Red Lounge Saint

Summer Vacation

Go East, Young Man

In the contemporary classic, “Eat, Pray, Love,” the author Elizabeth Gilbert departs a broken marriage to travel the world in search of herself. To explore eat, pray, and love, she visits three countries that start with the letter I: Italy, India, and Indonesia. Perhaps a trite synopsis of a wandering year, nonetheless the verbs and countries give focus to her travels and link her novel together.

I’m off next week for that elusive fourth verb to yet another “I” country: Iceland. At work, I have renamed the aforementioned book, “Eat, Pray, Give Money to Dudek.” People get through two-thirds of the novel and forget the last part. For me, will the fourth verb be “freeze,” or “soak,” or “think,” or perhaps even “sleep?”

I prefer “Rest” as in “Eat, Pray, Love, Rest.” Giving up on Burning Man this year, I haven’t had a break from work since the SXSW music festival in March. I’m tired, tired of the five-on, two-off schedule, tired of the long weekend nights out, tired of the projects at home. I’d like to leave San Francisco, wanting in a week’s time, somewhere in Boston or Reykjavaik oh so desperately to return.

It’s been forever since I’ve traveled abroad to a new country. I booked a hotel – the Klopp!, arranged a day tour of geysers and waterfalls. I packed my neglected passport (don’t lose it!) and tried to internalize the Icelandic Krona (118 Krona to the dollar). I’ll be a bit lonely, but my anticipations are small. Ah, rain.

I’m also returning home. Two years since I’ve seen my parents, I had best sit next to them for a couple of days and reconnect. We can learn where life is taking us. I’m not one anymore for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Those holidays are too cold and rushed. This time of year, September, the only occasion is lunch in the center of town or sorting through my childhood belongings.

I’ve gotten some Boston advice for new spots to investigate since my last visit. I’ll sit in coffee shops and commune with long-lost friends.

Not Burning

Not Black Rock City

The end of summer has arrived and with it comes a wave of heat. My mind drifts skyward on thermals east of San Francisco towards Reno, past the gambling city, and north into the desert. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, for almost a decade, I have migrated annually this week to Burning Man. Not this year.

Fifty weeks ago, I left the Playa with resolution not to return for a while. It wasn't that I had suffered, sweated, slacked, or soured. Actually, 2009 was a wonderful year of great ease at Burning Man: no rain, no cold, a quonset that got built unexpectedly without much planning, a cohesive group, a fine location. Yet, it was too easy. After five consecutive years, I had taken the desert for granted. I had conquered the planning, living, enjoying, and packing out. Wandering the Esplanade was like pacing a well-worn racetrack. The unexpected was humdrum. The magic was gone. Burning Man was better last year.

Last week on more regular soil, I certainly found my San Francisco Sunday brunch difficult with a cohort of former Bostonites planning their packing for the Playa. Everyone was going while I was staying. San Francisco emptied over the weekend as caravans of overfilled cars and campers paraded out of the Bay Area. Like a Dad, I waved goodbye to my kids going to college. The giant cruise ship boomed and I hailed from the dock.

I traded a week at Burning Man for what!? to sit behind a computer at work. This week would not be memorable. This week would not have magic. This week would suck.

But I'm getting what I wanted. I'm reassessing why I go to festivals, I realizing what I'm missing. Like it or not, Burning Man is the great annual meeting of contemporary arts and ideas. It is the world's largest party. It's within driving distance. It is a place where I can forget my job here and my life in San Francisco. It's where I can pick up new ideas and return exhausted but creatively full.

I'm hoping this year off will change my compass of intentions. Perhaps I won't feel so much the need to be everywhere at once on the Playa and in life. The unexpected frequently comes small, merited to those that stop and savor.

I'd like to return next year to Burning Man with a larger project. I now have storage space below my San Francisco apartment. I could build a quonset, modelled after Tom and John's, or construct an art car. Perhaps a giant light sculpture!

Nonetheless, Wednesday night is here and I think I can hear the music out in the desert. False Profit's party is done Tuesday night. There is still much to be had. Next year, next year, next year. I'll be better prepared at not expecting so much.

Summer Days

Notes from the Front

“Hot fun in summertime?” While the rest of the country bakes, the fog has rolled over the hills on to the city of San Francisco. August this year means unrelenting cold, not bitter, just disappointingly brisk juxtaposed against the tropical expectations of beach balls and sunglasses. I’ve lost my tolerance for heat and humidity, but I would like some signifier of the summer season. Fortunately, I work in a different micro-environment on the peninsula, close to a town declared “climate best by government test.” While my San Francisco neighbors face the gloom during the day, I get moments of sunshine walking between the buildings at work in Menlo Park.

