When the clock strikes 25.00

Wow. I must be heading for some kind of record. Three posts in one day, sorry to bombard you with States' tales from a broad, but tomorrow the camp we head for after Hearst Castle has no WiFi (I know, it hurts me too, I'm addicted to this stuff). I meant to say in my last couple of posts a very big hello to Bean, who is mastering the wonders of technology to join me in my blog, and even managed to post a comment! Thank you Bean, missing you, very much, and can't wait to see you when I get home! I hope that you're liking the blog.

Well today, we set out to explore Santa Barbara - and we did! Apologies that the last few posts have been so long, but any of you who know me really well will also know that I'm impossible to shut up once you get me started, and a blog is the very definition of a captive audience (as long as you keep reading it, that is!). A warning too, that this one is going to be quite long, today was Ah-sum!! Oh, and apologies that a few of the links weren't imported properly in the last posts, you'll have to copy and paste them to the address bar yourselves.

Santa Barbara is a beautiful place, though its beauty was not instantly apparent when we arrived, as the campsight is just on the outskirts of downtown. The city is nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez mountains (that's them in the background of this picture) - are you catching the Spanish theme yet? The area is steeped in Spanish history, and was named in 1602 by the Spanish Conquistador Sebastian Vizcaino, who named it after the Saint who held that birth date. You can see this legacy in the architecture and especially in the street names, though it is also commonly referred to as the 'American Riviera' and was a big favourite among Hollywood celebrities of the golden age of film-making, including Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Charlie Chaplin even built a hotel here for all his friends to hang out in! It's famous residents nowadays include Kirk Douglas and John Cleese, though we didn't bump into them today.

We left the RV behind at the campsite today for the first time and walked (yes, walked, Amy was horrified) to the waterfront. The walk was a little depressing as we passed no fewer than a dozen homeless people, they are everywhere here, but ominously disappear when you hit the main street downtown, State Street, leading me to suspect that there may be some kind of ban for fear they will hassle tourists or make the place look bad. On our walk to and along the beach though, we passed loads of people, men and women this time, either making their way to places (usually wheeling trolleys full of stuff - in one case a guy was wheeling a trolley with all his stuff and an unconscious woman inside), sleeping, or sat staring into space or talking in groups.

We got a bit lost at first, but soon found our way to the beach, where we sat to catch our breath and look out at the Pacific Ocean for the first time with nothing between us but rolling sea air (our glimpses of the Pacific so far have been from the Interstate 101, hurtling along in the Beast). It was overcast when we set out, but still warm and the breeze from the sea was more than welcome. We jumped on a shuttle bus and headed for Stearns Wharf, which was owned by Jimmy Cagney and his two brothers in the 1940's. Apparently they wanted to turn it into a kind of fair with rides and entertainments - until they realised what it would cost! Now Stearns Wharf is better known for being the oldest operating Wharf on the West Coast (it was built in 1872). We ambled along the wharf (as far as I can tell, just another name for a pier, these Americans and their funny language, eh?) for awhile, and in the broad stretch of yellow sand, homeless people were pan-handling for money by making sand sculptures. They dig their pots into the sand and you throw your change down into the pots from the wharf - it reminded me a little of the mudlarks at Portsea. Amy and I had a competition to try to get change into them, but neither of us managed it, to the amusement of the pan-handlers sitting under the Wharf in the shade.

At the end of the Wharf, we stopped for some lunch at the Harbour Restaurant (but more of this later - Shonagh has been asking me about food!) and decided what we were going to do. As we had started out rather late, we had to choose between the Museum of Art and the Santa Barbara Mission. As the art museum was listed in our Lonely Planet as having an Edward Hopper, we decided to head there. I'm a huge fan of Hopper so I was really looking forward to this and we caught a downtown shuttle bus to the corner of State and Figueroa. Sod's law, the Hopper is no longer on display, but the museum was so good that I completely forgot that the Hopper was what I had come to see!

