I’m seeing political ads all over the city, and while I don’t exactly follow the logic of their imagery, the sheer audacity of the message deserves commendation - such an unflinching indictment of an administration run amok. I am surprised, however, that nobody caught the typo. How could anybody have left the first letter off of every single sign and marquee for that chilling political thriller, President Evil?
Today I got an email from my freaky cool shul about their upcoming festive celebration for Simchat Torah - the commemoration of the handing down of the law. It’s one of two times in the year that jews are supposed - nay, are obliged - to get good and sloshed. And this is a very observant congregation. The email mentioned that, for the services, “music will be provided by the Polyphonic Klezmer and Avant Hasidic band, Captain Zohar.” I really hope I can make it for that. Music can make all the difference.
Which is all the lead-in that I need for a story I wrote up a few weeks ago about a dude I saw listening to music:
I’ve admitted it here before so it should be no surprise that I am prepared to reiterate: I play with myself. I only do it at home because they’ve prevented me from doing it at work, but I do make sure to take a few minutes for self-entertainment several times a week. However, the game has changed a little lately, and I think it means I’ve changed a little too.
It used to be freecell, every time. The initial layout of the cards is simple and almost every deal can be played to victory, so I made sure I never lost if I really didn’t feel like it. And for a while, I just didn’t feel like it. If a game had me stymied I’d restart it and restart it again and again and again until I’d achieved victory. I felt good about being able to master this little pixellated two-dimensional world - even if I only succeeded after many failures. That had a lot to do with why I liked the game, actually: I could re-create the universe and experiment with it as many times as I liked till I got it right. That was comforting.
(It should be noted that all these games are being played on my computer. I would never play so much solitaire with actual, sordid cards. I used to, though. I used to wile away many hours playing canfield and clock, alone in my room, with analog cards and an am radio on my green shag carpeting. Those were simpler days. Freecell is just too fast and complicated a game to play with a physical deck, though. I tried once and for my trouble I got a bloody nose and a restraining order. I don’t need that kind of aggravation. No cards for chuckles’ solitaire fix.)
So, I was in the habit of playing my share of freecell, and enjoying it too. And then I realized something: I sucked at it. People were winning 15, 16, 17 games in a row. At my best, I could get up to about 9 before failing. Folk had performance stats, victory secrets, ratings and rankings. And if I joined them I’d be a nobody. My numbers would be pathetic; my skills, unworthy of note. It felt like my little fiefdom, my sense of supremacy in this small arena, had been totally quashed.
But at just about the same time I started playing spider. Spider’s hard, and I play it with four suits - the hardest version. It’s not much like freecell. The layout is big and complicated, there is much to be remembered and manipulated, and many golden opportunities evade my grasp by just a card or two. And I’ve never won a single hand. I’ve never ever come close. Twice, including last night, I cleared two runs - a quarter of all the cards, but still a weak showing. Yet I enjoy it, throw myself down a hand most every day when I have a few spare minutes.
But the big difference isn’t what I’m playing, but how I’m playing - or how I’m not playing. I’m not playing to win anymore. Rather, I seek to hone my memory, my instincts and my strategy. Sometimes I do well and sometimes not so much, but once I’ve dealt myself out all the cards and run out of moves to make, I just shut the screen down and walk away. I don’t restart and restart, desparate to salvage a victory; I know that victory is unreachable, so I stop striving. One try at it and I am done. Victory isn’t the point, just as a high jumper knows he can’t escape gravity. The point is in playing well, making good moves, drawing together runs and organizing columns, and then letting myself move on to something else. The victory is not in the game, it’s over the game. I find myself playing less and getting more out of it, as a result.
Of course, if I ever actually won a hand, I’d be a lost cause. But that just doesn’t seem too likely anytime soon.
So we’re watching tv and an ad comes on for “Big Brother,” about which I have nothing to say in particular, except that the ad had a banner on the side of the screen that said the name of the show and then this text: “This program is not associated with the Estate of George Orwell and is not based on the novel ‘1984.’” GodDAMN. And here I was waiting for them to strap on ratmasks. What a ripoff, dudes. Doubleplusbad.
okay here’s the story, we had a great time in out in Mendo County: ate ourselves into a new dimension of existence at Cafe Beaujolais, ate myself completely stupid at Horn of Zeese (twice), drank myself into effervescent bliss at Roderer, into profound serenity at Brutocao, and into giddy glee at Navarro. Kel picked up some stuff that will look very cool around the house, and the dog snuffled around to his heart’s content. I had a shot of Basil Hayden, a bottle of a lovely Sinskey Vin Gris of Pinot Noir, and some fine port I can’t remember the details about anymore. I saw a frog, a lizard, several turkeys, several skunks, a whole crapload of deer… and all we did was relax. It was sweet. Thanks, Ralph and Catherine, for letting us use the cabin. It’s one of those things that makes everything else easier, just knowing it’s out there.
I stuck a few photos of the trip in the extended entry, for those who want a multi-modal experience. Yeah, this is the way I talk to people in real life too.
It’s been a good weekend, a good day back at work, the boss brought some tasty delight back from her vacation in Turkey, and my luncheon salad was delicious, tyvm. I’m looking forward to a relaxing evening of store-bought food and tivo-licious cartoons. But I still seem to have a gripe in my craw, so let me take a moment of THE MAN’s time and see if I can shake it loose.
I’m interested in free speech. This blog, for example, is free. ("Blog Free,” the heartwarming tale of a talentless hack who finds an ironic little essay in the wilds of Africa and raises it as his own? No, more like “The Blog,” the heartstopping tale of a small bit of weak writing gone horribly awry, going gelatinous and gargantuan, taking over vast tracts of my free time and mental ease. But anyway.) I think one of the things most commendable about the U.S. of A. is the notion that, so long as you aren’t hurting anybody, a body can say whatever a body wants to say.
