Thursday, November 27, 2003

visual stimulation

A little bleary from the beaujoulais and gallinaceous tryptophan?  Or from that sentence you just read?  Here’s a few comfortably easy-to-understand images that will ease you into restful digestive slumbers.  Or they might infuriate you and drive you into an unreasoning rage.  Hard to tell from here.

This one was taken at the edge of the Grand Canyon around 2001.  I guess that’s all there is to say about it.

This one was taken in 1982 of one of my freshman roommates, as he stared in a deep and darkening funk out my window on the 10th floor of our 25 story dorm.

This one is a door hinge in Mendocino; I took it around 1995 on an autumn sunset.  I don’t know why I love this photo so much but it seems to have a lot to say, though I’m not sure I often hear much of it. 

Now a quick seasonal essay, and then to cook the green bean casserole.  Mine is, by the way, the best.  I’ll catch you all on the flip side.

The Feast

It’s not that it snuck up on me, I’ve been watching that pumpkin pie on the horizon getting bigger and closer every day with slavering anticipation.  But this past few days at work have been a lot more intense than I had planned on them being, and my weekend was full and busy and wonderfully pleasant but not so productive… and mom’s in town staying with us through sunday… so I had to take off work yesterday and do floor and walls and trash and beds and the fridge and windows and cabinets and entryway and a few other messy items.... and that barely left time for grocery shopping and no time at all for cooking… and I still haven’t made time for a “thankfulness rumination.”

I could make the cynic’s choice and use this post as an opportunity to harrangue what I’m not thankful for.  Many wise commentators, some with deep sonorous voices, have been doing the same this year.  But I figure that I dedicate most days of the year to complaining about crap I can’t do a damn thing about.  Bad ideas, bad execution, bad intentions, bad music.  Here’s one chance to put aside my alum and admit, even if only grudgingly, that the world has something good to offer. 

Today started with my getting an email from my dear friend daBomb, among the longest acquaintences in my life and among the most precious.  It was a quick flash animation telling me she was grateful for me.  For me?  My dear, I’m grateful right back at you for you.  For a lifetime of friendship, hours of wise counsel, years of uproarious laughter, and just for being so darn cute. 

And that puts me on track to think of a lot of stuff that I’m thankful for.  So much, it would likely be pretty boring to read a recitation of it.  I’ve had an exceptional year, the sort I’d figured I was done having years ago.  With this much to feel good about, a list would be too banal to reflect even a part of the thankfulness I feel. 

So instead I’ll relate a short exchange between my dad and myself.  I just got invited to offer a toast at his upcoming septidecimal birthday party, and I knew right away that my toast would have to include this story.  It’s one of the first conversations I ever remember having.  I was in the back seat of our car, and he was in the front, driving me to my nursery school on a bright morning.  I was just starting to get actively curious and I remember asking, “is it better to be a kid or a grownup?” Dad gave a thoughtful pause and answered, “Kids think it’s better to be grownup, and grownups think it’s better to be a kid.  The thing that’s best of all is to be who you are.  If you’re a kid, be a kid and enjoy it.  If you’re not, be who you are and have fun with it.  If you think it’s better to be something else, you won’t even be what you are.”

Here’s to all of us having a day in which we are all ourselves, and enjoy it till we fall asleep.

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

I got your dots right here

I’d like to think we’re a “visually-impaired sensitive” household.  Kel works full-time with the blind, and is going for a masters in the field.  I used to do a little volunteer work at the Lighthouse, an organization that helps the blind.  Plus, we got a copy of Spirit of the Century.  (Which completely rocks.  Someone swiped it from us.  Gotta replace it.  Great album.) Even I - I, myself - wear eyeglasses.  So we’re a sensitive crew here at Greater Huttsville when it comes to ocuclar acuity. That’s why I feel comfortable making the following observation about braille.

Braille is an alphabet made of patterns of raised dots and is read through the sense of touch.  The Lighthouse has its name (I assume) plastered across its stucco facade down at Civic Center in three-foot-wide braille dots.  That wasn’t the first place I saw braille where it usually isn’t.  I’ve grown used to seeing it on elevators, ATM machines, in museums - places where people often have to respond to visual cues.  I’m usually happy to see braille anywhere it shows up.  It’s an important tool for independence and mobility and I support its promulgation. 

But on top of a building, as a sort of dentil frieze for the visually impaired?  What a world! 

And then I started noticing braille all sorts of strange places I’d not have expected it to appear.  Places where, as far as I can tell, it’s not doing anybody any good.  Or it’s been installed so that it’s effectively invisible to the blind, or in places a blind person just doesn’t need to look for instructions.  Some of the stranger options I’ve enjoyed have included braille at drive-through windows (for the visually impaired motorists among us, and they are legion) and on the emergency exit instructions on a 777; I think my current favorite was a big painted wall sign with two-foot-tall letters and nice shiny braille dots painted onto the glossy wall underneath.  These dots are bigger than a handsbreadth, and I can’t imagine how the blind would know even to feel for them, much less be able to read their flat surfaces.  But that’s the magic, isn’t it.  That’s why people are lining up to put braille everywhere.  It’s just fun.  It’s political sensitivity meets pop art. 

