Traveling slow

It was a good decision so far to break this trip in half. We did one short flight to Houston, stayed in the airport hotel, and will take off later today for Ecuador. I had a swim last night in the hotel pool so I even got in some exercise. This is in theory going to mean I’m not physically destroyed at the other end of the trip (and then on the way back we’ll stay in Houston a few days to visit my parents and grandma). So far so good!

I am planning to fritter away some time in the airport this afternoon before the flight playing Ingress and Pokemon as I ride the tram around and around. Perhaps also an airport “spa” leg massage.

A good adventure on the road

On the road by myself this morning to Calistoga I pulled off of 101 figuring I could have a little Olompali State Park lookaround. So I’m on San Antonio road, parallel to the highway, and passed a young person with a backpack…. thought a second, stopped & stuck my head out the window. WANT A RIDE! I screeched out the window after a quick assessment. The young person ran to catch up looking absolutely gobsmacked and hopped in. Rather than drag them to the park I figured we were on the back road to Petaluma (where they said they were headed). After some consultation of maps (young Tad was walking to Bodega Bay) I offered to take them to Santa Rosa where they could take 12 to the coast. Offer accepted!

Our mysterious encounter continued and I hoped my tacky dance music was acceptable (“Hashtag this you basic bitch!” was blasting, which felt wrong for my new friend somehow.) I mentioned the land and the Mushroom Farm as a conversational hook to no avail (My first guess of eco-farm-hippie was wrong.) An observation on some sort of Path (terminology that I don’t remember) was made. “So… Buddhist? Hindu? Krishna?” Yes to Krishna! That explains the cute lil dots and stripes of white face paint. “I’ve always liked the story of Krishna stealing the butter and his mom telling him to open his mouth and she looks in his mouth and instead of the stolen butter there is the whole world and the whole universe!!! Enthusiastic agreement from Tad. When you are first on the path, you’re like a child seeing the forest from a child’s perspective! Then, the next stage, you’re like a mother holding the child in her lap, in the forest (on the path?) and you have to be both mother and child, to yourself! Enthusiastic agreement from me. Priest and poet journeying together! We entered historic Petaluma.

Somewhere in downtown Petaluma they offered the thought that I should see Scott Pilgrim (movie, full title escapes me) which I had not. “Is that.. uh is that by the guy who did Slacker?” No. But Tad loves that movie. I was like Tad, my friend, I lived that movie and knew everyone in it! Turns out Tad was a street kid in Austin for some time. We high fived for love of Austin at a streetlight. How about the movie Waking Life? Yes! Tad loves it! I think it is a little sad but beautiful. Why sad? Because, I take it to be all a dreamlike mind journey in the moment between a car crash and death (feeling a little weird to say this to my hitchhiker as I, a stranger, drive my FMINIST-mobile.) “I’ll have to watch it again! I didn’t notice that!” Tad had left the hari krishna festival in Fresno (to go their own way still a personal follower of krishna) and it was an uneasy path and difficult but worth it.

When I said I love trains, they quoted Buckminster Fuller on public transit. Hahahah, lovely. I explained about 4D Timelock and the towers and airships. Also I was offered a Bob Dylan quote (always stick your tongue out at babies) and something about the Grateful Dead.

This young puppy, voice barely breaking, utterly charmed me. I dropped them off by the side of the access road to highway 12 in Santa Rosa, offered $20 bucks “because you’re a holy pilgrim, and to get some food and water!” (I thought of giving more but did not want it to be weird.)

We are now Facebook friends. An auspicious start to my mini-vacation at the hot springs. Wow I do love life quite a lot. A small human connection. All of these moments should be valued and held close to our hearts.

Back on my bullshit!

I’m back from my trip to Seattle, Vancouver, Whistler, and beyond! Now that I’ve taken the Coast Starlight train to all its destinations I can’t wait to take some more long distance train journeys!!

Danny has often pointed out to me how I go down a social class for every bag I’m carrying and it was even more true for this trip. As I went from my friend Els’s house near the giant geodesic dome thing in downtown Vancouver, to the train station, at 4:30am, laden with giant backpack hanging off the back of my wheelchair, smaller backpack at my feet, and duffel bag balanced on my lap, a little group of maybe 30-somethings was heading away from the crosswalk I was approaching. One of them veered off towards me holding out a bag. “Would you … would you like breakfast?”

