Moving landscapes: San Jose to Sacramento by train

On a three hour train ride from San Jose, 
I resolved to record as much

of a slice of the California landscape as I 
possibly could. On a table before

me, computer, Droid, water, book, coffee, 
music in ears to block out sounds

of chatting. To my right, the Coastal Range, 
dry, sparce, filled with natural

selenium.

And near the tracks, a dismal landscape unfolds, passing repetitively.

Fremont.
After John C.
Dry, very dry rolling hills, the quintessential California oak spotted,

ravine gouged from rare rain. A mining operation provides

views for thousands of track homes that line the

graffiti filled track sound walls, small houses, town houses,

hundreds of bedroom windows just feet from debilitating noise.     

    

Hayward. 

Trash. Whistle, whistle. Industrial, graveyard, mobile homes,

backyards, trash, apartments, trailers, tilt-up malls, empty trucks,

garbage trucks, self storage yards, dead car yards, cottonwoods,

parking lots, eucalyptus, track homes, shacks, poverty, graffiti,

scrap metal, machine shops, paper recycling, dump trucks,

empty box cars, Raiders’ stadium.

Oakland 1:45.  

My great grand-father was a Superior Court Judge

for Alameda County until his death in 1925.
He studied for the barwhile working in a shoe store
in Oakland, owned property, built three homes up the hill.
Now, graffiti, water tanks, steel, recycling piles,

concrete supplies, shingle company,
dead cars, falling wooden structures.

Self storage, abandoned manufacturing buildings,
more graffiti, thicker, freeway,

Estuary, glimpses of sparkling water,
underside of freeway, concrete factory,
sail boat marinas, cash & carry, condos, parking.

           

Jack London Square 1:50

In 1996, I created a two murals now
destroyed, not by locals but by the developer.  

Matson shipping containers,  Schnitzer Steel,

shipping yards, miles of huge booms
swinging out over ships from all nations,

track, freight trains.
The City in the distance.

Turning East, old UP yards, piles of dug asphalt,
freeways, piles of sand, huge cranes, cargo containers,
car gently rocking, SP trains dark with dirt,

petroleum cars, black, round, endless,
under tall freeway overpasses

old rotting wooden structures.
Overpasses piled. Emeryville, high rise hotels,

condos, shopping, Borders, Bay, warehouses, industrial,
graffiti.

           

Berkeley 2:08

Grand-father, mother, daughter

graduated Cal in 1905, 1938, 2000.

Homeless sitting, waiting.
Concrete tanks, graffiti, monumental pipes,

conduits, graffiti, Bay, rock supplies, housing,
large satellite discs, Richmond, city buses,
open fields of tan, green, red, blue water,

Eucalyptus groves, not native.
Jack London planted groves,

thinking it a good business decision.

It wasn’t.

Wetlands, old destroyed pilings in water,

the tracks skirting the Bay.

A lovely day, so broad and still, kayakers, fishermen,

nice tract homes, sail boats in distance,
dredging barges,

and what I’ve been waiting for, the oil farms so jewel-like at night.

The shore of the Carquinez Straight, Benecia across.

C&H up close, for a moment

Naval graveyards of old, dead ships, once great

monsters of the sea and war,

silent, rotting, polluting. 

Wetlands, hawks flying low over

waving grasses in shades of green and wheat,
tiny cattle far off,

stands of trees moving into the flat valley floor,
punctuated by palms,
not native.

Suisun/Fairfield 3:30.
Transformer station, piles of garbage cans,
dumpsters, trees, and in the isle a man
with the face and hair white and wild,
of a mad scientist,

grown old,
slightly stooped, one tooth missing at least,

happy and busy who must have been beautiful

some years ago.

Graffiti, rolling hills hiding green valleys,

yards full of trash, shacks, self-storage,
strip mall, dead cars, abandoned barns,
cattle by wetland lakes in wheat colored fields,
grazing,

industrial tanks, storage crates piled high,
manufacturing facilities,

transformer farms, gravel pits,
hills more gently rolling,

fewer trees, less water, ranches,
more cattle, smoke in the distance,

hay bales in tall rectangles waiting,
a fence hung with tires,

fields of something green and new,

power lines forever to the east,
acres of corn still green, a dive bar,

red barns with sloping roofs,
more lush fields of waving grass,

corn so healthy, swaying, alfalfa, flat,
so flat.

Black birds feeding on newly planted crops
rise into warm afternoon air.

Two horses, sway backed, wheat with yellow tops,
green stalks linear with passing rows,
tractors, farm houses in stands of trees,
fields of sunflowers,

orchards full but empty of fruit,
tomatoes sitting in open trucks

waiting for processing at huge industrial plants,
grain silos, sentinels of this Valley,

produce truck beds stacked, orchards, oleanders,

earth fallow,
earth tilled.           

           

Davis 3:30.  

Orchards, fields, open wheat colored spaces,

and slowing through West Sacramento’s
industrial landscape,

over the River onto land in turmoil,
bankers, developers, city councils, Federal subsidies,
into the largest infill project in the United States, halted,

the train halts, spilling passengers into intense heat,
hot, unbearable

sun.

 

Sacramento 3:50.