Study in California

I an not ashamed to admit that I am a tourist here. By "here" I mean the state of California, where I was born and where I've lived for most of my life. Other place that I travel to a place I visit for pleasure or for business-cause me to have a different feeling. In those places, I try not to look like a tourist. I don't want to be singled out as that comical figure, the one who stands out as oddly dressed, somewhat lost, gawking and awed by all that I see. No, when I travel, I try to maintain a certain world weary, I've seen it al demeanour. Yet here, in my own birthplace, I gawk, I ogle, I succumb to awe. I am the dictionary definition of tourist. And, reflecting on this behaviour, I have to ask myself why.

Study in California

Maybe it's because all of us Californians have become here from another place. Even those of us who are native born have mostly likely grown up listening to our parents or to our grandparents reminisce of other places, other times. We listen and we turn to look -just a little-at our surroundings though their eyes. It is then that we see a land unlike the 'old' country, a country that can be as close in space and time as the Korea of 1987 or as distant as the Oklahoma of 1935 or the Italy of 1910. Regarding these other places, we may here our elders speak of tradition-bound country with little opportunity for a young and ambitious family, or we may see a war ravished landscape, a terrifying image of image of imminent death, a place to avoid, to flee. We may or mat not hear the real, personal reasons that led to our family's immigration -avoidance of military service, bankruptcy, some indiscretion, sheer boredom. Whatever the reason, we find ourselves at each hearing in a young and fresh land that many first generations call "golden".

In the title on this article, I have chosen a different nickname for California. I feel that "The Magic Kingdom" more easily fits my vision for the state. It seems that both the myth and the reality of California co-mingle to paint a picture that is larger than life that is fairy-tale in proportion, that very nearly verges on magic. For example, it is a fact that the largest and the oldest living things on Earth are to be found here, the mighty Tequoia trees of Central California. We can also add one of the hottest spots on the globe, theatrically called, Death Valley. On the same list, we have one of the most picturesquely beautiful lakes in t6he world (Lake Taloe), one of the greatest valleys and waterfalls (Yosemite) and one of he most ruggedly beautiful coastlines in the world. (Just drive on Highway 1 from San Francisco to L.A.). We even have volcanoes, some long extinct, some dormant (Mt. Shasta in Northern California), and some still rumbling and steaming just waiting to erupt. (Please try one of our most popular ski resorts at Mammouth Mountain). To be in the presence of these natural wonders is to transported to the realm of Fantasy. Then. To realise that they're all only a few hours away from each other is to become truly and irrevocably a victim of California's charms.

On top of all that, what we don't have naturally or historically, we then create for ourselves. If Europe has it's Medieval and Renaissance Castles, why can't newspaper mogul and millionaire William Randolph Hearst built a bigger and better one here? (Visit the Heart Castle on that beautiful coastline in Central California). Of course you need to eat in California, but you find yourself surrounded by an inhospitable, semi-arid landscape. Well don't worry. Thousands of immigrants have sweated for 90 years to make the San Joaquin Valley the most agricultural productive in the world. Of course all of these farms need water, so does the megaloplis, Los Angeles. So we dam up rivers, drain lakes and build hundreds of miles of canals to make the desert bloom. (Other than the Great Wall of China, these are the only man-made objects that can be seen from out of space.)

Take a look at our house, and choose your style, ranch, Mediterranean, Spanish, Tudor, Georgian, colonial, federal, arts and crafts, or the two or three extent examples of Frank Lloyd Wright's Mayan fantasies. If you're more advant-garde, we’ve even brought the Bauhaus here (Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler) to give us the glass and concrete structures Europeans crave. We are classless people looking for class, living in a land of illusions and possibilities, both in almost equal proportions.

And, in California, it’s not just the landscape that can be remade. This is the promised land where we can also make and remake ourselves, shed our old skins and try on new ones. Back east in New England or New York, our arch-rivals, they have long prided themselves on their sophistication and proper breeding, referring to us on the west coast as shallow, preening vulgarians. It is there that one still goes to dinner in formal clothes and sits stiff-backed at the table, hushed and properly choreographed in each action. Not out here in California. Let’s just say that it started with the weather. We have sunshine more often than not. Our climate is temperate and user-friendly. This environment of ease and comfort has promoted a similar lifestyle, one that has led us from starched collars to T-shirts (take a look at James Dean) and shorts in church. Very soon in our short history, you find us abandoning the formal dining table for more casual meals outdoors; then, you find us gathering in the living room, cross-legged on the floor with an "instant" dinner, all of us staring into the TV screen. And what are we looking at? We’re gaping at an endless series of images of ourselves (in T-shirts and shorts, maybe even bikinis) devised, defined and dramatised by Hollywood, our neighbour right down the street.