Now…. what a question since I was just looking around wondering if anything was open so I could get a muffin or whatever before getting on a 3 hour bus to Seattle where I’d get back on the train. Perhaps this young man had been at some sort of … early meeting rife with donuts, or was a baker carrying home some fresh pastry and a MAGICAL CROISSANT was going to appear for me.

Thus I paused a bit, consideringly, and said “Um… what is it?”

“It’s my leftover McDonald’s pancakes. Please, take it, go on!” (Earnest eye contact, look of deep and pained concern.)

Maybe I should have taken it so he could feel good about himself but I did not and I may have giggled inappropriately without explaining but I did smile and was as nice as possible at 4:30 am on the street. Then I passed through a sort of encampment in the park and at the train station a cab driver was screaming at a definitely homeless dude who was asking for change and so I gave the homeless dude my leftover Canadian money mentally attributing it to the nice man with the free bag of (gross!) Mcdonalds pancakes.

Completing my downwards journey to squalor I then just flat out laid down and fell asleep on the (relatively clean) floor of the bus.

p.s. I did get breakfast from a nice man in the train station who opened a tiny cafe at 5am and sold me a slice of lemon cake!!!

p.p.s. Wait staff in Vancouver AND Whistler sensitively offered me a straw, multiple times! They lean over and say it with soulful discretion, while making eye contact and touching my arm a little! “Would you like a STRAW, ma’am?” (They have HEARD that disabled people have this whole straw thing so…….)

More about the amazing adventures on my trip later !!! A little at a time!!!

p.p.p.s. CRIPS!!

Reading The Cruel Way

I am reading Ella Maillart’s The Cruel Way, about her road trip from Switzerland to Kabul in 1939 along with her friend Annemarie Schwartzenbach. This book was in theory free from University of Chicago, but I ended up buying it after several failed attempts to get the free book in a readable form, having installed several ugly and pointless pieces of bad software which I then had to uninstall. Better to buy the book and crack the DRM myself! Ridiculous!

Maillart is an ethnographer and writer, is interesting, often fantastically racist, hates Hitler, and is trying to help the famously “androgynous” men’s-suit-wearing Schwartzenbach clean up from a heroin addiction (what better thing to do than bring someone straight to Afghanistan????!!!) and get over some sort of stormy lesbian heartbreak. While I hoped initially they were lovers, now I think not – Schwartzenbach seems to have some other affairs along the way, though. Their relationship is pretty cool though. I enjoyed the moment where Schwartzenbach moans that Ella is more famous because her books have been translated (even though Schwartzenbach had more publications). Still true and no one seems to have translated her to English yet. Also fascinating, Maillart’s recordings of sentiment from people in various countries about Hitler, Mussolini, Britain, the US, Russia on the eve of war.

Neat stuff looked up in Wikipedia along the way
* Windcatchers of Hyderabad http://localcode.org/2017/03/windcatcher-passive-cooling-and-cultural-identity/ https://www.fieldstudyoftheworld.com/searching-windcatchers-hyderabad/

* The Tomb of Kabus and the Qabus-Nama

So many other things but it’s now a week later and I have moved on to read some other things! Oh well, I’ll post this anyway.

Highlights of this lovely day!

Up betimes!

We set off in my (washed) trusty FMINISTmobile, in the unexpected sunshine, packing everything into the trunk carefully, stopped to gawk at the ocean, I enjoyed driving a lot, can’t remember everything we talked about but it was fun whatever it was, stopped at Bean Hollow beach and hunted pebbles (I hid in a cave) thinking it was using all my extra walking juice for SOME TIME. The drive was so beautiful! Everything very green from rain, lowering clouds off in the distance but sunny for us, sparkling ocean, enticing roadcuts, no traffic, just the open road. 2 hours later we got to Milo’s college and began to unpack the car. But wait….. my powerchair battery….. was definitely not in the car. Must have been still in the garage where we disassembled the chair! My heart sank but I quickly recalibrated my plans and expectations. Everyone just rolled with the changes of plan.

