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To Live in a House by the Side of the Sea

I recall having read, while writing a book, that Friedrich Nietzsche said:

"I would not want to build a house, but were I to do so, I should build it right down into the sea.  I would like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster."

And if Nietzsche did not say it so, I will not complain if you attribute it to me, although no one will believe you, not even I.

Heidi, our daughter, and Jack do not have a house built right down into the sea, but the sea is close enough so that you can hear it murmur and roar, and you can see it, and if you wish, by walking to the edge of the continent and looking down at it as it comes at you.

That is not the best part of that house.  The best part is Heidi and Jack.

We had planned to drive back to San Francisco with them, in an evening or so, to attend a Giants game, but as I have said (in earlier posts, below), we had been scurrying around and through San Francisco for a couple of days already, something like Rommel surrounded by urban assault vehicles:  three hours, for instance, to drive down the Peninsula and across the Bay to Fremont, criss-crossing Fremont searching for my tracks in the sand, and then down to Santa Cruz, never an open lane and seldom a parking spot.  We were ready to leave for home!  A long uneventful drive sounded ideal!

So we did not go to that game.  I had moved to the Bay Area the same year that the Giants did when they left New York, and had seen Willie Mays play major league baseball in a minor league stadium:  my first ever major league game had Willie Mays playing in center field!

Jack made dinner:  a major league dinner with chinook salmon on the grill!  Heidi's ancient, arthritic Australian shepherds protected us from Australians.  They are, after all, a California developed breed.  Her cat was the only real threat to us:  he, or she, or it lurked, stared, and complained incessantly about strangers in paradise.  That is a cat with clear right-wing political and social opinions.

Somewhere, on our way home, we stopped at a place that might have been named, "Albertini's Overpass", but it wasn't, where George Patton is said to have trained men for duty in North Africa during World War II.  There were, at any rate, old tanks about in the bushes.  I include a picture here, not for the sake of the tanks, or even George Patton, but because I have been trying to make this darned iMac accept photos of Jack and Heidi and Mari and me, and it will not do so.  It is as close as I can get.  I do not want you to think that I did not try.

Addendum

 Have you read this before, 
and particularly the foregoing paragraph,
you might note, here, that I gave my computer
a digital Heimlich squeeze, and coughed up
the picture of the four of us so lamented there,
and now here.

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