'd be lying if I said I didn't start my blog, reorganize myself, and begin from scratch again, and again, and again. 

But that's my only option.

Starting Again.

Until I can't.

So, for now, again, here it is, myself as best as I know myself right now, right here.

In California. Right. Back. Where. I started from. 

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