At the start of spring, I eagerly and naively bought a slew of tomato and chili plants. Through April and May, I let the sprouts swelter and get swept by winds on my high balcony. The tomato leaves wilted while the chilies prospered. Come August, harvest! cornucopia! and my green ardor has shriveled. My total crop will yield about ten golf-ball sized tomatoes and maybe six or so wrinkled chilies. The sole red pepper (capsicum) is about the size of a quarter. Black beetles colonized every stem of the chives and aphids set up home on both types of basil. This morning, I whacked all the plants that decayed and left the remaining tomatoes and chilies to struggle onward with their burden of fruit. I may do better next year with more wisdom and a full season of crops in the same constant setting of my hacienda. With all these horticultural setbacks, I’m more in awe of commercial agriculture; how the tomatoes get so large at Rainbow Grocery, I have no idea, but I suspect San Francisco rainbows and unicorns.

A bit drunk last Saturday night, I got on the internets for some surfing. Oh, dear. Perhaps stupid, I signed up for two running races. In October, I’ll head to flat and fast San Jose to try to break seven-minute miles for their over-commercialized rock n’ roll half marathon. In December, I run my second marathon in Rubentown, a.k.a. Sacramento, to qualify for the Boston marathon. The three races: the San Jose half, the Sacramento marathon, and the possible Boston, may be the last of my long-distance running.

Too much stability causes boredom. I find myself bereft of consuming projects. I moved. Check. I agitated at work. Check. I ran a marathon. Check. I set up the new apartment. Check. What now? News flash, I’m painting bright orange one of the walls of my living room. I’ve never painted a wall before, but I want the accomplishment and control of my environs. I have a stack of paint chips from a paint store on 24th Street. Tom and I argue over shades of orange. I prefer neon; he counsels terracotta. He’s right, of course, but I may need to live with unrelenting creamsicle to realize my colorimetric folly.

It’s about time I visit home. Not home, this apartment, but home-home, my parents. I’m heading out for a few days in the middle of September. Although I’m not crazy excited to wander Boston, it’s essential for all that I reconnect. Furthermore, I’m heading onward and outward from Boston to the icy north of Reykjavik. I’ll spend three solitary days in Iceland reading sagas, listening to Bjork, and eating fermented herring. I didn’t want another year to go by without leaving the country. Projects indeed.

The Big Run

26.2 Miles through San Francisco

At the end of February, I clicked a few boxes on the internets, made a payment, and found myself signed up for the 2010 San Francisco marathon. Earlier that day, I had completed a half marathon through Golden Gate Park. Nonetheless, twice that distance felt overwhelming: you want me to run that race twice? Fortunately, I had months… to sit.

Sit, I did. Eventually, I got off the couch. I gave myself two months to get in shape. At the beginning of June, I ceased my Serbicizing™ to pick up running. Two feet as fast I can – this felt familiar. Each Sunday, I added two more miles to the allotted length. Fourteen miles one weekend, sixteen the next. I found new routes over hills and through the city.

Yet, I never made it as far as twenty-six miles. While I ran by myself, the end of July and the marathon marched closer. The preparation for the final week before the race was easy: don’t run. Everyone told me to taper, which is code for take a seat. This I can do.

An experienced racer counseled plenty of sleep two night’s before the race. Ok, staying out until four in the morning probably was not the optimal execution of his advice to rest. I still had all Saturday to lie in bed.

Saturday afternoon, I woke late and bicycled to a San Francisco convention center to pick up my race tag (bib) and assorted schwag. Advertisers have learned that runners are affluent and in need of quick-fixes. Companies push a slew of products ranging from new energy drinks to odd-shaped massage tools. Most everything is obnoxiously overpriced and a poor substitute for just hitting the pavement.

After I collected my bib, with an inauspicious number 30198, I headed to Buca di Beppo, a giant Italian restaurant in the SOMA section of San Francisco. At the restaurant, I met co-worker Neil, his wife, and a gang of runners from Palo Alto. Only five o’clock and we were already arms deep in huge platters of pasta.