The first exhibition that we stepped into was amazing. It was an installation of young Chinese artists - mainly photographers and film-makers or documentarians, but also including performance artists - whose collected work formed a fascinating and highly emotional meditation on the cultural revolution and its impact on the Chinese culture: socially, psychologically, environmentally, even architecturally. I knew almost nothing about the Cultural Revolution, I particularly had no idea that it happened so recently, ending in the year that I was born. For those who share my ignorance, there is a useful article on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution.

One of the first artists refers to the "historic shock" that he experienced on returning to his homeland after 4 years studying in Germany, whilst another artist, Hong Lei, states:

"I cannot forget the cultural glory of our ancestors, which I first witnessed as a child. I am troubled and angry about the destruction of this heritage, which I see in my everyday life. It is as if this ancient civilisation has collapsed in an instant in front of my eyes."

As well as the physical changes to the architectural landscape of China, literally destroying ancient buildings to make room for modern cityscapes and skyscrapers, the destruction of old ways of life has taken place, where communities that have lived in areas for hundreds of years have been ousted to make room for the new urban jungle. One installation referred implicitly to the disappearance of traditional "landscapes and lifescapes, caused by the rise of megacities, the resulting new urban cultures and the large scale internal immigration of populations." Another artist used photography as a medium to represent his perceptions of these changes as:

"demolition abetting the disappearance of history, construction sites containing the impending future, new developments built on the absence of history."

As a viewer, I had the sense of a country in which individual and collective identities have been utterly dislocated, uprooted and destroyed - in the most dangerous and aggressive, not to mention democidal (I learnt this new term from Wikipedia, it refers to huge numbers of citizens killed by their own government or state) of ways, by brute force - replaced often by tenuous or transitory ideas of self, community and belonging. Set in this context, the work of these artists was amazing, and evoked very strong emotions of empathy, inspiration and sorrow in me.

I loved a piece in response to the 4th International Women's Congress, which was held in Beijing in 1995. The international delegates, many of them representatives of women's movements from all over the world were not permitted to liase with the Chinese people. In response, three Chinese women artists held an exhibition where, in their words, "an ordinary Chinese woman could become part of the international event and the contemporary movement of women's liberation." This exhibition consisted of private belongings brought by women for display, including photos, cards, letters, calendars and diaries, each of which depicts more powerfully than words that the personal is political.

The role of women in modern China is represented here as ambiguous (indeed, a lot of the performance artists' work is heavily themed with representations and explorations of gender - reminding me a lot of the material I studied at Uni on queer theory and gender subversion). An artist called Yang Yong captures the glamourous freedom of women's sexuality, whilst revealing the darker side of the cityscape as it affects young women. Many of her pictures depict young women "who seem to float aimlessly in a night-time world where the fashion industry blurs with the sex trade." Her work depicts young women and I felt a sense of sexual empowerment mixed with fundamental powerlessness that I could easily relate to the mixed messages sent to young women in the West. But my and Amy's favourite artist in the Chinese exhibition was, without a doubt, Chen Lingyang, a piece called 25.00, which depicts the artist's own nude body superimposed on an urban landscape as an enormous figure (the picture here is the only one I could find of hers on the web, but this is not the one we saw, although it is similar). Chen comments:

"This giantess is not really very brave, and so she will only freely change her size and make these kind of gestures when the clock strikes 25.00. Very often, the real world and the male world get mixed up in my mind...I wish that every day there could be a certain time like 25.00, when I could become as large as I like, and do whatever I want." Nuff said. I know the women I know and love understand exactly what she means, as I did, reminding me that the world is not such a large and alien place after all. If I had any doubts before, this trip has given me the travel bug for sure, and I'm hoping, judging by the reactions to the blog so far that I might even be able to make a living from writing while I wander my way across the globe! Kate, we need to start planning our Europe trip!

