Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Geary Depredations Part 1: The Grubby Groper

So there’s this guy - I’ll tell you about him: the Grubby Groper of Outer Geary.  I don’t know if he’s an inspiration or an exasperation to me, a cautionary tale or a mythic tragedy or what.  All I know is that he’s been shuffling around in my head for long enough.  Now I’m going to let him try his luck in yours. 

My piece of Geary Boulevard is broad and busy, punctuated regularly by sidestreets thick with duplexes and coruscating with cross-traffic.  Heavy buses and impertinent delivery trucks navigate six leanes of traffic amid innumerable autos observing innumerable international traditions of roadsmanship. It’s a polyglot community of bakeries, pharmacies, liquor stores and other civilizational profundities.  Sidewalks are lined on one side by parking meters and parked cars, and on the other by storefronts that hiccup with recessed doorways opening inward to commercial depths within.  It’s a sufficiently complex environment for any of us, but I really don’t know how the groper manages any of it at all. 

The groper in this case is an old man in a windbreaker and tan cordoury pants - I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in anything else; I doubt they’ve been cleaned in years, judging by the thick patches of crustspatter festooning his chest and the dank acreage of black stains rubbed into his thighs.  His skin is liver-spotted and wattle-creased; his hair is brillo-pad stiff and soap-scum grey.  But most meaningful, perhaps, are the sunglasses shielding the middle third of his face: they’re dark brown plastic jobs that make no nod to fashion, cutting crudely across his forehead in a straight line and drooping deeply down either side of his nose with humorless heaviness.  They’re the kind of shades one might receive from an opthamologist, to fit over one’s regular glasses.  They are the shades of temporary blindness, and he’s wearing them always. 

He walks down Geary, unimaginably slowly, slower than slow.  It isn’t even walking, really - it’s an incremental shuffle, a bare slip of one toe past the other with expaserating deliberation.  Even so, that progress, painful though it is, follows only after that of his breathlessly outstretched fingertips.  He walks, always, with one hand (if not both) extended out in front of him with habitual protectiveness.  He leans forward on a creaky spine, his jacket stiff over his bent frame, his hand probing reluctantly into the unknowable obscurities of the void that incessantly faces him.  If there’s anything on the street side of the sidewalk - a wall, a rack of newspapers, a pallet of melons, whatever - he traces his way forward using that as his guide, dragging a thick filthy fingertip almost lasciviously along, creeping at his usual glacial pace, with his other hand still reaching forward to fend off imagined, anticipated disasters. 

When there’s a doorway or some other gap in his tactile orientation structure, he locks up.  Both hands lift up before him, and he starts taking sub-measurable steps.  He seems aware enough of his environment occasionally to ask a passerby - once, me - to help him to the wall gain.  His voice is an eastern european caricature as he flags you down with repeated pleas that somebody eventually answers in the same way that somebody will eventually look for a crying baby.  In my case, I heard him begging beside me, “Sonny, please!” They were well-chosen words and I stopped on a dime.  His hand felt like snakeskin and I couldn’t tell the dirt spots from the liver spots on his head.  “Hep me - hep me get bak t’th’ wall.” I guided him, the work of a second or less except that this guy is a brittle old twig and I couldn’t push him too fast… “Hep me,” he’d plead, “Is’t very far?” Not at all, three steps forward.  He recoiled visibly at the idea of such an audacious trek; in the end it took several minutes to get him back to the safety of the shopfront less than ten feet away. 

And then, once I’d carefully, thoughtfully, courteously catered to his helplessness, he’d had the audacity to try to engage me in conversation about the weather, the neighborhood, changes, manipulations, his heavy jaws chomping at each comment, his jowls hollowing around the vowels.  I shook myself free, extricated myself from his groping grasp and went on my way, leaving him to fend for himself with the many upcoming doorways on that friendly neighborhood block.  I had neither the time nor the energy for his incapacities.  I left him barely inching forward, moving by angstroms, hands stretched out before him tensed with awful expectations, face a little averted from the impending injury he imagined as he made his anguished way down three squares of open sidewalk. 

As it turned out, I’ve seen him many times since that day I helped him, always on the same block, he always in the same clothes and in the same stricken posture, traveling at the same infinitesimal rate, perpetually dislocated and begging for guidance, blindly seeking his place from behind those all-obscuring sunglasses.  He’s always exactly where he always is.  And that’s the grubby groper of Geary Boulevard.  Watch out for him.  You can be pretty sure he’s not watching out for you. 

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Feel Me

I hopped the bus a little late last week and had to sit way in the back, but at least I still got an in-facing bench.  The back is where the action is, I told myself - where the young people congregate and excitement is born.  Whereas my old halfway-back seat is where the crabby grannies demand that I get up to give them the seat I’ve just gotten all warmed up for myself.  It was for the best, I told myself.  And then for some reason I took out my notebook.  Premonition is a funny thing, sometimes. 

Down in the raunchier part of town (and I mean that in the not-nice way), three thugs boarded.  All were young, maybe early 20s; all were dressed in jeans and sweats and seemed in excessively good cheer.  One wore wraparound shades; one had gold braces on his teeth; and one had big glassless frames on his face.  This glassless guy was really having a good time.  They were all laughing and grinning but glassless was loud, too - shouting, hooting, gesturing broadly and calling witness to heaven, or at least to whomever would listen to him, which was everyone in that crowded bus’ audience captivity chamber.  We were stuck there with him and I was going to hear everything he said, whether I wanted to or not. 

The three stood in the stepwell for the rear exit for several minutes, and the way they all huddled together with heads down roused my attention.  I suspected what they were doing but I couldn’t see clearly… but within a few moments I could tell by smell.  I was pretty sure no one had loosed an angry skunk on the bus.  That meant that the powerful scent of pine and biology that permeated the air was most likely caused by dank chronic.  That’s right, conservative blogosphere: I think these guys were rolling a joint.  Right there on the bus.  I didn’t know whether to chastise or applaud them but I chose the discreet path and kept my mouth shut and my eyes on my notebook.  They were having fun but I didn’t know if that could be counted on in the long term. 

Shortly after they had finished their craft project, glassless stepped up out of the stairwell and started waving his handicraft around.  It looked like a tiparillo, one of those skinny cigars that used to be advertised on television, but this time it was all made out of marijuana.  Glassless was shouting louder now, howling out his glee in the narrow bus aisle; his friends were content to smile and nod and shake their heads at him and at each other as he reached regular crescendos of hilarity.  He kept calling out to them, “my brothas,” “my cousins,” that sort of thing.  He kept introducing his ideas, and then self-confirming them, with the phrase “Can ya feel me?” He shuffled through his voluminous pockets, pulling out and examining what appeared to be dozens of small ziplock plastic baggies stuffed with dark green buds.  And as much as anything else, he talked politics. 

He was really excited about Obama, and he made no bones about it.  He shouted out how “the white - SO CALLED - house is appropriately placed.  It’s not in the middle of no nice condos and neighborhoods and shit; it’s in the ghetto.  It’s the capitol of the ghetto and it’s surrounded by niggas!  It’s all niggas up in there!  Tha’s why it’s appropriately placed!  Ya feel me, my cousins!” He insisted “Barak Obama my daddy but he don’ know it yet!  He went and got with my momma and she didn’t never tell him!  And now he’s got me and I gonna walk right up to that white house and bring all my shit!  Time to play some cards in the Oval Office!  Time to throw some craps in the ballroom, ya feel me?  Ya feel me, my brotha!”

He went on and on, with crudeness and profanity, waving that enormous joint around and threatening always to light it up right there.  His friends said nothing, egging him on with their smiles, but bothering no one.  But glassless, he was classless, and he made a lot of people uncomfortable.  And elderly woman with her two granddaughters sat near me and was complaining quietly to herself, about how it was disrespectful, that there were children present, that they didn’t know how important it was that a man of color had been elected.... she herself was of an age to have experienced institutionalized racism in person, and I saw the pain in her eyes as she saw young black men behaving so fecklessly.  “Don’ laugh, girls,” she impotently admonished them.  “He’s just nothin’ and nobody.  You know we don’ talk like that a-tall.”

But in the end I don’t think that glassless was as impertinent as he sounded.  He didn’t have a vocabulary for it, didn’t have the experience to make a cozy context for it, but I think he was genuinely proud to be able to disclaim about Barak Obama.  In his way he was paying homage, though he didn’t exactly know how.  But with that blunt fatty between his long delicate fingers, and those ridiculous empty frames surrounding tired eyes that had seen entirely too much, he couldn’t hold back his joy and he shared it with all of us as best he could.  “I don’ need to look up to no rap star no more - “ he crowed, “ - fukkin’ rappers are idiots.  They can go back where they come from.  I be lookin’ up to the presiden’ now.  I got somebody real to look up to.  You can feel me, cousins.  Feel that one.” And really, I think I could.

