A Mural Lost in Time

A Fanciful Tale in Constant Flux-

and No End in Sight

()

It starts with a portal…

Walk out of a dusky grove of ancient Monterey cypress toward two square wooden pillars. They support a great wooden lintel, time-faded to medium gray. Beneath it lies a chiseled block of granite of a deeper gray—the sill. It is an assemblage reminiscent of a piece of Druidic ruin, though built of wood, mostly, rather than stone. But for sharp eyes one might fail to notice it, so well is it camouflaged by ribbons of fog…also gray.

Around it, through it, the other side of it are more mist, more trees, more Monterey. It is the Monterey of an earlier era—a time untrampled by crowds and unencumbered by modernity.

It is a portal, nothing more than an ancient artifact standing alone in the wild. And yet, it invites us to walk through.

So…why not?

()

The room is capacious. Vibrant color-filled pictorials are spread throughout, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. Were it not for these glowing walls the place would feel darkly cavernous, but it is not that. “Capacious” will do nicely.

The walls depict Monterey’s natural landscape and evidence of human habitation in the days of the old adobes. The hand-crafted floor tiles, the tall and narrow stained glass windows, the cross-beams supporting the sixteen-foot ceiling, the ceiling itself…every square inch is covered in finely crafted illustration.

Turn now and gaze upon the portal, transformed. It is beautiful from this side, the inside. Two tall centrally placed doors, folded open against a high wall, glow in a reddish mahogany tone. They are carved in the simple but elegant River of Life pattern seen in many of California’s Spanish Colonial era churches. The door posts and lintel are incised with intricate runic-like designs.

You will find few amenities here. No welcoming desk, no slotted box in which to deposit a donation. No souvenir shop, no art books, nothing to take with you when you leave.

You will see no chairs, no benches, no place to rest and ponder the lush illustration. Does their absence convey a message? You may rightly ask, but we can offer you no answer.

You will find a library table fashioned of ebonized wood, heavy, unadorned but for a surface worn by time, centrally placed on the tiled floor.

You may hear a sweet-voiced Jenny Wren fluttering about in the rafters.

Do you smell candle wax, and a hint of eucalyptus? Two dozen or more reflective candle sconces hang on the walls—these account for the wax. The aromatic scent of eucalyptus presents a puzzle, though—all of the trees here are made of oil paint.

The sconces spread a warm glow to walls, tiled floor, red-and-black patterned Flemish rugs, and remote recesses. The effect is at once comforting and mystifying.

()

People here speak of an enchanted room. They speak softly, just among themselves, for fear of ridicule by the nay-sayers.

“Somewhere in Monterey,” they whisper, “sometimes in Monterey, appears a mysterious room. Within this room is a mural. A large, wonder-filled mural.”

It exists in a region of shadows, emerging rarely and unpredictably, never in the same place twice, never in the same way twice. It may come out of a shroud of fog, or appear near a pathway through eucalyptus. For these reasons and others even more enigmatic, few have chanced upon it.

Some of the people scoff at this notion, saying such a room can exist only in the darkly shaded moments between sleep and wakefulness. Others swear they have experienced it in full material form.

We count ourselves among the others, and, dear reader, we can take you there.

Look just to the right of the River of Life doors. It is there the mural begins, with granite, the geological foundation that supports the sand and silt and clay upon which our community rests…and cypress, which came along much later. Words in script, centered within a curvy ribbon—a plaque, of sorts—identify the Granite, and the Cypress…as does a disembodied voice.

Granite, we hear, and cypress.

It is the poet Robinson Jeffers, unseen, unseeable—not a physical presence, just a voice. Or perhaps it is no voice at all, but only thoughts, the thoughts of a ghostly docent somehow bypassing our ears to enter directly into our consciousness. Did we not warn you this was an enchanted place?

Granite. Red-hot magma brewing in huge pockets deep within the earth’s crust, churning for eons, and cooling for eons longer. As it cools its components link together in ways that make a stone of extreme hardness. Much of it is pushed to the surface by the constant thrusting of the earth’s crust, to be sculpted, over still more eons, by earth’s natural agents of erosion.

We’ve not encountered these words in the world outside of this room. This place has imagined them, wishing us to know the essential truths Jeffers might have spoken, and which he certainly understood. Jeffers knew some things about granite, and cypress, and this room knows, somehow, all about Jeffers.

And cypress. Our venerable Monterey Cypress, old and gnarled. They cling to the very edge of our continent. Battered by winds off the sea they assume stunted, twisted, other-worldly shapes, beautiful in their wild way.

