Blurbs O Burbs - Unexpected Exotic Travel!

The making of coffee in the early morning is a ritual for ordering your world. Sleep is Chaos: dreams and nightmares swoop down into our souls we know not whence (frighteningly, those nocturnal imaginings our fevered minds create, but the reason why that new guy in Payroll was flying over the backyard silver maple as your Junior High science teacher looks on, while you pile a wall of bricks around your ex-wife’s wedding dress simply escapes you). When we wake crawling into consciousness we immediately desire to reestablish control. I relish all the measured steps to build that first cup: grinding fresh beans into fine powder, the spit, hiss, and gurgle of brewing, and the machine’s final steaming exhaling to signal coffee is ready. You know, traveling to exotic places is worth writing about. But sometimes those places aren’t traditionally exotic. At present, sleep’s fantasia has evaporated, and I am sitting in a comfortable porch bench in a gated community called Rancho Murieta in the Sierra foothills of California, having arrived the day before to visit my brother and wife and two nephews. Some quiet reading time before the nephews stir (“Uncle Tim, you want to play catch with these darts?”) in the carefully tended neighborhood before the terrible heat of the day. Brother and family live on a cul de sac, and it’s not unpleasant sitting here, but I know if I lived here I would surely die. It occurs to me that the garish realism of Desperate Housewives and The Truman Show is less digital effects than documentary: my god, look at this place. Every trim and trimming is planned to adhere to a model of what a perfect neighborhood should look like. Each address is a small isolated complete minor kingdom, the homeowners strung together with shared understanding of the need to upkeep one’s own province while respecting the sovereignty of other kingdoms. From my vantage on the porch (and I must say on every visit I’ve never seen anyone else ever sitting on their porches) I’m pleased to see great oaks towering into the pale blue that the community planners blessedly allowed to remain, and the homes built around them. Beyond that small grace, the unruly spread of original wild nature is checked, and instead the august spirit of perfectibility that sustains the dream of the suburbs reigns—or I guess this is technically the exburbs, and I suppose what differentiates the original town from the frontier’s outlaying exburbs is the degree to which a center does or does not exist, a localized gathering area where all citizens come together (creatively, economically, politically, socially). I think my kingdom metaphor is not misplaced: nothing escapes royal attention to order. Like palace grounds, lawns are sculpted, carefully edged. Gardens are designed to rise and fall and flow as though natural, but instead appear obsessively tended. But I’ve never seen anyone gardening. The color you paint your house is ordered from a narrow spectrum, grays, beiges, milky salmons, ash blues. Ironically, though a kingdom in your own right, you are not to stand out. Conformity is the rule (and here’s the weirdest observation: every golf cart that hums by in this community is driven by guys that look dead-on like my brother, or my brother looks like them: it’s the stocky build, the close-cropped hair, the blank face of driving, the golf shirt, the sporty baseball hat…everyone the same)(and don’t get me started on the shiny muscle trucks these guys parade around in: the Dodge Rams, the Ford 1500s or whatever, you ride around on your bike and every other driveway has a behemoth stretching to the sidewalk, because, yeah, they need a huge truck to haul a carton of milk four blocks away, or they need to make sure we use up the available fossil fuels as quickly and inefficiently as possible, thereby ushering in all the quicker the Armageddon I suppose in their born-again hearts they thirst for). I don’t know this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if lawns were required, as model neighborhoods advertise them (irrelevant that they are unnatural, water-intensive, and require fertilizers which drain off into the environment). You couldn’t grow high stalks of corn in your front yard, say. And front yards are not given to use, it seems. These are family homes designed for Family in the strict cultural and politically specific sense of the term, but I rarely see actual families on their lawns. Growing up in the suburbs of Sacramento, on a summer morning like this with school out, we’d be outside running around, tossing footballs around, scrimmaging, over one lawn and across another. I look around: where are the children and their wild imaginations? We created great assemblies of adventures on summer mornings and evenings, but it seems these yards are for presentation, not play. And this sprawling rosemary bush to my left: does anyone clip a few stems to season their own tomato sauce? Not if Costco has a 25-lb. of dried rosemary on sale (it’s out in the garage on the shelf below the gallon jug on Mama Walmart’s “Homemade” tomato sauce). But wait! My quiet is disturbed: across the street a king has emerged. He’s wearing gray shorts, white socks, sandals, a T-shirt culturally referred to as “wife-beater”, and he is pushing a lawnmower. The grass seems to have grown overnight, and his Highness has come to quell the rebellion before the unrest spreads. I notice, as the mowing commences, that the homeowner chooses the outside-borders-first style, rather than the consecutive straight rows style. Halfway through his lawn, he turns off the engine to empty the trimmings. Just then I hear someone scream inside a house down the block. But like birds startled make for the sky then immediately float gently back down, the neighborhood returns to ordered silence. What goes on within each kingdom is the king’s business. Mowing accomplished, all is quiet, and I return to reading. Suddenly, a voice! The king speaks! He says good morning to his neighbor who has emerged. What ensues is the perfunctory exchange we all carry on. First, the weather is noted, and the king says he wanted to get the yard done before it got too hot. “Yes,” the other king replies, “the days are getting just too hot.” “Well, it’s all about enjoying life,” retorts the first king (I have to pause, but I guess he means enjoying life after work is done). “Oh yeah,” says the second king, “you gotta enjoy life." "What are your plans for the Fourth?” “Oh, you know, we’ll walk down to the parade (walk? Not drive his Dodge Ram the torturous three blocks?), then there’s a barbeque, then you know, we’ll have some friends over and then, yeah, we’ll go see the fireworks." “Hey that’s great,” says first king: “I notice you have a lot of flags in your yard there.” “Oh yeah, you know, it’s patriotic and kind of…fun…you coming to the barbeque?” (Here the first king pats his round belly) “Well, too much eating!” (In his defense, the second king pats his own belly, though he looks pretty fit) “Hey, none of us need to eat more!” (It’s worth noting here that through this whole exchange neither king has moved any closer to the other. Banal formalities occur across distant lawns, and not even kings would dare tread upon their own lawns let alone trespass on another’s) First king brings up the block party, says he might drop by for a drink. The second king pauses, then with mild enthusiasm encourages, “Oh yeah, come by for a drink, there’s gonna be LOTS of food” (Was the first king only formally included in the invitations? Was he not expected to show?). The first king acknowledges the abundance of food, pats his belly to demure. Sitting here, I’m getting uncomfortable, for the hot yellow foothills sun has found me, and I’m slowly warming, but I feel locked in place, the foreign observer. A column has blocked my whereabouts, and my presence if noticed might alarm them. Conversation is winding down. As we all experience, these exchanges have no natural end. Limping from one generalization to the other, finally someone offers a “Well, don’t work too hard!” which receives the easy forced laugh and the “Oh, I won’t!” The ceremony is now officially finished, and the kings withdraw. “Have a good day, Louis,” the second king offers. Louis! How perfect is that?