California was nice. It was a drag actually doing the convention part of it, but then we rented a baby blue Mustang and drove up the coast on the hairpin curves of Rte. 1, which might be the most stunning drive in America.
Here's the car:
And here's a shot of a mountain pass on the road to San Luis Obispo:
And my buddy Kevin near the Bixby Creek Bridge:
So the gestalt should give you a sense of the experience. We ended up in San Francisco,
where I had a hot fudge sundae at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory and Kevin suggested we ask especially homophobic-looking people to take our picture as we held each other's hands in front of the scenery.
A trip like that, where you're constantly in awe of everything, kind of puts the fear of God into you. How is this stuff created? How did it become so beautiful? How long did it take to form it into these perfect shapes, with the perfect plants and trees existing in perfect temperatures in order to provide enough sweet-smelling oxygen to keep us going? How long will we be around to enjoy it? Seeing these enormous mountains eaten away by the waves, we were shocked into silence. That's as close to a sense of eternity as most people get. Looking at the ocean for an entire day will do that to you.
Lyrics from a Built to Spill song called "Randy Describes Eternity":
every thousand years / this metal sphere / ten times the size of Jupiter / floats just a few yards past the earth / you climb on your roof / and take a swipe at it / with a single feather / hit it once every thousand years / `til you've worn it down / to the size of a pea / yeah I'd say that's a long time / but it's only half a blink / in the place you're gonna be / where you gonna be / where will you spend eternity? / I'm gonna be perfect from now on / I'm gonna be perfect starting now...
Something that beautiful makes you want to prepare for the afterlife, even if you're not 100% sure there is one.
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