On the way down, I listen to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham Lincoln, Band of Rivals, and am impressed with several things.  First, Lincoln was ware of his emotional side, and therefore would calm himself down for a  half hour of so if he were agitated by someone or something, before reacting.  He knew his own nature and compensated for it.  Second, Lincoln would compose by first jotting down his ideas in sketch form, just sketching a few notes in broad terms, then come back and flesh it out.  He would get the ideas down first, like he did on the Gettysburg Address, then add the ornament.  His main point, which he got down, was that the war and battle were really not about keeping the union together or abolishing slavery, but broader, whether popular government, of the people, can survive.  Can people govern themselves, can such a state survive.  The northern soldiers would end up fighting to preserve a noble experiment, whether they knew it or not.  That is why he was generous at the end, able to forget the 400,000 Union dead, to preserve the union and an even greater idea which started with Locke and The Enlightenment.  He had to reestablish a popular government as it had been before the south started leaving the union, to restore it, not to create a confederation or monarchy.

I wake up in Santa Barbara Wednesday morning, lying in bed, thinking about Art Nouveau, of floral patterns and leaded glass, images which came to me from the Art Nouveau coffee table book I purchased after I arrived in town the day before, at the Lost Horizon used bookstore on Anacapa Street.  The book showed me the connection between Art Nouveau, a decorative style, and modern architecture, the connection being that Art Nouveau had an architectural variant, in Paris, Glasgow, Chicago, and Vienna, which was not curvilinear and florid, but geometric, using smooth rectilinear planes and rectilinear representations of nature for ornament.  This geometric school led to Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Otto Wagner, Joseph Hoffmann, and Adolph Loos, forerunners to Bauhaus, LeCorbusier, and Mies.

I get around, and start my ritual, driving up Shoreline Drive to Cliff Drive, passing Arroyo Burro beach and Hedry’s Boathouse, then going north and uphill along the coast towards Hope Ranch.   I park at the pull off on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, always empty for some reason, and look out at the wide expanse of Pacific.   There is haze over the tops of the Channel Islands in the distance.  The sky above is medium blue, not light blue, with occasional vapor trails visible from Vandenberg Air Force Base.  There are no clouds.  The ocean below is also medium blue, shaded in places where there are shoals or deeper water.  The waves are visible and rippling, the ocean surface undulating, but without whitecaps.  You have just a wavy surface.

After a while of sitting there with my car door open to the ocean, I drive back, down to Shoreline Drive, a street lined on one side by a park which runs along the cliffs, with picnic tables and benches overlooking the ocean, and on the other side by pastel colored 1950 and 60s ranch style and bungalow homes.  Shoreline Park has a walking path, a windy sidewalk, running through it, and picnic tables.  Seagulls share the park with families, with kids and dogs.  I sit on one of the picnic tables, looking at the ocean down below the craggy coastline, the white foam of the leading edges of waves coming ashore.  The water seems a bit darker blue here, except for a few ribbons of lighter blue water streaking out to sea, like channels in the ocean. The tall palm trees lining the park cast long shadows.  The wind is blowing their fronds outward, towards the sea.  It is not the lighter blue, turquoise sea of San Diego.  My eye follows the coastline towards the east and south, jutting out at East Beach, then curving south, paralleling the the mountains of the Santa Ynez range, down to the San Gabriels, Ventura and Los Angeles.  The  mountains are granite and blue, and tan where there are barren spots.  You can see gullies on the sides, and ravines, and occasional barren patches where there is no foliage, where there have been landslides.