So, let’s blame it on Hollywood. We have to ask ourselves what is it that Hollywood has given us. Quite simply, the answer seems to be several thousand images of ourselves we would like (and sometimes not like) to be seen. We’re tough and "hard-boiled" like Humphrey Bogart or Arnold Schwarzenegger; we’re glamorous and sexy like Marilyn Monroe or Madonna; we’re completely loony like Jim Carey. You say that on your continent you have the world’s biggest desert, the Sahara. Well, we’ll take r cameras out to the Mojave Desert, and we’’ make it look bigger, hotter and sandier than any desert you’ve ever seen. You want the Alps. Wait a couple of months until it snows, and then we’ll take a 30-minute drive into the San Gabriel Mountains, just over behind that Hollywood sign. Just wait, there’s much more. Less than a hundred miles from LA, we have paradise itself, where humans don’t age and life is forever serene and idyllic. To create this, this early movie makers used the beautiful Ojai Valley near Santa Barbara as the setting for the movie Lost Horizon (1937), which gave us Shangri-La, a vision of heaven in a world on the edge of war. Finally, to make a point, we have a real earthquake, and Hollywood follows up with a better one, more destructive, more dramatic, with a better looking cast. In the end, we’re all part of the supporting cast. We have created - and we are created by - this movie magic. Like it or not, this is the mythic substance to our lives (not Homer’s Illiad, or the epic Ramayana), telling us what to face to wear and what lines to speak. And I think many of us secretly relish the roles we play.

Now to the Magic Kingdom.. This is how Disneyland likes to refer to itself. I think it’s appropriate for the rest of California as well. When you enter the front gates at Disneyland, you’re given a map that shows you how the amusement parks divided into "themes", that it into different visions of reality or unreality. Each one of us - whether US citizen, US resident, foreign potentate or simple visitor from another country - can glide effortlessly from one "theme" to another, from Frontierland to Fantasyland, from Tomorrowland to Adventureland. In this, I’m just as susceptible as you. I step across the imaginary boundaries between these lands, and I lose myself in a new and wonderful dreamscape. I fly over London with Peter Pan; I row a canoe down the old Mississippi, past Tom Sawyer’s island; I toboggan down the Matterhorn; and I end up on the tidy, inviting main street of a 19^th century American town. Imagine that! All of these temporal/spatial jaunts in one day and in one place for just $40 per person.

Believe me when I say that I’m as wide-eyed as any tourist. Not just at Disneland, or at Magic Mounatin, or at Sea World, or at the Golden Gate Bridge, but in a hundred other lesser known places. I sometimes feel that it is my pre-ordained duty as paterfamilias to orchestrate every weekend as part of a guided tour. And what better place for variety than here in California, where ambassadors of every nation and culture on Earth have established a culinary/linguistic/cultural colony just around the corner. On Fridays and Saturdays, I look through the newspaper to find exotic events, foodfests. I look through maps to find lost nooks and crannies of history, flora and fauna. I lead my wife and children across invisible boundaries to the sunny vineyards of Sonom County, to the "romantic" missions of the Spanish padres, the battlefield of San Pascurl (where Mexican Californios speared Yankee soldiers in 1846 and won"), to apple orchards (where we pick fresh fruit by the basketful), to the date groves near the Salton Sea (an immense, smelly, salt-water lake), to gold mining towns in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to Buddhist temples in Hacienda Heights, and then to that California outpest just across the Nevada state line, Las Vegas, where pyramids, Sphinxes, Roman palaces and space stations crowd in on one another. If all this seems a bit much, I suppose it is. We’ve been satirised for our excesses (read The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh), ridiculed (watch almost any Woody Allen movie), and scorned (could it have been Bertolt Brecht?), but we persevere - indeed, for better or worse, we thrive. From Adventureland to Fantasyland, it’s all just an air-conditioned drive down the freeway.

Finally, as an educator, I must conclude with a few words on the subject of schools. Our forefathers here in the Golden State did eventually take time out from sunworshipping, orange growing, surfing, panning for gold, painting en plein air, and thinking up plots for movies in order to insure that future generations would also be able to enjoy this good life. They took time out and devoted a goodly portion of their earnings to create one of the largest and most prestigious educational systems in the world. Our colleges and universities can match the best anywhere. UCLA, Berkeley< Stanford, CalTech and USC are just a few among many. Everyday in these schools, the future leaders, scholars, scientists and artists of our state and of the world fill their waking hours with study, gentle and serious discourse. They ponder our past, our present and our future, plotting the need to change course when the weekend comes. Along with the rest of us, they slip into a different pair of shoes, a more colourful shirt or blouse, and they join the tourists, ready to assume a new and exciting identity in a new and exciting place. So, get moving and join us. For a moment, let yourself go. It’s Friday, and we’re already halfway to the Magic Kingdom, where dreams just might come true.