Anyway that’s the only explanation I can come up with for the bizarre abuses of braille that seem to be proliferating in our modern world.  And regular readers know that there’s nothing like a bizarre abuse to get my creative juices flowing, so here are a few other ideas for places to use braille:

Auto dashboards
Movie screens
Petting zoos (I envision baby animals with big ol’ braille dots glued on)
Peep shows
The beach
Firearms

I also think that chirping signal some intersections have to let the blind know when its safe to cross, should basically follow me around.  We could all stay out of a lot of trouble that way.

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Going Underground and Coming Out

There are new streetlights across the street, sleek and black and vaguely retro in a futuristic way.  They remain dark at night, dwarfed by the lamps currently bolted onto the crude utility poles that punctuate the sidewalk - but shortly, those poles will disappear.  The switch to underground utilities is nigh for this block, and proof is manifest everywhere.  Soon the wire umbilicals connecting my flat to the other side of midnight will be no more.  I can sense that the time is upon us for change.  The metal plates in the street and sidewalk have been replaced by smooth concrete and uninterrupted asphalt.  There are spools of new cables tied to the utility poles.  And most importantly of all, I now have about 20 new television stations.  These aren’t actually new stations, but I hadn’t been able to get them before.  HGTV.  Animal Planet.  Classic old tv shows.  All the important cultural input - plus a network each for golf and fishing, in case I think life’s too interesting.  It’s like opening the medicine cabinet and finding a big bag of cocaine.  I am rationing myself.

One of the benefits I’m reaping now is a sudden influx of Queer Eye.  I’m not going to get into the well-established debates as to whether it’s a good or bad thing, culturally, for this show to exist.  It entertains me while I eat supper and that is sufficient for my humble purposes.  BUT.  An episode I recently saw did give me a bit of a strange vibe. 

The straight guy on this episode was a dad with long greying hair and a full beard.  He’d had the beard for 20 years or more, and the same with the hair that fell to his lumbar curve.  His cute wife had called in the fab 5, but his 14 year old daughter was really running point on this remake.  She was helping with the shopping, the redecorating, anything she could do.  It was very sweet to see how dedicated she was to her dad - but it was clear that this was a filial matter for her, she was helping dedorkify the man who picks her up from school. 

Then they cut his hair and took off his beard.  Dad had been a male model in the 70s but his daughter had never seen him cleanshaven or nicely coiffed.  When he was unveiled to her, the sight of her father seemed to press her eyes back into her head.  It took a few moments for reality to register, and then it was spraypainted all over her face - “oh damn my dad is a total hottie.” After a few minutes she was almost drooling over him, grabbing hugs and kisses whenever she could, and at other times, gaping at him with a sudden stimulated charge that she’d only fully sublimate on horseback or a vigorous mountainbike ride.  When the wife came home she reacted identically, and then, hopping up and down on his hip, told her husband, “You’re gonna get lucky tonight.” I could see the daughter react, not in disgust, but - could it have been - disappointment?  That the hot new stud in her house was already taken, that her special time with that chiseled jaw and tousled hair and broad smile had come to an end?  Has queer eye broken the final taboo and introduced incest to the american family’s prime-time televised life? 

I think I’d better stick with old Stanford and Sons.  Maybe some Barney Miller.  You know, entertainment from the era of the funky themesong.  Those were days when we knew what television was for - dancing.  And incest stayed where it belonged - the legitimate stage.

Monday, November 24, 2003

Our Lady of Refuse

Some weeks I see her frequently; some weeks, less so.  She wears the standard uniform - blue twill trousers, black leather oxfords, a blue cotton shirt with a label stitched over the warm swell of her breast… her hair, raven and wavy, is pulled back with a barrette so just the ends brush her broad shoulders.  Her long lean arms, the color of caramel, move with confidence; her hands are manicured but her nails are sensibly short.  Her face is round and strong and beautiful; her cheeks are lightly rouged but the cosmetics are superfluous.  Her lashes are enticingly long; her eyes are large, dark and expressive. 

When I see her, she’s usually doing trash can duty.  She pops the grimy lids, removes the plastic liners and their contents, sprays the cans and lids with something unnaturally floral, installs new liners, closes up the cans.  She moves efficiently and with the grace of a Madonna; she stands among the trash cans like a lotus emerging from stagnancy and rot.  Her remarkable physique (as I am sure it must be) is hidden by her plain workday blues; the only jewelry she wears is a thin simple wedding band.  So lovely she is: so regal in bearing, so serene in her movements, so sublime in her beauty…

She is on the custodial staff, making a living, working a job that has all the dignity of labor.  Though there is filth all around her, the garbage is illuminated and beautified by her touch.  She is so lovely and calm, working assiduously and with perfect self-containment, not looking up or around at the sea of faces streaming past her, faces that, on seeing her, twist with hunger and desire and just plain lust - men and women both, devouring her visually as she gazes with devout purity of intention into the garbage cans… They take her callously with their eyes and she, in return, gives up nothing, nothing at all. 

