Thursday, March 31, 2005

doorman

part IV of V - office space essays.  conclusory addition: another business name from the east bay.

I’m basically a pretty discrete guy.  I try to modulate my voice in public and to respect people’s confidences, not to walk too loudly or dress unnecessarily garrishly.  (I mean, anymore.) I try to make a good impression on people in general, any time such people are obliged to deal with me.  Whether it’s politeness, insecurity, an attachment complex or some combination of these and/or other factors, I don’t like to be pushy or make a big noisy splash.  I’m just more comfortable that way.

So I find it inexplicable that I’ve got this irritating habit that instantly undercuts my purported goal of inoffensiveness: I open doors too fast.  Sounds benign?  Maybe it is.  Maybe I’m stretching a mere quirk into a full-blown “issue.” Maybe it’s nothing. But maybe it’s not.

It’s just not helpful for me to approach the bosses’ door with a carefully-thought-out question in mind, just to get her so flustered when I power my way into her office that she can’t think straight.  I go to the hallway door and crank it open vigorously, nearly decapitating the hapless innocent on the other side.  I emphatically broach the restroom door and give three guys instant performance anxiety with the suddenness of my unsubtle entrance.  What’s the opposite of slamming a door?  Me.

So, what exactly am I doing?  I can break it down in my mind: I usually walk with “purpose” (that is, as if I had a purpose); I don’t do much idle ambling.  As I approach the door I am building up speed and energy.  So I’m heading to the closed door with zest, almost as if I am preparing to kick through it with a private eye hipsnap (Paul Drake, not Jim Rockford).  As I get within reaching distance of the hardware, I stop myself short; my forward momentum flows through me like a whip,seeking some dangling appendage to invest with my powerful charismatic chi.  I let the energy descend from my shoulder, down my arm, into my palm; it draws up my outstretched hand almost automatically and fills it with potential, an eagerness to translate mere existence into an impact that will literally and metaphorically expand my very horizons.  The hand hits the metal with a flat slap and continues through, driving the latch down or the knob into rotation, all one smooth movement of presence, expression, exposition.... I push forward simultaneously as I make contact, and the door springs open as if I had passed materially through it.  Really, it’s very satisfying. 

Until I notice the people on the other side.  They generally look shocked and startled to see me crash their little party so vigorously.  It’s not exactly that I’m unwelcome, but that it all happens too fast.  Some people look defensive about the abrupt invasion of their space, as if they expect to have to protect themselves; some look nervous, as if I’d just nearly caught them at something.  It typically ends with mutual embarassed laughter and a quick return to business as usual.  But someday I’m going to catch someone upside the head with the edge of an 80-lb firedoor; the vision of their shattered brainpate will finally wean me from this habit altogether.  Or, perhaps, I’ll finally intrude on someone doing something they don’t want me to see.  In which case, I’ll probably just keep pushing my way through doors for the rest of my knob-cranking, latch-smashing days.  Once you get used to hitting that wood with feeling, it’s hard to back off. 

business name from Richmond or Albany, CA (on Cutting Boulevard, in Richmond): Cutting Gas.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Hey, Sniff This

Today is the third in a week’s worth of posts about my workspace in some damn way or other.  As with all these posts, I will conclude with a random amusing business name from somewhere in Richmond or Albany, California.

If you work, as I do, in a hivelike edifice of stacked cubes, sealed windows and recirculated air, you’ve smelled it too.  All you want to do is finish reading one more clumsy proposal, or fulfilling one more undodgeable demand, or just to sit and quietly surf the gently lapping margins of the datapool surrounding us, and suddenly it invades, distracting you, pushing inappropriate buttons, confusing your bioclock.  Just when you least want or expect to smell food, it is all up in your face and down your nostrils and into your hapless mind.  It’s not like you have any choice, you’re locked into your scene for the duration.  You must endure the indignity, if not the nausea-inducing olfactory insult, of smelling food at work, where it ought not be smelled. These are the Inappropriate Food Smells, or IFSs.

The classic example is the hallway outside the coffee room that seems to be permanently scented with popcorn butt’r, that syntho-oleageneous goop that turns a healthy snack into paper sack full of coronary thrombosi.  There’s the elevator that reeks of someone’s onion-garlic curry leftovers, or worse, of someone’s breath or other bodily emanations resulting therefrom.  And of course, the odor of a big meaty cheeseburger-n-fries being consumed by the selfish carnivore in the next cube over, too industrious to eat lunch away from the desk, too lazy to have bothered to bring you a burger too.  These IFSs are pretty standard fare, hardly worth bitching about to your fellow zombies, much less worthy of precious blog space.

Then, there are my IFSs.  By their nature, by the very fact of being mine, rather than yours, they are inherently profound and fascinating.  They disrupt my serenity and confound my metabolism.  They disgust me when I should be building up an appetite, and when I really don’t want to be thinking of food they rack me with longing.  They even have the audacity to create entirely unwelcome associations in my mind between food and non-food-related activities and places.  I know I can’t exorcise these IFSs by “outing” them here, as you might do with a song you can’t stop thinking of till you pass it on to someone else.  No, these dyschronous gustatolfactions are going to continue to haunt my workworld no matter how I whine about them.  But I’m in a sharing mood so you’re going to hear all about it anyway.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

So Safe I Could Scream

Tuesday morning, day two of my “five days at the office” posts.  Once again, I’ll conclude with a random business name from Richmond or Albany, CA.  Just because I cherish structure.

I usually sit at an internal cube, sheltered from direct exposure to the outside world.  But last Tuesday, I realized that, with my supervisor and colleague both away, I ought as well undertake my routine desk work at their desks, with their associated expansive views west down Howard Street and north over across the cityscape.  It was 11:45 by the time I got fully situated.  At noon I happened to look up into a murky day of blue rain and heavy clouds, spring showers and squalls lashing the window at the whim of the wind....