So, that was a bit of fun.  Now for the hovercraft full of eels:

In the Presidio, not far from where we used to run Cosmo off leash, there’s a forest rehabilitation project and all sorts of earthmovers and trail-layers.  But just 50 yards or so farther on, we found some little houses built of windfallen twigs in the downhill lee of larger trees.  Some were mere pup tents but some were pretty damn elaborate.  It was chilling to see them there, waiting for the return of their solitary dispossessed occupants, so I took a photo and perpetuated the discomfort:

Here’s Zach playing at one twig tent that had been started but not built up very far:

Changing gears quickly, here’s a photo of the nastiest sign I’ve ever seen for an open bar.  I think it’s in the window of the “Date Rape Tavern.” And yes, it does change colors randomly. 

Finally, as a burst of optimism at the tail end of what has turned out to be a somewhat glum post, I offer this: the sun setting down the Bush Street canyon, from my Market Street bus stop. 

Those days of sunlight when I leave work are now well behind me.  I think it’s time to hit that road and call it my own.  Have a delightful administration, now - ya feel me? 

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Reposted Wapitis, Kitchen Genius, and the Original Yah: A Blog Post that’s Sort of Like Gorp

I continue to get a fair share of my paltry few visitors as the result of their search for “Elky Summers”.  You youngsters may not know that that’s a crappy grandpa pun about a berlin-born actress of the late mid-twentieth-century, Elke Sommer, renowned from blockbusters such as “the Double McGuffin“ or the “Night in the Harem” episode of “Fantasy Island.“ Anyway, these friendly folk do a search for Elke and they find this site because of some elk photos I put up in 2004 but that disappeared in one of my various migrations from one host to another.  Anyway, I re-posted them.  Now if someone is looking for Elke Sommers and finds my site by mistake, at least I can show him some cool wapitis and ungulates.  No, seriously.  Enjoy, you craven ogler of germanic hotties.  I refrain from the “rack” jokes but you are warmly invited to make up the deficit. 

This morning’s pancakes were my best ever, I daresay.  The batter had a light even consistency so I could easily ladle it out onto the griddle, which I allowed to get hot but kept unoiled till the last moment so the oil didn’t sear and spoil; I added the frozen blueberries later than I usually do, at the last moment even, and that kept the batter nice and light in color, not a thick muddy purple; the spices - cinnamon and cardamom - were well-chosen and properly apportioned; the cakes cooked up light and fluffy, with golden-brown sears on each side but rising with airy abandon between them; I even flipped them all accurately and on time so every pancake came out looking as good as it tasted.  It put me on a kitchen rush, what can I say, so I’ll also talk up our new kyocera ceramic veggie peeler, which I used earlier today to peel a freaking GRAPE I love this tool, especially since our prior peeler was a crude twig with a blade from some manicure scissors taped to it. 

Hell, I’m so overflowing with the spirit here, let me just add a kitchen tip: when you’re cooking ground meat, be it beef, turkey, pork, veal, or an extruded sausage, which tastes just as good as it sounds, make sure you stick around and make sure the meat breaks down into the smallest pieces and doesn’t just fry up in big chunks.  The big chunk fry is not as tasty and it’s harder to incorporate evenly into other dishes in which this tasty ground meat can be used.  Oh and measure things using measuring spoons over a little bowl.  It’s way too easy to make a mess using those little suckers. 

Which leads me to another brilliant genius move I invented today au cuisine: we wound up - AGAIN - with a little can of tomato paste, of which we’d used 2 tablespoons and the rest was going to be YET ANOTHER experiment in low-temperature mold colonization.  We needed to freeze the tomato paste, dammit, and in a way that wouldn’t require us to thaw the whole thing just to use a little of it.  My BGM: I lined an ice cube tray with clingwrap, put a few tablespoons of paste into four of them, covered them up with a little more wrap, and let them freeze.  A few hours later I could pull them out of the tray without leaving any trace or stain of that very pungent, fast-staining stuff on my white cube trays.  The four nuggets of paste now sit individually wrapped in a freezer bag, awaiting my pastely pleasure. 

One additional kitchen tip that I don’t use is putting all the similar silverware in the same part of the cutlery caddy in the dishwasher - all the knives together, then the forks, then the tongs, then the skewers, then the jaws of life… that way you don’t have to separate the forks and knives when you put stuff away, it’s already separated for you.  Someone in our house says that’s too much effort on the front end for an insignificant savings of effort on the back end, but I’m not sure.  I am not constitutionally opposed to front-loading my back end, but then again, I’m not sure what I’m talking about anymore.

There may be more to say about kitchens, but I think that this is enough for now.  I have been reading “Wind in the Willows” to Zach and I just got through “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” That is some freaky juvenile literature.  I’m going back to my blacklight strobe closet.  Oh, but one final notion: Z has Flintstones chewable vitamins, as I did at his age, with the distinction that I knew something about the Flintstones at the time and he does not.  SO I loaded him up an episode from the first season and we watched it this morning on You Tube.  The overt sexism, the brutal slapstick, the smirking acceptance of spousal abuse and the omnipresent laughtrack that rode the animated program like a tick on an overweight picnicker, none of these really caught my attention.  What I couldn’t help noticing was that Fred kept getting excited about doing something and would shout out “Ya-hoooo!” That’s right, Jerry Yang, he wasn’t shouting out Yabba Dabba Nuthin’.  It was Ya-Hoooo straight down the line.  I could have sworn he had a different catchphrase, but I guess that was an ad lib somewhere down the line.  The Dabba Doo was a Johnny Come Lately.  Only the Yah was truly with us from the outset.  I think there’s something theological about this, but the blacklight strobe closet calls. 

Saturday, November 08, 2008

MYSTERY!  Plus a welter of details, gustatory and otherwise

I have that familiar urge, that primal passion I share with the painters of Lasceaux and the mercenaries of Kandahar, the throbbing drive that compels us all, to blog a little something.  I’ve got a handful of essays shaping up but god knows when I’ll have a chance to finish and process any of them.  So here is a little weekend quiz to keep your minds sharp while I founder and prevaricate:

1) My bus takes me past an unvarnished part of chinatown most days, and one of the shops - I think they have groceries and vegetables - has a sign over the roof that’s missing the first and last of four panels, so the beginning of the first word and the end of the last one are missing.  What’s left reads “TIVE PROD”.  My question: what would the sign say if it were whole?  I thought “native produce” but that seems kind of strained.  Looks more like a place that would specialize in exotic stuff, anyway.  This is the kind of question that re-asks itself of me every morning, and I am tired of it mocking me. 

2) Turns out I’m a bit cocky for being so proud of my knowledge of the nations of north america, in that I guess I was leaving out, oh, 38 or so of the other ones.  How many can you name before you check? 

It’s raining hard; we just made it in from a stroll along clement before the sky opened up.  turns out Z does not like tapioca drinks, and prefers his mango in solid fruit form.  Also, Martha & Bros sells mexican hot chocolate, which is very much the way to go.  I’ve been totally indolent the whole day and may just watch a 2-hour Futurama tonight - see if I don’t!  Kel made that killer peanut butter-sweet potato-okra soup and it really came out great; last night was steaks and chiantis with Mitch and Cath and Eli and tomorrow is pancake breakfast sunday.  We even got a new vegetable peeler with a ceramic blade.  I’m going to go now and flash-sautee the scallops, shrimp and calmari and since the boy’s napless I think he’s going to drop off early.  So we’ve all got our assignments.  Don’t let me down, people.  TIVE PROD is a mystery that cannot be allowed to disturb my serenity for another round of commutes. 

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Hardly Strictly: Photos from the Bluegrass Nursery

So in lieu of the usual verbiage (you’re welcome) I’m going to toss up a handful of recent photos.  For certain reasons which will remain unstated I will have to rely on what’s on my thumbdrive, but there are some really nice shots in here taken about a month ago at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  However, since I rarely got close enough to any stage to take a decent “action” photo, and since those photos always make me wish I was listening instead of looking, I’m going to concentrate on my own party experience - mostly defined by the raucous laughter of peopleinis.  To wit:

On our way into the venue on Saturday, Zach demonstrates his spectator skillz:

Later on Saturday, Zach and Kaleb enjoy some russian cornpuff treats.  They tasted awful.  I don’t think the kids were too concerned with “taste” at the time, though.

On Sunday, we really got down with the crowd.  Here, Z-bot, Kaleb and young master Aaron confer regarding the upcoming election: run around screaming, or stuff dirt in each other’s pants?  The electorate was split. 

Shortly thereafter, the long ‘loons came out, together with Ji-Hun and Shi-An.  And there was much rejoicing. 

About this time we were delighted by a visit from ol’ Mike Watson, a friend from college.  He was busking between sets and favored us with a nice Nashville Blues.  Talk about adding texture to the experience. 

Once Mike left, though, the kids were, oh, what’s the word?  Energized, I guess.  Kel tried to keep things at a dull roar but the “dull” part just didn’t fit with the day’s festivities. 