The rest of the museum was equally amazing, housing paintings and sculptures by artists of international and timeless reputation, including some of my favourites (but not Hopper!): Matisse (the sketch shown on the right beneath the sculpture - speaking of him, can any of you see what's missing from this muscle-bound stoner?), Dali, Picasso, Cezanne, Monet and a Rousseau to name a few. And these were all just hanging on the wall, no guards, no wire to hold you back, nothing, just you and these amazing art works. I've had some great experiences here so far, but I think today was a real high. When we left the museum, I just felt so alive and stimulated, my mind was buzzing with all the things I'd just seen, all the connections with life back home, with my own life - am I excitedly rambling on?! Yes, I think I am, but it's so hard not to.

So, the Museum of Art was fabulous. After, we strolled along State Street for an hour or so. Just along from the museum was an L-shaped avenue of shops and restaurants, called Arcadia Avenue, which was peppered with statues and sculptures across the walkways. It was very beautiful and almost deserted by the time we left the museum. We spent some time taking some photos before slipping off to grab a coffee and a snack.

Which brings me neatly to Shonagh's latest question about the food here. Well, I can say that the food has been great so far, with the obvious exception of the mulch they served on the plane - seriously, I'm not sure why they bother, there wasn't one person in my eyeline who ate it. Some of that 'food' is, I'm sure, barely edible anyway, I'm not sure it even is food. Since then, though, we've eaten in a variety of places. When we've visited the major 'sealed-in' attractions, like the Zoo or SeaWorld, we didn't get much choice as to what we had, in terms of choosing venues, but the food offer in these places is generally quite a good standard. Amy and I are psyching ourselves up to try corn dogs, which are on offer everywhere you go and look like giant turds on sticks. Apparently they're frankfurters in batter, and the Yanks love 'em!

On the first night, at the Marina Del Ray, we all decided to have the traditional American fare of hamburgers, and the portions were so huge, that despite being starved on the plane, none of us managed to finish it! Since then, I've had the most gorgeous chicken ever cooked at the Daily Grill (this dish had a name but I was too busy being a greedy gannet to take note of it), which came with the most heavenly coleslaw (better, Shon, even than Paws for Tea). I've had some delish BBQ ribs and today, at the Harbour Restaurant, some good shrimp scampi, which was huge shrimp cooked up with onions, tomatoes and mushrooms (although it became a bit dull after a while, and there was loads so I didn't finish it). Dad had coconut shrimp (which I wanted instantly, one of those scenarios where you wish that you had ordered everyone else's food), which I tried, and it was lovely. I don't know what they did to the strips of coconut, but I wish I could take the chef home with me and get him to cook it on demand. Amy had a Caesar Salad that looked great, too.

The rest of the time, we've either cooked in the van while we prepare the next day's itinery and route and I've worked on my blog or we've eaten on the road between stops. Cooking in the RV has been a good experience because it got us into some of the supermarkets here - Shon, the supermarkets are where the action is really at, the portions they sell food in there are gargantuan, pizzas the size of dalmatians, you wouldn't believe it, and the average carton of eggs has 24 eggs in! - where all the wonders of the culinary States really live. No wonder so many Americans have weight problems. We're all addicted to Rocky Road ice cream, which is a double chocolate ice cream with pieces of almond and marshmallow in. I was no Kate Moss when I arrived, but I'll be a Roseanne Barr by the time we leave - they won't get the plane off the ground!

But more than the food, is the drink! There is every drink known to man here, and it's all so cheap! I've fallen in love with every type of smoothie I've tasted so far. As I wrote notes for the blog in Northstar Coffee House on State Street, I was sipping from a Very Berry smoothie, which was as thick and cold as Arctic snow, and red as blood. I've also become a big fan of a Tropical Fruit Punch that so far I've only come across in SeaWorld - best served with as much ice as you can fit in one glass. Delish. Shon, I hope this satisfies your curiosity and doesn't whet your appetite more than you can bear!

Tomorrow, we're off to Hearst Castle and I hope you'll hear from me the day after. We're all really looking forward to this, especially Dad, and if you can't wait until I post to hear about it, check it out in advance at http://www.hearstcastle.com/. Speak soon you guys, missing you all and big sized love coming across the water atcha!