I could drive around to an illegal parking spot like a loading zone by Milo’s dorm, walk in and hang out in his room. My mom took the car back to a legal spot. We stayed there a while and then I stayed in bed there while everyone else went off for a tour of Stevenson College. No zooming around for me but the rest was nice.

We drove to lunch in town instead of going to Milo’s dining hall (since I could not get there without my wheelchair.) Saturn Cafe was awesome (brunch!) and just as nifty as I remembered from 1991 or so. Then drove Milo and Ada back up to campus and dropped them off, talking a mile a minute – they were going to Milo’s D&D game which Ada was going to join as Sloan the Black Thief (with his Hibernian Wind Flute).

We had a look at the Arboretum though I could not go far from the car. Basically I sat on a bench in the succulent area for a bit & then we drove through the parking lot slowly & had a look around. Then to the bed & breakfast place which was mercifully accessible and easy to get around in (1st floor, like 2 steps from car, small, lovely beds.) We crashed out a bit. Mom & I then had a small adventure driving out on the wharf to the end, got out to have a look at the ocean, and realized there were a zillion giant sea lions under us, orking loudly. So much fun! Dorky sea lions! Blorping around on a little pier ! What luck! We were grinning like fools as we photographed the sea lions & then got in the car to warm up. Slowly driving out… rain started up again…. then a GIANT RAINBOW was suddenly going all the way across the sky from the Boardwalk into the ocean. At the boardwalk it was a double rainbow for a while. More wild and enthusiastic photos! & back to our B&B which was just a few blocks away for another rest before dinner.

The kids cabbed to meet us. Some not so great luck, the restaurant I picked form the internet had an enormous freaking flight of stairs. OK I’m just going to do it because I’m hungry and I can’t walk anywhere else without going there in a cab! Fuuuuck! There was an elevator but to get to it i woudl have had to walk all the way around the block to the back, which I could not do. (cab???? lol …. omg…. ) So I grimly hobble up sideways. The guy at the top tells us that they had a party of 12 and then a party of 20 and were understaffed and it might be an hour before anything would come from the kitchen. I did not care at this point just give me a drink!!!! Hot whiskey arrived. They came back suddenly and said that it was all okay again and the kitchen was Producing and we could order food! Huzzah! Our luck (?) held.

The kids then showed up & regaled us with the story of their game. Dragon island, ruled by a tyrant, they’re hired as mercenaries to help rid the island of dragon problem. The players sounded hilarious and clever! Too much detail to repeat here though. Milo = Jack the Giantkiller, a gnome ranger. (Everyone was a giant to him.) A druid in a forest … a burning city… a redemption Paladin riding her elk up a cliff, etc.

At the ending battle Ada (aka Sloan the Black Thief) says I whip out my Hibernian Wind Flute (remember that?) to play a song to hearten the paladin (who is taunting the dragon) And Ada literally pulls a bright orange kazoo out of her jacket pocket & started playing The Final Countdown. The players all lose it at this brilliance. I think she also rolled a natural 20 (because of course.) Everyone except milo was surprised as hell.

At another point in the fight she decided to mock the dragon & played the sort of uh, whatever you call the clint eastwood theme from the good, the bad, and the ugly. Another point she healed the paladin by playing All Star. And when the DM looked up and said in shock that the dragon had 1 hp left (and it was charging at Milo) Ada played some sort of special dragon slayer theme from Skyrim which I wouldn’t recognized but the players did, and I think Milo also rolled a natural 20, then jumped inside the dragon’s mouth screaming I’m Jack the Giantkiller, how do you think I got my name! and killed the dragon by cutting his way out through his throat. The end! This sounds like an incredibly good game and it entertained us all the way through dinner. Milo is also in a weekly salsa and bachata class, and a hip hop class, and is taking discrete math, a 2nd calculus, and a data structures class. We will go hang out with him a little more in the morning — then back to the city. I hope my legs survive. it is more walking than I have done in a long time, I was surprised I could do it, and I will likely be feeling the extra pain for a bit but totally worth it. It has been working well to do slow ankle strengthening exercises (I had to give up trying to walk a block and back from the end of December, and do more strengthening, for example.) If I come out of this trip fairly OK then I will wait at least a week before trying anything walky again (like that 1 block plan) but maybe I’ll be ready? Unsure till it happens.