If so many are willing to stare at her so blatantly that even I can see it in the span of the few moments it takes me to walk past her as she works, how many will be emboldened to speak to her, she whose only adornment signifies that she is not available?  Yet they pursue her with words more filthy and ploys more exhausted than anything she finds in the dingy bins she services.  As she simply tries to make a living, how much garbage does she really have to put up with? 

Friday, November 21, 2003

It sounded smart when I wrote it down….

Y’all know the ‘hut don’t write its damn self. Here’s the mechanics of this content: I carry two notebooks with me most all the time, one 6 x 8 pad for essays and extended writings (in my timbuktu bag), and one 3 x 5 pad for quick notes (in my pocket).  Then sometimes I just go ape and write something freehand, cuz I’m so free and handy and all.  Lately I’ve mainly been posting my notebook work and some freehand stuff, but just for variety I’ll throw down the three items from one page of my little notebook so you can pity the waste of potential that I represent.

BX Stands for Bonkers

There are those who say that the 38 is the toughest line on the grid, but regular riders know that it gets tougher - on the 38BX.  The BX stops at all the gritty little stops from 25th down to Masonic, and then it hauls clear up to Bush and cranks downtown nonstop, veering across three lanes of one-way traffic in a race against eternity.

I was on the BX recently as it lurched with ill humor and broad shoulders to its final stop in the avenues, Presidio Avenue.  Anybody with business on the west side had best get off there. The doors that day had opened, several people got off, others got on in approximately equal numbers, and the doors started closing again when he started calling out “back door” and fumbling his way to the stairwell.  He reached the stairs, called out again - this time, with the enthusiastic assistance of several others in his vicinity eager to help him depart our company.  He wore a crushed and lusterous brown felt porkpie hat with a little feather in the hatband, a once-vibrant guatemalan patterend jacket, well-worn and faded but in excellent repair; a colorful plaid shirt of similar quality, olive drab fatigue pants torn off to make knickers, tragically overextended hiking boots… his face was a question mark portrayed in human features, with sallow brown eyes behind rectangular wire frame glasses, the dusting of a red beard on his jaw line vaguely curving around his face like an interrogation you couldn’t quite make out; he carried a tote bag (who carries a tote bag?) stuffed full of a wide variety of papers, a fair number of which he may have self-authored, along with a bottle of Anchor Steam (a fine beer with a distinctive bottlecap) and a mysterious parcel wrapped in tattered brown tissue.  As he left the bus he was asking everyone around him, “Is this the right stamma for mamnammallahh....?  Is this where gabbalabbala....?” His voice, querlous and weak, collapsed on its own confusion and couldn’t make an intelligible inquiry. We ushered him to the sidewalk, leaving his unspoken questions unanswered. As the bus pulled away for its run downtown I saw him approach a man on the sidewalk, and then a woman, asking them each in turn a question about a yellow card he was holding out in front of himself - something, perhaps, like a doctor’s appointment slip.  The man sidestepped him adroitly; the woman already looked exasperated with him.  The guy in the hat just looked very, very earnest, and entirely confused.  He disappeared behind us, and by the next day, he was gone.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

Hot Meal - part 2

I started this story last week - here.  Now I’m finishing it.  Here. 

This time, as he negotiated with the mustachioed cashier, handing over his pre-counted change and taking his meal in its plastic basket, he never stopped staring at the cook.  He knew she knew he was there for her. This time he’d made no attempt to hide the fact that he watched her as she made his burrito for him, and he had thought she’d blushed when he smiled at her.  She had round cheeks and dark eyes, high brows and lips that looked like candy, and by god, she had hips.  As he’d watched her through the wide window into the small kitchen where she was working on his burrito, he’d thought of her hands touching his food and a tingling rush coursed through his legs.  Then she had looked at him again when his order was ready; she’d puckered her soft full lips and pressed them to the end of his burrito, her eyes linked across the room to his as she kissed his supper before handing it over to the old grouse at the register. 

He was on fire, knowing now that she’d noticed him, was waiting for him to share his feelings with her.  He’d intended to wait till she was off work tonight; he’d have walked around the dusty block for as many times as he’d have had to so he could be waiting there when she emerged from that door that night. That was still three hours away. But now something else was happening.  She’d kissed his burrito.  The thought of it made the heat rise under his skin.

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

What a Bargain

Readers of the Chucklehut might remember last year’s contract negotiations fiasco, or debacle (or “fiabacle").  With the bitter taste of those hard slogs at the table still curling my palate, I had somehow supressed the fact that we had another bargaining session this morning, number two for this year’s round.  I didn’t even expect the meeting to go forward.  Therefore, it gives me amazed joy to reprint an email our union prez just sent out to all hands summarizing the results of today’s meeting:

“Management and the Union have reached a tentative agreement on the 2004 MOU reopener. Attached, please find a summary of the tentative agreement. We will have a general meeting for all bargaining unit employees on Thursday, December 4th at 12:00 in the Boardroom on the 4th floor to discuss the agreement. The ratification vote will take place after the meeting.”

That looks like it, then.  Bargaining is over, without a single night in my favorite hotel in LA, or any visits to friends, or expensive but unsatisfying meals, or 4 am trips to the airport.  Let the lobbying, brownnosing, and regularly scheduled reamfest begin.  I have lots of extra energy now for such useful pursuits.