As I sit there, people walking together pass by on the sidewalk.  Two young Hispanic men with backpacks are riding bicycles and talking as they pedal. They are speaking Spanish.  A hippie woman in her 60s wearing Tibetan clothes walks by with her blue healer dog behind her obediently.   He seems old and loyal, not noticing anyone but her.  She is talking on her cell phone to someone about her daughter who won’t listen to her advice about something or other, and about her boss, who told her that if she leaves the office, she needn’t come back.  Several tall and thin young women, looking affluent, from the neighborhood, jog by individually.  A couple are wearing I pods.  Two women walk by, one the mother in her 80s, and the other a daughter in her 60s, both wearing straw hats.  The daughter is supporting the mother.  Two college age guys are playing a guitar, sitting on the grass across the park.  An older man wearing a golf jacket a size too small and a straw fedora hat, is wandering along the wire fence at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the shoreline.  He is probably in his 80s.  He walks slowly and carefully and is stooped.  A young couple push a baby stroller together, her wearing capri pants and her pony tail sticking out the back of her baseball hat.  A young fellow on a cell phone is talking, explaining to someone that “Cleveland was playing Boston.” Another baseball fan, I think to myself, a member of my fraternity.  My White Sox hat sits on my car dashboard in the parking lot.   Several elderly couples walk by slowly, not taking much.  The walkers also have a variety of dogs, mainly large dogs like labradors and retrievers, but also a chow, a collie shepherd mix, and a dauchhound.  Some of the women wear sweaters tied around their waists.

I am looking out at the Channel Islands, sipping my Kona blend coffee which I got at the shopping center nearby, at ‘A Good Cup.”   Usually, I purchase a slice of their spinach quiche as well.   I should walk the path up the coast a ways for exercise, as my friend Herb in Helena recommends.  He knows this area.  He is right, quoting Dr.  Nuland, who says it all adds up, like points, adding longevity and a healthier older life, if you avoid smoking, eat properly, diet, and exercise thirty minutes a day.

An overweight labrador retriever, white colored, wagging his tail, follows with its master, a Hispanic woman in her 50s, and two other non-Hispanic women. They talk about skiing, “cross country I can do, not that down hill.”   That is all I catch.  Two women pushing baby strollers pass.  A young man in his 30s,  dressed like a Yuppie, like me, is a bit off the path, on the grass, talking on his cell phone, walking to the area near the wire fence.  It is lunch time.  Two women pass talking about pizza. The conversations are generally about domestic things, diets, jobs, kid problems, favorite breakfasts of their kids.  People passing by are active and seem younger, jogging and dressing sportily and tanned and driving stylish vehicles.  They smile a lot.

A Piper Cub drones overhead, flying low and slow and following the shore.  The sky is, as always,  cloudless.  A friendly middle aged Hispanic woman walks by, and says hello to me, “you need a sun visor,” she says, laughing.   She is jolly.  That is the first person I have had any personal contact with, outside the hotel manager, Anton, since I arrived.  You can go for days, and only have human contact in ordering meals at restaurants and paying for books at bookstore cash registers.  The guy on the cell phone across the grass is saying “I’ll be pissed, I’ll be pissed.”   Another woman walks by, saying something about a child with a problem at school, counseling her daughter or a friend, “they must have a resource person there.”  Women, I notice, are getting support from other women.  Two women in their late 50s walk by, saying something about the sister’s grandchildren, a boy and girl, then fade into the distance.  Behind me, on the street, a large dump truck is passing, changing gears, drowning out the drone of cars.  The truck motor is a loud grumble.

I return to the Pacific Crest Inn on East Beach.   An Irish-Japanese couple runs the motel, and the Bulgarian, Anton, helps out on the desk.  They all play fetch with the black lab, “Shadow,” a bit aging and stiff and gray at the mouth, but real sweet, as he runs for the yellow tennis ball.   He doesn’t always bring it back to  the person who throws it.   He may choose a girl by the pool.  I sit on the balcony outside, with my room door open next to me.  There is a palm tree that gives me some shade.  I am reading James Salter and searching different authors for a style or voice.  I am trying Hemingway, Didion, Babel, Fitzgerald, Anne Morrow Lindberg, and St. Exupery.  These seem most likely to mesh with me.  They are writers I admire.  I must also reread Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin since they are memoirs.  I must find a theme to write about and a style of my own.

Later, that  afternoon, I walk a block to the Ocean, following the park and bicycle path which leads from the Cabrillo Bath House to Stearns Wharf.  Along the way were the usual individuals and couples walking the path, skating, or bicycling.  One young girl is learning to ride a bike that has training wheels and wire saddle bags on the back to carry things.  As I walk past, I hear the father say “trash cans,” joking about the saddle bags, and the girl reply, laughing, “Oh, Dad, they’re not trash cans.”  You can hear the steady drone of traffic on US 101, about a mile away during the afternoon rush hour.  There are homeless men and women camped near the public restrooms.