A small travel plan for the year

One of my plans for this year is to ride BART to every stop. I’ve always wanted to do this but have not felt energetic enough to do it! I’ll plan out my excursions beforehand, marking cafes with wifi and nice lunch spots near the stations if they exist. Then I can haul myself out there for an afternoon and work from a cafe, getting to know the entire Bay Area more intimately & scouting for future excursions!

BART map

It would be nice to do this with the ferry, too.

I’ll get VERY ridiculously excited about going to Antioch, or Union City! And I’ll report back with the results of my travels!

Do you examine places on maps and mark down spots you’d like to visit? I had a great virtual tour of Sicily’s north coast near Messina (Villa Terrafranca, Bauso, and Serro) where some of my ancestors lived, walking along the village streets and the waterfront in Street View.

Whenever I’m going to a new part of town just within San Francisco I have a look on the map as well, to mark anything that might be interesting and study the accessible MUNI stops & best routes to go there and back.

Like Des Esseintes’ journey sometimes this map-journey is all I get. The real journey never happens and I am reasonably content with the imaginary one! If it does, then the imaginary journey deepens the enjoyment of the real journey. I learned something about this from how, when I was a little kid in Detroit in the 70s, my dad would write away to parks and chambers of commerce, get back a lot of maps and brochures, and we’d learn stuff about the history and geology of a place before we went.

Along with this knowledge is a sort of errand geography, so that I have buckets of errands to be done and if I’m going to a particular place I’ll know “And while I’m there I should do everything that needs doing in a hardware store since there’s one right next to the BART stop”. Very handy when you don’t drive (much) and have limited energy.

Wine tasting

I have a vague memory of once being at a winery tour and maybe seeing some barrels and being in a big room drinking a glass of wine with a group of people but this may be completely imaginary. My sister took me today to Quixote Winery where we had an appointment for a wine tasting. I had no idea what to expect, maybe a tour of a cellar where I would not want to go down a million steps so would sit and read on my phone while a tour guide took other people around?

Instead it was just a very quirky interestingly built house and garden. As we went up the flagstone path to the weird looking house on top of a small hill we noticed & were commenting on the patterns of the paving stones which were set in rivery random looking designs, brick, stones, and I think maybe also tile. The building had a lot of tile mosaic bits – outside and inside – and a gold leaf covered tower like a minaret. I kept muttering “quirky Alhambra” to myself….

We sat in front of a fireplace and this lady explained about 5 or 6 kinds of wine to us as we tasted them. Mostly Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Syrah. We were there basically because my sister has a book about the architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I gathered the building has no right angles. Even the bathroom was really beautiful and had a sort of tile path across the walls, over the doorways, hard to describe. And, fat, chunky, bulbous columns in somewhat Minoan colors, orange and turquoise and gold and purple. Tiles or other elements were cracked and re-assembled or seem like they are flowing into one another. I like this guy’s aesthetic. The building fit the hillside, it fit the idea of California, it fit “Quixote” in a particular way, and it made me feel happy, dynamic, sort of mind-explody in a good way, comfortable (the movement and chaos feeling very homey, like how I think). Laura talked about how even when you have a strong vision (like this) of how you want something to be it is very hard to get it across to others and to get them to actually do it or to accept your vision to the degree that it takes to overcome the various tendencies to do it the way you (the other people) want (like the clients) or how it is easiest or most convenient (for you the workers digging holes and laying tiles and cement and so on) and about the ways sexism plays into that dynamic.

hall and column of winery

We sat in the patio for a while for Laura to sketch. I was taking notes for my text adventure game and then just gazing around to appreciate things, looking at the gold and green hillsides and the distant cliffs (Stag’s Leap… part of the terroir or the viticultural district. I had just been reading in my Roadside Geology book about how dark volcanic soils and oceanic crust soil makes for good and complicated red wines. Pretty cool! While I’m not sure I really know one kind of wine from another, everything we had there tasted interesting, complex, and delicious. 15 minutes and Laura had made a super cute sketch. She will probably do more from photos later.

laura sketching

watercolor sketch

Somehow all day she was asking me phrases in Spanish which will help her communicate with her landscape crew (she is a landscape designer/architect) so it was stuff like I’m not ready to plant these yet, Put them over here, No, over there, I’m still thinking about it, The tall ones go here, the short ones in front, How are you, How is your family, I’m sorry, Excuse me, I had a nice weekend how about you, and a lot of variations on Fuck these fucking fucked up plants, because everyone needs to be able to swear to express their personality properly.

liz in front of mosaic wall

Flaneur time

Loafing around. Swimming. More swimming. Scootering around. More writing (notes for the text adventure I’m writing with Milo) and gossiping with Laura. Playing Ingress and Pokémon around the resort.

