Final Weekend in San Francisco...snif, snif

Except for Bub's graduation in June, sure to be a busy weekend with family and parties and commitments, this is really our last weekend in SF/Palo Alto. As I said very lovingly to Bub, "okay, it's great that we'll be on the same coast and only a few hours away, blah blah blah. I'm really going to miss it out here" to which he readily agreed. As if I need to note, we have a full lineup of under-the-radar fun and great eating. Thursday night was the Zun and I wanted to cry over the chicken. Friday we drove for lunch at Sierra Mar at Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, which is famous for breathtaking ocean views. Alas, the restaurant is under renovation so we ate in their temporary space in a nearby meadow, which was also lovely. Although the waitress screwed up a bit with my allergy (and then tried to dismiss it when she brought me a new plate, as though I didn't "like" the first offering) but the food was light and flavorful, particularly Bub's carrot and ginger soup. Some photos of the restaurant, the meadow (which I told Bub reminded me of the Roald Dahl story about the man who marries a horrible woman who is unfaithful and long story short, she gets her head stuck in a Henry Moore and he "accidentally" cuts it off) and me on the cliffs of Big Sur:

But I digress. We then went to Carmel to take a tour of poet Robinson Jeffers' home, called Tor House. I'd never heard of Jeffers, although Bub has wanted to see the house for some time. We drove into a suburb on the water which was packed with tacky new-construction spanish-style villas and cheap big houses with no yard space, such that you can watch your neighbor in the bathroom whenever you want. And smack in the middle is this bizarre stone cottage with a tower nearby, green-filled gardens and the perfect view of the ocean from the windows. Everything is made of stone and little pieces of the pyramids and jade from Beijing and pieces from Shelley's gravesite were worked into the stonework, little spots you would overlook on your own. The tourguide read some of Jeffers poems, a number of which are about Tor House, his beloved wife Una and death and nature - especially the death or end of nature to civilization - which was of course exactly what's happened, evidenced by the woman we saw bursting out of her flowery leggings and sun visor walking her dog past the house. It was a view into the past you've always hoped America was about - man, vast open spaces, quiet, in harmony with nature but sensing its demise, true paradise being paradise lost. We saw the bed in which he died, with its view of the water and the rocks seen in the top photograph. And I picked up a book and found this poem and loved the last stanza - it is to Una, who was dying of cancer:

Tonight dear Let's forget all that, that and the war, And enisle ourselves a little beyond time You with this Irish whiskey. I with red wine.While the stars go over the sleepless ocean.And sometime after midnight I'll pluck you a wreath.Of chosen ones; we'll talk about love and earth, Rock solid themes, old and deep as the seaAdmit nothing more timely. Nothing less real.While the stars go over the timeless ocean. And when they vanish we'll have spent this night well.

And it must have put me in a romantic and tragic mood, because at a gorgeous dinner at Marinus at the Bernardus Winery and Lodge in Carmel, we sat by the fire and talked about death and love and people and ate a near-perfect meal and chatted with the wonderful staff. My grandmother Aurora died almost year ago and that's been on my mind I suppose - and Jeffers' heady words about a now-dead time reminded me that I thought of her death as the end of an era that even though I knew I'd never live through, I could see through her. I always carry several pictures of her in my black book and two are of her and her friends when she was about 17 in a meadow picnicking and that meadow is now gone, completely developed into housing tracts and chain restaurants and these kids all dressed in flowered dresses and white sweater vests and ties are ghosts. And how, when I was a kid, I never thought of her as having been anything but a grandma but now I mostly only picture her as a contemporary and how many things she was before she was my grandmother and in that meadow her whole life was before her. A lot of things I didn't expect rolled into this last weekend in California.