I’m okay with time-and-place restrictions, the doctrine of “fighting words,” commercial limitations and even, to a degree, the paternalistic attitude taken toward some communicative behavior in schools. But in the end, as a general rule, I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll kick some serious ass if anyone tries to keep you from saying it. (This was translated from the French, a language that makes up in subtlety what it lacks in aspirated consonants.)
And of course, just as important if not moreso, is the right NOT to speak. Jews are familiar with this concern, historically having been forced by oppressors to speak against their interests and their hearts for millennia; so often have we been required to enunciate oaths of loyalty to a religion or a monarch – oaths that violate the very essence of the faith – that on Yom Kippur there is a special very old prayer asking to be released from any false oaths one had been forced to make. Freedom means both the freedom to, and the freedom not to. It’s a critical part of making the American dream work – that no one can tell you what to do, or what to say.
But I guess the people representing our national interests in our nation’s gleaming capitol have a different opinion. One particular form of speech is now on its way to being made mandatory, and you won’t have any right to complain about it. It’s not that the courts will rule against you – you won’t be allowed to take your complaint to them in the first place.
That’s right, the courthouse is closed. You are gonna say God Rules This Land and you’re gonna like it. And if you don’t you’re gonna shut up about it. We’ll tell you what to say, and what not to say. And by “we,” I mean, Congress and God.
The problem was that a case that brought this issue to the national spotlight was dismissed earlier this year because the dad didn’t have custody of the daughter whose right not to invoke the deity was at issue. No custody, no standing – that is, no right to bring this complaint to court. Note, please, that the problem wasn’t that this complaint couldn’t go to court – it’s just that this plaintiff wasn’t allowed to do it.
But clearly the lingering threat was too dire for some Replicants in congress. They forced a vote to deny anyone the right to bring such a case in the future. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who helped write this bill, claims that “activist courts,” by failing to rule clearly that we should all be compelled to identify the one on high by name in the pledge of allegiance, have “emasculated the very heart of what America has always been about.”
First, Toddles, emasculation is not cardiac surgery. I believe there are videos that make this plain, though I’m not sure they let you buy them if you’re a Replicant from MO. (Coincidentally, there is language in the Yom Kippur prayerbook concerning the “circumcision of the heart,” but that gets a bit too philosophical for some of our legislators.)
More importantly, America has always been about “don’t tread on me.” Don’t tell me what to say or think. Keep your guns out of my church, and don’t make me learn your secret handshake. There are no religious qualifications for any public office. But now it seems there is such a qualification for attendance at public schools – and you’ve got no right to say otherwise. Because that’s what America is all about – jamming my god down your throat.
The theory that made our government so stable and responsive for two centuries is that one body makes rules, one body enforces them, and yet another decides how to interpret them and metes out punishment for those who violate them. That’s the separation of powers, and it’s a good idea. This new legislation, some Replicants claim, is consonant with that principle, because the states would still have the power to make their own rules and have their own trials on the matter.
No, no, no, no, no. No. The federal constitution is where the rights to speech – and silence – are enshrined. To remove a whole class of speech-related issues from federal jurisdiction is to do violence to the constitution’s distribution of the powers that the check-and-balance system is supposed to support. Far from supporting federal primacy over those matters reserved to the national government in the constitution, it gives away a critical power that was key to the founders of this great secular country.
The main case here is Marbury v Madison, which goes back to 1803 and provides the basis of judicial review: It is the province of the courts to say what the law is. Congress can write it, but if it violates the constitution, it will not be enforceable; the Executive may enforce it, but if that enforcement violates the constitution or federal statutes, it cannot continue. The courts are the public’s only protection against the tyranny of the “power branches.” They are weak, but effective – so long as they’re left to do their work.
But when congress steals a piece of the court’s right to say what is constitutional, and what is not, 200 years of judicial principle are being flushed down the crapper. Because this time it’s the pledge of allegiance, and next time it’ll be birth control information, and then gay marriage, and then gun rights or the poll tax. There’s no reasoned, logical place for this kind of whittling away of judicial power to stop. Unless it’s stopped before it starts. Actually, that one makes pretty good sense to me.
It’s time for me to leave for the evening, and at home I’ll relax and work up a few photos I took this weekend and generally catch my breath and take a load off. But I just had to complain a little about this political madness that seems to be getting very little press. Anyone who tries to exempt a cause of action from judicial review because it has to do with god is not a conservative, but a zealot. And those are not good people to have running the country.
I guess it did take a whiz, and that ain’t me. Pea nailed it, and I have only myself and my sieve-like memory to blame. I could say that the coding changes I failed to make were down off the bottom of my screen and I didn’t even think to look there for them but that’s the same damn excuse I used last time so I think instead I’ll blame insurgents. They are handy, that way, for blaming things on them and such. Meantime, Thank you ms pea for the gift of wisdom. I’m going to have it bronzed. The photoblog awaits your viewing.
well dammit I’ve learned one lesson and failed another. I was so aggravated with myself for having blown the ISO settings when I took photos at the bus terminal that I went back and did it right this time, and I actually rather like the results. I was even able to load the damn things to my photo blog. BUT. I can’t make the stupid things show up there! If you go to the page and check “recent entries” on the left, the first nine are from the Transbay Reshoot Project. I’ll figure out how to make them show up on the main page eventually. In the meantime, I’ve got to get my head together and take it to a dark quiet place. I’ve had enough of this for now.
