Yesterday, just after sunset,

I was trying to slow down and savor the rapidly vanishing weekend, so I thought it would be nice to stop in at Dream Fluff, a donut place on Ashby I've been frequenting off and on for most of my three and a half decades in the East Bay. Teri and Jackie (and I) love the old-fashioneds (chocolate glazed or plain). Picked up a couple five in a nice white paper bag, then crossed back over to Espresso Roma, a cafe notable for its high ceilings and many decently-spaced tables, aside from the great coffee drinks that the non-English-speaking baristas can somehow dependably produce in a minute flat.

Got my latte, settled in at a table facing the door, and watched the ebb and flow of the clientele.

An old man, short, hunched, with tufts of white hair on either side of his head and a face dominated by dark, wide-set eyes and a big hawk-like nose, walked in, stood on line for his light supper then sat down at a nearby table, smiling at the two young women who were just leaving. They returned his warm smile, for which I was oddly grateful.

I couldn't help thinking, "Old father, where is your wife?" As a shadow crossed my heart.

The part of SF I work in,

(a few miles south of AT&T Park, for all you baseball fans) is pretty funky; lots of auto body shops, warehouses, and strip malls. It's usually referred to as Bayview, but, as you may have suspected, you'd have to go the highest elevation, climb the tallest tree, and then whip out a pair of high-power binoculars to get any glimpse of the Bay from there.

A lot of Bay Area people are either ex-New Yorkers (and even after thirty-six years and two kids here, that's how I still identify myself) or have spent some time in NYC, so it's a popular past-time to describe the different areas and neighborhoods here in terms of their NY equivalent. (Best example is, if downtown SF is Manhattan, then Oakland is Brooklyn.)

In these terms, Bayview could be certain parts of the Bronx or Queens.

So - being a guy whose lunchtime routine over the past years has been to eat something I brought from home at my desk, then go someplace to read and drink a latte for a few minutes, I realized I may have a challenge. Just to underline the nature of the area, I drove around this week for a couple of miles and could not even find a STARBUCKS. That's saying something.

But I finally did stumble on a corner cafe:

good coffee, nice light, even a decent lunch menu should I need to nosh.

Now if I could just get them to do something about the Spanish hip-hop on the radio....

Stuck in traffic in the rain at nightfall

can be beautiful

Too tired to write

so I'll just share an image.

I call it serene confusion:

A Mixed Blessing

I have worked with a  lot of different kinds of people - young, old, rich, poor, white, not white. And to a great degree, most of my colleagues have shared their opinions with me - either face to face or on-line.

That honesty and sharing are the good news.

The bad news: a lot of what they share is - how shall I say this - lunacy.

Could be a Miss Manners question, but what do you say when someone you believe is a good-hearted, generous person shares extremely questionable "data" with you?

This is not snark. Serious question.

June 6? 1972

Had occasion to visit downtown Oakland once again

and was once again struck by its beauty. And then reflected on the fact that most of the rest of the country still visualizes it as an urban hellscape.

I got your urban hellscape right here, pal:

It's All Context

The new job requires a daily commute over the Bay Bridge. This can be an emotional challenge, but when you're driving toward a new situation, sometimes hope makes even a dark sky and a sea of crawling cars something striking -

 - and then when the jam is broken and you can accelerate, as the clouds part, well, it can be downright uplifting -

The clink of the dishes

means supper is served,  or just about. At this moment, I am often in my office, and need to rush whatever I'm in the middle of to an end.

What a fragmented life. But as I've observed, not a coal mine in sight

July 23, 1993

After all these years,

it still bothers me: At any number of Grateful Dead concerts, from I think 1969 through 1977 (when I stopped going to their shows), whenever they performed "Truckin" and got to this verse -


What in the world ever became of sweet Jane?
She lost her sparkle, you know she isn't the same
Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine,
All a friend can say is "Ain't it a shame?"


- the crowd would roar their approval at the mention of cocaine.

And mind you, this happened EVERY TIME. And every time, I would think, what part of that verse do you all think says, "yay, drug abuse!"?

This was part of the reason I had to stop going - the experience of going to concerts had originally been very exciting, and even inspiring in a way, like a gathering of the tribes. And this communal aspect made the actual performances seem even more vibrant.

But at some point, the crowd became just a crowd, a huge mass of strangers many of whom behaved like whatever substances they had gorged on had in fact leached away whatever intelligence or grace they may have possessed before. Which may have been the case.

So, it came to this - however much pleasure I took in hearing the band performing live (and as many know, with the Dead, it was really, really live, since their hallmark was to continually and unpredictably alter each song in performance, as if the goal was to NEVER sound like the recorded version), being with the crowd became too great a price to pay.

The straw that broke the camel's back: at that last show, which was in at Winterland in SF, June 1977, I was sitting at the back of the auditorium in the area where there were chairs for those who wanted get off their feet without being trampled by the crowd. Suddenly, a very big, very stoned-looking woman came reeling out of the mass of dancers in front of me, and proceeded to land in my lap. And pass out.