Photographic Memories

I’m a bit behind this morning (thanks, Coach Knight) so I’m going to run with what is already in the can, to use filmic lingo.  In other words, here’s some more of my photos.  You wanted words?  Come back tomorrow, I’ll have a doozy or two for you.  Meantime, if you don’t like the heat, go someplace cooler. 

This one was from 1984 (note the pencilthin necktie on the patriotic fellow), when the Olympics came to LA.  It was one of the best summers of my life.  This was taken on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine Street - the heart of glitzville - during a wonderfully proletarian and uncomplicated parade.

This one is from around 1987, at U.C.Berkeley.  I think it speaks for itself, in that I am about this articulate myself right now.

This one was taken around 1992 at Bodie State Park, a ghost town about 15 miles north-east of Mono Lake, in a desolate and arid plain where 10,000 people used to live.  Now it’s a monument to what was.  It’s a very cool and creepy place, and I actually photographed a ghost there too, but not in this exposure.

Monday, November 17, 2003

Knight Rider

I rarely have dreams about famous people.  I did have one a few nights ago, but don’t remember too much of it.  I was in a small cramped room with Bobby Knight, the boorish assaultive college basketball coach.  For international readers, he’s got a reputation built over a career of decades for hitting players, throwing chairs onto the court during games, and generally being a gaping flamer of the highest magnitude.  I don’t care much about basketball, and I care much less than that for Bobby Knight, but there he was in my dream, looking like he was doing a razor commercial.  Then again, so did I, in my european-cut shirt and a pair of sharp new black chinos.  I was trying to deal with something in the corner of this cramped room, and Bobby Knight (I can only refer to him by both names, otherwise he could be Bobby McFerrin or KnightRider) is standing right by my side.  I bend over a low table to pick up something and Bobby Knight slaps my ass and tells me approvingly, “That’s nice and firm.” That’s all I recall from this dream. 

He didn’t feel me up.  I was not excited by this dream, but this is the only part of it I remember.  I do recall, in the dream, thinking, “what the hell is Bobby Knight doing here, and why would he be slapping my ass, much less expressing an opinion about it?”

I think I need to go hunting or blow something up.  Quickly.

THAT Salmon (panseared with spicy soy), and yucca-cabbage delite

As daylight hours shrink, a man of any wisdom betakes himself more frequently to his kitchen.  This occurred to me saturday night as Kel and I ate a sort of white-trash cassoulet with fatty pork and black beans and onions and a thick purple sauce.  We had it over couscous with steamed veg and it was really perfectly tasty, but we were both looking at each other and thinking the same thing - it was good, but it wasn’t that salmon. 

That salmon.  It was a meal that started as a mere artifact of improvisation but ultimately arogated the whole article “that” to itself.  It’s just that damn good.  And when one of my offhand culinary masterworks keeps recalling itself to me and kel both, even several days after I made it, in a good way I mean, then I am moved to engage whatever influence I have, doddering and attenuated though it may be, in service of the idea that maybe this meal may be repeated, may propagate and thus may bring joy unto the masses.  Easy salmon, challenging veggies.  Come along and let’s remodel our dingy old RECIPE CORNER with the key data on THAT SALMON - WITH YUCA VEGGIES.  Good-o.

Hats Off

I’m sitting in my cube eating my salad (eh) and reading emails about evaluation programs (feh) and just feeling like the weekend really wasn’t and I’ve been petrified in this seated position for days on end already, and then Jay the clerk walks up and tosses my choppa liddie on my desk, resplendent in its baggie.  Oh Amy I love it dearly.  The color choices are perfect and it fits my tiny noggin to a T and even matches the clothes I’m wearing today.  I love getting stuff, but stuff made just for me rocks infinitely.  I even get to go out and run an errand during my lunch break, so I will wear my beanie out on the mean city streets of the mid-size city and cool things down a bit with my stylin’ attitude.  Thanks, Choppa - I’ll be enjoying this hat for many a chilly day and night.

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Our Latest Entry!

The witty and sophisticated Gimmy G‘s contest inspired me to write the following poem, based on this picture.  Since I never have anything to say anyway, I figured I’d just dump that poem on you instead of writing anything new.  You can handle it.  More fresh stuff on the way soon. 

The wind blows steady on this hill,
the sun less constant than the fog;
the earth resists the hands of men
and crushes the ideologue.
The road they built has come to crumble;
trees loom like a serpent’s head -
their darkness sweeping ominously,
shadowing the land with dread.
Hills too steep to hold a harvest;
fog too thick to sprout a seed;
my duties called me here sometimes,
and, other times, I felt the need
for silent solitude whereat
to settle on a line of thought;
I found this land accommodating
when my mind was overwrought
these misty acres would abide me,
I could find some comfort here
among the black and twisted trunks
and hillsides stubblegrown and sere.
A quiet place to take my troubles,
undertake what need be done;
and when transgressions are upon me,
times I can’t endure the sun -
for all those days, and they are many,
when I reject the light of day
a little shack stands hunkered down
where I can put myself away.
No windows, faceless, lichens growing
on the asphalt tiled roof;
I slip inside and lock the door
(it never was if there’s no proof).
O little shack beneath the cypress,
when my prayers can’t be prayed –
I hide my horrors in your cloister,
grow my shadows in your shade.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Hot Meal

