Many Hands, Turned Upward

Beijing to Brooklyn was a shift.  But frankly New York to Laguna Niguel is rather more dramatic.  City to city vs. city to cliff side view of the Pacific.   I was driven out here from LAX last night at 1:00AM.  I’ve been used to Uber drivers listening to one thing or another that I don’t want to hear.  But this guy had an old Ringo Starr solo song on.  Looking up I noticed he had a Beatles icon flashing on the sound system, that suggested he was listening to some sort of streaming Beatles station.  I told him he could turn it up.   And, as can happen, the Beatles became a spring board for a careful conversation that turned up as many mutual points of admiration we could find in the hour it took us to get there down the coast. 

This morning it’s all sun.  Sharp, California sun that cuts into you with its optimism and makes you want to rethink everything.  I didn’t have a beach front room.  I didn’t care.  I walked up to the breakfast place.  I’d slept on the train and slept for four hours on the flight so I assumed I wouldn’t need to sleep much at all by the time I arrived.  But in fact, I retired swiftly after making it through only a few pages of the book that I was so eagerly looking forward to read. 

At the coffee break we looked out at the water from the bluff.  “There’s a whale breaching”, someone suggested and sure enough there was a huge swell off in the distance.  A small flock of pelicans flew across the surf down below, looking for all the world like the pterodactyls they shared some ancestry with.   The woman beside me pointed out the achingly beautiful flowers that dotted the lawn like so many hands, turned upward, were imported from South Africa and were knows as “Birds of Paradise.”

By dinner time I found myself in line with a sharp young gentleman, staffed in Belfast.  But his accent, which I later understood to be Egyptian, was not suggesting anything to do with Falls Road.  We discussed travel to Egypt a dream, long deferred, for me.  “Is it a good time to go?" I asked hopefully, suggesting that the regional troubles meant that there would be fewer tourists.  “My father runs a tour company."  He told me.  "It's best not to travel in groups.  If you go by yourself things will go more smoothly.  But you don’t want to be seen following a tour with a little flag.”  I imagined leading my family about Cairo, everyone beside me in a head scarf.  Someday, surely, we’ll need to go.  I made my way home from the dinner early though, with plans to read and read more of the biography I’m now more than mid-way through.

Wednesday 01/31/18