The sky is turning pink later, in the evening.  The sea is pink on the surface as a result, and also placid. The last vestige of light is reflecting from amber window panes of houses on the hillsides.  The mountains are lavender and purple.  It is only 5:30 in the afternoon.  By 6:15, the sun is down.  On the dark hillsides inland, now you can see scattered lights of individual houses. The ocean is dark purple and you can barely make out the sailboats bobbing in the bay, one white light coming from each.  A water taxi with a sold red light is moving out there between the boats.  Further out are the oil derricks on platforms, lit up with orange, white, and red lights, and beyond are the Channel Islands, no longer visible on this dark, almost moonless night.  Traffic rolls along Cabrillo Boulevard which runs along the water front.  Looking straight up, you can see that the sky is indigo, but slightly illuminated by city lights, creating a lighter indigo layer over the populated area.  Higher up, are the stars, bright and white, above the darker indigo.  Constellations are visible.

I walk back to my motel, located on the side street, and sit on the balcony looking towards the Ocean a block away.  The side streets are dark, but you can still make out the palms that line them.  The area is one of apartments and small hotels whose white outside lights illuminate stucco walls.  Cars occasionally come down the street, their headlights breaking the night, their tail lights illuminating things red as they brake or back up.  The sound of traffic on 101 is more apparent, since the night closes out other sounds.  You can hear the distant rumble of a motorcycle on Highway 101. There is the passing of the Amtrak “Coast Starlight” train, running from Seattle to San Diego, at first mild, then a blasting air horn, then the rumble of wheels on the track with a bit of metallic jangle thrown in, then gone, and the distant car noise again faintly apparent but not bothersome.

The next day, I visit the Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Arts. There are wonderful Roman sculptures in the gallery, originals, and a few Greek and Etruscan statues. The Etruscan are interesting, their bronze horses are more stylized than the Roman, not as realistic.  It must have been a beautiful culture.  I am most impressed by the British Impressionist Alfred Sisley’s painting of the Seine in the countryside.  The brush strokes are of medium size, a bit larger than Monet’s whose Westminster Cathedral paintings are adjacent to the Sisley.   The Sisley greens, medium, like sun bleached grass, are soft, as are his blues, better than the Monet and Renoir colors, I think.   The Silver Medal goes to Frederick Remington’s painting, “Battle for a Waterhole,” with two cavalry troopers fending off Indians in the distance, their horses killed, by themselves, as barricades to hide behind.  The painting is mainly grays and tans.  It is astounding.  I also like the Gauguin, “View of a Castle,” a street scene, women wearing white Breton hats and collars over dark blue dresses, and gray smoke, almost surreal in the swirls of the winding street and smoke.  Berthe Morisot’s “View from the Trocadero” has beautiful royal blues.  I am impressed by the Cycladic stone ware, almost translucent; the Chinese silks used in the Manchu dynasty dresses for women; the tortoise shell and amber straight hairpins for women; the Chinese stone ware, black and dark brown; the Han and Tang Dynasty reddish horse heads, square; the Egyptian relief, on white stone, of Ramses II’s son; the wonderful Chagall painting of a young girl fleeing, with her long thick brown hair flowing behind her, and a small girl in the hair, also fleeing.   There was also a Rodin, a Matisse (green and orange chalks), a Kandinsky, a Van Gogh, a Saint-Gaudens, a Roman bust of Michelangelo and also of Alexander the Great.  I loved the carved Ibex, the good of education and mathematics, in bronze and wood.

Go to lunch on State Street at the Zia Cafe, not far from Habit Hamburgers.  The cafe is run by a woman from New Mexico, and the food is distinctly northern New Mexican, blue corn tortillas and red and green sauces. The huevos rancheros have pinto beans and pasole, hominy, on the side.  Not as good as the “heuvos” at Tia Sophia in Santa Fe, Flying Star in Albuquerque, Garcia’s in Albuquerque, Capitol Cafe in Roswell, Jalisco in Silver City, or the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.  But, good.