Pete and I had lunch yesterday and then went on a shooting spree in a downtown bus station. Sadly, I failed to re-set my ISOs so most of my shots are not much worth sharing, but
this one seems good enough to keep from where I’m sitting, which is sure as hell not on that grungy bench. The bus station has suffered for years from deferred maintenance, then from planned obsolescence, and throughout it all, from the hard use of the hard bitter people who spend time in bus terminals. There were a lot of travellers there yesterday doing their best to get the hell out of Dodge, but there were probably just as many vagrants and homeless wandering about in widely various states of sentience and cleanliness. Some of the darker corners of the terminal stank badly of human waste and wasted humans. Regardless, I very much enjoyed my photo excursion to the TBT - decay and deterioration are just about my favorite things to photograph.
Later on, though, the thing that stuck with me wasn’t the visuals, but the smells. Bus terminal as enormous outhouse. And this in turn reminded me of a story or two:
It’s a good thing I like to keep busy at work because I’m getting a goddamn crawful these days. I was mortified to find today that a series of questions I’d sent out to the ED of a very large and important legal services program had included an inquiry into his plans to address the growing problem of “homoe improvement fraud.” Taken out of context it really sounds like somebody got ripped off by a wanna-be Queer Eye guy. Mitch did me the gracious favor of not mentioning it, but it makes me think I’ve got to slow down a little.
But, while slowing down a little is overall a very good idea for me right now, it’s just a rule of thumb. There are some things that are better as fast as I can handle them. I refer, of course, to my television watching. TiVo has sped up my passive entertainment input tremendously, and this obvious boon has had an unanticipated benefit as well: the commercials are now much more entertaining. I thought, as a callow youth, that the new technology would let me evade (or “evoid") entirely the phenomenon of the paid promotional announcement. When I learned the terrible truth, I was sorely disapointed to have to sit there comme un pud manually fast-forwarding throught a stack of four or six commericals at ten or thirty times the standard speed, making sure I didn’t skip over into the show I was trying to watch. This means, in practice, that instead of watching a bunch of boring commercials I’ve seen before, I get to see one really weird commercial that moves at breakneck speed on mute so I get to make up my own plot and soundtrack in my own little overworked mind. This has become nearly as much fun and only slightly harder to follow than Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Let me elucidate (wow, my brain echos):
Gnop: He’s there about half the time but I haven’t figured out a pattern to the appearances. He’s always at the southeast corner of Fremont and Mission, right across from the terminal where my bus stops; I have to pass him on my way to the office. This is a particularly raunchy corner, one where I’ve encountered some of the worst examples of homeless psychosis I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve encountered some doozies.
The fellow I’m thinking of is tall and thin, white but deeply tanned. His head is covered by a colorless knit cap from beneath which enormous fist-thick dreads slither, raffia-taupe and wily. His face is square; it’s the shape I associate with frontiersmen, widebrowed and broadjawed. Small square spectacles perch on his small pointed nose, under beetled brows that lend him an air of studious tension.
A ratty plaid shirtcoat, untucked and unbuttoned, flaps loosely around his railthin frame. His legs are basically naked, as his habitual cutoff shorts are almost indecently abbreviated. The original trousers from which they’d been crafted must have had wide legs, and, as his are very skinny, the tiny shorts bell out uproariously at their lower fringe, just slightly below his hips. His gnarled feet stand on old plastic shower sandals.
Beside him is his bicycle, a road-weary touring model heavily laden with large, well-worn nylon totebags, neatly but very fully packed. The bike leans against a mural of designs created by schoolkids to encourage us to love the planet, in a display sponsored years ago by Enron to mask the blight of a gaping vacant lot. The bright colors and ingenuous sentiment of the murals in front of which he stations himself, worn though they may be, belie the seedy gritty treeless waste of the corner where he stands, selling flowers.
That’s what he does there: he sells flowers, by the stem or in bouquets, sometimes bound up with baby’s breath or in cellowrap. He stands in his shabby coat and ludicrous shortlings, holding up a rose or a dahlia or an iris; he peers at it intently, grooming it, picking off bruised leaves and petals one at a time. At his feet lies a welter of long slim white cardboard caskets full of homeless flowers, on offer today at fire sale prices. They litter the filthy sidewalk with color.
Y’all have been getting antsy, haven’t you, looking for my next transit vignette? Those precious pearls of commuter experience that make you wonder why you even logged onto the internet in the first place, when you could be out riding the bus and getting a fistful of reality rammed down your hangstrap? Well I hear you loudly and clearly, and frankly it’s not even entertaining to ignore you anymore. Just to quell the discontent, here’s head 1 of a double-header of transit vignettes:
Gnip:
It seemed to be ‘that kind of morning’ early on - even at the bus stop, the women and girls were unusually easy on the eyes. One I got on the bus, things on the visual entertainment front really accellerated. The quality and quantity of eye candy was truly impressive - like having dessert right after breakfast. I was standing on the bus when she got on; I noticed her immediately and knew that our paths would collide even though we stood far apart in the crowded aisle. As anticipated, within ten minutes we were settling into adjoining seats, our thighs barely brushing together. I pulled out a notebook so I’d have somewhere more appropriate to stare, but it didn’t really work. The competition from the next seat was just too intense. She looked young, self-possessed, and so much like J-Lo that Jenny From the Bloque should hire professionals to keep them from ever appearing in public together, for fear of diluting her star power. Hair, skin, general physique were all uncanny matches (though my neighbor was quite petite overall); the girl next to me even wore a rhinestone stud where her elder doppleganger has a mole. Her slim legs were accentuated by tight denim, while her wide hips flared under the hem of her light sweater; she held herself demurely with deep eyes cast down to her lap. Her pale green cable-knit scarf matched her pale green knit cap, surmounted with two little ponpoms side-by-side on the top like some adorable kitten’s ears.