I asked the seasoned veteran across the dinner table, Kirstin, for wisdom. She recapitulated the marathon lore floating about. The race would be 20% physical and 80% mental. If I got fatigued, she suggested counting my steps in series of ten to move my mind to the road and away from the suffering. Her first marathon, she ran in St. Louis, signing up last minute on the same day. As she ran, the crowd inexplicably yelled, “Top Ten!”, and later, “Top Eight!” She finished in the top eight with a blazing time of three hours fifteen minutes. “Anything is possible,” she smiled.

After dinner, I somberly bicycled home. As the sun set, I lay out the next morning’s clothes of running stuff like shoes and socks. I don’t own anything fancy. My gray shirt lacks a label. I do have a GPS watch that counts out the miles and glows with my current pace.

Races occur on Sunday mornings. Traffic then is the lowest of the week so the police and race organizers can more easily block off the streets. For this marathon, the runners race over the entire span of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, taking over half of its width. To get everyone off the bridge before the traffic accumulates at noon, the marathon starts freaky early.

Did I say freaky early? At four in the morning, I woke disoriented in the dark. Time to make the donuts. I stuffed down a couple energy bars and drank a beverage, wishing it were beer. I got up a little earlier to have ample time to take a morning dump. With heavy apprehension, I tied on my shoes. “Take me home, shoes,” I thought.

Friend Jim pulled up in his car at 4:50am. I thanked him again for the ride through the silent city. “You’re doing all the work,” he smirked. Just after five, still dark, he deposited me by a road barrier. I had a backpack, keys, and some clothes. Skinny people were processing through the streets to the crowded plaza in front of the Ferry Building.

Dark gray air hung humid over the quiet scene. I took off most of my clothes and dumped my bag, marked with my number, over a fence. I stood in an impatient line to use a bank of port-a-potties. We all nervously needed to pee, or worse.

With an anticipated crowd of over twelve thousand, the runners departed in staggered waves based on their estimated finishing times, the fastest departing first. With little fanfare and a countdown, the initial wave left at 5:30am. I stood for the third wave, departing at 5:42am. I worried about my knees. I wouldn’t say I felt good; I felt asleep.

The announcer whisked us off. A guy holding up a little sign that read “3:40” left in my crew. This pace-man would establish a three hour forty minute finish time for anyone who wished to follow.

The pack head north along the Embarcadero, hugging the water. I had run this route before, but it felt different at 5:42 in the morning, surrounded by a troubled throng of silent runners. My first mile clocked in at almost nine minutes. Start slow, I was advised, but this was ridiculous if I wanted to finish reasonably.

“What do you hope for?” many co-workers asked. “I want to finish,” I answered. I haven’t run twenty-six miles before. Actually, below four hours would be good. I did some math over and over again. An eight-minute mile would put me in at precisely 3:29:36. Anything below that time would be great. In February, I had already finished a half marathon in 91 minutes. Twice that distance and time, however, is 3:02. Considering the additional fatigue, it would be asking a lot to finish in less than 3:30.

We turned west through the Marina. I knew the course, but did not pay attention. I was quite asleep. I found gaps to pass others, seeking empty spaces to run by myself. A guy had a watch that beeped at every step. Annoying. Many already looked exhausted; why were they in my wave? A roman centurion’s armor clanked; humorous, yet he wasn’t going to make it.

Fortunately, I had a lot of time to think. Hours and hours. I don’t run with music or a companion. Just me, the view of the road, and the stamping of feet.

The Bridge loomed. We climbed two hundred feet up a highway. Aaron had warned me that the pack constricts on the bridge. I kept advancing while calculating. I was still two minutes too slow for my pace and not making up the time.

I crested the highway and swung on the orange Golden Gate Bridge. Indeed, it was half-closed for the runners to traverse it. A fleet set was already exiting in the other direction. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the advanced group that would win the race. One guy hustled by wearing just shorts and no shoes – barefoot for twenty-six miles.

I clenched a plastic bag of gummy energy. Every four miles, I ate one gummy on the run, whether I wanted it or not. I agreed to stop at every water station to bolt down some water, or some really gross Cytomax.

A sign on the Golden Gate Bridge said “Marin County.” I had left San Francisco. At the turn at the tourist look-out on the far side of the bridge, a band played in the fog. The bridge wasn’t yet crowded, but Neil later on said it was unbearably, stumbling thick about thirty minutes later. Cars honked in appreciation. I could spot Alcatraz through the netting.