Their seedlings send down taproots, and then surface roots that spread for several feet until they, too, turn downward. Where eroding soil exposes them the roots cling tenaciously to weather-polished granite outcrops, poised near or precariously above Monterey’s churning sea: exposed roots bleached white, grasping the granite. For 300 years and more, grasping, holding on.

Providence has placed these trees to stand against the soft light of cold blue moons, creating silhouettes to inspire generations of sleepless plein air painters.

I wrote poems about granite, and cypress. I built my home out of the stone, and then surrounded it with the trees. “Tor House,” I called my home…

…and “Tor House” I titled my poem. It begins…

“If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes:

Perhaps of my planted forest a few

May stand yet…"

And ends...

“My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably

Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind

With the mad wings and the day moon."

It is a beautiful poem, well worth reading, and perhaps even better in the hearing, but we have no time for it now. We need to move along. Jeffers will not mind.

()

Monterey Cypress shares space with other trees painted on these walls. Cypress gives way to Monterey Pine and pine to Coastal Oak and oak to Eucalyptus and on to the rusty-red branches of the Pacific Madrone. Twisted trunks and wind-sculpted branches interweave in ways that frame subjects close by and far distant. Leafy canopies form visual pathways that pull our eyes onward toward the glens and hollows and habitations the muralist has placed on these walls, and hold our attention there until the places themselves release us to move on. This is not magic—it is simply artful composition at its best.

Or...perhaps it is not simple at all. Maybe it is magic.

Not a series of panels, this mural room. Rather, a quartet of interconnected, sweeping panoramas.

()

A forest nook harbors a great snoozing bear. In heavily shaded light the woods seem denser, his refuge safer. Fallen clumps of leaves and other moldering vegetation offer a temptingly soft resting place our bear cannot resist.

Comes now a second phantom message. It is Joseph Mora, another of our spectral docents. Again the words are imaginary, but imagined in the certain belief they express the thoughts and feelings of this gentle man of art and nature.

This one is a California grizzly. You know this by his great size and by the large hump between his shoulders. The "griz" once enjoyed a robust existence here, and then disappeared. They shared their wilderness with us until we hunted, hounded and harassed them out of it. This saddens me and I cannot dwell long on it.

Other animals reside nearby. Rounding that tree stump is Old Man Badger, do you see him? Watch closely now as he turns and glowers at us before crawling into his den. What a baleful snarl he has. Badgers are reclusive by nature and we are fortunate to have spotted him.

The people say these walls are seldom still—that if you look long enough you will detect movement. “A cranky, stripe-faced badger will appear,” they whisper, “something will change, another thing will disappear.” The naysayers resist this notion, saying it is just crazy talk. Yet who among us will decide what is crazy here?

Jo Mora painted animals of all stripes onto his colorful pictorial maps, though he seemed to have a special fondness for bears.

()

Now, this is interesting. A small-scale illustration within a trompe l’oeil picture frame, tucked into the mural proper. We see a ragged, wave-battered ship held in rugged rocks close offshore. It is a small emissary of the larger fine art surrounding it—no less important, no less gripping in its impact, just…smaller.

I see a marked resemblance to several of my own shoreline nocturne compositions, but I did not paint this one. No one knows who painted this one. As a matter of fact, no one knows who painted any of the scenes on these walls.

So, Armin Hansen joins the reverie. This enchanted room is fully alive now, its minions in complete control.

This one puts me in mind of a diorama. Look at the successive layers of activity, each layer distinctly separate from the others. The group of human silhouettes in the foreground, the “watchers” on the beach, frame the remorseless sea battering a ship to its death in the middle ground. The middle ground action gives way to a panoramic background of roiling moonlit clouds. Layer upon distinct layer. Yes, what a fine diorama one might build from this design.

()

Step up, now, to the old library table. Its time-worn surface is bare but for an envelope lying near the corner, bearing words in flowing script: Dramatis Personae. Just an envelope—you may peek inside, but you will find nothing there.

()

We'll not see many people depicted here, though this gentle uphill slope holds ample evidence of human habitation: a cobbled collection of Monterey’s oldest buildings, most all of them of adobe brick construction. These are not placed in any semblance of road-map order. Their arrangement conforms only to the illustrator’s artistic vision:

Here on the left: a tavern run by the outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez. A rowdy place, it is. It peeks out from behind a sturdy stone jail in a fitting juxtaposition: Vasquez and his nefarious confederates spent plenty of time in both establishments.

