Rediscovering Home

Palm trees and pink stucco houses, flat blue cloudless skies and wide curving roads, the warm, salty smell of the ocean--home. Yes, I've returned to Southern California where the only bricks are adobe, where the weather is easy to predict and where the sights and sounds are comfortable and familiar.

After all the talk I heard about the inevitable feelings of embarrassment and alienation that accompany a summer home after a year away in the alternate universe of college, I was surprised to find that this summer, once settled, began to feel like any other, with the slight exception that my little brother can now drive and his friends are devoted to making him fashionable. Hopefully, resistance will not be futile.

Sure, I'm spending a lot more time programming and a lot less time watching Tiny Toons. But the cat still sleeps with me and complains piteously if the door to the closet is heartlessly left closed, I still stay up until all hours of the night playing Trivial Pursuit with my brother and my parents still complain that there's nothing that all of us will eat. Life is good.

But while the essentials have remained constant, not everything, of course, is the same. In my family, vacation, when we aren't visiting relatives, has always meant camping and hiking--Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Rocky Mountains or, for a day trip, a trail in the mountains or the desert a couple of hours drive away. But this summer, my family decided to try something new. We have lived an hour away from Los Angeles for ten years, but we rarely visit. (Irvine and its neighbors are technically suburbs, but they are cities themselves, and most people do not commute). So a couple of weeks ago, we decided to go downtown. I, for one, was surprised by what we found.

Downtown Los Angeles has a bad reputation, but its business district is full of beautiful, architecturally amazing buildings. Most of the new and unique structures date back only to the 1980s when, I assume, the knowledge required to build earthquake-safe skyscrapers first combined with economic prosperity to make such construction possible. And public art is everywhere.

Next to the Library Tower is a curving stairwell, flanked by plants and shops and split down the center by a small, raised stream of water flowing over rounded rocks. The path leads the eye upward, where finally, around a bend, a small pool and fountain rest serenely. Across the street, the steps to the library itself are decorated in words in many languages and split by a series of pools and sculptures. There are open courtyards, a sunken mall and beautiful glassy buildings that reflect light down to the street.

On the side of an office building, a statue of a business man leans forward, the wall resting where his head should be. A clever poem next to him recounts the fate of his "head for business." Sitting in Grand Central Market, eating fried bananas and feeling grateful that I took Spanish in school, I was amazed by how much I liked the parts of LA that I saw.

Last weekend, we decided to stay closer to home. This time, we traveled ten minutes to the Orange County Museum of Art, a fairly small modern art museum which we had never visited. Once again, I was surprised and impressed. Being relatively small and specializing in modern art, the museum of course has its share of pieces that I don't particularly care for, but it also has many that are quite good.

My personal favorite is a piece of installation art by James Turrell--a dimly lighted room that the viewer enters through a narrow, black hallway. Inside are two dim lamps pointing toward opposite walls and what appears to be a black rectangle hung on the wall. I walked in and was not impressed. I'm not anti-minimalist--in fact, I loved the minimalist collection of the Orange County Museum--but two lights and a rectangle in a dark room?

After our eyes were adjusted to the low light, we went up to the black rectangle and looked at it, and we still weren't impressed. Then I went to touch it, and it wasn't there. As far as I reached in any direction from the edge of the rectangle, there was nothing, and there was nothing to see. It really looked like a "limitless space." I was very impressed, and now it is my favorite piece, because it tricked me into thinking that it was stupid.

In my opinion, it's much more difficult to find very good modern art than it is to find very good old art because all of the really bad old art was thrown out or burned a long time ago. But this museum, located across the street, around a corner and a few blocks down from a movie theater and food court that I go to all the time had some very good modern art. Wow.

I decided to go to school on the opposite side of country from my home in order to experience a new world--to see new sights and taste the atmosphere of a new region. I am happy with my decision--I feel that my time in Cambridge has been and will continue to be the experience that I hoped for. But my time at home this summer has reminded me of what is, in my opinion, one of the happiest truths about our ever smaller world--that even in the most familiar of environments, there is always something new to learn and to see.

Ruth Murray '01 is programming and exploring at home in Irvine, California. She will join Kirkland House in the fall.