Then I heard the sirens.  Oh yes, Tuesday, noon.  Sirens.  Every week.  But this time it was different - I really noticed them.  My mind flashed back to those ads I’ve been seeing lately on the busses: ears to the left and right, listening to a black background with a clock in the center.  “The Tuesday Noon Siren.  (Move over, foghorns.  Safety has a new sound.)” They’ve always blown civil defense sirens at noon on Tuesdays, as long as I can remember - a weekly warning warmup that almost seemed comforting in its regularity and soft keening call.  It was like the bellow of a she-bear to her cubs, an invitation home for cocoa and shelter - be it a defensible treestump, or radiation pills.  But the ads had alerted me - there was a new siren in town.  And I was right next to the windows, not squirreled away in the rabbitwarren.  And that mutha was heavy. 

The siren struck as I was already looking out down Howard Street, the brake lights and headlights, business marquees and billboards all peering dimly back at me through the rain.  The sound was intense, immense - a single rising wail that seemed to come from deep below the ground and rapidly, inexorably, rose in the air all around my building, all around me, till it reached an anguished alto beyond which both my heart and ears would start to bleed - and then, just as rapidly, ebbed away, dropping in volume and pitch till it extinguished itself in the sodden pavement, disappearing entirely within just a few seconds of its beginning.

One call of the siren, and it was over.  The city seemed not even to have noticed it; all went on as it usually did.  But, having heard it myself, loudly and clearly, I felt as if I’d lost something with spiritual value, in exchange for a useful but soulless tool.  The old foghorn of attentiveness had been replaced with the klaxxon of outraged anxiety.  It certainly fulfilled its primary goal of heightened awareness, and did so with chilling efficiency - but had replaced a warm beacon of safety with a yawning auditory emptiness, a sound that evoked an existential crisis.  I couldn’t tell, as I looked out over the apathetic city, if the siren was warning me of something that was coming, or something that was already here.

Random business name from Richmond or Albany, CA: Naral, Div.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Work Essay One: Binding Agent

For reasons of pure coincidence, I happen to have lined up five essays having something to do with the physical nature of the place where I work.  Easter Sunday was a day of wonderfully sensual experiences, as was saturday when Dave had his blowout party and indeed the whole damn weekend thank you very much.  I may get around to saying something about some of that later on.  Right now, it seems like I’m supposed to be writing about the workspace, so that’s what I’m going to do for the next five-count’em-five posts.  Plus, for no extra charge, each day I’ll throw in the inadvertently amusing name of a business in Richmond or Albany, two cities in the east bay. 

Without further ado, here’s post number one:

It’s my way to blame myself.  Each failed penetration, each ruined sheet and disassociated set, made me question my own competence, my very identity as a man.  Other people could snap one right off cleanly through a healthy stack without thinking twice.  I had to resort to multiples, back-and-front action, and even that dreaded fallback, clips.  It couldn’t have been that I’d gotten the only stapler in the building that didn’t work - I was screwing it up somehow.  I was pressing too hard and too fast, or not forcefully enough when it really counted.  Whatever was wrong, it was within my power to fix it.  I sought the answer within myself. 

Then, recently, my supervisor sat at my desk for a little business chat and handed me some documents to staple together for her.  “I don’t know,” I admitted in sorrow and shame, “if I’ll be able to do all of these.” “Of course you can,” she reassured me.  “I’ll show you.”

Four or five ruined staples later, pages 7ff still hadn’t been pierced by my delicate silver spikes, which, rather, formed the beginning of a carpet of mashed steel wires covering the corner of the small sheaf.  “This is ridiculous,” she muttered as she grabbed another Swingline off a neighboring desk and neatly nailed one right through the whole stack.  At that moment I began to doubt my own personal responsibility for my maniford stapling woes. 

It felt self-indulgent, even unto a perversity, to credit the possibility that some entirely outside element, randomly connected to me by the heedless cosmos, was the cause of three years and more of botched sheafs, cascading pages and a continually reinforced sense of ineffectuality The possibility held the sweet promise of self-actualization, but my world had not yet changed enough for me to rely on what was still really a mere hypothesis.  A theory was all well and good, but I needed hard physical proof. 

Two days later, real proof was delivered.  My supervisor stopped by that morning with a cruel new tool, matte black and knurled, poised like a snake with replaceable fangs.  “This is for you,” she announced as she handed it over.  Immediately it felt different in the palm of my hand - light, agile and capable, instead of heavy, plodding and reeking with the stench of failure.  I kept the old stapler in reserve in case the new one somehow failed in the clutch more spectacularly even than the old one typically did, but I considered it unlikely I’d need it.  I expected to be able to make the big switch very soon, and on a permanent basis.

For the better part of a week I didn’t need to staple a thing, not even once.  But when my chance eventually, inevitably, came to test out the spikemaster 3000 in the crucible of necessity, it came through with profound proficiency.  Each time I gripped it, it seemed to find a good place to clamp down on my papers, forming pleasing angles with healthy margins for a confident, reliable bite.  More importantly, when I closed my fist around it - on two pages, on five, or even ten or more - it obeyed me.  It secured them.  It pumped wire brads cleanly through each and every sheet, locking their trailing edges into a tidy pair of folded arms that quietly waited for a reader to depend on their gleaming steel strength.  The sound it made was a crisp machined click as the staple was driven into place, and a snap as the ends were efficiently bent back over themselves.  The first few, I was willing to treat as flukes - but once I successfully drove a staple through a dozen sheets in one one try, almost doubling my previous record with the old shoddy stapler, I had to sit back and laugh in imperial triumph.  I threw away the old stapler with derision and ensconced the new stapler in a place of honor at my elbow.  My days of perforating my paperwork were over.  My days as a stapledriving man have just begun.  I am the John Henry of paperwork cohesion.  I am staple-ready and proud to punch. 

Bring it on. 

Random Business Name from Richmond or Albany, CA: Handloggers.  (bonus fact: kel hears from people at work that it’s a great place to get wood.)

Friday, March 25, 2005

The Bottom Line

I’m marking time at a shoe store off Union Square, the most consistently exclusive shopping district in town.  Kel is getting sturdy waterproof street hikers for work; I’m waiting for whatever comes next.  The shop is attractively laid out on two levels; we’re upstairs, and we are not alone. 

A few rows of low shelves separate me from a couple of older people.  “Older,” here, means that they’re not just older than I am or than most people out and about seem to be this day - they are of an earlier era, each of them an image of well-worn maturity; “a couple of,” here, means that they are not a couple, per se, but rather are two individuals, thrust together by the vagaries of commerce.  She is there, as it happens, to buy shoes, and he is there to sell them to her. 