You wound me grievously, sir. I behaved as a gentlemen at all times and in all places.

Pay no attention to him. He and his henchmen mastered thuggery and thievery, and spread fear and death. He was no “gentleman.”

And over here—well, you may experience some confusion about the identification of this two-story adobe structure. The sign painted on its facade reads French Hotel, though it is more commonly known as the Stevenson House after he of “Treasure Island” fame. We grew up delighting in the adventures of the unforgettable characters about which Stevenson will begin to write one day soon.

The sign will remain.

I will rest here but a short while…

Ah. It is “himself,” The Scotsman.

…long enough, though, for Montereyans to lay claim to a piece of my celebrity, and hold on to it. When I go from this place I will carry away visions of incomparable vistas, and memories of long conversations with genteel women and salty sea dogs and idle ne’er-do-wells. And I will recall the sounds, yes, the constant thrum of waves crashing on rocky bays and the howl of Monterey’s coastal winds. My experiences here will influence my own dreams of adventure, and make their way into my tales and my poetry. So many of the things I will write in coming years will harken back to my sojourn in Monterey.

And that poor dwelling sitting atop the small mesa, the one in such a sorry state of repair? That is Antonio Mario Castro’s adobe. The roof is failing and rain has found its way in, softening the adobe bricks and creating large fissures. It looks as though an entire wall might peel away at any moment, and the building soon melt into the natural materials from which its bricks were formed.

We see more here, scattered about the hills and hollows of old Monterey. Many of these are tangible—we know them, we can name them, can trace their textured surfaces with our fingertips. Others are but fog-shrouded ghosts of buildings that ceased to exist ages ago. Still more rest patiently in impenetrable shadows, embryonic musings waiting to be born on these frescoed walls.

()

Nestled in this corner: a handwoven reed basket of Indian design rendered in cream, red and black, tucked away in the twist of a surface root of a Mexican White Oak. What does it hold? What is its meaning?

()

These trees frame a ridge-line fronting huge billowing clouds. The structure there…

Do you point to the ruin sitting at the foot of the hill?

A soft voice, this one. It carries the rasp of old age, and a distinctive accent.

I will not say my name, for you would find it unpronounceable. Think of me as a “weary and worn little Costanoan Indian who during the strength of her young womanhood helped to bear the burdens in the building of San Carlos.” It is a fitting description, offered by Francis Rand Smith. You may encounter Francis during your visit here, though in this place one can never be sure.

The ruins you point to are the remains of the church of Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo. The place has gone to wrack and ruin, an old carcass frequented mostly by sharp-eyed owls and their rodent prey.

Bodies are buried there, around the crumbling church walls and between them. Spanish priests, Indios, local farmers, craftsmen, luminaries. My bones lie beneath the large entrance door to the great church. The fathers buried me there, that I may forever hear the whispered prayers of the worshipful as they pass within.

Close by lie the bones of another—one Garcia, by name, a member of Vasquez’ gang of murderous thugs. Garcia does not hear the soft words of the worshippers—in his purgatory he feels only the punishing tread of their feet.

()

What have we here? A beach-stranded Sperm Whale, magnificent even in death. She experienced a natural departure, spared the indignity of a relentless sea chase and the piercing pain of a sharp harpoon. This thought comes to us strangely, not in memory, but in mystery—we know things about her, though we know not how we know.

Our whale explored the vastness of Monterey’s great undersea canyon, venturing two miles and more beneath the waves in search of battle with the giant squid, her favorite meal. Her prey never had a chance, yet even so, she reveled in the hunt. What wonders did she encounter in this dark territory that rivals the Grand Canyon in its breadth and depth, but is impenetrable to the likes of we frail humans?

()

Look, now, as we approach the other side of the long, dark library table. On it sits an architectural model. Does this mystify you? Of course it does: the model was not here when we passed the table going in the other direction. The wizard that tempted us here acknowledges no bounds and offers no explanations. Make of this what you will.

The small model presents classical Spanish Colonial features. Its gray exterior surfaces feel like rough-hewn stone, cool to the touch: go ahead, no one here will stop you.

A partial expanse of its tiled roof is missing, offering us a look inside. There, to your left, are elegant miniatures of the two red-toned River of Life doors through which we entered. In the corner at right, the woven basket, a tiny thing, indeed. Clearly this is our enchanted room, precise in all particulars, though shrunk down to Lilliputian size.

