America the Young

It has been a while since I have written you.

Life has finally come to a strange balance in the San Francisco bay area. I feel relaxed; everyday I appreciate the ideal temperate climate that this area has to offer. I still enjoy my rides on the Bay Area Rapid Transit. And I appreciate the valuable time I have with my family.

There is no question that this is an outstandingly beautiful metropolitan area. In every direction there are places of enchanted natural beauty and I am thankful for that. Perhaps people can say the same about Seattle and Vancouver in the north, Los Angeles and Santiago in the south. Cities that don't forget just how beautiful the rest of nature can be. And yet San Francisco is beautiful by itself when you see it, for example, from Alamo Square at dusk, all the lights and towers spread out before you....

Yet the society, the culture, the artifice, have not yet been here long enough to have learned the wisdom from the land. The houses, for example, are still not yet ready for the earthquakes that are surely to come. The culture of the people here (many of whom are temporary transplants) has not yet learned to embrace the full splendidness that exists here.

Yet there are individuals here, if not small groups of people, that have learned to truly enjoy their time and space.

This is all on my mind partly because of an email from my friend in France who wrote this of Europe:

"There is a passionate, deeply embedded love affair with food -- and with nature -- here, and the curve of every landscape tells the story of the people who have come before. Walking in the wilderness is like stepping into a storybook fable: I had never realized it until now, but the scenery and images most cherished in childhood, the colorful landscapes that accompany every child's fable -- what seemed so imaginary, such a flight of fancy at the time, having never seen them -- I now realize is the beautiful product of thousands of years of the relationship between humans and the wild. Without covering every square inch of land with asphalt, highways, strip malls, and row after row of identical, vinyl-sided houses, Europeans have managed to preserve themselves in the world around them, and thrive, while still creating a dynamic landscape in which one can still feel the wonder of being lost in the woods."

The descriptions remind me of (the best sides of) Japan as well... and they make me feel what most of America does not yet have, if it ever will. And yet I want to live a life with that 'deeply embedded love affair' with food and nature here in America. And yet, can I when most everyone else around me is not? It takes so much effort and care to have to create a culture in your life that does not exist in the society around you! What are we to do?