Continental Shift: Fairfax to Campagnano di Roma

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From Saturday in Fairfax— with its Biketoberfest (above) and all things California—I've crossed the continent and then some. Nine hours ahead of my west coast family and friends, I'm now in Italy for a few weeks. My long-time friend, Ira, met me at Fumicino Airport in Rome and drove me to his little town of Campagnano di Roma. I crashed just after midnight, slept almost 10 hours and then needed a three hour nap from which I've just awakened. Here is a view of the surrounding town from the highest elevation.

Some scenes (below) from my walk through the main town, forgetting that at ore 13 (1:00 p.m.) everything closes so people can go home for pranzo and un bel reposo. My lengthy nap was just on schedule.

Oh, how I've missed those terra cotta colored walls!

Pumpkin Brain on Scenic Road

I've been staying in a studio apartment cut into the side of a hill on Scenic Road in Fairfax, California. Fairfax isn't your usual small town. Just today we passed a yard sale that had—along with the usual detritus of wooden mug stands, outdated electronics, ugly framed mini-prints of ideal landscapes, computer speakers, old bicycles—it had four guitars! This is a town of long-haired musicians. Long-haired not in the sense of "long-haired music"—a term people of my generation used to name classical music. In this case, I'm using the adjective "long-haired" to describe the large population of musicians, most of whom play guitar and have long hair. Fairfax boasts live music every night of the week. It's a small town with a big Art.  Walking along Scenic Road late this afternoon I saw art of a different kind when I noticed Pumpkin Man or is it Pumpkin Woman? I had to take a picture of it and the pumpkin patch from which he/she hatched.

Marin County Marvels . . .

 
I've been visiting with my son and daughter-in-law in Fairfax, California for the last few weeks. Last night was the first time I saw rain. With an overcast sky, today was the first day without bright sunshine, and a perfect day for an outing to Point. Reyes which is celebrating its 50th year as a National Treasure.

 The cliffs at Point Reyes on which an old light house is perched has some of the most extreme weather conditions in the country. One hundred and thirty-three mile an hour winds crash against its 50 million year old unforgiving and craggy terrain.
 


Colors are often more brilliant in overcast light so admiring the soggy lush mosses and the hearty bright red-orange lichens was a great treat today.

Today's entry is a photo album not only from some scenes of the day, but also some shots from last Sunday's Farmer's Market in San Rafael.

This huge market that operates year round on the grounds of Frank Lloyd Wright's last commission, the Marin County Civic Center, boasts tent after tent of fresh organic produce and everything from pig parts to freshly smoked salmon.

 

meditation with mandalas

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung used the drawing of mandalas to calm himself. Several years ago I took a workshop with a Jungian-inspired writer who challenged us to pick an image from one of our more elaborate dreams and then to write about it. The workshop culminated when we were prompted to draw our own mandala using the dream image as subject matter for the form. I've been drawing them ever since.

To create a mandala, you start at the center and work outward in 360 degrees. Many paintings are Mandalas used as objects of meditation and prayer common to many of the world's religions. As opposed to a maze that is meant to confuse, a mandala is a visual labyrinth that the viewer follows first from the center and then  travels outward to the edges. Working backward from the outside edges back to the center, the mind travels in and out getting not only lost in the pattern, but calmed by it and the slow contemplation of the form.

For me, drawing my own mandalas is even more calming. And I've been making a few lately. I draw them freehand with a magic marker, then bring the black and white image into Illustrator and then use "Live Trace" to create an electronic web of the pattern, then use "Live Paint" to fill in the lines with color and pattern.

Here are few more recent ones:

 

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors . . .

When Robert Frost wrote the poem "Mending Wall," it was more about stone walls in Vermont that separate plots of land, but every time I walk along the winding streets of Fairfax, California, and see these fences, Frost's words "Good fences make good neighbors" which are repeated three times inside the poem comes to mind. Fences, gates, doors are for privacy—something we all need. And yet we want to be friendly about our boundaries, too. Keep them inviting but strong enough so that we can be our own gatekeepers. In Fairfax, too, just like in Vermont, good fences make good neighbors.

De Liver de Letter de Sooner de Better . . .

Don't remember where that phrase comes from—somewhere in my past. And not just my past. Bills, junk mail, and catalogs still arrive in the box but letters rarely do for most of us. Snail mail is something we do as a last resort since e-mails, e-vites, and e-greetings have taken their place. Still, hungry mailboxes abound, especially in Fairfax, California where I've been visiting a lot lately. As I walked down the winding streets of this idyllic part of Northern California, these old fashioned mailboxes called out to me. Even if their mouths aren't stuffed as much as they have been in the past, we still need them and always enjoy a handwritten note or letter or card.




 

Summer in the City

One recent walk down Centre Street in West Roxbury revealed a very unexpected object: a snowman!

It was an attention getting promotional stunt perpetrated by one of the owners of Wicked Sharp, a ski shop eager to remind folks that even though you may be sweating, winter is coming. Eventually.