I tried to concentrate on my writing but when I glanced over with utmost subtlty to check her out at one point, I found, to my consternation and fascination, that she had begun to suck on the tip of her thumb. With utter discretion and tact I swallowed hard and tried to control, or at least conceal, my circulatory response to the immediacy of her parted lips and the moist, lucky digit that she slipped between them. She glanced over to me as I was composing myself and she smiled shyly; her thumb slid more deeply between her lips and into her cloistered mouth. I smiled and said nothing. I wanted to regale her with something witty and urbane and memorable but I couldn’t think of a single thing I felt comfortable saying, so she left the bus once we got downtown without a single word having been exchanged between us.
I’ve been having trouble with somebody at work lately. She started in as a temp, but it’s been about eight months and she’s still hanging out every day in our conference room. She started out mellow enough but over time she’s developed - or maybe, revealed - a more malevolent side. Nobody seems to know where she came from, or what she’s doing there. We think she stands for something, but she looks like she’d bite your head off if you asked her what it was. It’s like she’s going for a wedgie that’s forever just out of her reach. Frankly, she’s making me a little uncomfortable. It’s a pity, too, because she has that retro sensibility that I find so comforting, and a good sense of design, and it’s almost like I used to know her in a previous life. But that life is obviously far behind me, if it ever existed at all. This woman treats me like I don’t even exist, like she’s all so high and mighty, when she’s really nothing but a two-dimensional facade, a falsehood writ large. Well, I snuck into her office yesterday when she wasn’t watching and snuck a photo of her, just so you all can share my disdain of her. I present to you now, Pac Jan.
It’s the new year, folks, and I’m full of the spirit. Which spirit in particular that may be, I’m not at liberty to say, but it’s not the Easy Spirit wherewith nuns play basketball. It’s a bit more subtle than that - as if anything could be more subtle than a nun playing basketball, but that’s the magic of the spiritual journey that is Rosh Hashona. I will elucidate by sharing a few items of note about the services:
* We got to Berkeley very quickly, both wednesday night and thursday morning, avoiding stacks of traffic and zipping along with a song in our hearts, channeled through the iPod. On wednesday night, though, once we got to Berkeley and were in the right general neighborhood, we spend a good bit of time trying to get around blocked intersections and wrong-way one-way streets to get to our destination. The journey might be easy, but the arrival at the ultimate destination can still be a real bitch.
* We do not sing our service with all our voice and heart to wake up god - it is to wake up ourselves.
* The tashlich bags this year contain botanicals - a bit of potpourri instead of the traditional breadcrumbs or pebbles. These are to be tossed into a body of living water as part of the ceremony of sloughing off dross, which we’ll observe this evening at Baker Beach. However, for me, “Tashlich Botanicals” just makes me thing of Trogdor the Burninator,” which makes me giggle at inappropriate times. Similarly, at some point the machzor (prayerbook for the days of awe) used a word that was perfectly ordinary, normal and cromulent - but it brought to my mind the word “embiggen,” which I kept hearing inside my head for the rest of the services, with resultant distraction and giggles. Television and the internet have ruinously improved me.
* On the way home from evening services, after a quick and uneventful drive back into the city from the east bay, as we cruised along a wide avenue that dove deep into the heart of golden gate park, I saw three racoons fumphering around in the darkness near the tree ferms. They glanced over at us but didn’t let us interrupt their good time. The next morning I awoke to the strong, unmistakeable smell of skunk; it faded fairly quickly but drove into my mind that I am only one of many different kinds of living thing that calls this area home. There are comedies and dramas going on outside my front door that no human is aware of. I don’t think that’ll change the way I act or what I do, but if I keep it well in mind it may change the way I see my world. And would that be such a bad thing?
* Written as I sat waiting for morning services to start: This year I feel totally unprepared for this process. It’s not like anybody sprung it on me, but I just don’t feel ready for it. Not right now. There are things I can’t address yet, revellations still to intense to confront. And obviously, therefore, I need it more than ever.
* “The heart must break to become large, so there is room in it for the entire cosmos.”
* This congregation uses a machzor that is all scrambled up. You’re always going from page 7 to page 53 to page 15 to supplement page 6 number 12… it’s dizzying. But after a couple of hours in the lofty space where they celebrate these holidays, spinning around in the prayerbook - where they’ll slowly and repetitively chant just a few words to a driving highly orchestrated beat, on and on for several minutes, the congregation on its feet dancing and clapping - and then suddenly stop and quicklychant another page and a half of hebrew that I have no hope of following - after a few hours of this I get a sense of immersion in the process, where I don’t know where I’m going or when I’ll get there, so the only thing to think about is where I am right now - a focus on the sacred moment arising from a confounding of my innate desire for strict linear order. I used to wish they’d revise the machzor so it would track straight through, from page one to whatever. Now I’m not so sure.
* “This is a time of self-confrontation, of seeing what you would prefer to overlook. You must put yourself in a narrow place where you cannot escape from yourself, and then force yourself to undergo the process of self-examination that will result in renewed blessings for the new year and, ultimately, peace on earth. It’s hard to force yourself through this narrow place, but you don’t get much sound by blowing through the wide end of a shofar, either.”