Finally, a closing image-statement from Zach, as to his overall impression of the experience:

With luck I’ll have a street scene essay sooner or later.  Let’s see how it shakes out - I’m writing all day at work lately and it’s wearing out my verbs!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Why I Didn’t Vote For Obama

Not what I usually do here but it’s not a usual day - I recommend this essay for all voters and those who wish to become voters: “Why I didn’t vote for Obama.” The future begins with “the.” Now get started with it. 

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Valedictory

I suspect you’re sick of reading this, because I know I’m sick of writing it - but damn I am out of spare time like nobody’s business.  Add to everything else going on that I’m going to have to start harassing my senator and congresswoman to get my kid’s visa unstuck from the anal annals of the immigration bureau.  I’ve got a few other random irons in a couple extracurricular conflagrations, one of which in particular is demanding heretofore unrequisitioned extra creative energy, writing time, and human potential.  It is possible that this one bit of grit in the cogs of the sorry machine that is my life may actually pay dividends sometime soonish in a way that counts, but I have more work to do before I get to sniff that potential.  Meantime, what I’ve got is a notebook that’s rapidly filling up with writing that has nothing to do with this blog, and an old notebook with just one decent post left in it for your alleged enjoyment.  I need to transcribe it and put it away in the cabinet where such things go in my world.  After that, I’m down to the scourge of the ostensibly creative - photographic regurgitation. 

We’ll have to endure that bridge-crossing when we, um, drive off of it.  Meantime, I have this for you, as the final words out of a notebook I carried for most of a year, filling it up with essays that began with one dated March 4 about the new dark windows in my apartment that I barely even notice anymore.  That book got some good writing done in it, and then just as I faced its last few dozen blank pages with the sputtering pen of my imagination, a beverage spilled on it and the cover sort of melted and I just gave up on the damn thing.  But I wanted to close it out with a few final words, out of respect for all the other words I’d stuffed in it and those it had elicited from me.  These ideas germinated each other as I looked at the final page of that notebook one morning on my ride to work, and within a few days I had this - and now you do too:

Valedictory

Walk as if you’re going somewhere
Look around and look ahead
Speak as if you’re saying something
Don’t forget to go to bed
One good friend can last a lifetime
Never hunt what you don’t eat
Act as if somebody’s watching
Know your pudding from your meat
Put aside a little something
Think about the follow-through
Know your windows from your mirrors
Lead as if we’ll follow you.

Tattered, spattered, broken, torn
the blue mead notebook is no more
Hundred fifty college ruled
Nine-point-five by six-inch school
Non-judgmental, constant friend
Filled you up from end to end
Yes I’ve used you, it’s been fun;
Now there is another one
Take your place down in the drawer
The blue mead notebook is no more.

That should be all for now.  I hope later comes soon.  I’d like to see what I do with it. 

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Silent Partner

I’ve aged. The neighborhood has aged.  Everybody I know has aged.  So it seems to me a little strange that hte guy I’ve never spoken to dosn’t seem to have aged a day.  I’ve dwecided to find it encouraging.  Otherwise I might hav eto kill him, but that just seems like an overreaction adn he doesn’t strike me as the overreactive type. 

I guess I first saw him not long after moving in, back in the early ‘90s.  I was somewhere near the house, on my block or thereabouts, when he caught my eye.  His thick jet black hair stood in striking contrast to his easy gleaming smile.  His dark eyes flashed brightly and his shoulder dipped slightly with a courteous nodding bow as we passed on the sidewalk. Dusky olive skin, low-key casual attire, and a firm steady gait - he greeted me so naturally that I had to ask myself if I already knew him from somewhere.  I didn’t, I concluded shortly, but I could have easily enough. Maybe I’d never see him again, but at that moment when we passed each other on my new sidewalk, his warm natue reached out to welcome me.  I appreciated it, and decided to introduce myself to him if ever I ran into him again. 

That chance came within a few weeks, when our paths crossed a second time a block or two from my home.  But I was busy or had a mouth full of food or something, so I forebore to say hello.  Same thing the next time, a few weeks after that.  It became a pattern.  Morning, afternoon, evening, night; right at my front door or down the block or out on the boulevard, our paths would cross and we’d share a smile and a nodding salutation.  In my tangential way I acknowledged with regret his infirmity when he broke a leg and was tottering around on crutches.  One morning we exhcanged grins as I loaded into the car before dawn for a trip to the gym, and then again late in the evening as I came home from some random soiree.  The synchronization of schedules would have perturbed me had I not already considered him an ally, a silent partner in my embrace of my community. 

And yes, the partnership was silent.  Beyond a syllable or two of greeting at most, we never spoke.  This is not to say that I was parochially asocial.  There were lots of people I spoke to - some friends, some mere neighborhood familiars like that guy who walks his dog or the lady with the cactuses.  We’ll chat for a minute, if we have the time, and then go on with our lives.  But not me and that guy I’ve never spoken to.  We never actually spoke. 

Not so long ago some friends from college visited town and we pulled together a bit of a supper out with as much of the old gang as we could assemble.  It weas a fairly big meetup for a bunch of guys who’d lived together twenty-three years ago. We gathered at a coffee house across the street from Q, where we’d be eating.  The Blue Danube is authentically eclectic, a tightly-wound, tightly-run bohemian hangout for going on forty years or more.  It’s pretty popular, too, so when we walked in, Jon and Brian and Billmo and Mande and Dave (and maybe Kim?) and Kel and me, we were walking into a small room already very full of furniture and people. 

One of those people, as fate would have it, was the guy I’ve never spoken to.  He was standing by the far wall, sipping a cappa and looking very comfortable.  Our eyes met again, as always; as always, we exchanged a congenial nod and grin.  We had never spoken but the circumstances seemed propitious.  The moment was ripe. It was time to speak to this stranger-friend, and I was going to make it happen. 

As I resolved to sept over and break our mutual silence at last, he started walking across the room toward me.  He had reached the same conclusion as I had, at the same time. I raised my and to greet him with a handshake in the middle of the crowded room.  He raised his hand too.  Then he seemed to veer to the left.  Things were happening quickly and not quite correctly, it seemed to me.  He was not meeting my gaze and his outstretched hand reached at an angle away from mine.  Was he going to miss the handshake?  He was!  He was walking right past me - and into the friendly handclasp ... of ... some random guy?  I glanced back into my group of friends and noticed another couple standing with us, strangers, a little younger than us maybe, but normal enough.  They looked for all the world as if they were part of my group, except of course that I’d never seen them before.  The guy I’ve never spoken to was shaking hands with this dude and greeting gladly the woman with him who’d arrived with us, but who were not actually part of “us.” He joined these interlopers with with obvious delight. 

As they peeled off for another part of the crowded coffee lounge, he did look back toward me for a moment and I thought I saw wry rue flash in his eyes. If so, it was reciprocated.  I fully intended to have a chuckle with him over it when next we had a co-locational moment, but that turned out to be inconvenient for some reason.  As were the next few chances I let go. Now it’s been quite some time since that night that I almost shook hands with the guy I’ve never spoken to, and it would no longer really be appropriate to make that an initial subject of conversation.  It’s not current any longer.  We have news to catch up on.  If we ever catch up on anything, I mean. 

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Cell-phone Photos: The View from Inside My Calling Plan

I may not be good at taking hints but maybe y’all would like a little something less wordacious while you gear up for a pre-pre-election monday, or whatever kind of monday you’re having in your neck of the woods.  Let’s start with a few photos of the chalk graffiti that shows up at Z’s favorite local playground:
One child left behind:

A warm welcome to RoboCat:

And it goes without saying:

As for this last one, when I was snapping the phone-pic a youth was watching me and read out the words, “I like pie.” I asked him, “who doesn’t?” He answered me with disarming frankness, “pie-haters.” He had me there. 

And now, some photos that are a little more intense:

These two are some photos of tents I saw in the presidio on my way from dropping Z off at preschool, heading to my shuttle bus.  You can see the old barracks in the distance, and one small sturdy square building, windowless and red-roofed.  I’d overlooked it many times in the past, it was just another little outbuilding and not terribly impressive.  But this particular day I took a moment to check it out a little more closely, from its heavy masonry walls to its arrow-slit windows, to the plaque by the front door that reads: Old Stone Powder Magazine: Constructed by the US Army after the Presidio was occupied by American forces.  Built of materials salvaged from earlier Spanish and Mexican structures, it dates back to the period of 1847-1862.” Now it seems like a much more interesting building to me, full of history and ordnance, a place seemingly built of other places that got blowed up.  It’s older than most anything else around town, and pretty sober and somber with its lack of poetry and extra staunchness.  It looks good with the historic tents.  It looks good anyway.  (Additionally, the artillery piece in the lower photo was taken from the Philipines after the Spanish American war - they blowed it up instead of letting us get their good thang.  Pungent stuff to view on my daily way to the bus stop.)

Finally, these pics are from the waterfront near my office - an old pier ("ghost piers,” they call them) and a new walking pier with the bridge behind it and a sculpture in front of it.  It’s a nice place to go if you need some pretty instant relaxation.  Or a giant metal spider.  I’ve had both kinds of days lately, to be honest with you.

