Beauty

Today I brought my camera for a run with me, so here's a post crammed full of pictures for y'all. I got lost, as usual. There are two possibilities: 1) There's only one road in Bois de Céné and it just turns around itself a lot, so no matter which way I turn I'll get home eventually, or 2) I actually have a spectacular sense of direction that I've never noticed before. I probably ran at least 5 or 6 miles today, and had nooo idea where I was, but as always, I got home. Somehow. When I get to an intersection, I just sort of look both ways, sniff the wind, and pick one -- it always gets me back eventually. Huh, life's a mystery.

 The pictures definitely don't do it justice, but here is a grove of trees I found very early on, by the road that runs behind my house. Several weeks ago I was struck by how much it looked like Lothlorien (it's a forest in Lord of the Rings, for those of you who aren't up to date). The trees have pale silver trunks and delicate branches that were tipped with golden leaves. Now there are very few leaves left and it's no longer quite Lothlorien, but it was still quite impressive today with the brooding pale grey sky silhouetting the graceful skeletons of trees.

 Anyone who can tell me what this vegetable is gets a bonus point!

 Okay so I still think cows are pretty exciting. Yes, I'm kind of a city girl sometimes...

This is where I live! When I see this sign, it means I'm not hopelessly lost. (Once, I accidentally ran into the county next door -- I live in the Vendée and I ran into the Loire-Atlantique. Teehee.)

 There's Old World beauty here. It's green everywhere and full of old, crumbling stone buildings being slowly consumed by ivy. Impressively old churches with cool architecture are a fact of everyday life. At night, the stars light up the sky like fireworks, so far from any city lights to drown them out.

1) It's always grey and rainy here, so pictures always come out underexposed, 2) I'm using my iPod touch as a camera, and 3) I know nothing about photography so a better camera wouldn't help anyway. But if you can tell despite all of these things, here's a picture of a typical old, crumbly house. I think it's so unbelievably cool that there are old crumbly houses, which just goes to show that not only am I American, but also that I am from the west coast instead of the east.

 Another fact of life here, besides the churches and old crumbly stone houses, is what I don't know what to call except "ruins." There are just portions of churches, former abbeys, or religious monuments of some sort scattered all over. Old French Catholics took their religion pretty seriously, I guess. So this... ruin, or whatever I should call it, is situated between my house and the center of Bois de Céné. (I say "center" ironically, because our incredibly ghetto downtown consists of a boulangerie, a post office, one small elementary school, a café, and a pharmacy. This is why people laugh when I tell them I'm from San Francisco and now I live in Bois de Céné.)

"So if Old World beauty is stone buildings, empty green fields with blackberry bushes, and cows, what is New World beauty?" I asked myself during my run today. Obviously the US is too big to be characterized by one type of beauty. In many ways, Bois de Céné looks remarkably like rural Wisconsin, like my great uncle's farm. But I really couldn't think of how to characterize any kind of beauty from the Silicon Valley. When I think of San Francisco, it's impressive for tall buildings amid foggy, bustling streets, for graceful architecture like the golden gate, and for the art that springs up all around in graffiti, in vendor's wares on the beach, and in paintings displayed proudly on the walls of any self-respecting SF shop. But... Sunnyvale? Cupertino? We have many good qualities, but beauty isn't one of them. We don't have nature and we don't have big impressive city things. Where there is green, it isn't a satisfying GREEN green like up north where it rains more; it's sort of a dusty brown desertish green. (Think Rancho San Antonio if you're having trouble following me.) There've been beautiful moments, to be sure. I remember with fondness the Mary pedestrian bridge that lights up at night like some silvery futuristic necklace strung out across the black sky (black, instead of milky with stars like it is here). But I hesitate even to mention how I enjoyed the sunsets during marching band practices, or how pretty Memorial Park can be when you're throwing bread to the ducks, because sunsets and ducks are things even more plentiful and beautiful here. So let's just say as far as beauty goes, Bois de Céné: 1. Sunnyvale: 0. Don't worry, Sunnyvale, you can be happy with having better schools.