Just off the bridge, I hit mile ten. I looked forward to the next gummy. I was barely catching up to my idealized time. Many of those around me were running just the half marathon and had just a few more miles to go.

The slopes of Russian Hill were brutal. I careened down the hills and flagged up the next rise. City streets were closed and I blew through intersection after intersection. The pack thinned to just a few people. In the distance, one guy was leading us all. He wasn’t the fastest, but a wave frontrunner.

We poured into Golden Gate Park. I knew this territory. A barrier split the herd: marathoners to the right, the half-marathoners to the left. Decisions, decisions. I headed right. It was now too late to turn back. I saw Bill at a water station. I drank another cup and threw it on the ground. A blue strip spanning the road hid electronics and bleeped at my shoe’s RFID tag. I had cross the halfway point. I could do more.

In my weekly journeys through Golden Gate Park, I pass a buffalo paddock. If I see a buffalo, his presence is a lucky boon for the week. Heading the opposite direction this morning than with my usual route, I spotted five buffalo. I was in great luck.

The Hash House Harriers manned the next water station. There was a gauntlet of Cytomax, then water, and at the end: a keg of beer. Nauseating. Maybe later.

We circled Stowe Lake and descended back to the main section of Golden Gate Park. My watch ominously signaled eighteen miles. This was the start of the wall. I looked down at the pacing. Hesus Christos, I was currently running much under an eight-minute mile. There was no wall.

The road barriers were patrolled by a leather-clad gang of beefy bikers with odd fluorescent orange baseball hats. So San Francisco. They leaned on their chrome hogs, glared at the cars, and clapped as we churned by.

We ran out of the park and into the Haight neighborhood down the eponymous Haight Street. I recognized the art stores, the bars, and the thrift stores. Noc Noc! Shops were shuttered. A few residents clapped from their porches. I ran into the Mission and almost past my new apartment. The watch said 7.5 for the pace. I was going faster.

We turned at busy 16th Street and crossed mile 22. I was going to finish. This wall was coming. Yet, I could count down the remaining distance in striking. Four miles to go, three miles to go. I felt great. Carnage surrounded me. A few walked. One guy said, “shit, shit, shit” and then started hopping on a busted knee.

The last climb was Potrero Hill. A genial guy screamed, “It’s all downhill after this!” I turned the last corner and headed north to AT&T baseball park and the Bay Bridge. At mile twenty-five, I sped to a sprint. My first mile was my slowest. My last mile was my fastest.

There wasn’t an army of people ringing the streets. San Francisco sleeps on Sundays. I heard Tom Landers shout, “Steve Dudek!”, and I raised a fist. My feet were tired. I kept going.

I leapt across the finish line and into the chute. A volunteer ringed me with a large medal just for finishing. Another wrapped me in a mylar blanket that I absent-mindedly lost soon after.

I was hot. I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t eat. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom. My legs quickly congealed. On his bicycle, my chaperone Tom found me. We wandered to get my bag. He sat me down and poured me some chicken broth from a thermos. Weeks earlier, I had collected his husband after hospital surgery. This felt similar.

I turned cold. Tom had brought a blanket. We hobbled to the MUNI subway and headed to my house near Church and Market Streets. I was coherent, but not focused. I got home by ten in the morning. A marathon before breakfast, what would be for lunch? From the street, we could see more runners still heading down the hill. Once in my apartment, Tom mercifully didn’t stay long. I barely got through a shower and lay down for hours. I was done.

The winner, Keith Bechtol, 25 and from Palo Alto, finished in 2:23:29.

I completed the race of 26.2 miles at 3 hours, 25 minutes, and 37 seconds. I ran an average pace of 7:51 minutes per mile. I finished in 369th place out of 5955 runners. It will likely be the longest duration I ever run.

Middle Age

All those years

My friend Jim told me once that he realized around the age of 37 that he was no longer young. In my thirty-seventh year myself (don’t tell anyone), I scoffed at his decrepitude. I’m a rock star; I’m a go-getter; I have no time for wrinkles.

Yet, these past several months I feel, indeed, that I am no longer young. Over-crowded bars fluster me. I’d rather have quiet company. In the morning bathroom mirror, I look withered. I find bubbling innocence rather vapid. I have yet to write rambling letters to my congressmen, but I have a mind to.

It’s not that I’m ancient. It’s just that all my years of experience have accreted. I’ve studied, I’ve traveled, I’ve worked, I’ve loved, I’ve created, I’ve lazed, I’ve fought. I find mementos of periods of my life, such as a picture from Edinburgh, and those years no longer seem mine. Did I really live in Scotland? How the hell did I take a plane to Paris and not know where I was staying?

