Friday, December 20, 2002
The greening of Southern California.
It's the darndest thing - when I originally came to Los Angeles in October of 2001, it was pretty much like I'd imagined. Bigger, maybe; more sprawling in its immensity, less cohesive of an identity than I had hoped. But there were the vast tracts of suburban waste, residents flung to the far reaches of the southland, linked by a tenuous network of freeways and major traffic arteries that soon came to represent wholly my California experience.
Of course, I was living in the San Gabriel Valley at the time. Its particular take on the residential experience has probably colored my impression somewhat, perhaps indelibly so; since having moved to the edge of the ocean, my time in the Inland Empire has since come to represent my personal suburban nightmare. No offense, of course; after all, it can't be any worse than the deepest, darkest reaches of Long Island or New Jersey. In fact, I've spent some wonderful moments in all three locales; however, there is one detail that sets the latter apart from their California counterpart.
Southern California, you may recall, is mostly desert.
This is why I was surprised, beyond all reason, to find that the desert has begun to bloom. Although the ever-densifying environs of Los Angeles have squeezed nature all but out of the landscape altogether, there are scatted oases that remain. Some are hemmed in by lanes of traffic, isolated islands of brown dirt girded by gray freeways; others are long tendrils of dry-brush, winding their way through neighborhoods, alongside roads, up and over low hills. These varied corridors of natural growth are part of the subtle background of LA, flashing past car windows in a quick blink of brown among the gray, tall grasses swaying in the passing wake of a bobtailed big rig. As such, I had forgotten these last vestiges of nature altogether, allowing them to be swept to the rear of my awareness. They did not, as it turns out, remain there for very long.
It was, of course, the coming of the rainy season here in LA that brought about the transformation. And shocking enough in its own right was the rain itself, sometimes pouring buckets from an armageddon sky, other times floating as mist down through varied shafts of intense sunlight. Very strange weather we have here, sweeping in from the Pacific - exposed to the long, open stretch of sea, California sees weather first, when such weather exists. And here at work, I can see that weather splash up against the San Gabriel mountains, whipping up clouds into a tumultuous climax. The other day, in fact, this action brought hail down upon the foothills, turning a tin roof into a cacophony. The campus smelled of pine for hours afterward - a striking remnant of the beating the forest had taken, and the ever-changing possibilites for weather here.
So there I was, climbing the 710 Freeway to work, an insect upon the floor of the LA basin; imagine my surprise when those shades of brown flashing past had given to green suddenly, as hills covered in all manner of new growth. Clover, grasses, and all forms of small succulents were sprouting up, effecting a city wide metamorphosis. The landscape was changing, just as the air had been - now all at once humid and cold, it felt as it should for a resident of a city by the sea. This morning the San Gabriel foothills were clad in a layer of cloud, whipped up by splashing winds; it looked like cotton floss, pulled and stretched across the peaks - or marshmallow, beaten into froth and teased into tenuous tendrils of white. To the east, the high morning sun shone through pillows of cloud boiling out of green folds in the mountains - it struck me that I could have been in Washington's Olympia, driving through the North American rain forest once again. How strange that such a vision should strike me here. Perhaps, after all, there's more to this place than I'd been too close-minded to imagine.
It's the darndest thing - when I originally came to Los Angeles in October of 2001, it was pretty much like I'd imagined. Bigger, maybe; more sprawling in its immensity, less cohesive of an identity than I had hoped. But there were the vast tracts of suburban waste, residents flung to the far reaches of the southland, linked by a tenuous network of freeways and major traffic arteries that soon came to represent wholly my California experience.
Of course, I was living in the San Gabriel Valley at the time. Its particular take on the residential experience has probably colored my impression somewhat, perhaps indelibly so; since having moved to the edge of the ocean, my time in the Inland Empire has since come to represent my personal suburban nightmare. No offense, of course; after all, it can't be any worse than the deepest, darkest reaches of Long Island or New Jersey. In fact, I've spent some wonderful moments in all three locales; however, there is one detail that sets the latter apart from their California counterpart.
Southern California, you may recall, is mostly desert.
This is why I was surprised, beyond all reason, to find that the desert has begun to bloom. Although the ever-densifying environs of Los Angeles have squeezed nature all but out of the landscape altogether, there are scatted oases that remain. Some are hemmed in by lanes of traffic, isolated islands of brown dirt girded by gray freeways; others are long tendrils of dry-brush, winding their way through neighborhoods, alongside roads, up and over low hills. These varied corridors of natural growth are part of the subtle background of LA, flashing past car windows in a quick blink of brown among the gray, tall grasses swaying in the passing wake of a bobtailed big rig. As such, I had forgotten these last vestiges of nature altogether, allowing them to be swept to the rear of my awareness. They did not, as it turns out, remain there for very long.