It no longer felt like a coincidence.  She only worked on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and he was coming in every Tuesday and Thursday.  She rather appreciated his restraint; three nights a week eating at her counter sounded more to her like stalking than courting.  She liked to imagine he was courting her.  It gave her something to think about as she wiped down the steam tables.

testing my skilz

For longer than a dog’s age (note charming and meaningless colloquialism) I’ve wanted to get a few of my photos on line but couldn’t figure out how to make it happen.  Last night I had a breakthrough and so I’m taking a crack now at posting an image or two.  Please tell me if you encounter any technical difficulties.  Not that there’s much I could do about it, but it would be nice to know.  Frankly, I’m slap-ass happy that I’ve even gotten this far, so don’t pull any ‘tude on me here.  It’s still early in california, damnit, and I need more coffee before I can put up with your crap.  And BTW, since these are scans of physical photos, the color and clarity are a bit off.  What the hell.  It’s better than leaving them in a shoebox under the ragbag.  Enough disclaimers.  The photos are speaking for themselves even now. 

This one was taken the very first time I ever walked around with a real camera in my hands; it was 1980 and I photographed my neighborhood at dusk.  I like especially how the door seems ready to explode with light.  But I’m easy that way.

This one was taken as I wandered Lima Ohio after my Grandfather’s funeral.  It’s such a moribund little town but these enduring yet illegible messages always give me hope for some reason.

More to come.  Eventually.  Hell it’s taken me over 20 years to take the damn things, it’ll take me a few weeks to post them.  Mellow out, have a beer or something.  Tomorrow’s friday, init?

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Conserving

As a nerd, I tend to key in on the way that buildings and built spaces influence the way people behave in or around them.  A stadium focuses energy and attention, but not quite the same way as a procenium theater or a classroom… an office has a different sense of space than a cube, and a natural forest usually feels different than a grove in a city park.  But sometimes those city parks have spaces in them that change the relationship between inside and outside, exhibit and fixture, time and space.  The old Conservatory is open again and I finally got to go yesterday.  I’m not a big plants person; I like a beautiful arboretum and a nice forest, but I don’t grow potted plants or know their names or anything like that.  Having so said, the Conservatory blew me away.  The main room must be 50’ tall, with a 100 year old philodendron or some damn thing snaking in soft overlapping loops around concrete faux tree trunks. There are bamboo stalks that turn bright red, and when they catch the light stained by the jewelglass you can’t tell what’s real anymore.  The building has two long wings, maybe 70 feet long on either side, all made of redwood frames, painted white, holding walls that curve up into ceilings, all glass, all painted white.  The whole thing is more like a wedding cake than any other building I’ve visited, frosted and glistening in the sun.  One wing has an exhibit of butterflies emerging from cucoons and filling a long, broad hall with their particolored effusions; three large models demonstrate how a fly, a butterfly, and a bat pollinate flowers.  In this room, I think, they had an example of the Ghost orchid, or one that was damn like it and sufficiently ghostly to kind of freak me out.  On the other side, through the cool humid room and into the hot zone at the east end, there’s a lilypond with a small over-lip waterfall all around it.  Glazed urns overflow gently into pools resurfaced in green coruscating disc-like leaves, up to four feet across, that grow from the dark water below.  At one point the side of the pond had been cut away and replaced with plastic, so I could view the wispy stems of the lotus and lily plants as they swept down through the water into one of several buckets on the bottom of the pool.  That view wasn’t too enlightening.  Better, was the view from the back of the lilypond, the peak of the white glass roof reflected in the green of the water, a sense of peace and calm, impossible plants, air hot and moist, and the people spoke in hushed tones, careful about closing doors, careful about respecting each other, each of us charged with the energy of all that living, that oxygen, the brightness and warmth and heartfilling affirmation, even there in that bizarre over-milled relic of a gaudy and effusive time - a relic, in this case, that irrefutably demonstrates that sometimes the old ways really are best, and some solutions don’t bear reworking.  The victorian Conservatory is a celebration and a triumph.  Come on over on a weekday (not monday, though, they’re closed), I’ll take off the afternoon and we’ll have a gander.

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Clip Joint

I think the guys are mexican but it feels like sicily in there.  A hole-in-the-wall - or maybe even that’s too grandiose a phrase.  Five unmatched chairs, one wall of mirrors, the rest crudely panelled and then wallpapered with promotional materials and magazine and newspaper cutouts.  The peppermint stripe pole didn’t rotate; boxes that once held groceries and hair products 10 or 15 years ago had been filled with a stunning assortment of random papers, tools and containers, empty and full, of every description.... The guys ran from 35 or so up to one who seemed to be in his late 70s.  They all had a profound similarity to each other in the way they stood, sat, shrugged, talked, listened… like a wildly disparate group of brothers.  Their short sleeve shirts (not matching) were all unbuttoned to midchest, revealing verdant jungles of pectoral hair. They all looked similar physically, though not actually alike - broad chests, pot bellies, wiry hair with a tendency toward losing it, muscular arms, heavy chins.  Okay, one guy looked philipino and he had a different physique, but his style was the same. 