* As we walked into the sanctuary we were asked to draw a card; when we turned them over each one had one of the 22 letters of the hebrew alphabet (alef-bet) on it. Then we were handed a chart entitled “Some of the Meanings of the Alef Bet Letters.” I chose Tav, the last letter of the alef-bet, which symbolizes the end of theory and the beginning of practice. That’s a very good meditation for me for the coming year; I’m grateful for it. I’ll start by getting my lazy ass to work.
Tonight is Erev Rosh Hashona, the night that begins the annual period of introspection and resolution, of self-evaluation and goal-setting in the jewish calendar. I am pretty psyched. It does raise the question for me, though, of what to post on such an auspicious occasion. I had sat down here to ramble on about some vaugely raunchy drivel, but on reflection it didn’t seem like an appropriate choice for today. Instead I’ll share a story that feels like it should mean something, regardless whether it does or not.
Heidi had the twin advantages of superhuman visual acuity and the lifelove of the very earth. She could spot a recumbent fawn on a brown brushy hill 300 yards away - and if she found one, she could always find another. She once told a diamond dealer which of his stock were flawed - he’d had to put on his lupe to see what she’d noticed at a casual glance. And when someone let a guinea pig loose in the park, she was not only the one who first noticed it huddled against a wall of shrubbery, she was also the one who went back to look after it later. Heidi can see all - especially when it comes to animals.
She and Andy were living on our block at the time so we were often out together. As I remember the particular evening I have in mind, it feels like we were coming back from dinner, but I suppose we could have been doing anything. All I remember for sure was that we were coming home and Heidi pointed to yet another cardboard box that had been abandoned in the greenbelt across the street. “What is that?,” she asked incredulously. Well, obviously, it was a cardboard box, used till it was battered into unrecognizability, soaked by sprinklers until it looked almost ... like ... a bird? A weird white bird with a sorry expression on its abandoned face, sitting comfortlessly on cold grass on a chilly night? Goddamn. What was that?
We approached it slowly; it drew back but did not get up. Injured. And hobbled. Something like a mini-turkey, white with a yellow beak. It sat on the damp dark lawn, its legs tied together. It didn’t look wild. Nor happy. We looked at each other and played pingpong with our eyeballs for a moment or two, trying to decide who’d take the initiative on behalf of this helpless animal in distress.
Eventually Heidi went into her apartment and came out with a beach towel. She slowly crept up on the mysterous creature, not wanting to disturb it, fearing it would further hurt itself, hoping its injury wasn’t too gruesome, anxious that the bird not strike at her with talons or cruel curved beak or hidden spurs or anything....
The bird, ungainly, resisted her at first, but in short order she’d swaddled it and embraced it, swept it up into her beat-up old chevy, and the two of them scrambled to the emergency vet clinic.
Turns out the animal was a guinea hen with a broken leg. The vet’s best guess was that it had been destined for some sort of religious sacrifice, but that its broken leg rendered it unsuitable for ritual purposes, as only unblemished animals could be given as offerings - so it had been jettisoned where we’d eventually found it. I suppose, if Heidi hadn’t rescued it, the local racoons or feral cats probably would have attended to it shortly in some permanent way. However, following up a few days later, Heidi learned that this bird had enjoyed a very different fate: it had apparently been taken in by a guinea hen rescue organization that would ultimately place it in a petting zoo.
That’s a nice way to conclude this episode, anyway, and I chose to believe it. As for the rest of the story, I have wondered for some time what to make of it. I have recently concluded that it is the universal analogy, conforming to every theory and theme that occurs to me. And actually, that’s pretty cool all by itself.
Yesterday I went out and bought a new writing book and memopad for the new year (and because the ones I had were basically filled up already). I don’t know if I’ll hear anything in particular that I want to write down, but at least I’m ready for it if it happens. It gives me a sense of nearly unlimited potential, and that’s a pretty good mindset with which to go off to services tonight. Have a rescued guinea hen of a new year and I’ll catch up with you on the other side.
A tentative bargain has been reached, with a minimum of acrimony and a conscientious effort toward interest-based negotiations and sensitivity recognition. If it all winds up where it looks like it’s headed, we’ll have done quite well for ourselves, comparatively speaking. But for better or worse, it looks like the ugly part is nearly over. On the flight home, I watched Silicon Valley grow and sprawl out before me as the airplane barreled into Oakland, on a flight two hours earlier than I had expected to take out of L.A. We descended at sundown over voluptuous hills. For a short day, it had been quite full and I was glad to be so close to home again. That’s when I wrote this:
Mountains riffled like a spine
with ribs that tumble to each side
between them, twisting riverbeds
lie dusty, gasping in the wind
occasional dirt fire roads
meander lost among the peaks
where scruboak peppers leeward slopes
and small bright pools, mysterious,
glint blinking in the shifting sun
with water cloistered to themselves
as if some egg- and oystershells
had been set yawning in the earth
so pale and thirsty underfoot
awaiting their eventual
evaporation and demise
and leaving nothing else behind
but memories of mossy banks.
It was a lovely flight home and I’m glad to be back. I have a lot of work to do but I leave the office early tomorrow and don’t go in at all on Thursday; it’s all for the improvement of my ETERNAL SOUL so let’s try to cut the man some slack, okay people? Oh that’s right you’re antsy because of that thing with the car. Well, the story so far is that the damn thing broke down, I got a tow from a man who was more like a cartoon hero than a human being, and he took me to a questionable garage in a questionable part of town. The end of the story is in the extended entry below, so you can just ignoe it and go on with your day if that’s what you’d like to do.
This has been a pretty solid weekend. Friday night we watched Iron Monkey, which was beautiful and hilarious, in that the action was so flamboyantly unbelievable that it wasn’t even worth trying to take seriously. People don’t run up walls and hover in midair kicking in multiple directions like that. Not in this neighborhood. It was positively anti-gravitational, and that was about what I needed.