After a nap and reading back at the room, I go to my favorite eatery, Shoreline Restaurant near the harbor for dinner.  It doesn’t look like much, a white stucco drive-in on the beach, with attached dining room that is a bit open air, with clear plexiglass walls looking out on the sea, wooden plank floors, and a canvass roof tied down with ropes connected to post and beams.  The slight wind comes through the place.  The tables and chairs are plastic lawn furniture.  The color motif is aquamarine and white, the pillars being white and the wood trim green.   I am drinking a Stella Artois beer and having grilled Ahi Tuna steak, medium rare, with salad and sticky rice, and a slice of mango for the tuna.  I notice that people near the window are standing up, staring and craning their necks to see the shore outside.  There is a dolphin swimming about forty yards offshore, rising his back as he comes up for an instant, before diving back down.   Others in the restaurant are also standing up and going to the window.  A friend from the animal planet.  A benevolent feeling comes with him.  It is getting darker, the light is fading into night, and the water surface is the most beautiful I have seen.  It is iridescent, and set against the pinkish sky and the purple mountains that are the Channel Islands, in the distance.

The water is a silvery blue, but darker, and the lights of the cafe are on, reflecting off the plexiglass, and the overall atmosphere inside the beach front cafe is French, or so  it seems to me.  I find my self thinking about a trip I made several years ago to the American battlefields of France in World War I.  I remember clearly the Gar du Nord train station in Paris, eating a Croque Monsieur at a metal table on the concourse, then riding for a bit over one hour, arriving at Chateau Thierry.   It was Sunday and the train station was totally empty.  There were schedules posted on a kiosk outside on the platform, but no taxis.  I walked from the station into the small village and came to an Inn where men were sitting and drinking in the bar.  I was thinking of Doughboys in their brown uniforms with Sam Browne belts or suspenders, and leggings, and saucer helmets, at the Argonne Forest, St. Michel, and the Marne, the songs like “Mademoiselle from Armiterres.”   The locals in the bar called a taxi driver, who was at home on his day off, but he came and drove me around the battlefield monuments and cemeteries.   At the American cemetery, I picked up large chestnut leaves lying on the graves and gardens, and put them between the pages of a book I carried.  I will still have them twenty years later, transferred to a large photo book on Africa, preserved, stiff and delicate.  I visited a nearby site, where Teddy Roosevelt’s son, Quentin, an aviator, was shot down and crashed to his death in 1918.  The German cemetery down the road from the American cemetery was surrounded by a wrought iron black fence and the markers were not white crosses, like that of the Americans, but black short Iron Crosses, Teutonic Looking.  It seemed a bit unfair, that these dead were not really honored properly.

Now, my mind switches back to the present, uncertain why France had interjected itself into the cafe.  Maybe the sound of a bird, or the sight earlier that day of a British Roundel on a local pub in Santa Barbara.  You never know what sound or word or noise or feeling can bring up old memories clearly.   Perhaps it was the casualness of the Shoreline Restaurant that suddenly reminded me of France.  Families dining together, the fathers and mothers and well behaved, quiet children eating and enjoying the meal together, an active meal, like you see in the small French towns, even in Paris.  Perhaps it is the young waitresses, courteous and attentive, serious about the family business.  Part of it could be the lighting and the colors, like the rich, but soft, evening blues, as in a Paris quartz bar near the Opera that I remember, like Hemingway wrote about in “ A Good Cafe on the Place St. Michel,” in A Moveable Feast.  The sky and sea are now both medium gray blue, blending together, the sky only slightly lighter, with a bit of green thrown in.  The blending makes me think that earth, air, and sea, are all just differences in specific gravity, different densities of matter.  Perhaps the smell of the Shoreline is French.  Maybe it is the children’s tiny voices, the easy conversation with the children, genteel, and the father spooning out food to the children’s plates.  The cropped bangs of the small boys, the Belgian beer, the particular blues of the Cote d’Azure like night, the mountainous shore encircling the bay, the lighting, the colors inside the restaurant with a touch of night inside despite the light bulbs.

I remember more details of the Chateau Thierry stopover and smile to myself.  It was an overnight stopover, coming back to Washington after being in East Africa on business.  I was supposed to get back to Washington and quickly write up the report on my trip.  I had done my Paris consultations, but instead of hurrying back to Washington on the afternoon flight, I had called in to plead illness and say I would be a couple days late getting back.  There was an unwritten rule in the State Department that you not spend more than a day layover in Europe, despite the temptations.  No one would believe I was really sick, in Paris.  There would be raised eyebrows and knowing looks, but what could they say.