It was, of course, the coming of the rainy season here in LA that brought about the transformation. And shocking enough in its own right was the rain itself, sometimes pouring buckets from an armageddon sky, other times floating as mist down through varied shafts of intense sunlight. Very strange weather we have here, sweeping in from the Pacific - exposed to the long, open stretch of sea, California sees weather first, when such weather exists. And here at work, I can see that weather splash up against the San Gabriel mountains, whipping up clouds into a tumultuous climax. The other day, in fact, this action brought hail down upon the foothills, turning a tin roof into a cacophony. The campus smelled of pine for hours afterward - a striking remnant of the beating the forest had taken, and the ever-changing possibilites for weather here.
So there I was, climbing the 710 Freeway to work, an insect upon the floor of the LA basin; imagine my surprise when those shades of brown flashing past had given to green suddenly, as hills covered in all manner of new growth. Clover, grasses, and all forms of small succulents were sprouting up, effecting a city wide metamorphosis. The landscape was changing, just as the air had been - now all at once humid and cold, it felt as it should for a resident of a city by the sea. This morning the San Gabriel foothills were clad in a layer of cloud, whipped up by splashing winds; it looked like cotton floss, pulled and stretched across the peaks - or marshmallow, beaten into froth and teased into tenuous tendrils of white. To the east, the high morning sun shone through pillows of cloud boiling out of green folds in the mountains - it struck me that I could have been in Washington's Olympia, driving through the North American rain forest once again. How strange that such a vision should strike me here. Perhaps, after all, there's more to this place than I'd been too close-minded to imagine.
Monday, December 16, 2002
Hell freezes over...
...and this blog has a new entry. Like I mentioned, I've been really busy. Oh, I know; who's going to believe that? Really, even I wouldn't believe myself. As it turns out, however, my recent assignment here at work wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Not that it wasn't easy - because it wasn't - but my fading impressions of the last two weeks are more colored by how the project was managed rather than the work it actually demanded of me. The shrewd reader can no doubt sense where this is going - but I will not print a wholesale send-up of my upper-middle management here. We all know the sordid details of such organizational inefficiency - especially, might I add, those of us who happen to be engineers. We can only hope that, by our own good work and self-determination, we can rise above the fray.
Which brings me, in a rather roundabout way, to the point I should be making. Something happened, I don't know what, during the last week or so that I've been hammering away at work. It began with saying, "Sure, I can do that," and concluded sometime last Thursday amidst nightmares, cold sweats, and several cubic meters of coffee. Now that the problem is solved, the calculations are done, and my mug is again full, I can relax and take stock of my missteps. In addition, I've been able to pare down my analysis of the last week or so into a short list of possible causes:
5. Not asking for help
You've heard of this problem before, right? Perhaps some even suffer from its effects - beware, for they are long term and often irreversible. To help in recovery, we must remember our lessons, for there is a fine line between confidence and stupidity.
...and this blog has a new entry. Like I mentioned, I've been really busy. Oh, I know; who's going to believe that? Really, even I wouldn't believe myself. As it turns out, however, my recent assignment here at work wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Not that it wasn't easy - because it wasn't - but my fading impressions of the last two weeks are more colored by how the project was managed rather than the work it actually demanded of me. The shrewd reader can no doubt sense where this is going - but I will not print a wholesale send-up of my upper-middle management here. We all know the sordid details of such organizational inefficiency - especially, might I add, those of us who happen to be engineers. We can only hope that, by our own good work and self-determination, we can rise above the fray.
Which brings me, in a rather roundabout way, to the point I should be making. Something happened, I don't know what, during the last week or so that I've been hammering away at work. It began with saying, "Sure, I can do that," and concluded sometime last Thursday amidst nightmares, cold sweats, and several cubic meters of coffee. Now that the problem is solved, the calculations are done, and my mug is again full, I can relax and take stock of my missteps. In addition, I've been able to pare down my analysis of the last week or so into a short list of possible causes:
- Overstepping ability
- Underestimating stupidity
- Undervaluing experience
- Taking heavy medication
5. Not asking for help
You've heard of this problem before, right? Perhaps some even suffer from its effects - beware, for they are long term and often irreversible. To help in recovery, we must remember our lessons, for there is a fine line between confidence and stupidity.