Saturday we saw a piece of the Power to the Peaceful concert, which was conveniently held in a nearby part of a nearby park. The bit we saw was the String Cheese Incident set, which was about five songs in about half an hour. They played one song I liked but didn’t know, two songs I like just fine, one song I really enjoy, and they also played my favorite song - Restless Wind, on which they really went to town. It was glorious. We sat way up on a hillside next to the meadow and kept free of the unusually intense hippy melee, which is really saying something for hereabouts.
And today we drove 70 miles each way to a massive agglomeration of outlets, an outlet mall with almost 150 different stores, a mall so massive we had to repark the car twice (that’s three parking spots altogether) to keep the process moving forward. note: one of the shops at the outlet mall was called “Country Clutter.” I imagine the original name, “White Trash Backwash,” just didn’t pull down the traffic they were looking for. I’m happy with my swag but my feet are sore and tired - we were out for almost eight hours and for the record I would rather go to starbucks and drink their corporate jive than ever again set foot in an Erik’s Deli, so there. In addition, this morning I re-located a little notebook that had gone missing for a while, so I’ve got that going for me too. And the weekend was actually even fuller and more interesting than just these tidbits suggest but I think you’ve got enough to chew on for now.
Oh okay then, I’ll tell you a little something about when my car broke.
Yesterday, barely a week in advance, I made reservations for Rosh Hashona services. “Reservations.” What a provocative word. It’s weird at the outset to be reserving a place to worship, but I guess that most of us are like most of me – attending services once a year, the one (or two) times the halls are filled beyond capacity. I have to make sure to take steps in advance to save myself a decent seat at the tabernacle.
And then there’s the sense of “having reservations.” Like I’m holding back, somehow unsure and therefore unwilling to commit myself. But Rosh Hashona, for those who haven’t endured my excesses on the subject, is an experience I like to commit to utterly, to immerse myself in it. I try to get as much out of these services as I can, to use them to recharge me for the long looming winter ahead. I embrace the high holidays. So these are reservations, so to speak, without reservation.
Who says nothing fun happens in Ohio? Dayton, home of aviation and pneumatic tires, is also home of the Dayton News, which is running a story I’m not bothering linking to but: it’s the heartwarming story of a principal and teacher’s aide getting caught at 7:30 am doing some extracurriculars while in a stationary vehicle at the local park. The region where the incident took place is called Xenia Township - emphasis on the “X.” The specific area where the infraction occurred was Pierce Park, and the individuals involved are now on administrative leave from their jobs at the Beavercreek Falls school district. Only in the heartland, people, can we get so many entertainingly euphemistic names in one story. And that ought to do it for me today. One more big meeting today but this one is at home. Wish me luck and I’ll be back with more of that great chucklehut irreverence soon enough, goddamn it.
Let’s get away from the ranting for a minute and enjoy one of life’s entertaining little coincidences. Our clerk at work is taking classes at the local state university and one of those classes currently is called “Leisure and Contemporary Recreation,” as far as I recall. Really, that’s what he’s studying, and I wrote down the class title but I can’t find my little book so I’m going on memory. The point is, the class has a big volume of required reading, what we called a “bulk pack” when I was a lad - hundreds of pages of photocopied articles and exerpts. He had it out, closed, on his desk a few days ago, and when I saw it I did a double take. “Is that a textbook?,” I asked incredulously. “Yeah,” he chuckled in response, “the teacher even made a joke about it at the first class.” I nodded and moved on with my serious important business. I didn’t have the time at that particular moment to immerse myself in a weighty tome like that, with its title emblazoned across its front, identifying, perhaps, a class catalogue offering in the “recreation” department, or maybe something more diverting: “REC 420”.
Dude, when I was in school, that was considered “extracurricular.” I’m considering auditing this one for extra credit now. Maybe get a little tutoring too.... after a week like this one I could use a nice tute. Or two.
I was busy today. I kept working even when I encountered the kind of crap that usually drives me up a tree. Instead of letting myself stew in static fury, though, I tried to make little notes to myself, which I then filled out into full-fledged rants. And in the interest of getting the furies out of my head, I’ll share them with you!
Labor day is now behind us (or behind me, anyway, and it’s my blog), and I’m returning to considerations of a more autumnal nature. Yesterday at the big festive b-b-q down in Belmont, we brought a lovely cobbler of summer fruit - white nectarines, black plums, rosy pluots, with some blueberries and figs thrown in for giggles… despite my best efforts to ruin it by making it too wet and then too burned, it still wound up tasty as hell and was basically totally consumed before we left the party. However, it’s clear that this kind of confection is on its seasonal way out. That’s why, when we went to Trader Joe’s over the weekend, I made sure to get a box of the chocolate Jo-Jo’s. (That apostrophe is neither a possessive nor a contraction - it’s a pluralization of word that ends in a naked vowel. Don’t be giving me a hard time on this one, it’s too early in the week.) As the season shifts to autumn and light fruity desserts become slowly supplanted by heavier, baked goodnesses, there are two good things about Jo-Jo’s: they are great to eat (the creamy filling between the cookies is wonderfully mushy and fun), and they have two identical syllables that end in an “o.” That means that they almost (but don’t quite) make up for the fact that T.J.’s doesn’t sell the primary dessert food that meets these criteria - the Car-o-mel Ho-Ho. (Turns out this link requires a registration for the Philly Inq - usually I’d dump the link under these circumstances but it’s a fun article for anyone who loves the pre-baked cake as much as I do.)