I think I realized then, that my heart was in the arts rather than diplomacy and foreign policy.  I would spend time at the Louvre, at Chateau Thierry, enjoying my hotel in Montmartre, walking the Tuilleries.  I would see the Monets at the Musee d’ Orsay.  I would save the Somme battlefields, the Boulevard des Cappucines and other Montparnasse hangouts of the Impressionists, as well as the Left Bank hangouts of the Expatriates for another trip.  Something to look forward to.  Now, I was working not to become an Ambassador, but to support my intellectual pursuits and travel, my more important non-work life.

At any rate, that was thirteen years ago, and it is a beautiful, sweater-weather, night in Santa Barbara, as I leave the Shoreline Restaurant and walk to my car, the crescent moon hanging low in the sky above, its visible white arc lying at the bottom, and the rest of the sphere a faint outline above it.  The evening sky, with a couple of stars peeking out, is illuminated somewhat by the sun setting far in the west, out to sea beyond the horizon no longer visible.  Japan is out there.  The hills across the street from the cafe, leading up to the city college, are becoming a dark silhouette, with the twilight sky as a backdrop.  This is a night to remember, one of those that suddenly comes back to you, clearly, years later, when thinking of Santa Barbara.  You may forget the museums and cafes, but the image of the silhouetted hills, and white stucco buildings, and twilight, periwinkle turning to indigo, remain.  i get into my car, and turn on the CD. It is Dave Brubeck’s soft jazz, “Take Five.”  The combination of clarinet, whisk drums, and soft piano keys from the middle of the register is almost Arabic in tone, or more Samba, a tune from 1960, the ideal era.

I get back to my room at the Pacific Crest, where I always stay.  The walls are cream colored plaster and the door frames and trims are white, with flowery orange colored nylon curtains.  The beamed ceiling slopes down to the windows.   It is like an attic room, except larger, and has plastic louvers which crank open for windows.  Next door, I can see down onto the porch of the neighboring bed and breakfast, and I can see down the street, Corona del Mar, lined with bungalow style houses and apartment buildings.  I hear pigeons cooing next door, and see three gray ones strutting back on forth on the rafters next door.  They are pacing purposefully.  Guarding their nest.  There is a nice warble in their throats.

On the next day, I wake to the sound of a vacuum hitting the wall next door.  I hear two Hispanic maids chattering as they make up the room, the occasional whirring sound of a vacuum, like a jet.   I can’t make out the words, only hear the la la la sound and fast mumbling Spanish language, almost lilting, with vowels at the ends.  A propeller plane drones over head, and is gone.  A door shuts in the distance.  The maids knock on my door, “No Service Today,” they repeat my phrase in a lilt and go one.  I hear an occasional train going by on the tracks nearby, going to San Diego or up the coast to San Francisco, this time I think south.  You can hear the tires on the concrete of Hwy.101, also nearby, and the always occasional motorcycle, the high winding Japanese ones, again the drone of a small prop plane.  Pilots call them piston planes.

I go to the Santa Barbara Zoo, a modest area of 55 acres which you are able to see entirely in one morning without difficulty.  I see some wonderful animals.  My lasting impressions are of the two leopards, an Amur Leopard and a Snow Leopard, in separate areas, both large cats and beautiful.  They are both larger than expected, the size of mountain lions, and with padded feet.  The snow leopard is white with soft brown spots and has a huge, thick tail.  The Amur Leopard has beautiful jade eyes and is eating grass he can find, like a house cat.  The ring tailed lemur watches me closely with his orange eyes, reminding me of Fiji, my Siamese cat, for some reason.  The male  and the female Lemurs are hugging each other.  It is great to be able to have real communication which I feel with the Lemur, eye to eye.  I also have contact with one of the the giraffes, which we are allowed to feed at 2:00.   At the sound of the dinner bell, they start walking to the feeding place where children (and me) pay a dollar to buy a biscuit and feed it to them with your palm.  I am lingering, and one of the giraffes pauses on the way, staring at me, as if to say, “get going, buy me a biscuit, see you there.”  I think he is a very intelligent animal.  But, the most spectacular animal is the white gibbon, who hangs from high branches, a hundred feet up, by one arm and lets out loud high-pitched “caw” s that bring spectators from all over the zoo.  He is doing effortless acrobatics, like a circus performer.  He is like a small person in his proportions, but furry, and is overall very human like in his behavior.