Final note: on my way from a parking garage to a playground and kid’s creativity museum yesterday, Z and I walked past some guys gathering signatures and money, one with an “Obama/Biden” button, and one with a big poster of a black man with the word “HOPE” written under it.  I complained to them: “That guy is NOT Bob Hope!” They were laughing so hard they didn’t even ask me for money. 

Time to hit another playground and grab some grub for me and the youngster.  I’ll bring the words soon.  As if you were waiting. 

Thursday, October 23, 2008

DISASTER!

When my vitamin water burst last week in my messenger bag (and yes I clearly earned the karma, see if I learn anything) the casualties included my charming old writing notebook, which is okay because it was much less charming than old and really ready to be switched out.  Now the front cover is barely hanging on and I’ve already started toting a cool new book with pockets and a mellow retro look.  I got a lot out of the old notebook but this is not the time to be nostalgic.  It goes in the drawer with the others and I’m ready to move on. 

Except of course, I’ve got to transcribe what’s left in it.  That gives us three remaining old-book posts: something dumb, something painfully overwritten, and something surprisingly charming.  Let’s start with my strengths: today we will have something dumb. 

DISASTER!  I scared you, didn’t I?  No, it’s okay, but really, DISASTER! stalks us at every turn, lurks behind every tsunami, loiters ever more agressively in these days of nuclear proliferation and resurgent piracy.  Whether by fire, flood, tremor or EMP, we can be pretty sure that our world will soon be laid waste - and that our only salvation will be our own survival skills and preparation.  It’s all well and good to be a licensed ninja who can converse in all terrestrial languages, but if you don’t have what you need to get through the aftermath of devastation attendant upon all DISASTERS! worth the capitalization, all your multilingual ninjaism won’t help you for squat.  You need to prepare for DISASTER! if you want to survive.  You can bet that DISASTER! is preparing for you already. 

The problem with DISASTER! planning is that it is dull.  Checklists, buckets, tarps and latrine-sacks notwithstanding, some of the things people need to be prepared for DISASTER! are not as exciting as they could be.  They lack panache.  They lack bling.  They bore me, and of course they bore you too.  Consequently, none of us are prepared for DISASTER!.  So we will be incinerated with all the other losers, and that would be socially unacceptable.  A conundrum, would you say not?

Would you not say not, indeed!  But I have put my inconsiderable cerebral horsepower to this question, and have come up with the following ideas that will appeal to those who will only take action if it is the biggest action possible, and who would only care to survive DISASTER! if they could do so with style:

THE IMPRACTICAL GUIDE TO DISASTER! PREPAREDNESS!

* Take no chances with stockpiled water that tastes flat and lifeless - holy water never goes bad.  Make sure yours stays holy by having it blessed by the pope.  It won’t go stale in solid gold vacuum tubes.

* People store canned food but forget the can opener.  More effective and flexible is a thermal laser.  It opens food and cooks it at the same time, and you can use it for keratotamies after dessert. 

* If things are generally going well, a first-aid kit will cover your needs.  In a DISASTER! it will fall far short of requirements.  Instead, a full ER/OR combination should be constructed in your rumpus room, perhaps folding out from behind the dartboard or revealed by flipping over the air hockey table.  Hire professional medical staff or, better yet, install medical robots.

* Batteries wear out and have limited utility.  However, refining your own uranium and initiating cold fusion reactions as you shelter in place will provide you with both effectively unlimited power, and a fascinating project to keep you occupied during the long days ahead. 

* People get bored of board games and cards.  Far better for entertainment purposes as you wile away an indeterminate environmental recovery period, would be cryogenically frozen-and-defrostable operatic porn-star acrobats.  Alternatively, multi-purpose your medical androids, if space and food are at a premium. 

With these five tips in you mind, I suspect you consider yourself so well-prepared and impervious, that you will seek to trigger a DISASTER! just to try them out.  Well, don’t. 

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

this just in!

so this is rather out of my usual way of doing things here but I feel compelled to share the following incident:

I just got to work and I’m on my way down the hall to get a cup of coffee.  An IT dude enters the hallway ahead of me.  I tweak my collar out of my jacket lapel.  The IT guy brightens up and says, “Now you’re en plein air!” I choose to interpret this as a good sign, ambiguous though it may actually be.  Anticipation shapes eventuality, I always say, as of now. 

And since I’m here, Joanna, yeah, the candied pumpkin worked pretty well.  Slice up the pumpkin, cut slices into two-three inch chunks, clean those of pulp and skin, soak overnight in lime water (1 T/qt); rinse very well and then place in warm water to boil for five minutes; remove, cool and drain three hours; pierce (gently!) with a fork and cook with “equal weight of sugar” = covered in sugar at 300 for three hours.  I tossed in some cinnamon but I dont think it really dispersed evenly and frankly it wasn’t very good cinnamon but the candy came out like turkish delight.  I diced up a bunch and spooned it into bird’s custard as a topping/dessert cream at the sukkah party and people were ladling it over apple pie with breathless abandon; the crystalized pumpkin fibers wove all through the custard and the nuggets of glutinous candy stuck in your teeth so you could keep tasting them furtively till you gave in and spooned up more.  Hard to stop eating. 

And now to work. 

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Plumbing the Depths

First, a little catch-up: I’ve been busy as hell.  I’d like to be posting more; hell, I’d like to be writing more.  I’ve actually been using my precious writing-time on the bus to do work lately, that’s how bad it’s gotten.  But mixed in with reading Partnership Grant applications and reassessing the evaluation protocols with my friends at the Courts and redesigning the office website and negotiating a new contract for the bargaining unit and trying to get a few more stories up on FieldReport and starting to negotiate the possibility of a for-money writing gig, and stuff, I’ve had a chance to cook up some candied pumpkin and get out to the Harvest Festival (photos forthcoming) and have a delightful supper with a bunch of bloggy folk at Dave Francisco (organized courtesy of Blogography, as for which, Thanks Dave and the cards are awesome) at a pretty cool restaurant that allowed me to be in North Beach two weekends in a row.  I’d be happy to share details if you care to ask but I’m assuming you DO NOT so let’s not bother you with that.  Instead, I want to offer you a joke, a tip, and a rant.  Yay trifecta!

I am considering starting a company to sell clothes for yuppie Israelis.  I will call it El Al Bean. 

Yes folks, that was the joke.  The hint, now, is a sort of joke on me: iPods fare poorly in water.  Even if your water bottle breaks open in your messenger bag and just gets a little moisture in the general vicinity of the ‘pod, if you need to towel it off once you discover the issue, you are basically looking at turning it back in to Apple for a 10% discount on the new ‘pod you will have to buy.  And thus it is that my bonus-upgrade replacement of my original free iPod turned into $25 off on a new ‘pod classic.  It’s very sleek and full of extra memory and nice detailing but I would rather have kept the old pod and the delicious money it cost to buy one that didn’t have bi-hydrogen oxide all over its insides.  Bah.

The rant is below, in case you are tired of Joe the Plumber.  I am too, but I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about him till I get this off my chest. 

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Shuttle Stories

In the festival of delights that is my life these days, I seem to have lost an entire rather lengthy post.  In it I described in great detail my activities over the past few weekends, including more than ten shows I saw with many friends - old ones, new ones, and long-lost ones - at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass; now I’ll just let you look the damn stuff up yourself.  Then I mentioned the wonderful afternoon we spent with Chantel and her friends on a rooftop in Fishergraph Hill, eating hamburgers and drinking adult beverages (except for zach) and eating crispy chocolate freakout bars and watching the Blue Angels and other airborne entertainments at the annual airshow.  And I also talked a bit about the wonderful Yom Kippur services I attended, which were heartful and fulfilling.  I even mentioned the candied pumpkin I’m making (even at this moment). 

IT IS ALL GONE.  I logged in this evening and find I have posted nothing since last friday.  Bless you, god of blog, for eating my goddamn post.  I’ve got something else for you to eat if you dare show your stupid face around here anytime soon.  Which is to say, I’m going to re-transcribe the heart of my post from earlier today, which I hope you enjoy now that I’m typing it again for the second time.  It’s because I care, you jerks.  So read carefully and I’ll come back with a pop quiz, just as soon as I get a working phone number for your pop.  He’s a sneaky one, isn’t he?

It’s not that there are no stories on the new bus.  Even as I first noticed its relative dearth of human interest (compared, at least, to my prior route), I suspected that there was more going on than was meeting my untrained eye, and that time would soon sensitize me to the little dramas playing out around me even on my boring-ass shuttle ride to work.

I was right, too - the stories are there, they just play out smaller, or faster.  You’ve got to keep your eyes open on that 8 am downtown shuttle.  The buses are comfortable and the windows are heavily tinted, so it’s easy to lose focus.  And when you do, you miss things like this:

Tuesday morning broke sunny and muggy.  The bus was cruising inbound on Lombard, past endless little motels and eateries.  As we approached an intersection and came to a red-light stop, I saw a little covey of joggers pounding their way up the side street.  In true Marina fashion, they were slender, mostly blond, young, and stylishly kitted out in sharp jog togs.  They arrived at the corner as their traffic control turned yellow and paused for their signal, still cantering in place, each still personifying the “fresh-n-beautiful” aesthetic that is the hallmark of those privileged precincts. 

