Pacific Beach

This is a view from Pacific Beach looking up at La Jolla in San Diego.  I didn’t know what La Jolla (unfortunately not pronounced joe-la) meant, but apparently there’s debate.  On the one hand it could be just an unnecessarily complicated spelling of the spanish ‘Joya’ or ‘jewel’…I missed that word somehow. Pawn shops only seem to advertise ‘compramos oro’.  To that end though, all the streets in Pacific beach are named after jewels: Agate, Turquoise, Sapphire, Tourmaline, Opal, Beryl, Chalcedony, Diamond, Emerald, Felspar, Garnet, Hornblend….which incidentally sounds a little bit uh, biblical…  

On the other hand, the local indians called the place ‘mat ku-laxuy’ which means ‘land of holes’ and the word ‘Jolla’ could just be a transcription of ‘laxuy’.  I dunno, I could see that.  Problem is there aren’t any noticeable ‘holes’ in the area.  

Most famous resident would probably be Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel, of whom UCSD put up the world’s ugliest library in La Jolla in his honor.    Yes I know it’s interesting architecture.  It’s just…ugly….why did it have to be so…brutalist?  It’s all grimy and unpainted ugly concrete.  It reminds me of a gulag.  Then again, it is a prestigious University of California, so perhaps the evocation of arbitrary politicized enslavement is appropriate.  But that is not all, next to this gulag library, connecting it to the rest of campus (almost, as you’ll see), is a giant slate tile footpath in the shape of an enormous python, running through a grove of fruit trees, with a big monument in the middle saying ‘Then wilt thou not be loth to leave this paradise, but shall possess a paradise within thee, happier far.’ which is a quote from Milton of what Satan says to Eve in the garden of Eden.  I can’t avoid the biblical in this place, can I?  The snake path though, while appearing to lead to the entrance of the library and therefore symbolically ‘knowledge’, does not actually lead to the library, but sticks you outside the library where you can’t get inside, you don’t even ‘gain the knowledge’ that the serpent ‘promised’. I’ll quote the latimes article: “[the snake] path culminates at a dismal concrete plateau that surrounds the library but affords no access.”  That is one depressingly biblical symbol to spend millions of dollars on.  How much does tuition cost again?  And you wonder why California has that certain reputation.  

Xander has finished redecorating.  He has regular streets, not snake streets that deceive you and lead nowhere instead of to the gulag library they put up to honor the rhyming guy who wrote happy kid’s books.  Any UCSD students out there, am I getting this right?