According to G.K. Chesterton:

a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend.

Taking a trip up the California coast, one can gather what the early twentieth century’s “prince of paradox” was getting at. Sure, you can sit in a library and collect four books which might tell you something about life. Its origins, its rhythms, its meanings, its possibilities. But then, . . .

. . . well—now, there’s a thing . . . what four books would you choose? I mean, if you were trying to read the four that would teach you about the point and purpose and girdth and gristle of it all?

Would you go with the boxed set of The Origin of the Species, Frankenstein, Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, and The Catcher in the Rye? Or would you string together: A Tale of Two Cities, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Macbeth, and Das Capital? Of course, you might could go with: The Odyssey, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Les Miserables . . . or perhaps do as all sane mortals might: simply throw your hands up in intellectual resignation, stack everything silently back on the shelf, and concede that four books really wouldn’t get you as far as carrying one of those tomes out the door, climbing into your car, sitting with a friend conversing, as you both take in the grand view passing along your shoulder.

(As for the battle: that I’ve already been through, and let me tell you: two things are certainly true about that: (1) what Nietzche said about “that which doesn’t kill you . . . (etcetera and so forth)” is certainly so; and (2) the little mouthed truism “better to have warred and won than never to have warred at all,” makes most sense—but only if “better to have warred if losing was the only alternative” was, in fact, the only alternative).

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According to this piece by Sarah Boxer, in The New York Review, I don’t know how to blog.

As if:

whatever you think you’ve been doing for the last 3 years, dude . . . you’ve been doing it all wrong.

My reaction? Kind of like the guy on his death bed said, after encountering the winning numbers printed on his lottery stub: “better late than never.”

According to Boxer, what distinguishes my work from true blogging is that I don’t:

• thrive on fragmented attention (one-liners, song samples, summarized news);

(I mean, if you discount these bullets I’m just beginning to work through).

I also fail as a blogger, because I:

• fail! To: punctuate?
• eschew the use of punctuation and acronyms to express my feelings—a la :-) or ;-)

LOL

And, I fail as a blogger because:

• I tend not to adopt the mien of an impresario, curator, or editor—picking and choosing the snippets and headlines found on-line;

PRESIDENT’S DAY NEWS FLASH: Elder Bush Backs McCain

Looks to get back in the picture as his new VP

Okay, so I’m having a little fun here, at someone’s expense. Yours, McCain’s, G.H.’s. Mine. (But really, doesn’t that creepy sneer on senior and the semi-dazed, semi-satisfied look on McCain’s face make you suspect that something unsuspected is happening off-camera?)

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The crawl out of Los Angeles includes a pass through Agoura Hills, a city dubbed “The Gateway to the Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area”. The city, first settled by the Chumash Indians, and later by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in the 1500s, once served as a staging area for Paramount flicks in the 1920s—providing it, temporarily, with the name “Picture City”. No kidding. It says so right there on Wikipedia. It also says that the city adopted the name of one of its prominent residents, a local Basque-French immigrant-turned rancher, Pierre Agoure, Most likely (one infers) after the one-two of depression and war put a kabosh on Paramount’s use of the hills as cinematic backdrop.

Lore abounds on 101, but since it’s pitch black beyond the windshield and since we’ve finally managed to shake the bump-bumper-grill-grind, it really isn’t the time to be lingering over “what wases”. No, now that we can actually stretch out and move at some sort of decent speed, it is definitely time to open it up and gooooooooooooo! So: goodbye, Agoura Hills. Hospitable home to a slew of 80s-rehash acts such as Peter Frampton, REO Speedwagon, Boys II Men, and Alan Parsons, Fixing that past in our rearview, we push on—through Ventura County and on up to the next gateway.

That would be Buellton, the so-called “Gateway to the Santa Ynez Valley”.

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Ventura highway
in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger
than moonshine
You’re gonna go I know

America, Ventura Highway

At some point every Californian takes a trip up the coast. In my lifetime, growing up a So-Cal kid, I’d estimate that—between family vacations when I was a lad, student politics during my college years, law school up in Sacramento, and a girlfriend from San Jose—well, I’ve probably gone up and back 37 times. It’s one of those treks that, done right, you can never really tire of. Especially, if you are doing it with loved ones for the first time. A new lover, a spouse, children. The cruise up 101 and then Highway 1 never gets old.

It’s sort of like a rite that one has to experience before they can gain state citizenship. Why? Because one can’t truly understand the rhythms, the prospects, and the capabilities of this great Golden State until they have sampled the spectacular views along the craggy coastline; the lush hues of the ocean, kissed by the ever-changeable, vibrant sky; and the quirky folk and idle pace that define the seaside lifestyle. Taken together, these aspects of the coastal trek—and particularly from Southern California up to the San Francisco Bay Area—form one of the United States’ essential experiences; a national treasure, decaring uniqueness, demanding encounter.

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Super Sunday. Super Tuesday. Super Signing Day.

In America, three events this past week, all national in scope. Events declaring this place—regardless of one’s feelings about the events, themselves, or their situs (America, itself)—a “Super Society”. For those of you unfamiliar with American ways, we are speaking, respectively, of the final professional football game of the year; the largest slate of primary elections to ever be contested in a single day; and the first day a high school football player can declare the college he intends to don a helmet and pads for, thereby serving as four-year grist for their multi-million dollar sporting mill.

And, for those of you unfamiliar with American ways, these are all major cultural events, witnessed by millions on-line, through newspapers, or on radio and television. One event, a culmination, another the weigh-station, a third, the prelude, of significant societal phenomena. Believe it or not, these three events tell us so much about what the United States is—what its preoccupations are, what it stands for, what America means.

A football game. An election. A meat auction.

No kidding.

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An ad in today’s Los Angeles Times proclaims:

Go from no travel

to know travel

Which caught my attention, since it is a major premise behind this blog.

But, for those who know, it isn’t enough to “know” (you know?). Because, as in all things in life, what makes a thing live, what brings it to life, is the how. As in: how the travel is described. How the trek is rendered into words is what makes that place, or event, the people, their practices and beliefs, their paintings and songs and sports and abodes and pets and sartorial styling and favored slang, breathe. Only then does an object of our attention take on dimension, assume texture, radiate color. So, when it comes to travel writing, there is the travel, sure. And the travel is comprised of the sightings and the happenstances and the cadence of the spaces. But there is also that small matter of the writing that brings it all into focus. The words make the places palpable. One without the other and neither can be. Not complete, at least. Not a perfect sum; a satisfactory set; a finished whole.

Imagine that.

Which, when I do, often freezes me fast in my tracks. As in: “Yikes!” What is it that I must do? To explain this place. And how could I ever possibly make it so? And is this really going to be enough? So that you would possibly, truly know.

Which brings us to this reality. As sad as it is true:

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