I walked in and the senior partner hoisted his heft out of his chair.  “Now!  Here!  Come!  Sit!  Hello!,” he commanded me; I obeyed and sank into the stiff slick green leatherette.  “How you like today boss,” was ritually uttered and responded to as he draped me with a plastic tarp and collared me with a strip of tissue.  He was about to start clipping when she walked in.

She stood out, and not just by virtue of being the only woman - the only vaguely feminine thing - in the crowded clutter of the room.  She was a big woman, tall and broad, her black hair straightened into a majestic bouffant, her 49’ers warm-up ensemble set off with thick and complicated gold-colored jewelrey.  She wore a lot of strongly-scented makeup and smiled broadly, shifting her weight frequently from side to side, foot to foot. 

He looked at her from under his prolific brows.  “Ay, ya come back here, eh?” He made as if to start on my head, waving his arms in vaguely preparatory exercises, as if freeing his elbows from cobwebs.  She started talking, and spoke at length.  Where he had been hard to understand through his gruff, fraternal grumble, she was nearly unintelligible.  She had very big teeth, which seemed to interfere with her words and by extension with her thinking process, such as it was.  She mumbled and swallowed her words and laughed inappropritely when she spoke. 

He looked askance at her over my shoulder; I could see it in the mirror in front of me.  His arms were crossed, as he hove a sigh his gleaming saint’s medallion on its thick braided chain rose and fell on his chest.  She was sorry.  She was late.  She represented an indeterminate number of other people, possibly ladies.  She wanted till Tuesday but she did have some today.  “How much?,” my barber barked at her, forearms bulging with sinew and slightly glistening in the witchhazeled haze of the room.  She giggled and stammered, could not say how much.  “You go on and figure out what you got for me and then we can talk.  As of now, you paid nothing.  Due by sunday, gametime.  Come back when you know what the hell is going on.  You on for sunday?  Raiders?”

She smiled and nodded, her teeth eclipsing her face, and she left the small room.  My barber made a sour face as her cloying perfume slowly dissapated in the stale male air.  Another barber, a guy in his 50’s, sturdy, jovial, cool in a Tom Jones style, started belittling my barber as impotent, cuckholded, superannuated.  My barber shot a few back about genital inadequacies and mental deficits.  I got a decent haircut and that woman didn’t come back.  Not while I was there, anyway.  She really felt like a visitor from another planet.

MORAL: Heavy gold jewlery with a warm-up suit before 2 pm?  I don’t think so.

Monday, November 10, 2003

Appreciating the Little Things with the Big Ones

This past weekend has been chock-full of sublime recreations and satisfactions that far exceed my ability to describe them.  I had a lovely time at happy hour; I got to meet the gorgeous Jules and her spouse, both of whom are fascinating and gracious people; I attended a delicious, enormous and highly educational (and enjoyable) wine tasting with old friends and some new ones; and then got to spend half of sunday showing winsome and witty Kate around a few favorite bits of the little city I call home.  By Sunday afternoon I had barely enough energy to get into bed to take a nap.  Laundry, groceries, and vacuuming have been joyfully deferred.

On the other hand, early on saturday morning I pulled a muscle in my back somehow; I was sitting, motionless, on a favorite wooden chair, and the muscle just shrank up on me, went into spasm and still hasn’t really come back.  I’ve kind of been fighting the discomfort all weekend, so today I took a nice strong pill from my days in recovery from a broken wrist, and I’ll hope for the best.  It’s working already, and though my typing is starting to suffer, the pain is a lot less intense. 

It does make me think, though, of how many good things I can appreciate in my life even after weekends that are far less fun or provocative than mine was.  So here, fumbling its way through my lorcet-addled mind, is a list (of course) of THINGS THAT GIVE ME DISPROPORTIONATE SATISFACTION:

* When my signature comes out properly and attractively
* Being told I have a “radio voice”
* When the bus pulls up and opens its doors exactly where I’m standing
* When the cool barkeep knows my order and gets it for me before I even ask, before he even talks to other people who were already waiting
* Having read whatever book other people are discussing (not a very frequent occurrance)
* Exactly enough cereal in the box for one good bowl
* Pulling a cork from any bottle of wine
* When channel-surfing, coming back to the show I really wanted to be watching just as it comes back from a commercial break
* Giving directions to lost tourists
* Being able to stand steady on a moving bus without touching the poles
* Using FastTrak to avoid bridge toll lines
* A freshly made bed
* Compliments on my clothes from strangers
* Recognizing artistic or architectural influences in important works
* A good - or terrible - play on words
* Kicking something I encounter on the sidewalk clean and true and far

This list is not exclusive, but then again, neither am I.  The world is full of weird little things that can just totally make your day if you take a moment to appreciate them.  I warmly invite your additions to this list; I’m always in the market for more stuff to be happy about.  Have an unexpectedly pleasant monday.

