Travel Journal day One

[Steven Hunley]

Return of the Native Travel Journal day One
by

Steven Hunley

Looking out the kitchen bay window at six-thirty I see the familiar tree tops of Morley field. Of the houses that lie asleep in the foreground, many were tucked into my brianiac hard drive years ago, on the walk home from Jefferson, only a few are fresh. It’s early, but never too early for Columbian Supremo, which is drip… drip… dripping, making me patiently wait for a good cup of Joe. Maybe I should say ‘buena copa de Jose’. But maybe I got the gender thing wrong, maybe good and cup and coffee are masculine.
Simon and Schuster are watching, hounding me, waiting for me to make a move towards an abandoned sock on the floor, wondering which one of them will get at it first, purchase it with their White Fangs right out of Jack London, and worry it to threads.

Seventeen years, I haven’t been here in seventeen years. Here in San Diego and here in this house… even longer. James is off to work; probably popped a Starbuck’s Frappuccino chilled coffee drink, 180 calories per bottle, and wound his weary way up to Carlsbad. Bettcha he knocks them dead this morning, sells so many cars the lot will be so vacant a nomadic circus will think it’s abandoned and want to rent out the space for their grey elephants, fuzzy-haired clowns, red-striped tents, and acrobats doomed by their profession to fall to their deaths and be ‘trending’ on google.

So most of the houses are the same, and the oldest trees are without a doubt unchanged. Blackbirds, mockingbirds, finches, all little birdies- the same. From the far side of Balboa Park’s Eucalyptus and palm treeline, I hear a train. How do you describe a train whistle without getting romantic? Is it a wail, a scream, or a moan? Certainly no writer in his right mind ever described a train whistle as just a whistle. If he did, he wouldn’t be worth his salt. And if he was worth his salt, he wouldn’t use clichés either.

It reminds me San Diego isn’t as big as L.A. That thought, that whistle, warms me up as comforting as a tepid bath. Or it will, as soon as I look up tepid. Is that the temperature you use when you heat up the baby’s bottle and splash a drop on your wrist? If so, I know tepid three times over. Michelle tepid, Sean tepid, Nichole tepid.

Another funny thing of past and present is this. I just looked at a picture of a mature woman on Facebook. Last time I saw her was in high school, and the magic thing is, the nebulous circumstance, is that she’s actually prettier than she was then. Believe it or not, with some men and women, they, like fine wine, grow more mellow, attain better taste, and acquire more nuanced color with age. These three factors increase their value and appeal.

And all this, every bit of this exquisite improvement, while the rest of us rot.

But there she is, mature, fashionable hair cut, sticking her tongue out, bold, dramatic, sure of her self, full of confidence, a woman to be reckoned with.

What I remember is a shy little girl, her hair pulled back in a pony-tail, wearing a virginal white short-sleeved blouse, with a navy blue tie, like a miniature Mormon ready to knock on your door.

The little girl looks like a saint, yet the woman resembles a sinner. What wonders has nature wrought? In this case-pure magic.

And ‘they’ say growing old is dull stuff. I feel sorry for ‘they’. One hopes that nay-sayers fold themselves up in a cardboard box, like fleshy origami, set sail for distant islands, and make sure it’s a one-way trip.


day two lets hope tomorrow...

[AuntShecky]

Among the many commendable features of this piece, here are some that are particularly noteworthy:



drip… drip… dripping, making me patiently wait for a good cup of Joe. Maybe I should say ‘buena copa de Jose’. But maybe I got the sex thing wrong, maybe good and cup and coffee are masculine.

Perfectly captures a writer's self-doubt about dabbling in another language--"Did I get the gender right?" Self-deprecating humor and a prime example of showing, not merely telling.



sells so many cars the lot will be so vacant a nomadic circus will think it’s a
abandoned and want to rent out the space for their grey elephants, fuzzy-haired clowns, red-striped tents, and acrobats doomed by their profession to fall to their deaths and be ‘trending’ on google.

An imaginative conceit parlayed with up-to-the minute reference without succumbing to what MAD Magazine warns against, humor that is too "Acutely topical." But this piece, with its smart jab at words like "trending" will have a much longer shelf life. Slap an upper case "G" on "Google," though; it hasn't been around long enough yet to use it generically, which is what happened to the nce-capitalized "aspirin."


birdies Once in a while colloquialisms reveal the writer's unique personality in an endearing way, as this word does.