Perpendicularly came the hooker.  She was short and skinny, with dangerously tall shoes and a black dress that barely concealed her merchandise.  She looked good so far as that went, which wasn’t really very far when you got a look at her face, which was sufficiently pretty but unappealingly set in a grim and flinty scowl under her makeup and flouncy hair cut.  She walked swiftly, as if on her way somewhere to which she was already seriously late, and the bright sunlight seemed to leave her in a shadow of her own making. 

She reached the corner at the same time as the joggers, arrested in her walk of shame by an ironic red light.  She kept her eyes mostly down and shifted her weight from foot to platform-heeled foot, as if the sidewalk was electrocuting her.  The joggers, still prancing like Lipizzaners, gaped openly and slowly ceased moving.  For a moment, five hot joggers in spandex and eyeliner stood flatfooted and gawked at the whore, her face rigidly emotionless.  A world stood between them on that corner.  Two seconds later the light changed again and the bus rolled on. 

Or:

It was a heavy morning for my little shuttle.  All the seats filled up early and still the people kept piling on, all dressed for downtown offices, each wearing a carefully-crafted visage of dour self-absorption.  I watched them as they filled the aisle next to me, all full of vinegar and coffee.  The last to board at the start of the ride was a young man in a fitted business shirt and serious office slacks.  Tall, broadshouldered, and slim-waisted, his chiseled jaw was shaded faintly with stubble and his thick hair was neatly styled.  His eyes glinted as he made his way halfway down the aisle and took his place as the lead stand-ee, turning firmly on his heel to face forward as is the practice hereabouts. 

The doors closed and we rolled off to the next stop, where another small crowd was waiting for us.  The first to board was a slim young woman in trousers and blouse, her hair held back with a practical ring of elastic, her understated makeup putting a delicate blush on her sleepy, unsmiling cheeks.  As she came on board and noticed he next to whom she’d have to stand in the aisle, the drowse quickly faded from her face and the apathy evaporated from her small body.  She took a spot standing at a proxemically-appropriate distance from him and rotated into the proper front-facing orientation, a modest 18 inches or so separating her from the beefcake at her back. 

Still more commuters piled in and the aisle was filled quickly, forcing all those standing in it to crowd up a little more.  Mr. Studly took a step to the rear, and the woman in front of him hazarded a quick glance back to see where she was in relation to him.  People were bunching up near the door; she owed it to them to scootch a bit further back too.  A step and a half brought her into his immediate proximity; her shoulderblades were nearly brushing his burly pectorals and his large hands hung quietly right next to her hips He clenched his jaw and, with infinite patience, sighed softly, waiting for us to get moving again.  Her back so intimately close to him that she could surely feel the heat of his flesh through their clothes, she couldn’t help grinning broadly with illicit delight at the gift fate had brought her that morning.

That’ll have to do for now.  Best of luck with your respective Thursdays.  Mine promises to be a fresh coat of paint on the same old nard-vise.  You know how familiarity breeds contempt?  I’m getting real familiar with being busy.  And if I don’t get a chance to tell you in person, have a refreshing Festival of Tabernacles.  No, really!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Siding to Nowhere

This appears to have been one of those times that I built something up in my mind a little too grandly, but in my own defense, I think that’s what they intended. “One track” thinking does that to you sometimes.

Waa-Tee-Kaa undoubtedly once was fabulous. You can see its bygone grandeur in the wrought-iron guardrails, the leaded jewel-glass inserts over the windows, the understated opulence of the short, sharp syllables of the transliterated name which is itself evidence of manifest destiny and social superiority. Amid the plate-glass stuttering of the downtown office towers that surround the small courtyard where it stands marooned on a short length of transplanted, symbolic track, the train car promised a journey back to a gilded age’s most exclusive aerie.  It was the personal passenger coach of Big Daddy Bechtel and his brood of brooding Bechtel Boys - Wassily, Chaim and Raoul. Or whoever they were.

Because it’s not the people in particular I cared about - I was motivated not by biographical interest but by curiosity blended with avarice, a shameful jealousy over things I’ll never have and don’t quite understand, an incohate desire aroused by an intentionally deindividuated foil. And thus it was with clan Bechtel - who they were, personally, made no difference to me (assuming, of course, that they weren’t closet nazis or behind that whole subprime mortgage mess or anything like that). They were just industrialists, traversing the United States in the heyday of rail, living like the kings they’d have been if Social Darwinists had had their way, and when their travails took them to isolated outposts like desert riverbeds or forested mountaintops they’d plunk down Waa-Tee-Kaa and make a little campout with their coolies and cooks. Sounded sweet. I probably spent a little too much time imagining how sweet it was, but sometimes my brain had nothing better to do - and the car was just sitting there, after all, a few blocks from my office in the middle of my quotidian peregrinations, resting on an isolated pair of rails in a plaza fronting the Bechtel Building. It had been tempting me for years with visions of imagined oligarchic excess. It was a nucleus for fantasy.  I wondered what the truth would hold.  Short answer: not much.

Recently, I found myself walking past the Bechtel Plaza around lunchtime and found Waa-Tee-Kaa open for tours, as apparently it is on a daily basis at about that time. The car is mounted via a ramp that weaves, ADA-compliantly, back and forth in a gentle rise to the coach’s elevation several feet above ground level - a rather pedestrian affair of steel rods and concrete pads, uninspiring but sufficiently servicable for the circumstances.

I meandered to the landing on the heels of a young woman of pronounced urban sensibilities who was wearing a black hoodie and black chucks; she walked alone with no purse or bag, her face broadcasting skeptical curiosity as we separately ascended together to the entryway.  She went in first but left again fairly quickly, smirking in wry disappointment, so I had Waa-Tee-Kaa pretty much to myself. The car was laid out in a series of three rooms that opened off an aisle that ran down the left side.  Each room was entered through an elegant wood-trimmed archway.  In the first room was a central display plinth, exhibiting an antique surveyor’s transit from the early days of Bechtel glory.  There was also a comparative display of the weird clumsy canvas-and-resin hard hats of yore, and the sleek resin-and-canvas models in use today - all naturally inscribed prominently with the Bechtel name.  And let us not omit mention of the model of the Bechtel tanker ship.  That would be unforgiveable. 

The two other rooms followed suit, their walls lined with displays of enlarged photographs in spectacular living color, sentimental sepia, and gritty hard-hitting black and white, showing brash young men and grizzled old roughnecks forging bridges in mid-air and raising impossible edifices and otherwise wreaking civilization on the maidenhead of the wilderness.  They showed off the airport they’d built in Saudi Arabia that’s twice the size of San Francisco, and a refinery construction job three days upriver in darkest Papua New Guinea.  It was all very compelling, if that is the sort of thing that compels you.

And sometimes, amid these outsized pictorals of engineering audacity and nature-raping machismo, I’d see a shot of Big Papa Bechtel and/or his progeny - Adolph, Stucky and Wu-Tan. They’re invariably dressed in neckties and suits, looking terribly dour - as if their plunder of the planet might conceiveably run awry if they unclenched themselves for one instant.  They glowered out of their frames at me as Hoover Dam was hewn and Yosemite was laid open in the background behind them.  Surrounding them throughout the train car were more photos and models exemplifying their puissance and the instruments by which they achieved it.  I felt like I was supposed to be impressed.  I almost felt badly that I wasn’t. 

Waa-Tee-Kaa may once have been a rolling palace redolent of rare wines, imported cigars and rich living.  That is now all gone, in favor of pure corporate onanism.  All that remains of what once had been, were those leaded windows, their graceful arcs of blue and amber weaving together over clear plate panes that once looked out on dominion and in on splendor.  Now they gape, dazed, from a stranded antique, and the view outside is of asphalt, tour busses, and office buildings, not mountain chasms and wide-open spaces.  The view looking in, by the same token, is the same as you’d see in any corporate lobby anywhere in the financial district, testifying with equal eloquence to man’s enlightening relationship to the earth, as does any old train car on a siding to nowhere. 

cell phone photos:
waa-tee-kaa in situ:

visually if not thematically related: cable cars lined up at the terminus of the california street line, as seen on my walk to work from the shuttle-bus stop. These old cars are still in service, and what they lack in opulence they more than make up in authenticity. 

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Awesome - Canyon-style, not Pizza-style

We’re now at the trailing edge of the Days of Awe, the period from Rosh Hashona to Yom Kippur when we’re all supposed to, as the ancients advised us, get our shit together - for the next year, at least.  For literalists, there’s some kind of enormous book which we’re all editing at once, trying to ensure that we’re down for a year of good things.  You might call this the original cosmic wiki, but then again, you might not.  I’m not so literal about it, myself.  I prefer to think that this is my annual wake-up call, drawing my attention to what I say my priorities are, how my behavior demonstrates what my priorities really are, and maybe what I can do to narrow the gap between them.  We accept responsibility for the errors we have control over and we ask to be released from oaths we did not mean to take.  The ceremonies are full of uplifting stories and sobering ruminations.  I am not a very religious guy but these services seem to make a difference in my life and I am always glad to participate to the extent I’m able. 