Penny for My Thoughts

In the interest of equal time, fair play, and unauthorized republishing of other people’s work, here’s the monologue I was given to work on during my acting class last week when we all had to write our own monologues from the perspective of something that had been discarded.  I was very highly impressed with the quality of the scripts that came out of this class, and I think I got one of the better ones, by a woman named Abby.  Her discarded object was a one-cent coin.  (Mine, if you missed it, was a foam rubber foot.)

I’ve got her monologue in the extended entry.  It was a lot of fun to work on.  And now it belongs to the ages.

Friday, November 07, 2003

Last Flight of the Fast Plane

To hell with greatness, it’s fleeting and evanascent and all in the eye of the beholder.  Coolness is the thing really worth brushing up against, and now I’ve done it, just before the week was out and it would have been too late.  Eddie runs building services for us, he’s got a broad smile, a great attitude, he’s built like a dodge Apache pickup and he takes care of people with attentiveness and humor.  When I ran into him downstairs I learned that he’s also an aircraft mechanic, and that he’s always harbored a dream to fly on the Concorde.  And, on the final supersonic commerical flight from New York to Heathrow, he made his wish come true.  For three hours he sat in the second row of the fastest common carrier ever, and when the plane landed it was retired - never to be flown commercially again.  Too expensive to fly; too expensive to maintain… the time of the Concorde was over.  Eddie was the last to leave the cabin, photographing the exit door on his way out.  When he landed he was in merrie olde englande, where you boot in your trunk and the horses are ox-drawn.  It took a lot longer for his return flight, but that jaunt is already faded in his memory.  Those quick three hours at 60,000 feet and 1,800 miles per hour - those remain fresh when he relives the dream he brought to life.  When he told me about it, his eyes gazed heavenward and his smile flicked at his earlobes.  “Yeah,” he kept repeating, reliving every detail of the trip in his retelling of the story to me.  “Yeah.”

Damn straight, Eddie.  Way to be great.  Thanks for paying such close attention, and sharing the trip with me today.

She’ll be Touring by 5

We were giving Daisy a bath when Bad Moon Rising came on the cd player.  She lit up.  “Who is this, Daisy?” Dave asked.  “The Beatles!” she gleefully exclaimed, splashing her hands into the tepid soapy water.  “No, listen!” Dave urged.  She blinked and said loudly and more seriously, “Creedence.” “She doesn’t know,” Dave told me. “She’s got about four that she knows and she just goes through them.” Then some Pearl Jam, I think, came on… I don’t know what we were listening to… but several minutes later more Creedence came on (and Dave will surely catch me in every factual inaccuracy here), but whatever it was, this little 20-month-old girl brightens up and tells us “Creedence!” again.  Meantime she’s quoting back pages of childrens’ books that she’s memorized to me, which is a bit disconcerting and surreal sometimes; those books can have some twisted imagery and she really comes out of left field with it.  Well, anyway, now at least I’m convinced she knows her Creedence.  That’s got to be a good sign.

Thursday, November 06, 2003

Warning: Incoming Geek

Voyager has just travelled farther into space than any object we’ve ever hurled from this adorable little planet of ours.  8.4 billion miles, taking it to the beginning of whatever you call the stuff beyond our solar system.  No more planets circling our sun.  Just new suns, and their planets.  True exploration has begun.

Here we come, Persis.

Sidewalks are for Regular Walking

Continuing with a theme of “crap I found lying on the side of the road,” and lacking the focus or time to work up a presentable post for tomorrow morning, here’s a transcription of my notes from a few weeks ago of the stuff I found on the sidewalk.  All the the below-referenced items truely were laid out along about 10 feet of sidewalk on 14th avenue between Geary and Anza or Clement.  Seeing it all displayed in the bright sunlight, I just felt I had to catalogue it.  Now I know why.

* Console TV (a big one, too)
* 2 fridges (full sized)
* VHS VCR
* 4 more televisions (not console style)
* Steamer trunk
* Suitcase (hard-sided)
* Vacuum cleaner
* 2 typewriters (electric)
* 6 computer monitors
* Toaster oven
* Kitchen table
* Sink

These items made a merry diorama along the grassy verge under the acacia trees.  Someone had taken care to place every object in a clearly identifiable relation to other objects like itself as well as to other types of objects and the amalgamation of all the objects as a whole.  I walked around the display, writing down its constituent parts and marvelling at the modern world.  In some countries that console TV would house a family of 7.  In some countries these discarded computer monitors would be turned into construction materials or automotive parts.  In some countries that sink would be hospital equipment.  I live where someone artfully arranges it all in a trash boquet, a streetside still-life, there but to improve my aesthetic experience.  I was almost grateful, but goddamn it, that’s a lot of garabage.  And none of it seemed like much fun, even to a veteran shard-scrounger like myself.  I’m just saying it wasn’t as great as a collection of random garbage might sound like it could be. 

And a prize to the first to tell me who said the title to this post, to whom, and why.

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Last Word from the Foam Foot

Tonight’s the last of my three voice-acting seminars.  Parts one and two were a lot of fun, I hope that I get a chance to do more of this kind of work at some point.  But for tonight, we got a special assignment: we were to bring to class, in an opaque bag, something that might be found discarded - on a trashcan or at the gutter - anything that is headed for the dump.  We also were to write a 30 to 60 second monologue for that item in which the item exhorts the listener to rescue it from the traditional fate of refuse. 