How do you describe a train whistle without getting romantic? Is it a wail, a scream, or a moan? Certainly no writer in his right mind ever described a train whistle as just a whistle. If he did, he wouldn’t be worth his salt. And if he was worth his salt, he wouldn’t use clichés either.
See yours fooly's comment to the gender cases above. Same with this passage:

It reminds me San Diego isn’t as big as L.A. That thought, that whistle, warms me up as comforting as a tepid bath. Or it will, as soon as I look up tepid. Is that the temperature you use when you heat up the baby’s bottle and splash a drop on your wrist? If so, I know tepid three times over. Michelle tepid, Sean tepid, Nichole tepid.
And this:

And all this, every bit of this exquisite improvement, while the rest of us rot.

Your writing is never afraid to take risks and allows itself to show the unique personality that created it and as such is a joy to read.

Your fan,
Auntie

PS-- and "they" say I never have a kind word for anybody! Hah!

[Steven Hunley]

Aunty-your critiques always display kindness...

Return of the Native continued… day two

Yesterday I decided to see some old friends, and hiked up University Avenue through North Park. I took my camera, ‘cause that’s what a street photographer does, takes his camera everywhere he goes. We do this because the things we see are often ephemeral, and must be captured. They’re never posed. It works like this.

You see something unusual, an expression on a face, a gesture, something you understand is fleeting. If you stop and ask,” Can I take your picture?” The people grow stiff, they change, they pose, it can’t be helped, and Bresson’s “decisive moment” is lost forever.

So you move in close, compose, and shoot. You capture the moment. We used to do it using silver emulsion, on Kodak’s wonderful Tri-X film, now we do it digitally. Oh, but don’t get me started on the dangers of “shutter-lag” in such situations, because I could go on and on. You step in, shoot, and retreat before you’re noticed. And you never exhibit the ‘photographer’s’ pose with your elbows sticking akimbo. What a great word, akimbo. I swear it sounds pure Swahili.

Armed with my camera I head up university avenue, ready to pounce on the ephemeral, and record the fleeting light and dark, the hesitant expression, a common gesture, the poetry in a bit of movement, or the unusual in everyday things.

This walk has been taken by me many times in the past. We lived on Arizona Street, about two blocks from University Avenue, and my father’s Shell station was on the corner of University and Arizona. My mother could look up the street and see if my father’s car was parked on the lot. If it was, and if it was close to noon, she’d bring him lunch. Days were simpler then, no cell phones, no ubiquitous wires, no Facebook chock-full of phony comradery and hundreds of so-called ‘friends”.

Now I think back about it and realize we did have a phone. So why didn’t my mother use it? I imagine it’s because she grew up on a farm in Missouri. When a farmer’s wife has his lunch prepared, and its high noon, she steps out of her kitchen and shades her eyes with her hand and searches the horizon for her sweat-soaked husband. Oh, there he is, plowing the field on the north forty. I’m not really sure what the north-forty is, but suspect they may be acres, though they could always be hectares, whatever hectares are.

You see, my concept of ‘north-forty’ isn’t made up from my personal experience, but from watching too many Saturday-morning TV westerns made on low budgets. The Lone Ranger, (who had an Indian accomplice to help him do good), Tom Mix, (who I don’t remember squat about) Lash Larue (who could whip your hand away from your shootin’ iron faster than you could draw) Colonel Tim McCoy (who could really do sign-language, mind you), they all either rode to, or were going to catch the bad guys on or near, the north forty. That where I get a lot of my stuff, on TV.

Anyway, what has happened here? I’m losing my train of thought! My train of thought has gotten de-railed! I’m spending too many words on my mama and how she’d look for his station wagon up the block! Also, I’ve used too many exclamation points! Oh my God, here’s another one!I just did it again. Who is going to read multiple paragraphs with exclamation points exceeding the number of Chinamen in Bejing about why Mom would look for my dad? No one, that’s who, so better to get back to the story, never mind this stream-of-consciousness crap and ‘inner-dialogue’ ploys to give the readers a false sense of intimacy. Back to University Avenue.

So I’m walking up the street, and like before, when looking out the window at Jim’s house, there’s the odd juxtaposition of what was ands what is. Twenty, thirty, sometimes forty years of juxtaposition. Don’t you just love the word juxtaposition? It sounds like just what it is, like tumbling a pile of ABC blocks of wood when you were a child, and stacking them back up to make unpronounceable words.