The envelope inscribed Dramatis Personae is nowhere to be seen.

()

Huge twisted oaks border a gently winding track, their overhanging canopies forming another kind of portal—a portal in oils. A distant valley beckons, partly seen but mostly imagined. Shades of dusty rose bathe far-off hills. Rich ambers and red ochres complement soft pale yellows. The atmosphere is hazy, the shadows are deep. It is an enchanting place—do you feel its pull?

You may wonder what lies within the distant valley. A secluded farmstead? Quiet meadows where sheep may safely graze? Old groves of twisted pear trees? Walk in, if you will. We will wait for you. Truth be told, we do much of our wandering in our imaginations, all the better to fashion our own dreams in years to come, changing the details at will.

Have you noticed the gradual dimming of the light coming from these walls?

We recognize that voice. William Keith, California’s paragon of pastoral painters. And yes, we have noticed: the day is darkening. The vista before us appears a step or two darker in tone than the scenes preceding it. Shadows lengthen, and the atmosphere turns hazy. We are approaching nocturne territory.

Billowing clouds have absorbed soft pastel shades of amber, plum and pale rose. The muted hues are beginning to glow and within a very few minutes they will ignite in flaming brilliance, then soften to tarnished silver. The view will be majestic but brief, and then…

And then night will fall on this peaceful realm. I will sleep, and I will dream about The Glory of the Heavens, and tomorrow I will paint my dream.

()

Twilight hangs over this lonesome lagoon in Monterey’s way-back primordial world. The darkness here is broken only by a fast-receding soft glow, the remnants of a vibrant sunset. The moon is up, a mere slice of white crescent peeking out from behind wispy clouds.

From high in the eucalyptus canopy a Great Blue Heron drops out of her nest to the banks of the lagoon. Watch her, now, as she seeks her supper in the fading dusky light. The menu tonight is to her liking: fish and frogs, crayfish and turtles, rodents and snakes, all living in and around the brackish water.

The Great Blue is a stealthy hunter, patient, and well camouflaged for her work in the dusky-dark. Her prey of choice has little chance to survive this night.

To the Spaniards, the lagoon is el estero—the estuary. The name, formalized, will stick. El Estero.

()

A full moon is cresting the roofline of the old lighthouse situated on Point Pinos. The moon appears remarkably large on this night of its closest orbital approach to earth. Monterey’s atmospheric conditions have cooperated to color it a soft corn-tassel yellow. It is a moon to set the wolves howling.

()

We’re approaching the end of our strange tour, and yes, the atmosphere has become darker still. It is the dead of night, some would say. Dread of night, might say others, for it is broodingly dark.

A sloping pathway descends through sage and scrubland to a distant adobe. Walk in and you will see it: a rickety-looking veranda spans the left half of the dwelling’s face, and shelters a deep-set alcove—a doorway, we think. Just off the veranda a twisted trunk helps us resolve smoky contours above: the sweeping canopy of a decades-old cypress, propped up on the tile roof. Near the far end of the house the barest hint of amber calls our attention to a small window—the glow within is so soft it must be candlelight.

Once more we detect movement in these walls. A human figure, this time—a man out in the dark, alone but for a coyote or two—walks slowly down the path, approaching the house. Watch closely. He pauses now and again to make notes in a small book…looks back at the house…back to the book. This may very well be Charles Rollo Peters, out on one of his late-night sketching haunts.

The darkness here is cold and cheerless, the shapes insubstantial. Our imaginations struggle to find definition.

And yet…

Look longer and notice the soft washes of shimmering cool colors emerging here and there: bits of greens and blues and the softest of violets worked into the recesses of a darkness which seems almost total.

Look longer still. There is much to appreciate in this darkness. Pure black does not exist here: the darkest of the darks are not black, but rather, the deepest of blue indigos imaginable.

I did not paint this scene, and yet I am very sure I did.

Yes, it is Peters: Monterey’s celebrated painter of nocturnes, our own “Prince of Darkness.”

Can it be I am destined to create it? Time is all a-tangle here. This troubles me considerably.

This entire place confounds me…considerably.

With Peters’ thoughts we come to a dark and moody end, and this is the very spot for it, for a few paces to our right are the lofty River of Life doors through which we entered and now must attempt to exit. The wall candles begin to flicker and fail. Heed their message: we must soon make our departures.

()

We will long ponder our visit to this place where the walls are seldom still and murmur mystifying notions that affect our emotions but never reach our ears.

Ah. Psyche’s gentle thoughts.