I’ve finally finished the Hawaii Photos Project, wherein I cleaned up and generally fiddled with about 150 of the best photos from the vacation; the next thing will be to burn them to a disk so I can take them someplace with a high-speed connection and upload them to ofoto or some such thing.
Meantime, just to keep my hand in, and in celebration of the last weekend of unofficial summer, we dragged the 300D out yesterday to Tomales Point, where we drove to a trailhead at the Historic Phillips Ranch (1857, that’s old for rural california) and hiked five miles out and five back along a ridgeline trail to the tip of the point out by where the San Andreas Fault plunges into the blue pacific. The water was clean and the sky was sunny, or at least, not cloudy (it can be cloudy like nobody’s business up there; last time out there we didn’t even see the ocean and we were next to it). It was a refreshing, invigorating hike and if that was all there was to it it would have been enough.
However, once we got on the trail we found conditions to be somewhat “elky.”
I’m a little tired of all the karma I’ve been spouting off about this week, and there’s a bunch of entertaining little notions floating around in my brain that would be fun to write about. This is when my karma shows its mettle: do I have the inner clarity to stick with the game plan, or shall I just let it crumble like so many stale teacakes in a vibrating soccerball? (Creative analogizing is very karmic. Yes it is. Shut up.) So I’m thinking, next week this site will likely be marginally more entertaining (which is to say, marginally entertaining), with transit tales and vignettes, ironic discourses on curious locutions and yummy desserts and chuckletude in general and in particular. In the meanwhiles, nonces and interims, here’s an essay of friday karma that I think I am resistant to post because it is a lesson I’m having trouble learning, which I guess is the best reason to post of all.
For 14 months I didn’t so much slave in obscurity as I languished on the fringes of civilization. I was the sole employee of my organization anywhere within a 30 mile radius, located out in a radioactive cowtown that typified all the stultification for which the suburbs are so rightly renowned. I drove an hour to work each day, and 90 minutes back home again. The area was dry, flat - an actual imagination vacuum where creative ideas withered on the vine like so many bunches of late harvest riesling, forgotten until dessicated beyond recovery, moldy and sour.
The terms of my employment were simple: I was to follow my consultant’s instructions. I was not to pester people. I was to keep my mouth shut and my plans quiet. I ws to call people on Tuesday mornings once every week until I got through. I was to clear everything I did, said, and wrote with the main office. I was to do nothing on my own.
My office was an 8x12 room with no exterior windows. I brought my own lunch and ate it at my desk, as I had learned to do at the many other nearly equally isolated jobs I’d held in my years since graduation. Were I to leave the office I might miss something exciting, but equally compelling to me was that there was nothing else going on worth visiting. I could walk the three gaptoothed blocks of what passed for downtown; I could visit an ‘antique’ store, a western-wear store, or an army surplus store. After a few months all those options got pretty tired. I just surfed the web and kept my chair warm, and I dreamed of a day when a two-block walk from my office might lead me somewhere worth going.
So now that dream’s come true. Not only am I often, if not usually, pretty well fully occupied at work these days - but if I walk out my officeblock’s front door and forward about a hundred yards, I’m at the greyfaced glistening waterfront. Two blocks north: Market Street, lined with people and shops worth careful perusal. A few blocks west: Yerba Buena gardens with the museums and fountains and such. And to the south, the ballpark and the south park district (yeah, real name) and more ocular entertainment than I’ve even begun to catalogue.
That’s mainly because my sorry old habits, forged in job after job in the hinterlands - Walnut Creek to San Mateo to Novato to East Oakland to Livermore - have become so much a part of my psyche that I’m finding it hard to break the pattern. I have so many places I could go now - too many, really - and that seems to be enough for me most days. I have to force myself to leave my desk even for ten minutes most days, as a glittering and fascinating world pulses just out a nearby window and five floors straight down. It sort of feels like I’ve cubed my karma and now my cube’s the only place it wants to hang out.
Wow, putting it down in print like that really makes me think I need to change my habits. Maybe this “being out” is something I can integrate into my life, just as “being creative” was something I had to learn to graft onto days I thought were full already. I’ll start on the right foot by getting out for my bus and enjoying a sunny ride downtown while I finish writing an essay about my car breaking down. But that one’s for later. For now, have a great weekend, and for all you expectant moms, happy labor day.
The meeting went great, thanks for asking. Today I’m back to a full day of desk-jockey joy, but with a fresh new perspective I can only attribute to the fourth consecutive day of Karma week here at the Chucklehut. In honor of that auspicious occasion, here’s a story about the littlest karma of all.
I was in the shower, thinking about a document I’d edited that day, my suggestion that an Oxford comma be added, defending my position to myself, thinking of the role of punctuation as a road sign toward effective comprehension, and the serial comma as a semiotic setmaker, providing critical discriminatory insight in extreme cases; but even where confusion would be unlikely, it places things in an anticipatable order, an order the mind expects (and perception, as we all know, is primarily the modification of an anticipation, or as Dow Mossman wrote in The Stones of Summer, “We only hear the stories we’re ready to hear,” which is really just a rip-off of the Grateful Dead’s line from Eyes of the World: “Sometimes the songs that we hear are the songs that we know..."); even if the errant editor’s eye catches on it and lingers, disapproving, including that comma is still the right thing to do - it is supposed to catch you and make you linger; why is everybody in such an all-fired rush anyway; just because some lists are clear enough without a final serial comma, that’s no reason to omit it, just as you should still stop at a stopsign when you’re the only car around - it’s the way the world is organized, the structure of reality that lets us all participate in it, meaningfully, intelligently - that’s why I want that comma there: because without it life itself, and our place in it, our very relationship to it, would crumble and collapse....
