Lost in the Dark of "Shruburbia"

Last February we visited my mother, who has recently moved to a place called Murietta California, which is a bedroom community approximately 50 miles east of LA and about 60 miles north of San Diego. An odd vector, if ever there was one. It’s been a long time since I have spent any time in Southern California, so I have almost forgotten how the dry, semi-arid foothills look, when paved with endless rows of tract homes, mini-marts, condos and strip malls. Oh yes, and large nationally hegemonic Target stores and Walmarts. The whole town appeared to have been literally rolled-out in a single instant, like some kind of wall-to-wall carpeting or one of those lawns that arrives, in rolls of sod, which are “installed,” rather than grown. All the architecture of Murietta is of a kind--- a pestering, mock, semi-Spanish/Moroccan/Mediterranean stucco. Low lying, like intestinal bacteria. It reminded me a bit of some of the pictures I’ve seen of Sadam Hussein’s palaces—only far less tall. And, I dare say, less charming. And everything is painted in a lilting shade of Tuscan beige, which makes what would otherwise be merely an annoyingly standardized, ex-urban, built-environment, appear as if it were maliciously conceived and executed by a sole demon intelligence, or by the folks at Disney (whichever is most pernicious.)

Our first night in Murietta was really something. We landed in San Diego, and with no further ado, rocketed up the freeway in our rental car to Mureitta, where we retrieved my mother from her home in a sprawling, indistinguishable, gated community, and headed out to find a restaurant in the Murietta vicinity. Within 1.5 minutes of departing my mother’s house, we were as lost and bewildered, as if we had been traveling for days, without a compass or a guide, in the deep recesses of the Amazon. Of course, my mom was of absolutely no help in directing us—she hadn’t spent any time outside of her retirement enclave since moving there, and as a consequence, could not recognize even a single landmark by which we might orient our increasingly desperate search for a bistro. In all fairness, I must confess that anyone—especially my mother--- would have been disoriented; the planned suburban sprawl appeared to be purposely devised for muddling both the good citizens of Murietta and hapless visitors, alike. At night, every corner mirrored the last, and every successive block looked exactly the same as its predecessor (a phenomenon unchanged I discovered the next day, by the addition of daylight.) It is staggering to think that human intelligence, even if in the form of a California real estate development conglomerate, actually deliberately designed and built a place as devoid of character, even mock character—as this.

Anyway, after much aimless wandering about, we finally did manage to find a place to eat—a large cafeteria-like complex that served us massive quantities of soup and salads—in an all-you-can-eat style. Expansive, although, not expensive. Patterned after a Ford factory, I think. My wife named it the “Soup-a-tarium” because it had a mass, hospital-like, institutional quality. I preferred to call it “Souploitation” for reasons that are not now entirely clear to me—maybe it was the overpowering sense that I didn’t want to eat there, but feared starvation even more?

Thinking back now, it occurs to me that our driving around in the dark that night, famished, amidst wall-to-wall “shruburbia”, feeling almost completely lost and disoriented , with my mother snapping out occasional, and entirely useless driving directions, is somehow a perfect metaphor for my life, or at least parts of my life. I will have to explore this more at another time (too scary to do so now), but suffice it to say, I’ve felt lost and in the dark, steered by forces that are somehow related to me, but who do not at all have my best interests at heart. I have been redeemed occasionally by blind luck, the occasional kindness of strangers and friends, and serendipitous flashes of bright light. But much of the rest of my life has been beset by confusion, darkness, and the perpetual need to “get my bearings.’ Wandering around in the wilderness! Yikes!