For ten years or so I’ve gone to the East Bay to daven for the high holy days with a fantastic congregation in Berkeley, Chochmat HaLev.  But it’s quite a shlep and parking out there is a megabitch, so I have been looking for a local alternative.  I do live in a jewey ‘hood and there’s plenty of synagogues I could try to visit, but I was looking for something in particular, the unique “renewal” approach that blends old and new schools with a wide range of music, meditation, frankness and humor.  That’s a tough bill to fill but it turns out it was eminently fillable - Keneset HaLev is a congregation that holds its HH services in the county fair building at the arboretum in GG park, a pleasant 15 minute walk from my front door.  Crossing my fingers (in full recognition of the irony), I signed up for their gig. 

My hopes were well-satisfied.  Keneset HaLev consisted of about fifty or seventy souls, a fairly intimate crowd compared to my prior experience with Chochmat; they met in a small room off the main exhibit hall that was sparsely decorated with a small ark standing in a front corner in a hand-crocheted cover.  Kel, Z and I arrived about ten minutes early, during their preliminary chanting and meditation; up front were three “leaders” - a slender youngish bearded man with an etherial smile, a heavy-set older bearded man with a sly grin, and a lovely young woman who looked like La Gioconda (and who turned out to be the chazzan, or cantor - and also a performer with the SF Opera).  For twenty minutes Zach sat and listened, or quiety played.  This took us ten minutes into the services, at which point he sort of supernovaed and became unmanageable.  Kel gathered him up and took him home, but I was able to stay behind, for once.  And in staying, I was able to expose myself, over the course of the night and the following day, to the following nuggets of inspiration, which I (as is my wont) share here with those of you willing to wade through them and imbibe with me a few sips of the nectar of these special days. 

The evening service began when the bima (pulpit) crew stationed four shofar-blowers at the four corners of the room and called a “tikiah,” a long blast on the ram-antler horns that sound once a year with their call to prayer and introspection.  The shofar ceremony traditionally happens during the day services but they explained that they wanted everybody to hear it, even if they couldn’t come the next day, even if they had to leave early that night.  Zach was mesmerized by the sound that reverberated in each of our heads, through all of our hearts, that penetrated our souls despite our resistance to their call.  It’s an ancient and eerie sound.  Zach crawled under his chair and stuck his fingers in his ears, but he was grinning up at me for all he was worth.  It was shortly after this that he made a bee-line for the table with spare shofars, to grab one and try to blow it himself.  His fury at being denied this satisfaction was what led to his early departure, but at least he got to hear the sound that took down Jericho. 

The younger male leader reminded us toward the outset of the service that the word used for “god” in the liturgy is a placeholder.  The letters are not pronounceable, and the word we use in their place is best translated as “lord,” in the feudal sense.  He mentioned several other ways of making the reference to god, and urged us to use whatever word that made the most sense to us, regardless of what anyone else was saying.  Fill the god-shaped space in the prayers with the word that speaks to you, and make the generic statement personal to you.  I didn’t often take him up on that offer, but I appreciated the sense of freedom. 

A parable, from the older leader:  a young man and an old man meet in a train carriage.  They’re heading to the same town and start chatting.  The younger is very excited to attend a lecture by a famous scholar. The older man tells him, I know that guy - he’s really not all that.  He’s wrong a lot, and when he’s right it’s usually because he had good teachers who really knew what they were talking about.  The younger man, outraged by the insult to his esteemed instructor, punches the old man in the nose and storms out.  That night at the lecture, of course, he discovers that the old man he’d punched is in fact the scholar he sought to defend.  After the lecture he runs to the scholar and begs forgiveness but the old man says he can’t forgive him.  Why not?, the younger man pleads.  In reply the elder tells him, You are apologizing to me because you know that I’m a famous scholar, but when you punched me you thought I was a nobody.  So find a nobody, and ask him for forgiveness. 

The Unetana Tokef prayer consists mainly of a litany of boolean possibilities for the new year, most of which are rather somber.  Who will live, and who will die?  Who by starving, and who by thirst?  Who will find riches, and who will be cast down?  The list is lengthy and makes for rather heavy reading.  As I went through it I found my mind churning, and as I tried to take a mental step back and regain my concentration I found my own diad on the tip of my tongue: Who shall be dazzled by distraction, and who shall bless himself with focus?  Hunger and thirst, death by fire or drowning, many of the traditional references seem remote to me - but distraction and focus are my daily challenges.  I bet I keep this one handy for a few months, at least. 

The older leader spoke about the general theme of “awe” that’s prevalent during this time, and reflected that modern people don’t do awe very well.  The word “awesome” has lost all meaning.  The same word should not describe both the Grand Canyon, and a pizza you had last week.  However, in the overall interest of keeping things light and friendly, among the rebbes he quoted over the course of the services were Rav John Cleese, Rav Woody Allen, and Rav Buckaroo Banzai.  In the end, I think it’s all about the overthrusters, anyway. 

During the torah service, one scroll was withdrawn from the little ark for reading, with community aliot (which is the way I like it).  However, they also pulled out the second scroll and just handed it off to the congregation, so we could hold it and shnuggle a little.  The leader admitted that there’s a cult of veneration about the physical entity of the torah, but it’s really just a book - the important thing is what it stands for and what’s in it.  However, sitting on my little stacking chair, resting the parchment scrolls against my shoulder and inhaling its dusty animal ancientness, it was hard not to feel a personal connection.  When I eventually passed it along to the next people in the row, I did find myself a little lonely. 

Also during the torah service, the elder leader was expounding on the story that had been chanted in hebrew, the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar.  The story is a complicated and unpleasant one, and then we split up into one-on-one discussion groups to talk about it under the instruction of a psychotherapist, each of us trying to achieve our own comfort and understanding with it.  However, before any of that, the leader explained the basic facts of the story, describing the response of the patriarch at one point as, “Abraham is like, ‘no freaking way’!” We do have a prayer extolling the virtues of the patriarchs and matriarchs; ours is not an “ancestor-worshipping” religion, but that prayer reminds us that those people did some pretty crazy stuff and took some significant risks, physically and spiritually.  However, the “no freaking way!” reminded me in the midst of that, that they were really just people - not saints or angels or other questionable entities.  People do well, or poorly, or not at all sometimes.  That’s an example I can try to emulate - being a person. 

There’s one central prayer in the services called the Amidah.  This is a prayer to be said one-on-one, you to your holiness (be it god, heart, buddah, whatever).  It’s a lengthy plea for understanding, enlightenment, and harmony, to have the good sense to know what’s right and the strength to do it.  Usually I just pull my prayer shawl over my head, face east, and get into it, but this time we were in the FREAKING ARBORETUM so instead we all headed out together into a nearby meadow lined with redwoods and exotic trees.  Each of us found a place to stand and daven, and we each engaged the amidah at our own pace, in our own voice, with a connection through the earth under my feet and the boughs over my head to a larger and deeper world that has never been part of this process for me before.  It was deeply moving, at least up until the groundskeeping crew started chainsawing some overgrown shrubs nearby.  But that was okay too.  Sometimes nature brings challenges.  That’s the nature of nature. 

Finally, it is worth noting that much of the liturgy is set to tunes, some of which are very ancient and some of which have been re-written more recently.  My favorite tunes are a few that clearly come from the ‘60s or ‘70s, which I learned at summer camp and weekend retreats in my childhood - tunes that are soaring and beautiful and get to my emotional core in a way that always surprises me (since I don’t understand the hebrew words at all).  It’s been a long time since I’ve heard either of my very favorites of the favorites, the hippie-dippie versions of Shalom Rav and V’al Kulam.  Yes, we wound up singing them both.  For me, that alone would have made for a memorable and meaningful experience.  But it was not alone, and neither was I. 

Shana Tovah, blogopolis.  Hope you’re getting the most out of your days of awe.  And if not, don’t fret - there’s a whole year to work on it. 

For those who didn’t get to hear it last week, here’s a link to some shofar-blowing.  Tomorrow night is erev Yom Kippur.  The days of awe are coming to a close.  Lucky for me I got more than my share this year already. 

