Saturday, November 29, 2008

Geary Personalities Two: The Trepidatious Creeper - Plus Aghast Updates!

I have been having a delightful time, sleeping in and overeating and partaking of various other excesses.  I’ll bring the photos and quips soon enough, for my own gratification and memories - but that’s not why you come to the Chucklehut, is it?  No, you’re more about the grub’s eye view on the wonders of urban living and a healthy whiff of stale streetwise bodywash.  So let’s get back to the main event, shall we? 

The last post was about a Geary Blvd personality, and so, as it turns out, is this one as well.  This next fellow kept more to himself than the grubby groper.  It’s also been longer since I saw much of him.  Even so, for me he’s one of the key subfluences of the big boulevard.  Any taxonomy that omitted him would be by definition incomplete. 

The man I have in mind was the Trepidatious Creeper of Geary Boulevard.  A tidy Asian man with a slight figure and undistinguished visage, he must have been in his 30s but carried the weight of many decades more on the trembling reed of his slender shoulders.  He was usually dressed in a short-sleeved poplin collared shirt, buttoned all the way up and tucked into tightly-belted khaki chinos.  Sneakers rounded the ensemble, scuffed and ragged, but really, the whole vibe was pretty ragged to begin with.  His clothes appeared as clean as they’d get but very old and tired, hems frayed and fabric worn thin.  His hair, too, projected diffusion, a little longer than it had to be and all pretty much completely straight.  From one point at the top of his head a wiry stand of silver-black hair shot out in a wide flat circle, forming an essentially flat plane above his head from which was suspended a heavy mop that framed his face in a perspective-twisting convexity of stiff bristles.  But the hair was not what anyone would really have noticed about him - not at first, anyway. 

I’d see him already out in the thick of things on the Richmond district sidewalks of Geary Boulevard.  They’re not particularly mean streets, but they do get busy and they keep their own counsel.  It is a hard place to be very different, and this guy seemed a little more different than most.  He’d toe up to a crack in the sidewalk or a pavement groove or a painted line, just standing there, looking at it, glaring at it, watching it, both eyes burning with debilitating singlemindedness.  His body would tense up, as if straining at gravity; he’d shift up and down in his vertical plane like a willful little marionette, embodying somehow the will to move without actually moving.  He’d almost totter forward, but the chafed toes of his sneakers seemed locked down and he powerless to move them. 

Then he’d take a different tack: he’d try to relax, uncurling his shoulders by force of will, bellying his breathing.  One could sense a buildup within him, potentiation, a growing conviction that he could do it, and then one earthbound foot would lift at the heel, just a little, but easily, and that heel would push the toe forward, just almost a little, but a few millimeters of pavement would be eclipsed by his recalcitrant foot, and that would be a half a step.  One could see the relief and pride on his face as he looked down at his no-longer-even toes, and then the grim determination that would set in again as he steeled himself to move that other foot up to meet its mate. 

Every shred of his energy and every atom of his being were committed to every part of every step, or step towards a step, that he took, or tried to take.  He’d sweat with the effort even on foggy days and all the color seemed to seep out of his clothes and skin into the evergrey sidewalks to which he seemed anchored.  Only his hair, monochromatic though it was, seemed to reflect the intensity of mental agitation that was going on within him as it burst like a static halo from his overwrought scalp.  Man, that was some crazy hair. 

And that was the Trepidatious Creeper of Geary Boulevard.  He may be coming your way, but you’ve got plenty of advance warning now.

Or have you?  AGHAST UPDATE TIME!  I had hardly finished scrawling the above paean in my notebook and was on my way home from work yet again, as I seem to do almost every time I go to work in the first place.  The 38 dropped me at 12th and I trotted across Geary at the light.  As I came up the curb and turned to the sidewalk, I saw a man running up the block, head down and arms pumping.  His path veered a little from side to side, but not enough to slow him down much or render him a potential threat.  As he - rapidly - approached, I seized upon something about his high-waist pants, tightly belted over a tucked-in short-sleeve poplin button-up.... it was him again, the Trepidatious Creeper, reappearing as if summoned, fleet and in the flesh, running to make that cross-Geary light.  Each foot was pounding that pavement with heedless confidence and then kicking off, launching forward into the void with each eager pace, lamplit sidewalk flashing past beneath him in the autumn gloom.... and his hair, that crazy hair, was much more white than silver now, and he’d shaved it down to a tamed and mannerly nub.  It appears, therefore, to me, that the Trepitatious Creeper has left the boulevard.  Keep your eyes open, he’s on the run!

AGHAST UPDATE THE SECOND: And even as the one was summoned, were they both; and lo, tho one appeared before me, so it was with both of them.  Like catching a 90-year-old blind arthritic deer in your headlights, I was heading out a few days ago for some family fun (family included, supply your own fun) when who appeared right in front of our vehicle but the Gropester himself.  He stood curved like a beseeching hand in the middle of Anza Street, crossing at 16th Avenue with the help of a woman who seemed to be having a difficult time of it.  The Groper was rigid and motionless, frozen stiff with terror and disorientation as traffic backed up patiently on all four sides of the intersection.  We were in front (westbound) and therefore had an unimpeded view of the conflicts within and without.  The old man’s pants were rolled at the cuffs and he looked stricken, abandoned, lost in the middle of a wilderness of roaring cars and receding curbs, as if there wasn’t someone standing helplessly at his elbow trying to help him.  His helper looked anxious, using eloquent body language that was clearly illegible to him, consequently forced then to lay hands on him to urge him forward to the sidewalk twenty feet ahead, a goal to which he appeared unaccountably but very actively resistant.  I couldn’t help but notice how close her face was to his, and how she strained to remain blind to so much of what I knew she was unable to avoid seeing. 

Monday, November 24, 2008

Monday Afternoon: A Triad for your Entertainment (so-called)

I have another grubby Geary story for you but I don’t think I’m going to sit around this evening typing it up before I go home.  Maybe later on tonight?  O you should be so lucky, Mr and Mrs Lucky McFortunestein.  Let me, instead, fill the emptiness with a few items of note:

NEW RELIGION: And it’s so easy to join!  I like it because of the funny words.  You may have your own reason to like it, but if you want to go with “funny words” too, I’m okay with that.  But “neckties for the ladies” is also acceptable. Pastafarianism is so passe! 

A few weeks ago I finally finished my entire box of staples.  It took me nearly eight years of steady staple-abusing work, but I used them all up at last.  I celebrated by getting myself a new staple box.  I wrote “today’s date” on it so I could see how long the new box lasts but now I realize I probably should have actually written the date.  Live and learn.  Seven or so years from now I’ll have a chance to correct my error. 

Product alert: I am informed by those who know that people in California can now get Golden Star Jasmine Tea at Whole Foods Groceries.  My recommendation: do so, and try it with a clear palate and an open mind.  It’s sophisticamatated stuff.  Enjoy while it’s still relatively unknown, or else it’ll all be bought up by Dubai and Macronesia and places like that where double-fermented sparkling jasmine tea is the only game in town. 

Final note of note: the Department of Homeland Security ("We Give The Whole Country a Wedgie") has finally seen fit to approve a visa for my little tyro, Jesse, who languishes in Korea waiting for us to pick him up.  Should be soon, tigertyke.  Maybe not this year, but if not, soon thereafter.  And there was much rejoicing!

This, then, is enough, then, for now.  Then.  And for all of you who have been boosting my spirits while I’ve been waiting for the G-Men to get with the program and send my boy home, as well as those who have been looking for funny-sounding fulfillment, fastener-utilization updates, or refreshing and fragrant non-alcoholic sparkling beverages, thanks for stopping by.  If you were looking for the story about the guy who holds himself back, or the photos of the train exhibit in the conservatory of flowers with the SF landmarks made out of recycled chazzerai, well, come back later.  I’m done for the nonce. 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Geary Depredations Part 1: The Grubby Groper

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

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

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

He walks down Geary, unimaginably slowly, slower than slow.  It isn’t even walking, really - it’s an incremental shuffle, a bare slip of one toe past the other with mindnumbing deliberation.  Even so, that progress, slight though it is, follows only after that of his breathlessly outstretched fingertips.  He walks, always, with one hand (if not both) extended before him protectively.  He leans forward on a creaky spine, his jacket stiff over his bent frame, his hand probing into the unknowable obscurities of the void that incessantly faces him. 

If there’s anything on the store-side of the sidewalk - a wall, a rack of newspapers, a pallet of melons, whatever - he traces his way forward using that as his guide, dragging a thick filthy fingertip almost lasciviously along, creeping at his usual glacial pace, with his other hand still reaching forward to fend off imagined, anticipated disasters.  When there’s a doorway or some other gap in his tactile orientation structure, though, he locks up.  Both hands lift up before him, and he cuts back to taking sub-measurable steps.  He seems aware enough of his environment occasionally to ask a passerby - once, me - to help him to the wall again.  His voice is an eastern european caricature as he flags you down with repeated pleas that somebody eventually answers in the same way that somebody will eventually look for a crying baby.  In my case, he started begging beside me, “Sonny, please!” They were well-chosen words and I stopped on a dime.  His hand felt like snakeskin and I couldn’t tell the dirt spots from the liver spots on his head.  “Hep me - hep me get bak t’th’ wall.” I guided him, the work of a second or less except that this guy is a brittle old twig and I couldn’t push him too fast… “Hep me,” he’d plead, “Is’t very far?” Not at all, three steps forward.  He recoiled visibly at the idea of such an audacious trek; in the end it took several minutes to get him back to the safety of the shopfront less than ten feet away. 

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

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

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Feel Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, November 09, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, November 08, 2008

MYSTERY!  Plus a welter of details, gustatory and otherwise

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

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

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

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

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Hardly Strictly: Photos from the Bluegrass Nursery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Why I Didn’t Vote For Obama

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

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Valedictory

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

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

Valedictory

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

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

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