Up at 9am, hoping to leave by 10 to arrive at Lisa Prosek's noonish, dropping off parts (instrumental, that is) for Sex and the Orchestra, Op. 171, but
1. Have to buy new print cartridge, so a Staples run -- taking 1/2 hour.
2. Computer does not recognize replacement (have to haul original out of bin to double check), then try again, and, lo, all is well -- 5 minutes.
3. Sibelius crashes during print of sax parts (no accounting for taste) -- another c. 5 minutes for turnaround, rebooting.
4. Check old computer while new is printing, and all sorts of messages from Bette and S., who have evidently forgotten my cell number -- S. in hospital in Phoenix for c. 2 weeks, so I wish her well -- a welcome 1/3 hour.
5. Updated printer generates darker copies, but much more slowly -- another half...
Out the door by 10:30, but decide parts must be printed at Kinko's, rather than mere printout, so another hour gone.
Call Lisa to let her know I'll be late -- a second message -- phone almost dead from earlier calls + iPod limping along on low battery (ah the trivial challenges), finally blitzing out, and eventually passing the Wine Guy on California 12,
before heading up the grade towards Sonoma.
Several strange turns later,
the corkscrew California 1 canyon of Cheney Gulch (what a name, out in the wheelchair with you... Klinghofferesque?...) leads to
Bodega Bay and harbor,
with the stormy Pacific finally in view north of Salmon Creek.
The sun occasionally pierces through, although seemingly not for the pictures, as the progression of coast ghostlies proceeds beachwise from Miwok
and Arched Rock,
to Carmet (ah, the difference one letter makes... or not...,) shivering in
wraiths of mist.
Housing crowds foolishly and selfishly on the coastside flank of Route One at Gleason Beach (coastal erosion happens), while inland all is open in Scotty Creek Valley, north of which
a spacious, stolid farm looks out at
at a prospect all its own,
just south of
Duncan's Cove
(yet a view free for all -- as opposed to one for, say $15... soon at markalburgerevents.blogspot.com).
The road stays slightly inland of Wrights and
Shell Beach,
becoming a wide coastal terrace at the twin oedipian edifi of Gull Rock and Monadnock,
where, at the Goat Rock turn-off, the Jenner Highlands look down-turned
on the edenic/
semi-surreal lower Russian River Valley at Bridgehaven.
Over the bridge, looking to downstream's seastackish end,
can Jenner
be far away?
Indeed, it looms before us,
and we careen past Muniz ("Mooney's"[?!]) Ranches
to Russian Gulch,
up the somber Jenner Ridge switchbacks,
looking back on this beautiful/crazy coast,
inland to the beckoning Black Mountains backcountry
(violated lovingly by architecturally-splendiferous [and spendiferous] precious got-mines),
mounting the slopes to that childs-drawing of Meyers Grade Road
(look, Mom, here's the road, the trees, the grass, the sky),
to alternative worlds like the one-structure art-barn town of Seaview (independent wealth?),
and far onward to Lisa's
cozy-impressive,
comfy-pianistic spread,
with its corridor view of the Fort Ross coast and
resident raven (looking somewhat Maltese, what?).
After business, chat, and lunch (I've made 5 violin / viola / electric guitar parts and no cello / bass / electric bass ones, but luckily have original printouts), a loop (the only musical one is on the iPod, the four-hours thus far of The Bible [including the Sex parts, or, shall we say, sections...]) is made down to Timber Cove, and Fort Ross's forlorn (certainly today, anyway, and, weatherwise, one supposes, most days) Kuskov House
and moss-encrusted/empathetic Chapel,
up curvaceous Jenner Ridge from the north
to the dark trianglar niches of Mill, Timber,
and Jewell Gulches (indeed, with bovines seemingly adhesively fastened),
yielding heroinic (damselly-drug-induced?) views south
to the the Russian River mouth and Goat Rock.
Last light perspectives- of-new-musical-Muniz-Ranches ridges,
a-terrible-thing-to-be-lonely-alone trees (when so many are lonely),
and the windswept/penetrated sandbar, and it's night (not that it hasn't been pretty all-fired dark all day...) once more (astride a grave...),
with only two more pages (11-12) of Babe Ruth: II. Moabitena to keep alive the mountainous glow.