Hey, look at how long my words are! Juxtaposition, unpronounceable. If I’m gonna use that many letters in making a word I might as well be speaking German! I can’t decide if I’m getting smarter or stupider as time rolls on.

The sidewalks are often the same, and the buildings too. The paint is different. Some portions of the older buildings, like the North Park Theater, now have the twenties-designs on the façade accented with contrasting colors. That’s funny, because in the fifties, say in 1957 when me mum took me to see the Ten Commandments, these portions weren’t accented. Maybe it wasn’t hip to look like a 20’s theater in the 50’s. Now it’s hip to be old, architecture-wise anyway.

I wish I could convince myself the same thing applied to me and my flesh.

I get a few murals. California got the murals all right. Thank you Mexico, thank you Diego Rivera. Then I capture the image of a pretty young business woman in a coffee shop, well dressed, nice hair, shapely legs, wearing a flowered skirt and tan blouse, and scribing with a pen on a yellow legal pad. When I examine this picture later, I decide that it’s not distinct enough, its shot through a window. Then I decide that’s OK. I don’t want a shot of a specific girl, a specific personality, I want a shot that every secretary will relate to, and see themselves, a kind of Everysecretary, like Everyman, the character in the old English story.

Eventually, as the sun breaks thought the clouds, I find myself hiking uphill and breaking into a sweat. Where’s my kaftan? Where’s my camel? Where’s my Lawrence of Arabia, my Peter O’toole, my Omar Sheriff? Good thing I’m only a block from Jack and Mike’s home. I badly need some water.

On the way up the last hill, near 32nd street, I practice my opening line.

“Hey mister, ya gotta glass of water?”

I say it over and over until it sounds if the Dead End kids are saying it, until it sounds real New Yorkish or Jersyish, whatever they were supposed to be. Just like in writing, one strives for authenticity.

The stairs echo my footfalls with resounding wooden thumps. The door is open, and the screen is closed. They must be home. What will they say? I haven’t been over here for years, even if I have known them since the sixties. I’m unannounced, and didn’t even have their phone number.

Jack comes to the door.

“Hey mista, ya’ got a glass of water?”

“Oh,” he says, “Look who this is.”

I walk in and Mike is coming out of the bedroom. At first he doesn’t recognize me, because he’s putting on new sunglasses, and because macular degeneration is taking its toll. But when he does viddy me he puts out his hand.

“Long time no see.”

I love it when people use clichés. Death to writing and the spice of life all wrapped up in one package. We sit down and I show them some pictures on the laptop and I sort through a few revised manuscripts, marked up with blue-penned revisions. I remember one thing from that writing instructor back in college.

“The latest studies indicate that when you mark up a student paper with red ink, it threatens them, and they find it disturbing, so I use some other color.”

Funny, that’s the only thing about creative writing I ever learned from the eminent scholar. The rest I learned by reading the masters.

So we talked quite a while, sitting around the coffee table. But they had to go, the bug man was coming to spray, and they had to vamoose for a couple of hours. Hey folks, no candy-coating here, instead, realism at its best.

I got their phone number and address, and told them I’d write and send a few stories. While waiting for the bug man we’d talked, and I informed them of my situation. How I never liked LA, went there just for the money. How I had never made any friends up there. I’d paid all my attention to my family, and now they were grown and moved away. How distraught I’d become after Debbie’s death. Debbie had a baby with Jack, three with me, and Mike had been one of Christina’s lovers, she was my first love, and passed away too when she was just twenty-eight.

That's why I write comedy so well, I understand tragedy first hand.

In those days men passed women around as if they were sharing pieces of cake. We never considered they were doing the same thing with us. Men never do, their male egos won’t allow them the luxury.

The bug man arrived as I was folding up the phone number up on a piece of blue paper and slipping it into my computer bag. I shook hands with Jack first, and then Mike.

“I didn’t mean to spring on you like this, you know. Just appear at the door. But I didn’t know you number and couldn’t e-mail.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mike, and then he smiled and added three words I swear before God I’ll remember forever.

“You’re family now."

I'll make an admission right now, that I was finished with this piece, that it was put aside for the day. Yet something kept nagging me all through the afternoon. It was an almost forgotten line, more than that, a feeling, something I'd read from a well-known author. Finally I gave up, seached on Google, found it again, and it was treasure, as much as one hundred gold dabloons in a rusty old box with brass hinges buried on a sandy beach on a tropical island, as precious as icing on cake.

It was my beloved Stevenson, who once wrote, " Home is the sailor home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill."