hooray, thanksgiving

the full moon and the warm Santa Ana winds squaring off with the cool night air make for a bizarre evening here in orange county, where i have spent the last few days with my friend Jon and his family.  early in the morning i will learn that these winds, which blow desert air westward toward the ocean, have fanned flames across even more unrelenting fires outside of Los Angeles.

i have had a tremendous thanksgiving week down in Laguna Niguel. i think i held up remarkably well for what was actually my first thanksgiving completely away from family. i felt welcomed into a new family that made me feel both wanted and appreciated. while talking to my family during dinner i held it together until my aunt told me about going to see a football game at Haverford High, where the winner of the yearly tournament is bestowed with the Dr. Teddy Ranieri trophy in honor of my late uncle. for some reason this set me off and i grew sad. still, i made the most of the experience: after long hours of prep in the kitchen for our dozen guests who were predominantly foreigners celebrating a quintessentially American holiday, Jon and i indulged in an unconventional thanksgiving activity:

hot tub

all things aside, i am happy to return from beautiful but vapid southern california. i am a proud denizen of the city to the north, where ‘culture’ is widespread and you don’t need to get on a freeway to go to the supermarket, where it rains as often as the sun shines, where you can’t swim in the ocean, and evergreens grow as easily as palm trees; where horny housewives don’t solicit you on a daily basis and people seem as real as their breasts and weathered faces.

a little piece of home, from my redeye BART ride.

a few things to say about this ad:

1. yes, everyone is nuts here.
2. if you really left your nuts here, you should see a doctor.

yes, please shut up, ass wipe.

i have come to believe, as have many other progressive folk, that Hugo Chavez, self-proclaimed ‘populist’ president of Venezuela, is little more than an autocratic, delusional megalomaniac.  he seems to have been infected from the start with the Latin American ‘Il Duce’ contagion that has swept the region in the many decades since european and american colonialism and imperialism bastardised the political elite and robbed the indigenous people of all their rights.

but yesterday, he received a well-deserved rebuke from one of the remnants of his country’s colonial legacy – King Juan Carlos of Spain – who told him to shut his face in the same manner one speaks to a child in Castilliano.  i have to admit, i was pretty amused to see it happen.

i’m now every bit as annoyed when idiots like Papa Chavez, Mah-moody Ahmadinejad and Comrade Vlad “Impaler” Putin throw around words like “Imperialist,” “dictator,” “tyrant,” and “fascist” with the same ease that Premier Bush uses American buzz words like “freedom,” “insurgents,” “terrorists” (pronounced “tersts” for my unenlightened foreign readers) and “enemies of democracy.”   I am by no means a violent individual, but I would like very much to invite these and other shit heads of state to my imaginary castle for a tea party, and then beat the crap out of them.  I will need help with Mr. Putin as he apparently knows some serious Kung Fu shiznit.  Any takers, please feel free to let me know.

seriously, has the word “freedom” been forever contaminated in anyone else’s mental lexicon?  I’ll never be able to walk through a “Freedom Plaza” or look at the much-maligned and prudently dreaded “Freedom Tower” in Lower Manhattan (anybody want 80th floor real estate?  If you want to buy that, I will sell you my fingernail clippings, because you are a moron) without conjuring up a mental image of our “folksy” president speaking with his stupid “commander-in-chief” windbreaker speaking in front of droves of tanks flanked by dozens of strikingly similar looking photoshopped troops.  I am angry that in my unfortunate mind he has usurped a word and a concept that i love and uphold and associated it with the invasion of another country.

speaking of idiots, unless you have been living in a black hole (or the East Coast) you may have heard that the Chinese have gifted our lovely Bay with 58,000 gallons of oil, just in time to seriously fuck up wildlife and delay the start of Dungeness crab season. apparently the jackass captain (who, it should be told, was not actually Chinese but a Bay Area based pilot) has a history of stupid shit like crashing into big bridges.  anyway, the incident probably caused a backlog of tankers all the way back to China full of lead-based toys, cheap colour TV sets, crappy garlic and slave-labour underwears.  just in time for Christmas shopping season!  which reminds me, note to self, see this movie when it comes out.

but alas, as i’ve argued time and time again, we are unable to sever ourselves from the incessant I.V. of cheap Chinese shit.  people wouldn’t pay $700 to include our fair-labour costs for a 24-inch CRT television made in the U.S. of A., not when they can get a perfectly good Chinese one (and the quality is improving quickly) for $150 at Wal-Mart (Wal-Mark, if you’re from Philly).  so the realpolitik can continue to bitch and moan about how China is becoming the next world superpower, whatever the fuck that means, while meanwhile we do our part to ensure it happens, and watch more and more oil-soaked Cosco Busan tankers head towards the sunset back to Shanghai to pick up more cheap underwears, whilst all we can do is watch them take the U.S. economy away with them.