Art, history and mystery intertwine here. We have sensed echoes from other times, seen shadowy things where shade does not exist, and experienced odd yearnings pressed upon us unbidden. The spell-making spirits here have turned our mood nostalgic for a place so far back in Monterey’s past we cannot have lived it.

Who among us has not longed to visit olden times and experience events that exist only on the pages of old history books, and explore them with all of our senses? This spectral room has conjured up visions and emotions we have neither seen nor felt before, and may not even know we desired. We should be grateful for its gifts, as it is grateful for ours.

“Grateful for ours,” Psyche? What, exactly, was our contribution?

Love of painted illustration was our gift to this place. It was the price we paid—unknowingly—to pass through the wood and stone portal. We have engaged with these painted walls in admiring and expressive ways, and the controlling spirits have responded to our enthusiasm by offering up scenes they knew would most please and inspire us.

()

So this is goodbye, my friends. Try as you may, you will probably not find your way back here. We can offer you this consolation, though: you will always remember the wondrous things you experienced in this mysterious, soulful room.

As we part ways we must leave you with this caution: should you feel compelled to spread your peculiar tale, consider carefully, for you chance the naysayers’ harsh ridicule.

“Somewhere in Monterey,” you may whisper, “sometimes in Monterey, appears an enchanted room. Within this mysterious room is a mural. A large, wonder-filled mural.”

“It exists in a region of shadows, emerging rarely and unpredictably, never in the same place twice, never in the same way twice. It may come out of a shroud of fog…”

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

(and Animalia)

In order of appearance

Narrator

A slow-speaking, slightly stooped, bookish man in his winter years, wearing winter’s hair and winter’s beard. He is, with some trepidation, facing winter’s mysteries—and wishing he could go back and finish exploring autumn’s. A dreamer he is, with a whimsical imagination. The term “eccentric” fits him well.

The spirits here permit him to come among them, but he is not of them. You’ve followed him through, and heard his words. Feel free to fill him with a personality of your choice.

Robinson Jeffers

An eloquent, principled, soulful man, and the nation’s most acclaimed narrative poet in the early 20th century.

“Tor House”

If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes:

Perhaps of my planted forest a few

May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast cypress, haggard

With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.

Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers had the art

To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.

But if you should look in your idleness after ten thousand years:

It is the granite knoll on the granite

And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth of the Carmel

River-valley, these four will remain

In the change of names. You will know it by the wild sea-fragrance of wind

Though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;

You will know it by the valley inland that our sun and our moon were born from

Before the poles changed; and Orion in December

Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like a lamp-lighted bridge.

Come in the morning you will see white gulls

Weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon

Their dance-companion, a ghost walking

By daylight, but wider and whiter than any bird in the world.

My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably

Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind

With the mad wings and the day moon.

Robinson Jeffers

1924

Joseph Jacinto Mora

One need not travel far within our county to encounter the art of Jo Mora, Monterey’s celebrated sculptor-in-clay-stone-and-bronze, illustrator, author, draftsman, cartoonist—catch your breath, there’s more—watercolorist, pictorial cartogapher extraordinaire, photographic documentarian—and muralist. Throw in a bit of cowboy and you have Jo Mora.

Mora is known far and wide for his imaginative and colorful pictorial maps, or “Cartes.” These depict not only topographic details but also caricatures of animal and human activities associated with any place to which Mora takes a fancy. National Parks, large cities, small towns, the Monterey Peninsula, the Grand Canyon, and more, were all fair game for his playful mind and talented pen.

The Grizzly

He strides through Jo Mora’s half-dollar as though he owns it. He travels alone, going where he will, confident nothing can stop him. He walks with a slow, lumbering swagger, but he is not slothful: his swagger is an expression of power—he is displaying his might and his majesty.

He fears only one predator, the two-legged kind that does not fight fairly. When California attained statehood in 1850, our bear and his brethren numbered ten thousand. By the time California’s Diamond Jubilee rolled around 75 years later, we had hunted them to extinction.

Jo Mora sculpted his likeness on the reverse side of the half dollar he designed in honor of California’s Diamond Jubilee. His coin is one of the finest examples of American sculptural coinage—or so the people say.

The Old Man Badger

A curmudgeonly old thing, ferocious when pressed. He is indignant because no one has designed a coin for him. He may get over his pique, but probably will not—this particular badger tends to hold his grudges.

Armin Hansen

His night people! In his nocturne paintings they appear as silhouettes, mostly. Complex groups of blunt figures sketched in tones of muddy rust and somber greens and blue-greens. Not pitch black, but silhouettes none-the-less. In his paintings titled Storm Birds and Fisher Folk, Silent Watchers and On the Shining Sands, and in so many others, their faces, much of the time, are hidden. And yet his people, for all their darkness, are remarkably expressive.

We see hunch-shouldered men garbed in oilskin and knitted caps and misshapen old boots. Their children, too. And often, shawl-draped women not a bit cowed by the shoreline’s cold spray. Hansen’s “fisher-families” trudge through the wet and the cold and the darkness. They trudge and they tolerate and they persevere. “Stouthearted” may be the word we are seeking.

Tiburcio Vasquez

He dresses well and speaks well, and plays well the role of dashing vaquero. Beneath the polished act he is but a thug and will remain one, right up to the moment he is lawfully hanged for murder.

Robert Louis Stevenson

A young RLS rested here in the Autumn of 1879, before going on to write the things he has promised. His characters are unforgettable, instilled with the eccentricities we humans invariably possess, but magnified. His waggish humor is directed at both individuals and institutions:

O yes, that’s a son of a gun of a fine island, mountainious right down; I didn’t never ought to have left that island.

Moun-tay-ni-ous. Wonderful. And

…the police were dispatched in time to be too late.

(Excerpts from “The Wrecker”)

Costanoan woman

She and indigenous people like her labored hard on the Spanish Missions of Alta California. They have decades of gripping tales to tell us.

The Whale

Those who recognize her monetary potential will soon pick her clean, leaving but a few ivory-gray bones to bleach white in the sun. Most every part of the Sperm Whale has value: go ask Ishmael, he knows. Her vertebrae will be used as garden stepping stones. Her curved ribs will be planted upright in pairs to form archways in those very gardens, and fashioned into corset stays and combs and chess pieces and piano keys. Her huge teeth will be adorned with elegant carved designs. Her blubber, her spermaceti…every physical part of her will find a human purpose.

William Keith

In old photographs and portraits we see his face captured time and again throughout his career, his thick tufted hair unruly, his beard unruly. His chiseled features convey the suggestion of steadfast strength of purpose. Invariably he looks composed, pensive, miles away in thought, and sometimes, somber and unapproachable. When we view him in bronze he is an angry prophet out of Old the Testament—his face still chiseled and his hair still unruly. He is tenacious. Impatient, not to be denied. Always unapproachable.

But these static images deceive. We see Keith most genuinely through the lens of his bucolic landscape paintings. He made thousands of them—truly. He is the benign lord of canvas-backed realms, the benevolent master of serene pastoral worlds of his own creation, a stalwart shepherd of his flocks. Spiritedly spiritual was this “Old Master of California”.

Great Blue Heron

Her stately beauty is seldom matched in the avian world. Often shaded in soft grays and cyan with splashes of cream-white and charcoal black, she fits perfectly into a nocturne painting.

Charles Rollo Peters

He traverses Monterey in nights’ darkness, making sketches, taking notes, lost in thoughts about the moody nocturne paintings he will later create back in his studio. He startles a few Montereyan’s, coming upon them out of nowhere in the late hours. He is looking for mood, and finds plenty of it in the moonlit old adobes. Peters’ work teaches us that light works its magic everywhere, and that color lives even in the darkest corners.

Psyche

In mythic terms she is the personification of our essential natures. In the lost mural room she is the font of our most secret yearnings. Psyche guides and counsels us throughout our lives—or so the ancient Greeks believed.

Francis Rand Smith

She did not materialize this time around, worse luck. Personalities here change as frequently as do the scenes on the walls.

Smith undertook the early, pivotal study of the Carmel mission church, its history and demise. The Architectural History of Mission San Carlos Borromeo, published in 1921, is a fascinating historical piece, well organized, lucid, and presented with imagination, graceful prose, and drama:

“For years the sand spread desolation and ruin under the broken span of the great stone arches, and as the inhabitants about the mission saw the edifice breaking and crumbling they remembered that somewhere beneath the debris were the graves of Serra and Crespi.”

An Invitation

The lost mural room is quite the mercurial place, is it not? It waxes and wanes, its scenes and personalities in constant flux for reasons even we have been unable to discover—and we wrote the story!

To those of you who wish to contribute to the story's ongoing evolution by providing ideas, dialogue or other enhancements, please visit the "Collaboration" page and then write to us at:

somewhereinmonterey@hotmail.com

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

*****()*****

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()

()