I was getting worked up into quite a lather, there in the shower with the cool foggy dusk rolling by outside the window. I took a deep breath and gave myself a thorough rinsing off, conceived a different response to the imagined impertinence of an objection to my punctuation: “You may have a point. I’m not married to the comma. But, for what it’s worth, I had a reason to suggest it.” I turned off the water and stepped out into the humid air, blotted myself with a fresh towel. I was surprised how strongly I’d felt about that comma. I hoped that, when my suggestions were discussed, it wouldn’t come to fisticuffs. I need to stay positive. I need to maintain good comma karma.
What a lovely story, Dan. Never before has man’s struggle with punctuation been rendered in such cosmic terms. You need outside interests. Or so I imagine you saying, but I can’t be troubled with that. Instead, I’ve been troubled with this: last week I went to a conference where I met a number of people in person who had only previously known me (but known me pretty well) as a voice on the telephone. One of these was a rather high-powered CEO of a large organization we help to fund; I’ve had more than a few heated conversations with him about their structure and service-tracking in the past but he’d subsequently written to my boss to tell her good things about me. When he walked up and introduced himself to me neither of us had much time for pleasantries but he did make sure to tell me “You look just like you’re supposed to.” He wouldn’t elaborate. I’ve decided to take it as a compliment and move on. Resembling our true essence is, after all, at the heart of karma, is it not? Eh? Eh? Is that the sound of a mirror reflecting itself, or of the lotus seed taking root in the stagnant muck? Or of a comma, pausing between epochs? Or just snoring? Snoring? Snoring. Okay, forget it then. See ya tomorrow. Bring a semi-colon - we’ll have some party games.
Nothing really starts life back on the right track like good bread. Last night I brought home a freshly-baked loaf that a dear friend thoughtfully overnighted to me from a distant clime; after supper (another flawless Gordo’s carnitas burrito) I toasted up a few long narrow slices of the staff of life and buttered them, arranged a single fat fig, sliced beautifully thinly, over each crispy glistening yeasty wedge, and ate heartily of the essential goodness of which this world is capable. This morning, more wonderful freshbread toast, with my old standby tofu scramble on top - as the Molemen said, “better than it sounds,” and actually quite good. It’s a fine way to start a day that demands, like very few days I’ve ever had, some solid reliable karma.
To reinforce this precedent I’ve set with the tasty baked goods, I’ll share a short essay I wrote on the bus to work a few weeks or so ago. It was a day that started with good karma and just kept on karming till there was karm all over the goddamn place. I mean, in the good way.
****
I was getting out of the house early, which is to say, on time. Out the door with an unfamiliar backpack instead of my old beloved defunct messenger bag - and halfway up the half-a-block to the corner there’s gap between the trees of the greenbelt; I can see my bus stop acros the highway. And my bus is there and the light is green - I am allowed to cross but I’m still too far from the crosswalk and the bus could leave at any moment. I bolt, cover ground unexpectedly quickly, feet flying, and I’m at the corner fast - but I still miss the green by a fraction of a second and six lanes of heavy traffic in front of me start rolling past. I have to wait. Maybe I’ll miss that crowded old bus anyway.
The bus driver was cool. I watched him as I dug in my toe and got in position to dash across the intersection if I had to. But he just sat there, letting people walk up, one after another; he wasn’t getting antsy and closing up the doors, signalling and starting to merge back into traffic in anticipation of the eventual green light that would let me at him… bu it is a very long light and I felt like a good fatih effort would be needed to show him I was serious about making his bus once the light changed, so I bolted again at the green - but as I ran, I saw, one block up the road....
Unprecedented. A big new articulated muni bus making a left onto Geary and bearing down on my stop. Thing is, that bus doesn’t take that route - this was a sudden swoop in from a cloaked position. Eerie. But cool. The mellow driver in front of me was ready to go after his long wait at the green and as I jogged toward him I waved him on. I stood at the stop for almost 20 seconds before the new bus pulled up. I got on and found myself alone. I’m used to being the first, sometimes the only, person on the bus as it pulls out from the TBT downtown at the end of the day, but my morning bus stop is a major node on a major route and the bus is usually crowded by the time I get on. (For comparative purposes, in the week before this incident I’d ridden with Katrina three times out of five days. If you want more info on Katrina, type her name into the “search” window.) But this time: total solitude. Total potential. Tabula rasa. An omnibus that truly felt like an omnibus - one that could transport anything anywhere. And I was its sole occupant. All the opportunities in the world awaited my convenience.
It felt great. I took my usual seat and composed my mind for a moment (that’s all it took, honestly, I’m not working with much you know), reached into my pack to find my pad. By the time I’d dug it from those depths, and a pen from my pocket, someone else was already getting on my bus. I decided to be magnanimous about it and let her and her baby on.
Now (as I write this in my notebook) we’re already turning onto Market Street downtown and we’re almost to the terminal. The bus filled up completely, of course, and it didn’t take too long to happen. But even so, nobody sat next to me the whole way in. I got to keep a chunk of my own bus from start to finish on my morning commute. Maybe I can carry it on out of here and into the office with me. A chunk of bus has so far proven to be exactly what I seem to need today. Commute karma can get you a lot farther than just the office.
****
There you go, a little positive karma for this short workday. I have an important meeting this afternoon and I’m lining up all my karmas in a row, getting them nicely organized and tidy-looking. I’ve got some damn good bread to feed them and I expect them to be on their best behavior. Have a happy and I’ll catch up with you on the next bus.
lovely place
