Have Eyes, Will Travel

Is it possible to become indifferent to beauty? Even worse, does familiarity breed contempt? I hope not.

The city was posing for postcards today. We rode our bicycles up and down hills by the bay, marveling at the many views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Sailboats in gorgeous colors dotted the deep blue-green water and gulls soared and dipped, scanning for fish and generous tourists with food scraps.

We always bring them bread, more for the pleasure of seeing them catch large crumbs in mid-air than for charity. Seagulls are not polite birds; they lack the most rudimentary concept of sharing, but I admire them for their colossal survival skills and the breathtaking beauty of their flight.

I've been watching several patches of ripening wild blackberries for weeks, and my vigilance was finally rewarded. I have the scratches to prove it.

The Community Gardens were bursting with flowers, fruits and vegetables. I made friends with other peoples' dahlias, purple beans and giant sunflowers as well as tomatoes, nasturtiums, late-blooming wisteria and small green apples. This wondrous place offers plots of various sizes but demands proof of ones devotion by way of a 5-year waiting list. We come here often to admire and meditate, to inhale and exhale in exquisite surroundings.

My other favorite hangout, the Friends of the Library Book Bay, had changed their New Arrivals shelves since my last recent visit and I found a couple of goodies. Since I ride my bike in my oldest, rattiest jeans and sport road dust and helmet hair, I'm sure the volunteers think I'm a literate bag lady who bathes.

We're expecting El Nino soon, a yearly phenomenon, more or less, which brings fierce winds and heavy rains from Mexico. So far, we're batting 500 as it's not raining, but we had a powerful tailwind going one way and a headwind that required very low gear and the promise of hot chocolate to get home.

Such exercise is great in retrospect, the kind of thing you sometimes enjoy having done more than the doing itself. I feel tired and virtuous and swollen with all the beautiful sights I ingested. (And the berries.) I am rebuilding myself, a scene at a time. I had to come home. I couldn't hold any more splendor today.

I fear becoming jaded and taking life's wonders for granted. It would be awful to reach some point of diminishing returns and be unable to appreciate all this anymore. Beauty nourishes and sustains me.

"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."