as my brother is keen to point out, we have succumbed to decadence.  as with other empires in the past, this marks a heady downfall into dissolution.

i love conspiracy theorists. the insidious bastards, they’re even in australia! and look, we’ve taken England!

waiting for inspiration

in the meantime, this is worth 1,000 words exactly

earthquake

thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, oh Jesus, thank you. repeats the staid old black woman with the teal dress left from some ancient wedding and matching straw hat; she palms a thick leather-embossed New Testament with a blazing gold flame on the cover and some minimal writing, probably “Placed by the Gideons.” the BART train rests uneasily in dim light 100 feet below Mission Street, first something about tests being completed, and then, honesty; first from across the tracks on a train bound for the East Bay, the conductor’s crackling voice trails off just before the words… “earthquake…” “trains stopped…” the woman in teal begins to frantically repeat these dim shadows of words, earthquake, she says, trains stopped? oh Jesus, thank you Jesus, oh Jesus thank you. the conductor on this train then poorly echoes the sentiments of his colleague, omitting exactly the details these commuters want to hear, Jesus Christ, from the mind of the man in the tired suit with a briefcase seemingly teeming with phone books, but it isn’t fair, I was supposed to be home three hours ago, why does this always happen on Tuesdays… wasn’t it a Tuesday the last time… oh Jesus, sweet, sweet Jesus, her knuckles pale white from strangling her Bible, the minutes edge past and make silence seem as screaming. barely able to finish a poem, but it’s only fourteen lines, from the bespectacled young man in his father’s tweed jacket, strewn across two seats, as angry patrons stomp off towards the escalator seeking some alternative way home, be it bus or cab or long walk on a cold October evening, he dwells on the fact this is a tunnel. 100 feet. underground. he ponders this word, underground, subway, =under+ground, literally, under the ground. the ground that shakes in this part of the country. we are under it. in a tunnel. made of concrete. concrete that is under the ground, the ground that shakes in this part of the country. Jesus, oh Jesus, sweet Jesus, thank you, Jesus… as she bows her head repeatedly, his thoughts swing to those stuck in the tube sunken under the bay, but imagine, they must be praying. thank you Jesus… a bell and doors close, the train slides fifteen seconds, slows, stops. doors open. then first from across the tracks, earthquake, 5.6 magnitude, north of San Jose, all trains must stop, then again poorly echoed by a man with a thick Cantonese accent, still distant, but nearer. thank you Jesus. silence. moments pass. under ground. he thinks back to the two Hispanic thugs he saw earlier, sitting behind him as he timidly read his poetry, but they were born here, he was thinking, their Spanish is awful. that fucking guy, says the one in baggy black jeans and a charcoal tinted Philadelphia Eagles hat, I gonna fucking smack him up pretty good that guy. I gonna give him his due that motherfucker. fuck him, we gonna fuck him up, says his partner in the black and orange street uniform with sideways tilted Giants hat, the hologram still affixed to the unshapen brim, both with diamond studs, but he a fucking stupid little fuck, he gonna get it. just then the doors part for a sizable but stately senora with a face that has seen more pain than these two can ever remember, more than she cares to remember, she shoots them a glance, more a look of death, really, it reminds him of the face his mother would whisk out to him and his brother at church when they used to rock back and forth on the loose, creaking wooden pews; the two suddenly acquire manners unbecoming of their appearance, but when did appearances matter in this city, really, they immediately plunge into questions, como esta Roxana, y tu Papi, y todos la familia? she immediately asks after their mother. i turn my head and notice for the first time the whole ride from Balboa Park they have properly taken their seats and face forward as if present at a baptism. oh Jesus sweet Jesus thank you baby Jesus. the doors close and the train slowly peels away from the tunnel 100 feet under the ground below Mission Street. thank you Jesus oh sweet Jesus oh Jesus, not today.

not so bleak.

i hear six or seven gunshots in the distance. living in a valley between the bay and the ocean, everything echoes through here like a tunnel made of steel. ten minutes pass and i hear the sirens peeling down Geneva towards Bayshore. for an instant the blue and white lights blend with the orange glow of the homes perched on San Bruno Mountain making sort of a midnight rainbow.

