The World is Quiet Here

I read this motto of sorts in a Lemony Snicket book, and it reminded me of all the places in the world it would do me good to be right now. The World is Quiet Here: exactly the place I need. In the book it referred to a library, and that is certainly an appropriate place to seek peace, which is what I’m looking for. Perhaps that’s why I have always loved libraries. There’s a particular corner in a particular library, though, in Coronado, California, that is certainly one of my favorite peaceful places in all the world. I used to barricade myself in one of the overstuffed chairs in the corner behind the fiction shelves, on sunny Sunday afternoons all year. My corner had windows of high, tinted glass, looking out onto the wide yard in back, onto the tennis courts and eucalyptus and bottlebrush trees mottling the sunlight on the brown grass. I would repair to that place and fold myself into a chair with all the books I could carry. I would skim through them, digesting the plots, absorbing details, oblivious all the afternoon until night transformed the glass into mirrors and I could see my face instead of the street.

There are other places where the world is quiet for me.

The patch of clay worn smooth by my small scarred shins, between two lilac bushes behind our small house on Topaz. (The east-west streets of Kemmerer are named for precious stones like Emerald, Opal, Onyx, and Topaz, many of which may be mined from the ancient hills around the town, which are known as the Green River Formation.) Even with the sickly-sweet pale blossoms dripping off their upper branches, I was safe from bees and hornets beneath the canopy. I would hide there when in trouble or simply troubled, or when I just wanted to be alone and quiet, or with a stack of books or a pouch of my favorite toys, tiny plastic figurines of animals which, with a little imagination, presented limitless possibilities for play. At bedtime Grandma would pick the lilac twigs out of my stringy ragamuffin hair and I would ask if tomorrow I could take the hose out and make a river between the lilacs for the animals to live by. I think she frowned on such a waste of water but she let me do it anyway, as long as I soaked the flowerbeds first.

The kelp forest exhibit at the wonderful Stephen Birch Aquarium, an indoor spectacle of underwater wonders. There is, or was still at my last visit (which was some time ago), a bench built into the wall across from this fantastic living replica of the undersea world. Behind clear inches-thick glass, golden stalks of kelp sway slowly in the artificial tide, branching up towards natural sunlight, which filters through the swirling water and makes dancing patterns on the blue carpet of the hallway. Behind the kelp are rough coral walls where eels and bright anemones and barnacles reside. Crooked flounder and small sharks make hypnotizing laps low above the sandy floor, and I could sit for hours and watch this small world persist in being one of the most beautiful sights on Earth. I love the silence, and it is the essence of a lifelong yearning of mine: to be able to breathe under water. I don’t trust diving equipment; I’m far too claustrophobic. But if just once, for only a little while, I had gills, or something of that nature. Wouldn’t that be divine?

I must be missing San Diego. Next month will mean two years since I stood on the pier in Imperial Beach and felt it shiver as the waves assaulted its wooden legs, or sat in the rose gardens in Balboa Park with only three colored pencils and a thick sketchbook, or rode the ferry from Coronado to Harbor Drive just to enjoy the sea breezes. Plugging my car in at midnight tonight at just above zero only made me more aware that in some ways, life here is harder than it has to be. It makes me think of the tidepools at Point Loma and the shops at Seaport Village and incredible Mexican food from those little dives you’re sure the health inspector missed.

I have a big decision to make, or at least something to seriously ponder. I don’t have any time left, but I can’t help thinking if I could just have ten minutes in one of these places, all the pieces would come together and the world would right itself again. I suppose only time will tell if I’ve played my cards right.