Seeing Beauty

Seeing Beauty

I like living in California. There are many reasons for that, not the least of which is that I like the politics of the state, which, while it has its fair share of less than liberal areas, is, for the most part, very liberal. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to live in a state that wants to suppress voting or is prepared to mandate things like abortion denial, not only taking away a woman’s right to make her own life choices, but also sometimes possibly endangering her very life for the sake of what? A philosophical or religious predisposition at best, and at worst, a purely political posturing. For my friends who choose to live in Florida, so be it, they do so with their eyes wide open and get the environment they get. It must be particularly hard to be in a battleground state like Pennsylvania, Arizona or Wisconsin, where the pitched battles between the forces of red and blue might lead to purple, but lately have led to an oil and water coexistence with animosity in the air. i know lots of people don’t like lots of things about California, and are subsequently moving off to Texas and Tennessee and such, but I really wonder whether the lower tax rates and the libertarian atmosphere will make them happier.

This morning for some reason I decided to wait for my anticipated workmen out on the patio. It was a warm morning and the sun comes up on that side of the house. I sat at our mosaic table with its floral design with hummingbirds and felt the warm breeze on my shoulder as the fully leaved Queensland Bottle Tree spread its branches over my head as it reached to the sky. When the workmen came they commented about what an unusual tree it was and I explained that it was the largest of its species in North America according to the Department of Agriculture’s Big Tree Project. They were duly impressed since they were water leak detection guys and they recognized that the trees girth was a function of the stored water within its bulbous and shapely trunk. As they wandered off on the leak quest, I sat and marveled at how fortunate I was to live in this Garden of Eden on this lovely hillside. I love the house, but what really makes my heart sing is the combination of the garden and the weather and on mornings like this, there is nothing but joy in my heart for the beauty of my surroundings. I lingered on the patio for another hours or two, not wanting to leave as I wallowed in the pleasures of the moment as the sun arced over the canopy of the palapa and bottle tree.

This evening I have my second day of the week of teaching. While I don’t teach until 7pm, I am the kind of guy who would rather be early and find a relaxing spot to do something like write this story than find myself all stressed out on the Freeway worrying about traffic and arrival times. I generally leave the house at about 4pm and so far I have figured out that all the traffic is heading my way out of San Diego and very little is flowing back into town at that time. It does get a little congested at the bottom of the hill where the 15 crosses the 8, and while I was in the habit of driving towards the ocean on Friars Road, a road presumably named for the Franciscan monks that helped to colonize the state at the turn of the Nineteenth Century as they built their network of 21 missions along the length of California. I’ve been to all the missions and know that this Friars Road must have been trod by Friar Junipero Serra, who founded the Mission San Diego de Alcala in 1775. He had moved the mission from Presidio Hill, six miles closer to the water, but strangely lacking in sufficient water to have a productive ranch. Presumably, Friars road was used to ferry the accoutrement of the mission from the old to the new.

But besides the problem of traffic getting down to Friars Road in modern day San Diego at rush hour, there is the added issue that that route caused me to come up the hill to the University and I always felt like I was approaching the school from the ass end rather than the front. I now take the Genesee Street Exit and leisurely drive down Linda Vista Road. That road was probably also named back in the old mission days and it is descriptively accurate in that it provides a beautiful vista of the shoreline and ocean to the west. The campus of the University of San Diego has recently been declared by some authority or other as the most beautiful campus in America. I don’t know if that’s true or not and I don’t really care since I have only minor affiliation with the school by way of teaching there one or two nights a week. What I do enjoy is the ability to take that drive down Linda Vista and entering the University at its main gate. I then drive down Camino San Diego abound the back side of the southern row of campus buildings as I search for a convenient parking spot.

I buy a parking permit, but I buy the half-priced one since I teach in the evening and that cheaper permit allows me to park in the best spots after 4pm, so there is no advantage to paying any more since I’m never here during the day. But that ride along Camino San Diego is worth the entire trip. THe road is comparable to Central Avenue on the Cornell campus since it runs along a ridge that falls off to one side with the main campus on the other side. The views from that ridge line road are stunningly beautiful and I do it slowly, as much to enjoy the view as to be sure not to miss a good parking spot. From that road I can see across the San Diego River to Presidio Hill. I can see the Junipero Serra Museum that is built of white stucco much as the original Mission San Diego Alcala must have been back in its day in the late Eighteenth Century.

Friar Serra must have been a very practical man because the view of the ocean and Bay from that spot is magnificent and I’m sure the sea breezes were pleasant much of the year on that spot. So, he must have hated to give it up for the site further inland which is relatively unspectacular, but undoubtedly much more productive from a ranching standpoint since it has access to better river water in exchange for those stunning ocean views.

The Business School at USD has a new building. It is called the Knauss Center and it is attached to the main Business School building called Olin Hall. It was built on the site of an old parking lot and when I first saw it in all its matching sand-colored conformity with the other campus buildings that have an air of the old Mission architecture, I thought they had missed the mark. THe classrooms were not tiered amphitheaters like I was used to from Cornell, but the glass-walled classrooms do all face inward to a lovely arched courtyard which is decidedly Mission-like and pleasant as could be to sit in while I await my room becoming free. The warn San Diego evening feels a lot like my patio in the morning and I revel in the beauty that has surrounded me all day long out here.

There are times in life when we must all choose the practical over the beautiful. As Jimmy Soul liked to say in his popular Caribbean song, “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, so for my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you…” It may be practical to live in Florida. It may be pragmatic to commute to work each day and pay the higher parking fees in exchange for the bigger bucks and career ladder climbing. But that’s pretty ugly and you can’t beat being retired and choosing to live amongst the beauty of California, driving against the traffic flow and enjoying the ocean views and sea breezes. I am extra lucky because I didn’t even have to get an ugly girl to marry me to have happiness. I have a beautiful wife, a lovely and peaceful home and a great school through which to share whatever value I have gathered in life. Today I am seeing beauty everywhere I look.