not sure what the hurry is; more than likely they’ll arrive and the action will be through, left only with a couple of young lives wasted, bleeding out onto the sidewalk whatever violence failed to manifest itself in the few moments before. anybody they track down will wind up in any one of California’s cramped and aching prisons, with no opportunity for reform in between gang initiations, rapes, and beatings.

i’m encouraged by the research that i do into people and organisations that seek to permanetly alter the status quo of crime and punishment in this city, and across the country. people like Mimi Silbert, president of the Delancey Street Foundation, which gives recently released felons the opportunity to live and work alongside former cohorts in business enterprises such as cafes and restaurants, the precept being excessive personal responsibility will create model citizens and give opportunities for parolees that otherwise would be nonexistent. it works. Delancey Street’s success is unprecedented, leaning towards 70 per cent of participants getting their lives together and staying out of prison for good.

so despite reports that the U.S. is right up there with Somalia in sentencing 13 and 14-year olds to life imprisonment without parole, a clear indicator that reform squarely fits nowhere within the spectrum of our criminal justice system’s truest intentions, i find hope in the work of people the likes of Delancey Street and the Ella Baker Center. i am proud to live in a place so ripe with social entrepreneurs who are seeking to change the underlying conditions rather than see people fed into a system that constantly fails all of us.

$650 billion and counting

premier bush today requested $64 billion in additional funds for the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan (read: 90 per cent Iraq, chump change for the Afghans). we are approaching an inordinately massive amount of money that has been dumped into this mess, some of which seems to have been lost in the fray. meanwhile, our state is on fire. chairwoman Pelosi should grow some metaphorical testicles and request that we divert resources to our own crumbling cities before sending plethoras of money to destroy somebody else’s.

i have very little to add to this rant, it seems to speak for itself. if you’re not pissed that we’re still funding our own region decimating conflicts stemming from a sick neo-con democratization experiment gone horribly wrong, i don’t really know what to say. congratulations. keep smoking whatever you’re smoking, since it seems to give you the oft-desired ability to completely abscond from reality.

back in the saddle, again

after a three-week hiatus, i like to think that my life is back on track. i have returned to san francisco awaiting an interview for a job i supposedly already have. it was a very jolting return; not in any way natural or organic as i would have preferred.

first off, my first arrival here was gradual and timely. i came on a train that took basically two weeks to cross the country, so i got to immerse myself in everything that was between coasts.  i had minimal stuff, just a backpacker guitar and some cameras, and basically wore the same clothes week after week. even the time zone changes were gradual; i at least had the opportunity to wake up once or twice in each one along the journey.

this all goes back to the Inuit myth that however you travel, your spirit has to walk behind you in order to follow.  the train trip allowed my spirit to gain ground on me before i arrived, and it had definitely descended upon me prior to my departure.  flying back east sent him on a whirlwind walk through the desert trying to catch up to the 737.  flying back again three weeks later probably left him almost in the midwest.  so i’ve got to give my spirit the benefit of the doubt here, and figure the damn thing will catch up with me in due time. until then i will keep running and meditating and sending him positive energy, as in, go, buddy, you can do it.

this time, i shot in on a jet plane with two bulging suitcases full of clothing, a full-sized acoustic dreadnought, and twice as many shoes. i wound up on the opposite coast just seven hours after i’d had a full-sized jersey diner breakfast with my mentor at the crack of dawn. i went from being in the driver’s seat of my dad’s convertible to being a passenger with too much luggage. i couldn’t even stomach a delicious burrito from my favourite tacqueria in the mission.

next, there was the negative energy i experienced having left home again. my mother and father seemingly switched positions on me. my mother sent me off with her blessing knowing that i ‘have to do what i have to do,’ whereas my father harbors feelings that i have no sense of family belonging or obligation in choosing to relocate out here quasi-permanently (i hesitate in that i maintain the notion that nothing really holds permanence in life, and so i need to refocus and align myself that this is a momentary move and that i am here for now, and allow myself to be truly present in the moment… i’ve had definitive trouble doing that of late, and am now beginning to feel that i am where i am… still waiting for the spirit).

parting with my grandfather, who is 93 and in hospice care, remained difficult. honestly i hadn’t imagined it to be – we were never really close, although consistently shared a connection. this connection, once tenuous, resonated strongly as we parted ways.

after spending a last hour with him a day before my departure, i wheel him to the dinner table he shares with three charming old ladies, each of whom i’d met on multiple occasions, though every time anew escaping their recollections. he proudly introduced me as his “grandson from California,” who had come all this way to see him.  saying goodbye, he clasps his hands round my arm and brings me close once, then again, kissing and embracing me: “i love you,” he says.  i can never remember him having said these words to me before.