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Place-saver: Read On Elsewhere!

okay, the site’s been down for a week, during which time I did one hell of a lot of stuff and the site gathered a lot of spam.  The site, as you may infer from this postlet, has been restored to full functionality.  I have not, as evidenced by the two hours I spent last night on a spiritual post that evaporated into the ether whence it came.  So, bummer.  I’ll fill it back in when I get a chance but today there are more concerts so I’ve got to pack the picnics.  See you soon, and if you can’t wait for a little story from the hut of chuckles, visit one here: http://www.fieldreport.com/articles/1800 - I posted to FieldReport.com, which is a really cool site where you can rate stories by other writers and award them prizes up to a cool quarter-million buckaroos.  They saw fit to give me an intermediate-level prize for a story about a women’s football game, and it turns out they’re headquartered within an easy walk of my house.  So support the ‘hut, support the central Richmond District (and public health hospital complex adjacent thereto), and attention-starved authors nationwide.  And I’ll be back when I can with the good news about Rosh Hashona - personal renewal at services version.  And now, back to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival with the Paiges and Foxes and Nashes! 

Monday, September 29, 2008

Head’s Up: New Year New-osity from an Old-School Newbie

(update: photos from the hike are posted under “photos.” There are plenty of them so use the monthly archive to see them all.  Collect them!  Trade them with your friends!)

This is the good life my friends… I’m sitting on the couch, my feet are up on the padded hassock, I’m in my throwback Warriors t-shirt, I’ve got a belly full of apple treats and now I get to blog from the top of, shall we say, my “lap.” Feels millenial, peoples.  Feels like a new day is upon me, and I don’t just mean Tuesday sneaking round the corner waiting to give me a wedgie when I’m looking at my shoe.  I mean it’s a new year, jewish-wise, and that’s a climactic time in the ol’ hebraic calendar.  It’s a time to take stock, to make amends, to renew appreciation and to reconnect with traditions that seem to have some beneficial effect on me.  Let’s take a moment and review what’s so new about this particular little slice of the time pie, such that I have something to think about during services:

* HIKE through the forest last saturday with Kel and little whatzizname, who fell asleep approximately .5 miles into the four mile Bear Valley Trail that runs from the HQ of Pt Reyes (a park comprising a mere 71 thousand acres with 150 miles of trails) out to Arch Rock.  The photos are pretty great and I’ll post them later but for now I can report that it is highly salubrious to take a vigorous hike through the dense verdure of the forests, along the slim trickle of a crystal creek that bounces back the green of the canopy above it, the air full of pine tar and laurel spice and oak dust; sound muffled by redwood boughs and spanish moss and the meandering of the stream itself.  There was one short section in the sun, at a meadow where we lunched; the lilies there burst through the loam with irrational exuberance and their petals actually shimmered in the sunlight.  Then back again into the forest, and along the broad path till the valley grew broader and higher and eventually the trail just ended at a jutting fist of a cliff thrust abruptly out into the pacific, 100 feet tall, surf pummeling its foot so far below me that I could only smell it.  From shaded to glaring, from forest perfume to salt and fresh wind; from a view of gentle obscurantism to 270 degree horizons… it was breathtaking to arrive at the destination, but the whole trip was worth every step.  Of which there were several, believe you me. 

* SUPPER at a local restaurant for Kel’s birthday.  We haven’t had a parents’ night out since my birthday, back in april.  This time we really cut loose at Aziza, yet another of the good things about our neighborhood.  Let me divulge a smidgen: we started with cocktails and mixed appetizers, which don’t sound that amazing as I read my notes but were incredibly fresh and flavorful.  The greens on the mixed plate were purselaine - an archaic veggie that was shockingly delish.  And I don’t mean to suggest that the cocktails were anything but extraordinary.  Kelly really enjoyed her vodka with rhubarb, fennel, vanilla and black pepper, but I think my gin with lavender and orange-blossom honey was even better.  Main dishes were chicken breasts with sicilian couscous (much like israeli couscous but substituting vendetta for compulsory military service), a baked (and sugar-sweet) cioppolini onion, and slivered dates; Kel got lamb chops with figs and fried chard, and we shared a big bowl of ginger glazed veggies that were perfectly cooked.  (With the meal Kel got a glass of brico blina barbera ‘05 and I had a bottle of Saison Dupont belgian farm ale.) Dessert was the typical: fresh-baked hazelnut madelines, cinnamon ice cream and goat cheese sorbet, with some kind of chopped fruity product (mango?  sharlaine melon?  I stopped asking) - everything tasted great, especially together, and especially especially with the big glass of Obsello absinthe we shared.  We were home by 8:45 to relieve the babysitters, my two lovely nieces - WHO REFUSED HALF THE MONEY WE OFFERED THEM.  Two teen-aged girls for two and a half hours, and they wouldn’t take two twenties?  THAT is a good way to end the kind of evening that sharpens one’s appreciation for the good things in life.

* NEW MUSEUM: with that great “new museum” smell.  We walked all the way to the new Academy of Sciences building, three blocks down and two over, sauntered in with a printout of the receipt my mom sent us when she got us a membership (thanks mom!) in no time flat, and spent three hours gaping at dino bones, jellyfish, a four-story living rain forest (with birds and butterflies, but no pesky flesh-eating centipedes), and innumerable other coolnesses.  We can go anytime now.  It is an incredible resource, right here in our zip code.  New things burgeon, and I am the burgee, with responsibility for appreciating them - not just for their newness alone, though that is one good thing to appreciate about things that are new. 

* NEW PROGRAMMING: Survivor and Amazing Race are both back on the air.  Shut up.  This is good for me.  Even as the cycle of programming repeats itself, it has moved forward with a new menagerie of freaks and jerks and disasters-waiting-to-happen.  I learn something from every season of Survivor about how to handle myself in a crisis - or not.  And Amazing Race is just shamefully addictive.  The cycles and circuits of the networks replicate those of the heavens upon which they are loosely based.  I’m looking forward to 26 or so hours of sitting on my butt in front of the tube.  It’s comforting, just as is the eternal repetition of the seasons.  I count that in the “plus” column.

* NEW MAGAZINE: I got Kel a subscription to Cooks Illustrated.  I was hoping for a Rachael Ray pictorial but I didn’t even get Paula Deen - it’s the Consumer Reports of food: they take a recipe and tweak it every possible way till it’s at it’s best.  They review premium bacons and have a guide to buying and using mushrooms.  Pictures are clinical and simple, designed to help you get more out of the kitchen.  They don’t try to save you money but often do; they don’t try to make things easier - just better.  It’s a fun rag and we’ve got a year’s worth coming our way.  It promises to help us find more value and benefit in what we do all the time anyway - cooking and eating.  Kel’s already got some recipes picked out for trials.  And a year that starts with new recipes and better techniques, is a year that starts out on the right track.

On a related note, for Rosh Hashona on Monday night I baked an excellent apple cake (mix four yolks with sugar, then flour; fold in beaten whites and layer with thin slices of apple) and we had it after a supper of baked chicken (not perfect, though that’s not the recipe’s fault) and brussels sprouts a la juif, which made up for any perfection deficit suffered by any other part of the meal. 

* NEW UNDERWEAR: a major restocking.  Details on demand, with SASE and reciprocation.  Generous only need apply.  But it’s a truism that, with a new pair of boxers under your slacks, every old thing seems new again - and that goes double for the new year. 

Services resume tomorrow morning so I’d best get some rest.  I’ll get to some more essay-like stuff real soon, and I’ll post those pix from the hike too.  Meantime, shana tovah to each and every one of you, and let’s take our cue from the way things have been going for me lately and appreciate some newness.  It doesn’t last forever, you know, so you’d best enjoy while you have the chance.

Friday, September 26, 2008

not depressed, just busy

I’ve wanted for days just to slam a little essay up here about an old train car.  It’s all written up with a photo and everything.  Bastardsuckers won’t give a man a break and I expect today’ll be no different, going into tonight.  Today’s remedial expenses day - repairs to the washing machine and a new clutch for the old soob.  I expect it’ll be ugly but I am expecting ugliness more and more these days.  In a desperate attempt to derail the ugly express I’m going to have a grown-up supper tonight at a very nice place in my ‘hood; mom is invited but Zach is not.  And yes, I’ll have the debate on TiVo so I can hop right back into the ugly as soon as the mojito-and-harissa buzz wears off.  Tomorrow: Pt Reyes estuary hike.  Sunday: Academy of Sciences opening weekend.  Blog post: not sure when it’ll happen.  SO:

In lieu of the essay I wanted to share, here’s a bit of the chucklehut realpolitik: About a year ago I was in a long security line in an airport, behind a very establishment-looking white guy, late middle age, business casual with nice matching carryons.  He was clearly on his way to a business meeting and we wound up in conversation.  Turns out he sold computer equipment that helped federal banks track the flow of money around the country, and we started talking about the economy a bit.  We agreed that things were bad and getting worse.  I went so far as to suggest that if things weren’t cleaned up soon we might be facing a depression.  He laughed at this, assuring me that a depression was impossible, that the system was too redundant to allow that kind of hole to get punched in the bottom of the money bucket.  The overall tone made me think that he thought I was a fool, or at best, hilariously underinformed. 

