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II. Monterey Bay

Once't in a while, nature reminds us that we are not necessarily the crown of creation, lord of all we survey; that once't we came up from the sea and learned to breathe air. We left a kingdom; Neptune's world.

The aquarium in Monterey reminds us.

It stands--it dips toward Monterey Bay--it rubs gills with the Bay.  There where one a cannery operated--a part of Cannery Row--it brings the residents of the sea up to view.  It is a glory!

If ever you admired yourself in a mirror and thought it pleasing, you ought to watch the jellyfish in the Monterey Aquarium dance to music you have not yet heard.









It may be true, certainly it is true, that if you were where they are, you would wish to be anywhere else--such might they sting you--but glass between you and them, they are beautiful!

And, we might as well admit it, they have beer and wine in the cafeteria.

We first visited the aquarium about thirty years ago, soon after it first opened, after exploring the street where John Steinbeck had gone before us, enhancing all of us, shaming all of us, telling the truth about us.



From Monterey, we drove north, through Fremont, where once in another life I had lived and left for Chicago, to Davis, to remember and be glad for having known Tim, who loved life.  

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