as i walk away to the elevator bank, i hear him comment to his company: “i really hate to see him go.”  repeats twice, audibly, for the sake of his audience.

then: “he’s my favourite grandson.”

nurse: “george, don’t you mean he’s one of your favourite grandchildren?”

grandpop: “yeah, well, you know what i mean.  one of my favourite grandkids.  but this one – he’s one of the few people who really understands me.”

i’m standing at the elevator bank, eclipsed from view but not out of earshot of his naturally authoritative and voluminous voice.  i begin to break down just as the elevator arrives, and sob all the way down to the lobby. a long time since i have cried like this. barely manage to hold it back enough to drive home.

i manage to get it together before i leave, and the sight of familiar company awaiting me on a sunny day in the east bay at the airport is enough to make me feel as if i’ve returned to my home.

this readjustment will take some time, and i eagerly await the uncertainty to pass and home to return to my heart. to borrow and butcher a country line, just when i’d unlocked my heart, they’d changed the combination.

i never was good at remembering combinations.

what happens next?

being a libra, i’ve never had much fun with decisions. astrologically-inclined friends and family have never been amiss to point this out to me. but as i’ve matured, i’ve found big, life-crunching decisions usually unravel themselves before me more easily than simple, stupid ones, such as peanut butter or cream cheese on that sesame seed bagel.

now, i’m faced with multiple decisions based upon the self-assembling blueprint of my life, which has always seemed tumultuous but now seems torn anew between different places and different energy forces.

i came to san francisco to reclaim myself, not to find myself, as many have done. i was found before and simply got off track, and i needed a place away from loved ones, in a place where the sun sets instead of rises over the ocean, to prevent myself from further derailment. and i have made excellent headway in doing so. for the first time in a very long period of self-absence i finally feel like myself again. i’m truly happy here among friends new and old, mountains and hills, whitecaps and sunshine. why, then, do i even consider leaving such happiness?

for most of those who come here to find themselves, san francisco is a transitory place, fleeting at best, a place where memories are deposited and retrieved as quickly as raw materials en route to chinese assembly lines. i do not feel this way. every other place i have lived was transitory: washington, which changes with every political ebb and flow; new york, which eager souls can endure for only a year or two before burnout. instead, i came here because i felt like it was home, and everything i have experienced thus far has seemed to justify that. despite opportunities arising in other locales i never considered this move to be temporary, just sort of a mental repositioning. now, with my departure imminent to face those other opportunities, i worry that i am leaving exactly the sort of thing i came to find to return to exactly the sort of thing i meant to get away from. i never doubt that i can find opportunities wherever i may be, and while i’m not one to burn bridges, it seems fitting that this is where i belong right now.

there are many decisions to make in the next few days, but one thing bears mentioning: everyone here who is not from here has a story, a story for how they ended up here. when leaving felt so certain, i thought my eventual return would not be a story worthy of bearing repetition. now i feel like i finally have my story.

on another point, someone shared a terrific insight with me today – lots of insights, actually – but one specifically relates to an earlier post of mine: why are the very young and very old the easiest and most interesting sort of people to talk to? the answers lay within their respective souls and alignment with the cycle of life; the very young are closest to birth, the very old closest to death. thus, they have both the most insightful and innocent of all of life’s observations.

i am a lucky SOB.

it’s a bizarre and relentless synthesis of emotion when you just begin to fully come to terms with your life. when you’ve realised that you guide your own destiny. but it’s not necessarily done without a little piece of providence, some invisible spirit that evokes both pleasure and pain, sometimes simultaneously, as you wind through the days and years, via the choices you make, and the places you call home. to some this manifestation is entirely metaphysical; to others it’s the people you meet and the streets you walk along that bring things about.

to me, it is a bit of both. it’s the beaches you walk along at sunset, and the person who walks beside you, as you succumb to the scent of fresh lavender and collect errant sand dollars amidst deep conversation. it’s the swingsets you rock on at night, surrounded by smiling palm trees in the dark and the company you keep, as you bend your head backwards to watch the BART screech right overhead, like an inverted skyscraper brushing along at 40 miles an hour, loudly. it’s the perfectly-chilled champagne you share with friends on the rooftop in the icy middle of the night, lying on your back, your head in the stars, hoping to catch a glimpse of a meteor or two.

i have a lot to be thankful for this summer, and a lot of people to be thankful to. most of all i’m thankful for the happiness and contentedness i’ve felt and continue to feel every moment that i live here, among the smiling palm trees.