I selected an item that I actually found on the street and brought home with me a few years ago - a foam-rubber foot, basically anatomically correct (so far as those things go).  And, since I have a bunch of other stuff to deal with this morning, here’s the Last Word from the Foam Foot:

Hey Twinkletoes!  Yeah, you!  Where ya high-stepping so fast?  Hold up a second, will ya?  I’ve got something for ya.  ME!  Can ya believe the luck?  There I was, just doing my bit to toe the line, and some heel kicks me to the curb.  Well, I’ve been around the block, I know life’s not fair sometimes - but his loss is your gain, buddy!  If you’re twelve inches short of a yard, I’m exactly what you need!  Stub your toe?  I’ve got five spares!  I’ll walk the walk while you talk the talk.  And if ya say the wrong thing, I fit right in your mouth and you won’t lose a step!  I understand you.  I can walk a mile in your shoes.  Give me a leg up and I’ll stand by you through thick and thin.  You can’t buy that kind of friendship.  But you can get it for free if you just pick me up.  So whaddaya say, ol’ buddy?  Take me with ya and you’ll never regret it.  Don’t leave me here.  Can’t you feel it?  We’re solemates!

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Reflections on a Mirror

On my two-block walk from the office to the bus terminal, I saw an unremarkable post office truck make an unremarkable left turn from Beale Street south onto Mission Street east.  As the truck negotiated the wide turn, its rear view mirror detached and fell off - a big convex circular mirror, ostensibly bolted to a metal rod extending off the back of the van.  The mirror hit the ground with a hollow crack, not the sound of breaking glass but the unfulfilled sound of a thin metal rim against concrete.  From there, it rolled on its edge in a lazy circle that spanned three lanes of traffic before colliding, its momentum almost entirely exhausted, with the front left wheel of an Accord that was waiting for the green on Mission westbound.  The impact sent the mirror down onto its face, partly underneath the car.  The driver glared down out his window to see what had made the noise, looking as if he were on the verge of rage - but he saw nothing and restrained himself.  As the light changed and traffic started to move, the back tire of the Accord crushed the face of the mirror to the asphalt.  It was subsequently run over by three more vehicles before I walked away. 

I watched all of this from the corner where I stood, and laughed - and then I thought, that mirror is a metaphor for me, for my life - offering a distorted view backwards, loosely moored to my foundation even in the best of circumstances, but then breaking free - not to fly, but to plummet, and, on landing, not to rest in peace but to spin drunkenly, out of control, until I collapse, to the annoyance of others, face first, my light hidden, ultimately only to be ground down into dark realms again and again by the heedless forces I once purported to observe.

Wow, I thought next, I really need to cut down on the caffeine.

Monday, November 03, 2003

Child’s Play

The shop was one of dozens along Clement street, the main commercial artery of new Chinatown, which is not only a major concentration of Chinese - mainland, HK and Taiwan - but also Viets, Koreans, Russian, Irish, and any other refugee from the old world you’d care to mention.  I love to walk into these shops and breathe their mysterious herbal scents, handle unnameable produce, marvel at shelves of impenetrable labels… it’s a voyage to exotic worlds, two blocks from my front door; it’s a realm where I’m both native and foreign, where I have friends in some shops and where, at others, my voice is unheard, my face is literally unseen.  The multifarious variety spills from the shelves to the storefronts to the faces of the people who mill and churn on sidewalks which are themselves littered with an astonishing array of food, cigarette butts, torn wrappers, and bits of clothing.  Clement Street is truly a world unto itself. 

I stepped into a fishmonger’s shop, one of several on the main drag.  Inside I found the typical eye-popping collection of whole fish, mollusks, shellfish; heads, maws, random bits.... crab and lobster and catfish and bass tanks swam with cloudy water and imprisoned animals, and buckets full of other living things ran the perimeter of the room.  The frog tubs were covered with screens, and the turtle bin was very large so as to accommodate the ancient exhausted reptiles waiting in silent stacks, piled high on each other. 

A young boy stood at an eel bucket, a pointed stick in his hand.  Before him, the eels writhed in a few inches of dirty water, a foot or two long and shiny, black, smoothskinned, smalleyed, seeking space, seeking breath, seeking an escape into dark cold water that they would never find. 

The boy - eight years old?  ten? - poked at them with his stick, smiling quietly to himself.  Poke poke poke.  The eels tried to get away but the water was too shallow and crowded and the boy was too quick. Blood began to stain the water as the sharp end of his prong pierced the animals’ leathery skin.  Their heads lifted from the water to confront their tormentor, to hiss in ineffectual, helpless anger.  He giggled and kept poking. 

I reached down and stopped his hand, not in anger, but firmly.  “Don’t hurt animals,” I said, perhaps too strongly.  His eyes got wide and his skin paled.  His mother, who stood next to him in idle conversation with the fishmonger, snatched his hand from mine and glared at me.  She threw some angry Chinese words at my feet and left the shop as if I had fouled her doorstep. 

I suspect all those eels were dead within the next day or two anyway.