Mud bath in the spa (a strange sequence: shower, mud bath for 15 minutes, then another soaking bath that was mildly sulfurous, with a little wooden ledge to rest your glass of cucumber water on), then, clutching our faceclothes wrapped around an ice cube (?) into a steam room with the MOST amazing gurgling noises which must be the 1882 steampunk plumbing straight up from the geyser) then we were sort of tucked into bunks like burritos with towels carefully folded around us and cucumbers on our eyes. There should have been a step where we got to scrub ourselves in the mud bath since we were floating in a sludge of almost uncomfortably hot ash and pumice.

In the mud bath I pretended to be gradually waking up from a thousand year sleep, floating peacefully in low gravity in my nutrient slurry stasis chamber, about to step off onto a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Also, a Roman empress (alternating, though, I should really have combined the two.)

I also bought some boutiquey stuff in “downtown” Calistoga. Now the proud owner of a metallic gold vest with a lot of zippers on it, and a skirt with excellent pockets, printed with books and cats. This has been a nice mini vacation!

Petaluma, petrified forest, Calistoga hot springs

At a hot springs resort !

liz in bathing suit

My sister and I had a good leisurely trip up 101. Lunch in Petaluma – on our way to find a riverside cafe we were accosted suddenly by some really nice people with film equipment who asked if they could interview us about the women’s march. They’re organizing Petaluma’s first women’s march this coming January. I agreed (my sister did not) and they fussed with lighting and screens and sound for a bit, and then said something nice about how I marched with my kids and a disabled women’s contingent with huge banners at the Women’s March in 2017 in Oakland and it was not going to immediately fix anything politically but it is great for feeling solidarity, hope, and love which are all important for giving us strength to keep working to improve the current bad situation.

Somehow, I just thought it was hilarious that we were in a kind of deserted corner of Petaluma downtown and out I pop like a magical funny haired wheelchair gnome to do a reasonably competent off the cuff sound bite. But then I really needed to run off and find a bathroom and some food!

We noticed during lunch that across the river there was a strip mall with a Merle Norman makeup store. “Jesus! That still exists!?!” “Pretty much if you’re wearing that makeup you’re likely to be nearly dead.” I suddenly wondered who Merle Norman was. Wikipedia save me! But no. She’s not in there! The rest of the internets inform me how she started her business in the 1920s, blah blah blah. It was almost interesting… But not quite….Maybe if I read up a little more I could write Merle Norman’s wikipedia entry. But why?

Onward to a 3 story antique store in a giant old bank building complete with vault! It was amazing! I recommend it! I got a nifty chinese medicine chest sort of thing with tiny drawers. I’ve always wanted one! Need to translate the characters. One of the ladies in the bank vault elevator told me they have a ghost in the building. There was other gossip which I’ve forgotten already but I told another lady at the checkout (who told me a little of the history of my medicine cabinet) about a book I read where a girl goes to stay with her stern great aunt and there is a chest with dozens of tiny drawers each holding a different object, and when she opens the drawers and looks at the thing (like a pair of gloves or a locket) she is sucked back in time to different days and then realizes that the old timey girl she makes friends with is really her great aunt. I could be remembering the story wrong and I’ve never found this book again, but the point is it would be so cool to have a card catalog-ish cabinet and put things in the drawers…. Which I will soon do.

I read a little bit out of Roadside Geology of Northern California, about the Cotati Valley and the volcanic ash all over this area.