Come this morning and it turns out that a run on my bank has resulted in the largest federal bank seizure in history, on the heels of several others enormous seizures that are leaving our economy looking like an epileptic in a strobelite factory.  While a private buyer was found for my bank overnight, the next bank that succumbs to atrophy might not be so lucky.  Money is starting to be worth its actual value, and there is less and less of it when you cut out the people whose personal wealth significantly relied on leveraged derivatives (or “levrivatives,” a term I urge you all to use as if it was in steady rotation in the Financial Times).  The depression is not upon us, but I can smell it on the weather wind.  It may be that fed intervention will help us avoid longer breadlines and dustbowl-type dislocations of population.  However, if I was to run into that bank computer sales guy in line at the airport again, I bet he’d be a little less amused by my nightmare scenario.  The line from paranoia to realism is sometimes drawn by historical realities, of the sort through which I seem to be living today. 

Get beautiful, people.  Chuckles needs inspiration.  And a little more blogging time. 

Monday, September 22, 2008

Weekend Warp-Up: The TwoFer

This is, indeed, a “warp-up” of the weekend (I just tried spelling that without a hyphen and didn’t like the imagery of a bellicose dogbaby, so there you have it, hypenated and don’t you give me any guff) because we’ll be traveling at the speed of BLOG from Weekend A (13-14) to Weekend B (20-21)!  Strap on your tinfoil helmet, this one’s going to spin your virtual head! 

Two weekends ago we engaged in the following delights:

* TRIP TO INNER OUTER RICHMOND: Kelly was at work all day on Saturday so Z and I got down and partied like to guys loose on the town: We visited the Irish Bakery and then hit the playground.  The bakery was as satisfying as ever - we got two blueberry scones and a snowball, which in this case (stop giggling) is a bready muffin cut in half and then re-glued with raspberry filling, coated in frosting and then rolled in coconut.  Actually, the scones were better and we were on a pretty serious butter rush as we headed off to our next errand, the produce market.  I really like my local produce market and this time I’ve decided to show you why:

All this was purchased with $26 and change, including: three or four zukes, about five carrots, a parsnip, a jicama, two red peppers, three asian pears, a big basket of strawberries, a bundle of scallions, two yellow onions, a can of coconut milk, two 17.5-oz. cans of coconut water (which I am loving these days), a really good mango, a big sack of mushrooms, three nice yellow plantains, six nice even yellower bananas, a bottle of water (zach was thirsty), and an enormous red cabbage, the enormity whereof I can establish by reference to the above photograph which is entirely to scale and clearly demonstrates that the cabbage is significantly larger than my three-and-a-HALF-year-old son’s HEAD.  Moral: Yay Richmond Produce. 

* TASTY DESSERT: That night I finally slapped together the Mango and Sticky Rice dessert I’ve been loving for years from the little Thai place up the street.  The really great thing about this dessert is how it’s very tasty, but a close second is how I was able to mess it up and substitute in other ingredients a LOT and still got a very delicious after-dinner starch-and-sugar bomb.  Instead of soaking the glutinous rice for 12 hours, I did 3 hours and 45 minutes.  Instead of using palm sugar (which just sounds dirty to me, what can I say) I used granulamated white sugar.  Instead of tapioca starch I used corm starch.  And, craziest of all, instead of using cheesecloth and a bamboo steamer in a wok to cook the rice, I used cheesecloth on a lattice of dessert forks in a stainless steel vegetable steamer.  AND IT STILL TASTED PRETTY DARN GOOD.  It “serves six,” per the optimistic prediction in the cookbook.  It *actually* serves two, over the course of about three hours of steady munching.  Having a really good mango also helps.  As to which, let’s say it again: Yay Richmond Produce!

* HAROLD AND KUMAR: I enjoyed H&K Go To White Castle so I was eagerly waiting for more than a month for the opportunity to view their second opus, Escape from Guantanamo, with my lovely wife.  We were prepared for jokes about all aspects of biology, perversion, and substance abuse.  What I did not expect was to find it all so entirely unfunny.  In the first movie, it was hilarious.  This time, I just kept on remembering other movies that were funnier, like “Airplane!” and “Go!” and “H&KGTWK.” We watched it silently for 20 minutes, agreed to give it 10 minutes more, and then turned it off at the half hour mark.  Upshot: we tied up one-third of our Netflix queue for six weeks for nothing.  Thus endeth a triumphant saturday night. 

* TRIP TO EXPLORATORIUM: this happened on sunday morning, and enabled Zach to play with sit-upon gyroscopes, the parabolic whisper-sender, lots of buttons and pulleys, a fair number of small metal balls THAT BOUNCE, columns of air, and tiny pieces of dry ice that somehow recapitulate cloud formation by spinning around in delicate spirals of cloudy mist.  We spent many hours of gape-faced delight in the shadowey precincts of the museum and might have seen half of what was there - and that doesn’t even include the tactile dome, which is still too much for Z’s tender sensabilities.  Also, the outer grounds of the Exploratorium are being rehabilitated - the big dome is under scaffolding but the lake has been re-shored and looks fantastic.  It was a gorgeous day and we all enjoyed the living crap out of it.  And that, my friends, is a term of art. 

Now let’s hop into the TIME ACCELLERATOR and hop forward several days.  On THURSDAY I met with an old friend and helped him record a promo for a book his publishing house is distributing; we finished the evening with several beers at an old steinhaus in the financial district.  Mark drank Spaten from a giant glass boot and I made friends with the looming, glowering Prussian hardass who was running the house (or “haus").  FRIDAY I learned of a potential opportunity to do some writing for cash money, so we’ll see if that pans out but by my telling you about it hereandnow I pretty much guarantee myself disappointment.  Verily I embrace the unknown, even as I expect it to make fun of me.  Along which lines, we were also advised on FRIDAY that we’d better come up with a thousand dollars because we need a new clutch in the subaru and no kidding seriously.  It is good that those magic monkeys keep on crapping hundred dollar bills in our front yard.  It is bad that we need to feed them thousand dollar bills to make it happen but sometimes you have to make some sacrifices for your money-pooping monkeys. 

Which of course brings us to SATURDAY.  This was a day, once again, on which Kel had to work, so I relaxed in the morning by cleaning, doing laundry, and exercising the boy at the local playground again.  This time we skipped the Irish Bakery in favor of the HOUSE OF BAGELS, where I got an excellent sprinkle cookie but Z showed me up by selecting an exceptional black-and-white, oh man it was good.  Yes I had to help him finish it.  Because I said so. 

Then we returned home to RECONFIGURE REALITY.  With Z safely in the nurturing hold of animated television programming, I disconnected the information processing center in our study and moved everything to our bedroom.  The little desk, the rolling cabinet of important documents, the little halogen light; the printer and the speakers and the whole goddamn computer all came into what has been now for years a room that has been free of such equipment.  When we first moved to the apartment we had two housemates, officially (though one never really lived there) - so everything we owned was in our bedroom, on clumsy metal shelves and stacked-up milk crates.  For more than a decade we’ve been free of that clutter in our bedroom but that era ended on Saturday.  What once was our “study” is now Jesse’s room.  What once was our “bedroom” is now our multi-purpose space.  (I’ll let you figure that one out on your own time.) I’m just saying, it was a big job and now that it’s over I can say three things: 1) we are more ready for Jesse to come home than ever; 2) the computer stuff looks a LOT better in our bedroom this time than it did when we first moved in, and 3) our computer is unusually noisy.  It sort of hoovers up with a sudden loud fan noise at unexpected junctures all through the night.  We’ve got to turn it off when we go to bed, in a final gesture now each day that yes, our life is different - and it’s about to get a whole lot differenter. 

APPLEWALK: Saturday evening we spent a few relaxing hours visiting friends in the East Bay, and took a late-evening stroll among the shady lanes and hidden stairways that lattice their neighborhood, plucking ripe juicy apples off of trees and marveling at their honey sweetness.  The ride home was easy and fun, and I slept like a log on opiates.  Good ones. 

SUNDAY: Not much happened on Sunday, unless you count taking a drive up to Tomales for a picnic with the Holt families (we all adopted from Korea) at Heart’s Desire beach, which is a pretty little stretch of sand on the edge of a long narrow bay that juts in from the Pacific like a stab wound into the flank of west Marin county.  (In fact, Tomales Bay is formed by the San Andreas Fault where it comes out of California and runs into the Pacific Ocean, but it only makes you nervous when you think of it, so we didn’t.) We ate well (Kel’s chocolate-chip banana bread was particularly popular) and even got to take a friends’ kayak out to the next beach over, to see the reconstructed Miwok bark houses ("rMbh’s").  Oh don’t play coy with me you know exactly what I’m talking about.  But just to prove it to you:

Us, heading into the water.

Was Zach enjoying the boatly goodness?  YOU BE THE JUDGE:

Into the breach:

Onto my breeches, in that I was not wearing a bathing suit and my heavy cotton shorts were by now thick and juicy with ocean water that was pooling at my most personal juncture:

Those photos were taken by a skilled otherdad with a good eye for action.  The remaining photos were taken by me via cellphone and make up for their lack of resolution with their lack of dramatic content:

From inside a rMbh, watching our friends pulling onto the beach in their kayak: