Splendid San Diego...

The air is sticky and hot. At 100+ degrees fahrenheit, this is not surprising. Balboa Park is lush and green with grass spreading across it like florescent green lace. In the heat, the park is an oasis particularly for those (like myself) who enjoy the cool stone steps and the womb like interior of museums. Museums clump together one beside the other--Centro Cultural de la Raza, Japanese Friendship Garden, Marston House, Mingei International Museum, Museum of Photographic Arts, Museum of San Diego History, Reuben H Fleet Science Center, San Diego Art & Space Museum, San Diego Art Institute: Museum of the Living Artist, San Diego Automotive Museum, San Diego Hall of Champions Sports Museum, San Diego Model Railroad Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Man, San Diego National History Museum, San Diego Zoo, Timken Museum of Art, Veterans Museum & Memorial Center, and WorldBeat Center.

I enter the San Diego Museum of Art. Like all museums this one pulls me in with promises of beauty, culture, and shelter from the elements. The shows were spectacular: first I saw "Calder Jewelry" which exhibited the works of the American-born artist Alexander Calder who lived from 1898-1976. In it I saw jewelry that looked like it had been imagined in a fairy tale. There were twists and loops, metal leaves, crowns, everything. Then I viewed "Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power" which displayed Richard Avedon's portraits of activists, politicians, radicals, and others who held their own power.

The rooms of the museum were filled with eclectic people who could have been an exhibit in and of themselves. Their dress varied from surfer styled men, to girls with transparent dresses, to people in suits, to camera toting tourists like myself.

Outside the museum it wasn't much different. I sat reading beside the lilly pad pond and watched small children run around in their summer gear, couples holding hands, an tour groups on segways glide past my spot beside the lilly pad pond.

I almost fell asleep there beside the lilly pad pond and dreamed of being a fairy sleeping on the lilly pads. I took off my shoes and sunk my bare feet into the thick lacy green grass. I pulled my self into the shade and sank into my book, and the sun, and the afternoon.

Location: Balboa Park, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.