Wait, it gets worse. As I was trying to figure a graceful way to unpin myself, I felt something warm on my pants. Yes, my new friend had peed on me.

Sayonara, brothers and sisters, I thought.

I Just Don't Get It

I realize that railing about any technology-related aspect of modern life edges me that much closer to acute Andyrooneyitis, but, I'm sorry, time to rant:

Everywhere I go, people are talking on cellphones, or texting. Continuously. At great length. The texting is at least silent, so I'll set that aside for now. Back to the phones:

What is everyone talking about? Seriously, everybody can't be going through intense dramatic events that require constant sharing and consultation, all day every day.

I may be overly aware of this because it stands in stark contrast to my own habit and inclination, which is to keep all phone calls - especially when they're to or from people I see or speak with regularly - as brief as possible.

And this may sound odd coming from someone who is by most people's accounts a champion talker (or at least on the high end of the chattiness scale), as well as someone who's in sales.

But that's the point. Just as in sales, the point is to use the phone to convey the basics, then arrange to meet face-to-face for the real conversation, where everyone can see each other's face, read their expressions, and even hear what's being said when someone's silent.

I realize that we can't always do that. But again, I can't believe that the dozens and dozens of cellphone talkers I see every day are all talking to their old pals back East or their grandparents in Florida. Nope. In all likelihood, they're talking to someone they may even be SEEING IN AN HOUR.

Is this at all related to the phenomenon of people walking super-slow across a busy street?

Probably best if I stop now. Next thing you know I'll be bitching about not being able to get a replacement battery for my ten-year-old laptop, or why men don't wear hats anymore...

In the Strangest of Places If You Look at It Right (continued)

As the clock runs out before the new job starts, I do, you know, stuff: bank, post office (where I watched a young woman scrutinizing a little person behind her on line a little blatantly, to my mind), dropping off some donations of clothes and bedding to Goodwill, getting the oil changed in the Honda before subjecting it to a daily commute -

- picking up Jackie at school (she usually takes BART home, but I was available), doing the grocery shopping, surprisingly/pleasantly accompanied by my daughter (and exchanging delighted smiles with a one-year-old in the next check-out aisle).

Sometimes I feel like we should never think about life at all. Just think about days.

Finally relaxing a bit,

which is a wise thing to do, since in less than a week I start what is likely to be a fairly demanding new job, complete with daily commute to SF. My new boss gave me a link to some on-line training, plus examples of some of his current proposals, for me to dig into before I start. Useful, yes, but like a lot of new technical material, hard to absorb quickly. Managed to put perhaps two hours in, then broke for an early lunch, followed by some reading in the beautiful strong sun out back.

I was suddenly really drowsy, and succumbed to a desire to lay down on our bed, where I was soon joined by our orange cat. I drifted off for a little while. When I woke up, it was wonderfully quiet in the house, and in the neighborhood overall. Just the birds and the distant hiss of Highway 24. Nice. 

Enjoy it while you can, I remind myself. Tick Tock.

 

Let me rise like the smoke from a fire in the night

to the stars
'cross the deserts of space to the islands of light

I could pick one to circle and turn like a ring
out of mind, out of sight

at rest tonight in the restless night

The Helix Nebula - NGC 7293 -- Courtesy of NASA

Stephanie's Refrigerator Fudge Recipe

Pretty easy to make, and always turns out great:

Thanks to Stephanie Laursen

I don't think I realized how bad I felt

until I began to feel better. Well, no, that's not completely accurate; I had some pretty gruesome lows this past year, especially this past month or so, and they were impossible to ignore. A big part was money worries, and a big part of those worries was due to the job I took last July.

And so the reason I'm feeling more light-hearted today is that I accepted a new job and then emailed my resignation to my now-former employers. It's a fine feeling.

It's not like they were bad people - well, maybe one or two of them were, but that's not my point; the main thing was that after the almost seven months I was with them, they were perhaps even less organized than when I started.

I always like to say that although I've worked too many different places over the past ten years, I feel that I've learned something at each job; this may be the first time I can't say that. Not only didn't I learn much of anything there, I think I may have even FORGOTTEN some stuff.

Anyway, onward and upward. I have about ten days till the new gig starts, so I'm going to try to unwind a little, read in the sun, make it to the gym every day, haunt a few cafes...that sort of thing. Rest up before the new venture.

Nothing like solving a difficult problem to remind you that you have some say in how things go.

The One (No Apologies)

Since I've kind of worked my personal photo library to death in terms of these slideshows, I'm playing around with turning the lyrics into visuals, somewhat. Better than a blank screen.....

I had previously posted a live version of this, with one of the later Characters' line-ups, but this is the original studio version, which I think I prefer:

"Drinking the Kool-Aid"

"...is a phrase and metaphor, used in the United States and Canada, that means to become a firm believer in something, to accept an argument or philosophy wholeheartedly or blindly without critical examination. The term originated with the November 1978 Jonestown Massacre, where members of the Peoples Temple were said to have committed suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide."

OK, this is per Wikipedia. But what about "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"? Coincidence? There must be a connection...