What I recall of their clothes is significant more for vagueness than substance - few details remain in my mind.  They’re both conservatively dressed in (for her) a dark pleated skirt past the knees and a plain blouse of good fabric and stodgy color; and (for him) dark slacks, a moderately interesting rust-colored business shirt, and an unpatterened necktie.  Both wear eyeglasses (unfashionable, dark, heavy frames), and each one’s hair, once jet black, is shot with grey.  It’s easy for me to guess wrong, but from their accents I’d say that he (with his crisp, rapidfire speech) is Filipino, and she (with her melodious range of intonations and intense emotional palette) is Chinese. 

He’s slim, worn like an old cane, and clearly well-trained: he knows the stock, of course, but he knows customer service too.  Union Square means serious customer service, and he takes his job seriously.  She, on the other hand, seems intent on putting him through his paces.  Short and heavyset, she’s barking orders at him - what she wants to see next, what size ranges, the heel size and shape.... he fits a mule onto her pudgy foot; she looks skeptically at it as if she had just discovered mold growing on her instep.

“I don’t like brown,” she grumbles.

Deferentially he reassures her: “It’s a lovely color on you, and very current in today’s lines...”

“Is this brown? Tan?  What color is this, anyway?,” she queries impatiently.

Ever patient, even longsuffering: “Taupe,” he replies.

“What?!!  Dope? You calling me a dope?”

“No no no madam, t-aupe.  With a T.  Like tuchas.”

I gasp inwardly at his use of this ethnic crudity.  She cuts her eyes at him and inclines her head for a moment as if a storm were gathering and about to be unleashed on him; then she nods curtly and looks down again at the shoes.  Tuchas, she seems to understand perfectly - and not only to understand but also to welcome with easy familiarity, this word from a culture to which I would not have thought either of them would have been significantly exposed.  It left me wondering how yiddish turned out to be the lingua franca of pacrim Sanfran.  Regardless, the fact is unassailable: the tuchas has landed - and at the international terminal, no less. 

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

And Now, a Bit of Fun

It’s nothing like where you live.  And nothing like what you imagine.  It’s an idyllic paradise - a wealthy, harbor-front community where everything and everyone appears to be perfect. But beneath the surface is a world of shifting loyalties and identities, of kids living secret lives, hidden from their parents, and of parents living secret lives, hidden from their children… clandestinely washing their hands exactly seven times, then drying them on a fresh towel, and then washing them seven more times.... always having the same breakfast in the same bowl, and then getting dressed and undressed five times in the same clothes before going out to surf before school, and then listening to the same insipid pop as they drive the exact same route to school, and if you make a mistake you have to go back home and start again.... looking like Abercrombie and Fitch models yet feeling compelled to straighten out things they see in public, like books on shelves or fruit in produce markets or people’s feet on the bus.... each beautiful, yearning soul crushed by a feeling of impending doom that pursues them through sun-soaked skies and over broad sinister beaches, just waiting for a crack in their regular patterns of behavior to create the kind of chaos that will suck them down and never let them breath fresh air again.... It’s the story of repetitive-behavior fathers and anxiety-stricken sons, husbands who can’t stop washing the car and wives who can’t sit still for five freaking minutes, and the unbalanced relationships between a group of fidgety teens in Southern California. 

It’s the OCD.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Tubular Belles

It’s been a while since I had a nice fat rant.  I’ve had a good day back to work today, with long complicated telephone calls during which I got to make people miserable, and I got some entertaining packages in the mail, and even worked a few hours by a window with a nice view of rainy San Fran.... I should be a happy man.  Yet I grouse.  And why?  Hypocrisy, that same old hypocrisy that has always bothered me.  This time, it’s re-arising as our nation’s second-greatest deliberative body has been adjusting the doings of federal court as Terry Schiavo’s case wends its unique way through the system.

Noshin’ Tashen

On a rainy day when I’ve felt a bit under the weather myself, it’s a good time to talk about cookies.  This past weekend I was rolling out esthertashen while Kel was talking to her family on the phone.  Kel mentioned what I was doing and her sister Karen honed right in: I’d apparently mentioned these cookies on the family website (yeah we’re a cyber-family) and she’d kept them in mind, wanted to make sure I didn’t try to weasel her out of the recipe.  Well, they came out beautifully this year, although I made fewer than I have in years - and even so, it took many hours, over two days.  No matter.  It is always worth it to make really good cookies.

And instead of making them generally available, which I’m sorry I can’t this year, recipients are already in place and better luck next year, I’m making these delectations infinitely available - by posting the recipe.  Just follow these simple instructions, and you can have more delicious cookies than you would ever care to eat at a sitting, by a margin of several pounds.

First, esthertashen are my version of the classic traditional hamentashen, a cookie baked in jewish communities to celebrate the festival of Purim, which is coming up on Saturday.  I’ve written enough about Purim before, I won’t overburden you here with more of that.  The point is, we make these cookies, traditionally, to demonstrate mastery over our enemies.  I prefer, however, to think of these sweet triangles of delicate pastry to be symbolic, somehow, of the heroine of the story, Esther (you may have read her book, I don’t know if a movie is in the works).  I’ve made these cookies all my life and I’d like to think I’ve got them down to both a science and an art. 

The easy part is on day one: fillings and dough.  I didn’t think to photograph this stuff because it’s so boring:

Filling: traditionally, you just use a can of Solo.  Solo: jewish for “whupass.” Open a can whenever you need to.  You do this, you’ll be fine; may your house be blessed and yadda yadda.  I grew up on Solo and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  I just don’t use it anymore. 

Instead, I like going out and getting about 16 to 20 ounces total of dried fruit per batch, and I usually make two batches with two different mixes. This year I stuck with mango-apricot and raisin-prune, both of which came out unusually well.  I just put the dried fruit (or fruits) in a heavy skillet with water covering them, and if I’m using apricots or something else tart (cherries, sometimes) I add a few tablespoons of sugar.  Then I simmer it, stirring occasionally, till the water is mostly reabsorbed into the fruit or evaporated off; I top it off with more water (or maybe fruit juice if I’m feeling wild) and let it simmer down again till the juice that’s left is turning into a thick syrup.  Run this all through a food processor and turn it into a puree; try not to miss any of the liquid.  Sometimes I’ve gotten all artsy and tried to gussy up the fruit goo with spices and wine, but it’s not worth the effort.  All it takes is a little sugar, or better, a sweet fruit with a tart one.  Once it’s cooked, pureed, and cooled, spoon it into a ziptop bag and let it rest in the fridge.  If there’s any left over after you’ve baked yer cookies, it makes a great addition to rich gravies, compotes, salad dressings, and it spreads very well on bread.  Or whatever you like to spread stuff on. 

Dough: again, a boring set of visuals, not worth even taking.  Start with the butter at room temperature - much easier that way.  Take one cup of unsalted butter and two cups of sugar and blend them into a creamy paste.  Then add two eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla, and about two tablespoons of orangeblossom essense (my secret ingredient), and blend again.  Add two tablespoons of milk and blend yet again.  In a separate bowl, combine 3-3/4 cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt; mix these together well and then blend into the wet ingredients.  Blend till it starts getting nice and dense, and then use your hands to knead it down a little more.  Once it’s fully combined, wrap it up and put it away for a few hours at least.  It’s better to let the dough rest and cool overnight if you can bear to.  (That is, it’s better for baking.  For eating raw, it’s good right away.)

So by now, you have your
basics.  It’s time to make some cookies, dude!

Cookies: Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick, or less if you can.  This demands a very well-floured work surface and a well-floured rolling-pin; even so, you’ll need to be delicate. 

Press out as many rounds from the rolled-out dough as you can, using a glass with a thin rim.  I use a cheap wine glass; it has a fairly conservative 2.5-inch diameter, which means that I get a lot of cookies out of each batch. 

Once you’ve pressed out as many rounds as you can, roll up the remaining dough into a ball, re-wrap it and put it back in the fridge.  Make sure each round can be manipulated - run a thin spatula under them gently and loosen any that have stuck to the surface, using flour liberally. 

Ready rounds, stripped of interstitial doughage.

Trim a small (tiny!) bit off the corner of a zip-top bag full of fruit goo.  Squeeze the bag gently toward the corner and
extrude the goo out the hole into the center of a round - how much depends on the size of the cookie you’re making, but I use about a teaspoon-and-a-half for a two-and-a-half-inch diameter round. 

Much goo has been extruded, my child.

Now,
fold up the round with your fingers at about 10 o’clock and two o’clock, so that it creases at 12 o’clock; pinch this crease closed and then
fold up the bottom to make two more corners at about 8 o’clock and 4 o’clock.  Pinch these closed too and you’ve got a triangular, fruitgoorific, raw cookie.  If the dough is thick they’ll spread when they cook; otherwise you can put them fairly close together on a cookie sheet.  I like using
parchment paper under them; it helps them release and they don’t burn. 

Once you’ve got your cookies on a sheet, roll out the “extra” dough that you gathered up from between the rounds and punch out more cookies; keep re-gathering the excess and re-rolling it till you’re down to scraps.  Waste not, want more cookies. 

They bake at 375 for about 15 minutes; I switch the pans after ten minutes so the ones on the bottom go on top; that way they brown more evenly.  Let them cool for a few minutes
on the trays, and then transfer to cooling racks if you have them; the bottoms need to dry out a little for maximum structual integrity.  These cookies are very tasty the day they’re made, but seem to get better over time.  They also microwave very well. 

Okay?  That should make it pretty easy for you.  Go out and make somebody happy.  Cookies are only the beginning.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Such are the Days of our Weeks

Today I am staying home on a sick day, because I feel dizzy and wretched, though not retching, which is a good thing I suppose.  I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow, but I just did not have the energy to face a whole Monday this morning.  I’m moving slow and my mind keeps wrestling with the idea that I should be at work, or working, or something, because it’s Monday.  I have to keep convincing myself that it’s okay for me to be resting at home right now.  I’ll get back to work on Tuesday.  “Tuesday?,” I ask myself sarcastically.  “Tuesdays suck.  Don’t start on a Tuesday dude, you’ll just regret it.”

At this point I am face to face once again with my weird relationship with the various days of the week.  It is a theme I’ve resisted here for a long time, probably because it is so hopelessly overdone.  The personalities of general chronologic concepts; amorphous morphology.  I’ve even done something very like it before.  It’s so hackneyed.  But then again, that’s never stopped me before.  “Hackney” was even the name of my college president.  It’s not that I seek out the hackn, but if things get hackneyed I can work with it.

And how I feel about the day actually is something I think about almost every day as I face it.  These notions accompany me; one might say, they haunt me - these disembodied calendrical personalities.  They are a part of my life, they are members of my household.  So here they are, and maybe this will be my first step toward not concerning myself with them anymore, evicting them from my heart’s mind:

Friday, March 18, 2005

Two Coats - for better coverage

It seemed to get dark early on the evening that I saw him join my cadre of fellow busriders.  He seemed self-contained and well-adjusted, quiet and polite - the sort of person that might have a nicely parted moustache, which he did.  When he moved from the front to sit across from me, tidy and and self-contained, he bestowed a sense of order and calm on his immediate surroundings.  The beige seats and blackglassed windows took on a homey quality in his presence.  He smiled to his knees and folded his hands into a clean, hospitable tent, and I felt at ease. 

Then I made my mistake: I kept looking.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

jiggling the handle

On Tuesday night I attended yoga alone.  Class started strangely: Nina, the instructor, announced that she was tired; maybe we’d spend the evening in shabasana - “deep relaxation” pose, flat on our backs.  We didn’t, but it clued me in that she needed to recharge her batteries.  Then she asked to be stretched, physically, and two of the class regulars volunteered to help her out - she laid on her her back with her arms up and they grabbed her wrists and ankles, yanked her fore and aft on the human rack as she giggled with glee.  As we then proceeded with a standard class of typically vigorous postures, she occasionally forgot where she was in the sequence - which move to do next, which side we’d “done” and which needed “doing”.... “left” and “right” sometimes muddled themselves in her instructions.  She was really fading on us.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Shazam!

I am such a tease, am I not?  To tempt you nice bloggy readers with a photo of myself in a hebrew cartoon shirt and then not to give you the goods.  Well wait no longer, fair blogsylvania.  Here I am wearing the shazam shirt.  I’ve saved the rest of the people in the photo the indignity of appearing with me.  And for the technically sophisticated among you, this is a cropped portion of a much-enlarged digital photo of a 4x4 snapshot.  What appears to be a gentle snowfall is my crappy desklamp shining on the matte finish.  You want a nice photo, go back down to “5 FT.“ I can’t get that one out of my head. 

and Furthermore, in honor of Jules, who’s writing some great stuff these days and is generally cool and wonderful anyway, and who recently entertained us all with a few snippets from her notepad: Here are a few snippets from my notepad!

Movie idea: tragic story of maladjusted but beautiful pharmacy college graduate who turns her mysterious powers on her cruel classmates - ApotheCarrie.  Don’t miss the incredible robitussin-dumping climax!

Character in search of a story, literally cruising the keyboard looking for a ride: Colin Backslash.

Who’s that stinky old fruit?
That stinky old fruit just happens to be the first prime minister of Israel!
Incredible!  That’s David ben Durian?

Revealer of typographic mysteries: The Man from U.N.C.I.A.L.

These are literally the sorts of notions that pollute my otherwise reliable mental functioning.  I’ve got all kinds of stories socked away too, but I don’t know, I’m feeling nonlinear right now.  Maybe I can pick up the trail of productive behavior now that these poisonous ideas have been voided from my delicate brainpan.  We can only hope.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Dipci

The story has been flitting around my head for a while, but two weekends ago I saw a photograph that kicked it up into the fully active files.  The photo is from my 11th birthday, I think, and it features me in my backyard with my little friends.  I’m wearing a favorite t-shirt: white, with a puffy cumulonimbus cartoon cloud covering the chestal region.  Emerging from the cloud: a bright yellow lightning bolt; written in the cloud: the cartoon expletive “shazam” - but in the mysterouis shapes of the block-printed hebrew alphabet.  I loved the hebrew shazam shirt and donned it regularly until it was removed from my laundry pile as hopelessly overworn and outgrown. 

That shirt was never truly replaced.... but a few years later I was lucky enough to receive an analogous piece of accessorization that I liked just as much. 

Caveat: this was the ‘70s, an era not known for discretion or subtlety.  For me, part of the style of the time was wearing big belts with big beltbuckles.  I had one, for example, with a big “US” on it, a replica of a civil war relic. 

My favorite, though, was the Coca-Cola buckle.  It was brass and rectangular, featuring the classic traditional “swoop” stripe and lettering that curved into familiar patterns.  It obviously read, “Coca Cola” - but in hebrew script, equally mysterious as the formal block forms but somehow, to me, more inviting, less rigid, warmer.  So it said Coca Cola, in funky curvy hebrew.  And it was a beltbuckle.  And it was around 1978.  That’s the setup.

Ignorance of a phenomenon is typically related either to the novelty of the thing in question, or the density of those in whom said ignorance is evidenced.  And hebrew has been going on for a good long time, so the utter and abject ignorance I encountered regarding it as a language with an alphabet of its own can only be evidence of extraordinary denseness on the part of most everybody in my junior high school.

Dude - your beltbuckle is upsidedown.

Oh, yeah, no - it’s in hebrew.

Yeah well whatever, it’s upsidedown.

Do you know what hebrew is?  It’s not english, you know.  It’s a whole different alphabet.  It’s like.... chinese.

That is not chinese, dude.

Right - but it’s hebrew, so it’s....

Upsidedown.  Dork, don’t argue with me, it’s totally obvious.  Just admit you’re wearing it upsidedown, upsidedown-boy.  Admit you’re wrong.

Okay, take a look at this.

(taking care not to antagonize the snuffling oaf, I remove my belt for buckle-display purposes.)

Look, this is how I was wearing it, right?  The stripe is high on the right, low on the left - same as on Coke cans you can get at any store, the same design exactly except for the lettering. 

Asswipe, it’s still upsidedown, or can’t you tell? 

Oh yes?  When I turn it upsidedown again, then, it should be right side up, right? 

Yeah.

So let’s take a look at this. 

Sort of hard to read, huh?

What the hell?

If this is right, then that must be a “d.” Right?  D - i - c - p - c - i D - i - p - c - i.  Is that what it says?

Yeah.

So do you think this says “dicpci dipci” in english, or Coca Cola in some other language you don’t understand? 

What the hell is “dicpci dipci”? 

okay… it is the Israeli version of Coca Cola. 

Oh!  Now it makes sense!  So, it’s upsidedown because they’re on the other side of the planet?

Yeah.  That’s it.  Pretty clever, right?

No way, man.  You think way too much. 

Uh-huh.  And you don’t think enough.  Between us we average out about right, I’d say.

(Exeunt players, with hoots and beatings.)

Pt Reyes in 9,000 words

The weekend, once again, was to be envied.  Tara got in on Friday night and the four of us had many loungetastic experiences together.  Yesterday was North Beach, about which I’ve said enough already so suffice it to say, it was a gorgeous day and we walked the length of Columbus in both directions (consecutive, not concurrent), with stops at cool eastern antique and africo-oceanic arts shops, Mario’s for sandwiches and suds, Stella for a yumtastic treat or two, and countless windows and weirdos to keep us entertained along the way.  But we’ve talked about all that before, so I won’t bore you. 

And I also have already posted photos from Pt Reyes - from Chimney Rock, at least.  But some of the ones I took during our outing on saturday came out particularly well, I thought.  We also saw several whales spuming about a quarter-mile out to sea, and lots of deer of course; we were buzzed by some huge turkey vultures - they are more beautiful than I’d given them credit for - and saw kites and hawks, and a huge blue heron just taking off from a roadside marsh.  Wildflowers were also abundant and glowed with preternatural brightness in the gloom of the overcast day.

Naturally I didn’t get any decent photos of any of those nice animals or flowers, but there’s plenty of time for that.  Instead, permit me to disgorge upon you, in lieu of taking the time and trouble to type an essay worth reading, a few photos of stuff out at the tip of Pt. Reyes:

Edge of the Continent photos:

Not a great day for getting a tan, but a very beautiful day at the beach nonetheless.

Stairs leading down to the lighthouse.  They say it’s the equivalent of 30 stories.

The lighthouse facing off against the inexorable horizon. 

Desuitude photos:

From Sir Francis Drake Highway, the main drag up the west Marin coast, coming into Inverness - the last town before the park.

A shed at the lighthouse station.

Just off the trail back to the shuttlebusses I saw this post driven into the sandy ground, surrounded by, apparently, jack squat.  The post itself seems to come to about my hip - maybe a yard, not five feet.

This used to be a lifeboat station out at Chimney Rock; now it’s preserved as a historical whatsis.  Elephant seals and harbor seals abound - the beaches are literally littered with them.  The male Elephants can weigh 3,000 lbs (7 billion cubic centimeters) and they only do three things - sleep, fight and procreate.  They aren’t eating this season.  A 45-foot (6.3 hectare) grey whale pulled into this inlet two weeks ago and fed for 5 hours in 20 foot (5.43 dozen angstrom) deep water, calmly watching the gapers on the observation platform.  Anyway I thought the lifeboat station was pretty cool too.

All this and nature too:

This is a close view of some of the abundant orange moss.  I did not mess around with the color here, this stuff is so bright it looks like the rocks are melting into magma.  But this stuff is cool and soft, and it doesn’t have that sulphurous reek.  It smelled great out there under the low clouds. 

One other cool thing about the low clouds is how they raise the humidity and really pull out the color and detail in the rock formations.  This is an interface between beautifully patterened sandstone and Pt Reyes conglomerate, which is actually a sort of rock but sounds like the bad guy’s business in a tv drama that involves gunplay and fisticuffs near the end.  The point being, I like the rocks.

I’ll get these on the photoblog when I have a chance.  This is going to have to be it for now.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Moving On Out

Did you miss me?  Yesterday turned out to be one of my busiest days at work ever ever, so I guess it’s just as well the site was down - I didn’t even have time to prepare a post or any of that good stuff.  If sitelessness was ever going to happen to me, yesterday was probably the best possible day for it.  And special kudos to patricia, whose tireless efforts get this site up and keep it churning along, which is as much as I can ever say about my own self on a good day thank you very much. My friend, I am truly in your debt.  and you know what I mean. 

anyway.  in anticipation of the weekend, here’s a snarky dialogue I wish I’d had more than once: 

* So.  You like it here?

* Yes, we do.  We really do.  It feels humane.

* I ask because I’m thinking of moving out of the City.

* Oh.  You know, around here people call this “the City.”

* Oh sure.  That’s cute.  But everybody knows there’s only one city, really.

* Well everyone from New York knows that, certainly.  But anyway, I thought you loved it there.  Back in the day, it was all you ever talked about.

* I do love it. I love the city and I love my life.  I’ve got an awesome apartment 25 stories above Columbus in a great doorman building; my business is thriving - thriving!; I attend opera openings and gallery openings two, three times a week, it’s awesome....

* So why are you thinking of moving to this backwater burg?

* Aw don’t play modest, this is a nice enough town too.  But as I look around here I can see that you operate on a different currency here, and I think I’d do better with it. 

* Different currency?  Can you elaborate?

* Of course I can.  In the City - you know which one I mean - there is one, and only one, relevant currency: the coin of the realm.  It’s cash, baby.  Everything is expensive and the only way to impress anyone is by having more money than they do.

* That sounds pretty superficial.

* No, you don’t understand - it’s the opposite of superficial.  Everybody is smart and funny; everybody is talented and has talented friends; everybody looks good and reads good books and has great style.  You go to an opening or a party and you’re smart and erudite and articulate and you don’t even stand out.  You meet someone and start talking and to her you’re just another guy with an ivy degree who knows the libretto to Rigoletto by heart and volunteers with the opera gala steering committee - that stuff’s all too common, it doesn’t distinguish you from the pack.  The whole point of her conversation is just to figure out how rich you are and how much money you make.  And if you can’t impress her in this particular arena within a minute or two, she’ll just move on to somone else.  And the thing is, I’ll never be able to compete at the really high levels there.  Those guys are worth more than I’ll ever be, I don’t stand a chance against them.  And now I’m pushing 40 - I’m 40 - and I’m losing the race.  So I’m thinking it’s time I picked a different race - one where I’ve got a better chance to shine, where I’ll make a better impression.  And I’ve been out here enough times to know that I’ve got what it takes to make the impresion I want to make in this town.

* Well you seem to have it all figured out.

* I do.  I’ve considered it carefully.  Around here people seem more into confidence, coolness and personality - the interior life and the essential man, if you will.  It’s not money, it’s charisma that’s in play.  And nobody has a corner on that market.  I’m hella charismatic and I could play that game all night long with anyone.  It’s a competition I know I can win.  So I’m thinking of switching my game, out of the situation where I now have no real chance of ever winning, to here, where all I have to do is be myself and people will be blown away by me.  You don’t see any holes in my logic, do you?

* Just a little one.  I agree that money is not the primary social criterion for everybody around here.  It is for some, of course; some folk are fabulously wealthy and you’d never get the time of day from them -

* Not like in the City.

* No?  Oh well, I stand corrected.  And maybe, if you could stretch your imagination, maybe they’re not so far off your city-bred mark as you might imagine.  But those aren’t the people you’re interested in, are they?  You want to impress the people who look past the wallet and into the soul.

* Right.  Now you get it.  Right.

* So here’s my point: the kind of confidence and personality that succeed here have nothing to do with your career, or your opera tickets, or where your apartment is - it’s all about really liking yourself and being a likeable person to others as well.  You need an inner light that shines out with everything you do, a fulfilled personality that’s evident as soon as you start talking.  That’s not an easy game if you’re not used to playing it.  There is still a competition, don’t think for a second that there isn’t one - one with strong players and weaker ones.  Frankly it doesn’t sound like you even recognized that the game is on, much less its rules or standards.  And if you can’t see that the game is even on, you stand a very poor chance of success at it.  I’d recommend that you stick with the game you already understand.  At least you know where you stand that way.

* Don’t patronize me.  There is no game here, that’s why I know I’d kick everybody’s ass. 

* Once again, I stand corrected.  I guess your logic is flawless.  And I trust that you have other contacts in the area besides me?  Because as far as I’m concerned, chum, move out here and good luck - you are on your own.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

butt of course

It’s been a heavy few days, in so many ways.  Oh look, a little poem!  This is the attitude that is getting me through this week.  After I put in a very full day of work and etc yesterday, my dear brother-in-law* Phil showed up for a conference that runs through the week; we met downtown and rode home together on my ol’ reliable 38L and he’s staying here through Sunday.  Once home, we quickly changed clothes and then dashed out with Kel (just arrived home herself) for Tuesday Night Yoga Blowout - the class that takes two full days of workplace tension that’s built up since the weekend ended, and blows it right out your third eye.  Nina, the instructor, has a lot of personality and likes to make sound effects as she helps people into poses; she sometimes breaks into a little a capella R&B, well-punctuated with self-aware laughter.  I have really come to rely on these weekly rejuvenation sessions. 

*okay, sister-in-law’s husband.  so sue me.

After class was over, Phil, Kelly, and I sat around eating burritos and discussing our respective experiences in class.  Phil noted that Nina used the word “bootie” a lot.  “Shift your bootie to the left.  Push your bootie straight back.  Stretch out right through your bootie.” He thought it was a fun word to use in that context; one of his instructors back up in the greater Puget Sound region refers to that region as “your sitting flesh.” This circumlocution totally cracked (heh) Kel and me up.  How tortured is that?  “Sitting flesh.” It’s almost existential.  It sounds dead, cold. If I heard that in class I’d totally laugh out loud, but I don’t think I’d gain any deeper apprecation for that part of my anatomy.  So to speak.

- Which just made me think that there must be better ways to give instructions to large groups of people with regard to their derrieres - phrases that inspire and invite, without objectivizing or diminishing.  These phrases, moreover, should offer a range of shades, from the coldly scientific to the aggressively athletic to the brazenly voluptuous.  These phrases could have the power to bring a sophisticated, affirmative somatic sensibility to all mankind, or at least, that share of mankind that takes group exercise classes in english.  But that’s still a critical slice of the pie.  These people are worth saving.  They need help understanding their own physical bodies, and existing linguistic conditions just are not giving them what they need. 

Ever the humanitarian, I leapt in to fulfill this desparate, if heretofore unrecognized, demand.  Here, then, are the fruits of my labor, the output of my efforts.  Here are TEN WAYS TO REFER TO BUTTS WHILE TEACHING EXERCISE CLASSES, in no order:

moon globes
walnut cracker
posterior protruberances
bottomses
supraperianal musculature
“slappy” and “spanky”
j-lobes
mr tushiebutt
the back 40
thunder mountain

you’re welcome.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Sevenses

Hey, thanks, everybody, for your support over the past day or so.  It’s been a strange and disrupted time for us but your friendship has helped to make sense out of the circumstances.  We miss Rufus very much but we know that, to the extent it was time for her to go, she went with dignity, and to the extent that she can endure, she always will.  As will we all, one way or another.  We have much to learn from our fellow species, and from the natural cycle wherever it rouses itself. 

A few weeks ago our dear friend sawni was traipsing in the woods and found an old iron oven door.  It’s a small thing, only about seven inches square at the most, deeply carved with archaic reliefwork and richly covered in mottled rust.  She somehow sensed that I would cherish it so she sent it to me; I find it deeply satisfying and am happy to present a few photos of it.  They’re on the photoblog too. 

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have something of subsance to say.  Hey, there’s always a first time.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Rufus

Over the past few days Rufus had been acting unusually sociable and energetic.  She was traipsing all over the front of the house, where she rarely ventured, and spent more than her share of time nestled on Kel and my laps - sometimes simultaneously.  She’s been talky and sassy and full of life.  God bless you, Roofer. 

I guess we got Gumdrop the cat when I was only six or so, and she was a faithful companion till after I had gone off to college.  While I was in college, during our sophomore year, Jon and I got a little grey kitten from a friend, and Kashmir stayed with us throughout the next three years and then moved with Jon to New York when we all graduated; her little friend Biafra, matched to her grey perfectly and as neatly shorthaired as Kashmir was luxuriantly fuzzy, stayed in Philly with our housemate Bill.  Kel and I moved back to LA, to my dad’s house, where my sister joined us not long thereafter, in 1987; she had freaky friends up in the wilds of the Laurel Canyon uplands and one of them gave her a cat somehow: Sydney.

Sydney was a good housecat and we knew we’d miss her when we moved out (to a charming adobe-style flat with a no-pets policy).  Then, shortly before the day of our big move, dad found an abandoned and adorable doberman mix and brought him home.  Syd hated dogs with a passion, possibly because one had once bit off most of her tail, and she started living on the roof; she’d peek down over the eaves to complain down to us when we turned off the lights at night and lay down in our bed pushed up against the biggest window in the room.  She was too pathetic, and we wheedled permission to bring her with us to the new apartment.  Then she came with us up to San Francisco, where we moved her into a one-bedroom apartment at the bottom right corner of Pacific Heights - elegant lodgings but not what a former outside cat was used to.  She was climbing the walls, and for a little bitty thing like she was, she really ran the household.  We knew we had to get her a playmate to keep her company, so we went to the SFSPCA and fell in love with Rufus.

We loved Rufus because she sat quietly, almost smilingly, at the back of her cage, watching us and appreciating our attention but not yelling at us or making a nuisance of herself.  She was at once the most engaging and the least overbearing of the kittens available. While we were meeting her a very flamboyant and effusive man was trying to select a kitten to adopt and they were all shrinking from him in well-founded fear; he was hooting and cooing and so deeply engaged in his own fantasies of cat-ownership that he was oblivious to their discomfort in his presence.  As we walked out with our paperwork the staff were discussing how to prevent this guy getting a kitten.  I felt badly for him - his true desire to care for a pet was unquestionable, even as his fitness for the task was in serious doubt.  I knew it wouldn’t be good for any animal to live with him but I knew he’d be missing out on one of life’s truly sublime pleasures if he were denied a pet. 

But enough about him - we got ours, and an adorable one too.  We were stumped for a name, though, so she was just the little kitty, or love-pudding, or muffin, for a few weeks.  Eventually we realized that the only name we both liked was gender-divergent, but it was time to name the damn cat so Rufus she was, inspired by George Carlin’s character in the Excellent Adventure movie.  We learned some things about Rufus during this time: she was quiet, passive, clumsy; she had a big appetite; she did not clean herself or move around very much.  She liked to lie down over a sleeping person’s throat sometimes, and she liked to crawl into any paper shopping bags that might be left on the kitchen floor.  She liked to lie down on the ironing board, which we’d covered with a towel.  She was, as I mentioned, adorable. 

Sydney had other impressions: she ignored Rufus, hissed at her, gave her the hairy eyeball - and then, after about a week of this, Syd went missing.  We searched high and low for her, even into the airshaft next to the bathrooms down the center of the building, but she was nowhere to be seen.  At our wits’ end, we turn out the lights for the night, and immediately heard her yowling outside: she’d somehow fallen - or jumped - from our window five stories up.  This in itself would not have necessarily been too bad for her - cats are designed to absorb all that impact through a remarkable arrangement of not having a collarbone and being built out of slinkies.  She called up to us to get her; we scampered down and grabbed her and brought her back up.  She looked fine till she sneezed blood.  Since we were on a steep hill, instead of landing flat and absorbing all that downward energy properly, she had cracked her chin and split the roof of her mouth.  A nearby clinic stitched her up quite nicely, and afterwards she was much too sore to stalk away indignantly when the new kitten curled up next to her and fell asleep purring softly.  After about a week of that treatment, Syd realized that the new cat was not a threat, and might even be a nice addition to the household. 

Syd was always the dominant personality, but when she died three or four years ago, Rufus began to come into her own.  Already a cat well into her mature years, heavy-footed and thick-bellied, possessed of minimal interest in grooming and amazing capacities for motionlessness, a dear friend and a true comfort in times of difficulty - Rufus began to come into her own.  She and the dog got their relationship working on healthier terms; we found out she was diabetic and, with that under control with twice-daily injections, she seemed happier and healthier.  She had more than her share of foibles and quirks, but they were all endearing.  Mostly all, anyway; all of them worth talking about.  She wouldn’t often move, but when she came up to you and rubbed you with her forehead and the tip of her nose for fifteen or twenty minutes, you really felt loved. 

Over the past few days this behavior really came to the forefront.  Roof was trotting her portly self up to the living room, where we sometimes brought her but where she rarely ventured on her own - not only to sit on our laps and purr and rub us with the corner of her mouth, but even to munch brazenly right in front of us on the nice plant that Kel has always had to take such pains to protect from her.  She hopped up on the bed with me last night, or two nights ago?, rubbing the tip of her ear across my eyebrows so I would wake up and cuddle with her.  She just wanted the crook of my arm in which to curl up and fall into a wheezing snoring purring sleep, and I was happy to oblige. 

Of course, she never did learn to clean herself as part of these self-improvements.  Her chin was speckled and her coat was unkempt; we would brush her out but her skin was tender so we had to go easy on her.  Her toenails were long from lack of use and filthy from her habitual failure to do anything to clean them, as most cats do.  She needed regular baths and stylistic attention, and still she scattered filthy cat litter all over the house, onto and into the bed, through both the clean and dirty laundry, wherever she could; her litterbox skills were modest at best and more frequently merely approximate, but she did her best and there was never any disputing her good faith.  Her little hygiene challenges hardly eclipsed the pleasure of her company.

This afternoon I sat down at the computer to manipulate some photos when I heard a noise come from where Rufus often slept, a noise which should not have been coming out of her.  I came around the desk to find her stretched out, eyes open, mouth agape and grimacing, immobile and nonresponsive.  She was breathing in fast hard pants.  We bundled her up and got her to the local emergency pet hospital; this was at about 3.  We called at 6 for an update and they told us she was recovering slowly: responsive but unfocused, suffering from spasms in her limbs, and apparently suffering from a previously-undiagnosed liver ailment so serious they thought it likely to be cancer.  We drove back to the hospital and spent a few minutes with the lovemuffin in a sterile little exam room; she was really out of it and seemed to alternate between recognizing us and wanting to go home; and total insensate fear of everything.  Yes, I’m anthropomorphizing, but I lived with her for 15 years and I know what I think goes on in those deep yellow eyes.... she wanted out, and we gave it to her.  At about 6:30 tonight, Rufus was put to sleep with a massive dose of phenylbarbitol; it was over within 20 seconds. 

Rufus was an excellent cat, a dear friend, and a kindred soul.  I have thought several times as I type this at the computer where I was sitting when I heard her go into seizure, that I’ve heard her clattertapping her way in to see what I’m doing; I keep expecting to hear her yowl at me to stop typing and give her some cuddles.  I’m not going to hear that anymore, though, and no one is going to tell me to stop typing.  It’s time to stop, though, I think.  There’s a time for everything to come to an end.  Thanks, Rufus.  I miss you.

a sweet friend and a good cat

Friday, March 04, 2005

Hiding the Giant

Back when I was little I didn’t need glasses; I could see just fine wherever you pointed me.  That’s why I’m pretty sure the giant was for real.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

I guess word gets around

Yesterday I got two great messages.  One was a voicemail from my dear friend Lisa, at whose house I traditionally do a big passover ceremony.  Passover is approaching and I’ve been in touch with Lisa and her family about the schedule and plans in general.  Yesterday morning Lisa called me on behalf of her five(?)-year-old daughter Sophie, who could clearly be heard in the background prompting mom on what to say: that Sophie thinks it would be a good idea for me to have a special passover ceremony for the kids, with pictures instead of words so the kids can understand it, and a chance to play and to have fun for passover… I think it’s a Great Idea and I’m all over the “thinking it out” phase already.  My favorite part though, was just before the tape on the machine cut off, Soph was really getting up a head of steam telling Lisa what to tell me, and Lisa offered, “why don’t you just tell him yourself?,” and the tape ended with Sophie in the background shouting “NO NO NO NO N...”

The other great message was an email from my friend Mitchell, which whose family we spent a lovely evening last saturday.  Seems his son’s godparent’s friend was randomly surfing blogs and found this site, realized that she knew who I was talking about in my 3/1 post, and got word to the good man, who wrote back saying that his life was now complete - he’d been blogged.  Well I hope I didn’t bring ya down good buddy but here’s two considerations to considerate: first, you were blogged in the spirit of sharing joy and good times, and with the warm