hometown pride

though i gripe about football season on the west coast (they only show shitty games, our teams here pretty much suck, you’re watching the 1 o’clock game in your pajamas), the sunday night game is ideal in that it starts at 5 and is done by 8:30, so you’re not burning the midnight oil if it goes into overtime – as last night it should have.

so i found myself in a predominantly stumbling drunk Irish bar in North Beach (?) last night, in my unending quest to find a quintessentially pure Eagles bar here in the Bay Area.  i may not find it yet this season, but last night i found some fluttering support in the eyes of generic football fans who are fed up with the notion of a New England dynasty.  “i’m rooting for Philly in order to save football,” one guy said. “and to throw off the odds.  i mean what the fuck?  a 23-point spread?  nobody deserves that.”  others were general Tom Brady naysayers: “I grew up with him,” muttered a drunk Filipino guy (Brady is from San Mateo).  “Nice guy, but always a bit of a prick.  I want to see them stick it to ‘im.”

not the kind of unwavering support i had hoped for, but nonetheless a nice antidote to the prevailing Pats sentiment that pervaded the bar ever-more increasingly as the evening progressed (can you say “bandwagon?”)

and they almost pulled it off.  i know you’ll be quick to say ‘almost’ doesn’t cut it, but in this case, it may have helped save the season and boost Philly’s hopes and reputation in the world of football and beyond.  aside from the obvious (the ‘quarterback controversy’ is starting to fade into the realm of the all-too obvious), here is what i mean:

1. The Eagles have always been a polarizing team.  Perhaps this can be attributed to the abrasive impression most people (mistakenly) have of Philadelphians in general.   You either love ‘em or you hate ‘em.  The impression I obtained from more than a few die-hard football acolytes last night, as well as national sports coverage this morning, helps paint the picture that the Eagles, despite their loss, came the closest anyone has come to unseating an undefeated team on course for being the greatest in football history.  They have given the rest of the league hope that it can – and may very well – be done, and this hope trickles down to the fans seeking playoff glory.

2. This is why no matter where I wind up, I stick by my team and my city.  Philadelphia is being soured by a blight of violent crime the likes of which have not been seen in the city or even nationally since the 1980s.  Recently the escalating violence spilled over from the neighborhoods of West Philadelphia into Center City, forcing (white) residents to notice that something is horribly wrong.  For us Philadelphians, the decades-long drought of any sort of national sports championship contributes to this sort of second-city inferiority complex that until recently we shared with Boston.  Nascent research suggests that a Super Bowl victory may have economic impact, boosting the GDP of city and area residents, perhaps; but most of all it would help us to realise that anything is possible, and improve the morale of the community at large.  Increased economic growth and community sense of self-worth (which, I agree, we shouldn’t have to wait for a Super Bowl victory to acknowledge) tend to correlate to better community relations and a less nauseating crime rate.

3. Most importantly, A.J. Feeley, though he did make some mistakes last night, proved to the city and the nation that the Eagles are not beaten.  Who knows how this will play into the rest of the season and beyond?  We’ll have to wait and find out.  In the meantime, Eagles, good effort, we salute you.

so long, my fairlady

my father tells me he’s finally sold my car, to a pilates instructor from turnersville in her mid 30s. i am teary-eyed as we shared some fine moments together (the car and i, not the pilates instructor). in 35,000 miles she carried me between philadelphia, washington, and new york many times. she went topless for me in the summertime so we could both have a good time together. she lost her cool in later years, but it was okay, since she was a convertible and i hate air conditioning anyway. she definitely drained my wallet many times over the years, but i did it because i loved her. though she almost died on me several times, and she could never tolerate the frozen new york winters (neither could i), she never gave up on me. now she is gone, but not without leaving her trails all over my heart, what with her excellent dry traction and turning radius. i will never forget her.

my father says the pilates instructor from turnersville cried when he handed over the keys. apparently she had a dream about my car, and dreamed that she was gold, even though it didn’t say so in the ad. she knew then that she had to have a Z, and not just any Z, but my fairlady Z. she dreamt it, and then made it a reality. i would have to say i can’t imagine her going to anyone more worthy.

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.

when the lights go down in the city

it’s been a quiet week, back in my city by the bay. it’s been good to be in one place at least long enough to do some laundry, catch up on some sleep, check out a Giants game (and miss Bonds’ 756th, or even a hit for that matter, but it was riveting just to see him fly out)… and cook up a storm, as i’ve been deprived of quality kitchen time, what with being away from home.

speaking of which, home is a pretty fuzzy term these days. i suppose for all of us rather mobile young Americans and Canadians, who differ from our parents who settled close to family and wherever work was readily available, home can be applied to any of the places you lay your head long enough to breathe and string together your so-called life as you approach the ever-present spectre of adulthood and its child-rearing, lawn-mowing responsibilities.

i came out here to the West Coast to find home, and i truly believe for the first time in my adult memory that i have found it here in this place. but most importantly, i’ve found – yes, cheesy as it may seem, it’s true – that home has been chugging along inside of me all this time.

but what on earth does that mean? i’ve lived in many places throughout this home-seeking pursuit: Philly and South Jersey was my home that reared me and then spit me out into the world; D.C. was my home for growing up, learning, and exploring myself; New York was my home for trying something new, and losing myself; and San Francisco is my home for finding and reclaiming myself. every home seemed to have a different purpose, and a different time in my life for which it was an appropriate place to be. but does this mean i am destined to juggle these homes, and possibly new ones, and can i ever return to a home i leave behind?

only your heart holds those answers, and my heart often speaks in the language of memory. and in the past day or two, those memories were mired in homes past and present:

it may be odd, but unlike jazz, which makes me reminisce about a New York City that i never really knew, listening to Bruce Springsteen quite visually takes me back to a city that i really did know, and learn to love, albeit grudgingly, and to New Jersey, and to Philadelphia. and not just certain songs by the Boss, but actual precise segments of particular songs remind me of certain very particular places. for example, listening to ‘jungle land’ when the saxophone instrumental chimes in about six minutes into the song reminds me of looking up at madison square garden, having arrived on a train to see my girlfriend, and hopping a bus or the subway or a train to the Upper East Side. fast forward to the last two minutes of Bruce’s heartfelt final refrain alongside subdued piano, and i’m on the F train elevated platform in Bensonhurst, in the dearth of the final throes of winter, late one February afternoon, hands deep in my pockets and my face in my collar to fend off the unblocked wind. play ‘darkness on the edge of town’ and i’m in my 300 ZX speeding down the BQE on a hot summer night with the T tops off, weaving in and out of traffic, swerving to avoid potholes that have been there longer than i’ve been alive; or strolling down 18th Avenue with my aunt, into Dyker Heights, looking at the gaudy Christmas lights that adorn all the mobsters’ lavish houses, with the Verrazzano Bridge glowing blue and orange draped across a star-scraped black ribbon sky; or wandering down 9th Street in Philly, the Italian Market, after dark on a summer evening, cheesesteak in hand, kicking aside milk crates and empty beer cans in front as I walk, all the way across Washington, when warm rain starts to fall and the wind whisks them away from the next impending kick.

surely, for an east coast native who (justifiably) misses the people and places he left behind, it’s easy to despair and let homesickness for a previous home consume you. but that’s no fun, and it certainly plays ignorant to the home-bearing heart inside you. one remedy is to go out and absorb the world around you, and celebrate the fact that it’s your current home. so that’s what tony and i did today, on an outing to Marin Headlands, Muir Woods, and Mt. Tam[alpais], right in our backyard, across the Golden Gate:

i always knew i wanted to live in a beautiful place, and so i’m beyond happy that i can call this my home right now. thanks to the journey, i’ve learned that home is less a place in space and time, and more a state of being. and scenes like this teach you that if you’re not able to “be” in the present moment, well, you might miss something.