We stopped again at the Petrified Forest in the hills just west of Calistoga. The giant sequoia and redwood trees were blasted flat by a Mount-St-Helens-like explosion & covered with hundreds of feet of ash (I think several million years ago but am too lazy to look it up to check right now). We went on a loop trail up a steep hill. Model CI took it like a champion and I had a blast just being able to do that at all. We went backwards around the loop since I thought the end of the trail being paved looked easier for going uphill. Robert Louis Stevenson was here! I am his huge fan! Now I have to read his book The Silverado Squatters which is apparently set in this area and maybe mentions “Petrified Charlie” (?) There was a grotesque statue of Petrified Charlie and his burro. Also a lot of fire damage to the trees from last year’s wildfires but everything still very lovely, the buildings were saved (we learned later from the guy at the front desk) by the volunteer fire dept. coming heroically to fight the fire. The petrified trees were truly enormous, some of them half excavated from the hillside of cemented ash flow, with huge live oak trees growing through cracks in their petrified trunks. Satisfyingly, near the top of the hill as we went down, there was a sign (facing the other direction) that said “Suggested Wheelchair Turnaround. Thank you”. You can imagine how I got a huge kick out of this!

liz-turnaround-sign

The hot springs place is super nice, we had some free wine and cheese, unpacked, laid in the hammock out back of our room under some palm trees, then wandered around, had dinner at their restaurant, and went swimming. Perfectly clear night so we got to float around in the hot pool and look at the stars, just as I had hoped.

The people next to us in the restaurant seemed like they were dating. I wasn’t really noticing them much but when they got their food the lady in a fluffy white sweater was having halibut and she said with charming enthusiasm to her date, “Have you ever caught a halibut?” There was a sort of weird pause. “That’s a great question,” he said, in the tone of someone giving a talk who was asked something a bit unexpected and they need time to think of some sensible response. (I am not sure he really thought it was a great question. On the other hand, I enjoyed it.) “I can’t say I have.” “Well, they really put up a fight and then you just sort of spin them out [ed.: or some such fish talk – i’m a little hazy on the details]. Just like a flounder!” she said happily as if we all knew what it was like to catch a flounder even if we hadn’t been lucky enough to catch a halibut. “I’ll have to tell that to the boys,” said her hapless, square, not-knowing-things-about-flounders date. “Is it hot in here?” she later asked me. “Yeah it’s warm.” “I should just take my sweater off!” “Actually I already took mine off.” “Oooh! Well, I mean, I HAVE CLOTHES UNDER IT. THEY’RE CLOTHES! *charming laugh*” (she shimmied out of the fluffy angora sweater giving me a little eyebrow wiggle, which I returned.) I would totally fish with her.

My sister and I wrote lists of the things we did this year so that if we felt despairing and like we hadn’t done anything at some later point we’d be able to look at our retrospective of Things Done and feel comforted. They were good lists! I’ll write mine up soon!

The Future Is Fluid

Enjoying my visit to New York a lot already. This morning I had breakfast in our super nice hotel (Townhouse Inn). Tonight will be busy and I get tired easily, so I didn’t want to try to do anything big. I set off towards the nearest museum, which I knew nothing about – The Rubin Museum of Art, a few blocks away, picked out from Google Maps. It’s a museum dedicated to Himalayan arts and culture.

Along the way I browsed in a vintage jewelry store which had a lot of little wooden drawers full of stuff (like, a drawer for the 5 dollar tie pins, and 10, 15, and 20+ pins) There were drawers for brooches with people on them, animals, leaves, circle pins, birds…. I got a tie clip that is a very cute enameled bus from the 50s and something called a scarf clip that has morpho butterfly wings in the design that said it was from 1944. Anyway, I needed a clip because, all the way to the museum, I had to keep feeling at my neck to make sure my nice silk scarf didn’t fall off. Now the clip can make sure (or, I will lose a scarf AND a clip!)

At the museum I enjoyed the wrathful deities who represent wisdom and the small gold statues from the 13th-14th centuries especially the one of a historian and translator, Zhonnu Pel.