The other spectacular animals are the male lion, with his massive head and mane, but otherwise medium sized body.  The head is massive and square.  But, the paw he licks is something to behold.  It is huge and by weight alone could hold a person down.  The silverback lowland gorilla is massive and human in his behavior, rather shy, sitting alone in the shade below the viewing window, and averting his eyes whenever I look at him directly.  He appears benevolent.  He is, despite his shyness, curious about people.  The black-beaked swan with her whistle noise is rather personable.   I leave the zoo with a few concerns.   The silverback seems lonely to me.  The Amur and snow leopards are also alone, unlike the lemurs, lions, elephants, gibbons, etc.   Zoos, to me, are a bit sad.  As I leave, in my mind I bring up the image of Kokoshka’s “The Hunt,” with two Chinese hunters wearing conical hats and armed with spears chasing a beautiful deer, which is in mid-jump.  The humans have skeleton faces.  The humans clearly lack the elegance of the animals.  They are on a higher order.

I have coffee at The Habit hamburger stand, a sidewalk stand with wire metal chairs, on the main street, State Street.  Across the street are the typical boutiques, Urban Outfitters, Starbucks, a bicycle shop, mountain climbing store, and women’s boutique called “Gossip.”   Further down are the main stores, Nordstroms, Macys and Saks, in arcades.   An electric trolley goes by quietly.   Buildings across the street are all connected by a common cornice of red tile.   They are of the same motif, by ordinance, Spanish Colonial, of tan stucco, with wrought iron railings on balconies and arched porticos, “arcos” in Spanish.   The architecture is California in 1925.  The palms lining the street don’t hurt.  I am looking forward to evening, walking the beach, listening to the waves rolling softly ashore, going out on the pier and looking out at the stars and city lights on the mountainside.

I realize after a few days that it is not just the beach and ocean I am coming for, it is also the California culture, the Asian and Hispanic presence, the relaxing and healthy atmosphere, the tropical vegetation, the string of green hills which run along the coast, Highway One skirting the ocean, the cloudless blue skies and warm weather, and seagulls, and fresco colors, and good Mexican and sea food, and manicured gardens and immaculate, clean streets.  Everything, even the freeways, are done right, thought out in advance with an eye for the aesthetic.  There is the easy happiness of the people and the palms and lushness of orchards.  Wine country is just up the road.

But, after a few days, and missing my wife, I find myself back on I-15, my ribbon of asphalt running north, direct from Los Angeles to Helena, 1,200 miles, passing through Vegas and an In and Out Burger, and then through Southern Utah in the night, the big dipper hanging outside to the west in the dark night, bright and clear, then overnight in Salt Lake, and on to Pocatello, and Montana the next morning, into the beautiful snow topped lavender and purple mountain landscape.  I honk the horn at Monida Pass as I enter Montana.

I am listening to Grant’s Memoirs on tape,  a perfect bookend for the Civil War tape on Lincoln on the way down.   Grant said the Civil War, rebellion he called it, was perhaps punishment for having pursued an unjust war with Mexico, which we provoked.  He originally felt that war could have been avoided through diplomacy, to assuage Southern feelings and dampen emotions over the slavery issue.  He came to realize, however, that the adage that a “nation can not exist half slave and half free” had value to it.  America, without union and the abolition of slavery, would have remained weak and divided, more a loose federation without a real central core, like Mexico at the time, which became prey to Britain, France, and Spain after independence (Maximilian’s imposition).  Grant came to feel that the original contract, whereby the south would join the union against Britain if slavey was not made an issue, was naturally abrogated by the passage of time and by change.  The Union was no longer thirteen states.  The old contract was no longer realistic, with the midwest, Florida, Texas, etc. all added to the Union.  But, he agreed with Lincoln that it was important to put the war behind them after Appamatox and build for a future with the South included.  He had only two conditions for Lee’s surrender, lay down arms and an end to slavey.  Grant knew what had to be done.  He always though ahead.  He lost 40,000 killed and wounded between May and June, 1864 (Wilderness to Cold Harbor), but he had a system in place for automatic replacements.  He had the big picture in mind at all times.