But I especially loved the the animations by Chitra Ganesh (The Scorpion Gesture), and The Road to Sanchi by Ghiora Aharoni. Of Ganesh’s animations I super loved the large glowing panel called Metropolis (must be in reference to the movie with Maria the robot) I watched it twice – get ready for the somewhat inaccurate/incomplete description from memory. It started out in sort of cosmic space/time in the stars with a Buddha and a writing (woman’s?) hand, some scrolls/books and a giant glowing flower and buildings which looked old (a monastery I think). More buildings arise in a mountain backdrop and then giant black feet stomp on everything so that the land and mountains fracture (I suppose many disasters including colonialism and invasions or diasporas) It is all a gorgeous technicolor neon collage. The giant feet are like Kali trampling and I also thought of the Monty Python foot. Felt that there were a lot of inter-references to stuff I missed but that didn’t lessen the impact – clearly more depth, but accessible to the ignorant. There is a rainbow, more buildings, an airplane, tall buildings and urban life appearing over and along with the older buildings and temples, then I think the 2nd buddha appears in a golden statue form, its face changes to a woman’s face (but I don’t know who specifically) and her body is like a cyborg goddess body which raises an arm and some sort of energy (weapon?) appears in her hand. It was gorgeous and apocalyptic and many-layered, with a relentless quality to the action. Loved it so much!!! Science fiction feminist visions are the best. My head exploded! I could have watched it 10 times! Thank you future historians of the (im)possible!

The other exhibit that really struck me was The Road to Sanchi by Ghiora Aharoni. It is a curving array of battered taxi meters in glass bell jars. The meter has a small strip of video screen playing and if you go around the back of each one there is a digital camera attached to the meter, playing the same video, full screen. Each one is a journey through busy crowded city streets (though in at least one, a more rural road) to a sacred place of various religions, in India and I think maybe Nepal.

I was pretty tired by this time so did not watch each of the 12 or so videos of the journey. I spent a fair amount of time with it though. My mind had already been floating through my own journey to new york from san francisco & through the street this morning on my scooter mingling with the crowds and enjoying the many layers of time of this city where on every block there are buildings in stages of dereliction and renewal built on geologic-feeling accretions of cement and tunnels and asphalt and pipes. Purple glass “light tunnel” windows inset into older bits of sidewalk. You can feel the infrastructure just seething.

Then, just before I got to the Road exhibit, I had sat at a desk by the elevator, where you can write a letter to a future museum visitor. On seeing that I realized that someone had handed me a letter from another visitor on my way in (I took it with thanks but assumed it was a sort of “please donate” brochure) So, I sat at the desk, got out the letter, and read it. Very sweet: “Dear Visitor, Don’t leave the museum without taking an idea that can impact how you live your life! Enjoy the wisdom of an ancient culture, whether you believe in religion or not. – Batya” Nice, as I am in fact not religious – only a poet. Maybe someone will enjoy the letter I left in the box.

So the idea in “The Road to Sanchi” of someone centering the pilgrimage (rather than a destination), through these multiple cameras/videos of specific places and times, but all playing at once, where I could wheel around their graceful arc (of time and space) made me very happy, feeling even more pleasantly catapulted in my awareness out of linear time and connected to many times and places. (Thinking of the artist’s, and by extension, everyone else’s, experiences of their lives). The somewhat chaotic street scenes, sense of not being in control (as a passenger not the driver) but in control as the viewer of art. And the battered, gritty, homey feeling of the iron taxi meters, of a place I have never been so they are not familiar to me, but from their being more or less the same made me feel they were familiar to others who are not me, another sensation/thought that is beautiful.

In a small library exhibit there were shelves of books on culture and history, travel journals, and science fiction, especially noticed the heavy amount of Octavia Butler’s books and then the book Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler (edited by Rebecca J. Holden & Nisi Shawl) just leaped out at me. I may have pulled it off the shelf to put it on top of the book stand display!

Notes on access: The museum is spread out through several floors with a small wheelchair lift to the main lobby and then a separate bank of elevators to 6 other floors. It was pretty accessible but larger powerchairs may have trouble with the somewhat narrow hallway to the bathroom (i.e. you could not turn around, and would have to back out of the bathroom and hall). There were a lot of free headsets with audio descriptions for some of the separate exhibits. The front doors were heavy but well balanced enough that I could (barely) open them but there were people in the lobby standing by to help. So all around, very accessible.

Now getting ready to meet friends for dinner and go out to the performance of Descent which I’m looking forward to quite a lot.