Encrusted in San Francisco, I shed both naïve anxiety and exuberance. Sometimes nothing no longer seems scary, and nothing no longer seems thrilling. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, the far-flung continents, sleepy sunrises after a night out, even sushi – these were once all nigh-impenetrable mysteries. Life isn’t so mysterious anymore.

I do lament the passing of youthful uncertainty and recklessness, but I welcome the surety of wisdom. I know what I like. The comforts I seek these days – a good espresso or the glance of the bison in the park – are real comforts for me and not the manufactured products of consumerism or the strivings of my communities. I don’t need an iPhone, even if they look cool.

Furthermore, stuck to my rock like a hermit sea urchin, I better recognize ecstatic wonder when it floats by. Oh my gawd, that is the coolest, really!, coolest piece of neon furniture that I have lain upon! She plays the theremin better than any other I have ever danced to! I can filter in the magic of the trick even if I understand how the magician conjures it.

As difficult as it is for someone so scheduled, I’m trying to unfurl the sail when the unexpected trade wind rises. I stay past my bed time at the party/office/carnival/bodega when something spectacular, like ten-thousand volts of electricity, shoots through.

Nonetheless, this middle age, a mantle I don’t wear easily, brings its own uncertainty in its complacency. What am I supposed to be doing? If I can meet all my immediate needs, what am I supposed to want? I’m not married, heck, I’m single. I have a job I like (yay!), but my circle of friends is fast shrinking. Still, this urchin does like his opalescent rock. Mmm, plankton. I careen between sluggish ennui that glues me to the soft couch alone on a Friday night and new manic endeavors: I’ll run a marathon, I’ll build an art car, I’ll buy a motorcycle, I’ll shop on-line for socks.

Our generation of middling age has slept through a protractor youth. Because of longer stays in education and delays to raising a family, we didn’t get going until our thirties. However, I find that many of the choices we made (some of them idly) in our twenties have now come knocking. There are those I know who are now hitting the bleak wall of constrained careers or difficult relationships because of poor luck, extended bad breaks, or no planning a decade ago. The bill has arrived and I worry how some of my friends will pay it.

576 14th St

The Hacienda

It already seems ages ago. One Friday afternoon, I raced home from work. I packed up the few remaining details from my old apartment and then marched off to 576 14th St. There, I met my new landlord, Madeline, and received a set of keys.

Oh no, buyer’s remorse struck. When I had surveyed the prospective domicile a month prior, the place was furnished and I had hurried through. Now I faced emptiness. The kitchen was dark, the stove was electric, the windows still were crappy, and the stairs up were tacky and foreboding. Too late! It would be home nonetheless.

On Jim’s advice, I grabbed a few packing blankets for the weekend from the local U-Haul (a few blocks away – the joy of living in a city where everything is close). At dark on Friday, Jim brought by a City Carshare truck and moving help: Jay.

I and my two movers surveyed the furniture. Certain bulky items would fit only in the truck. There was a mattress, bed frame, dresser, armchair, swiveling glass coffee table, bookcase, and the couch. Yes, the couch. The black Rondo Transformable Sofa hailed from Italy, and Italians are not known for moving effortlessly. Upholstery and filler covered the heavy steel frame of the beast.

Jay suggested we eat the frog and move the couch first. “Eat the frog?” Mark Twain counseled starting each day by eating a frog, thus everything else in the day would be easier. The couch was our frog. We would eat it, or rather move it first.

Two years earlier, I had hired through Craigslist a mover and his truck to get the Rondo Transformable sofa from Foster City to 600 Oak St. The truck haul went great; it was getting the couch from the street to the third-floor apartment that proved challenging. We crammed the L-shape into the elevator in many orientations, eventually scratching up the elevator wall and jamming ajar the ceiling grate. The couch did go, but barely.

Jay, Jim, and I tried to repeat the couch-stuffing process in reverse. We iterated through a few frustrating orientations. The elevator had shrunk. The couch wouldn’t budge. Jay suggested removing the swing-out foot cushions. We did. Jay suggested taking the beast down the stairs. Three floors! No! Yes. On to the first landing, we had committed to the couch. I can’t believe I invited two friends for such exhaustion. I wanted to heave the Italian stallion off the balcony. What seemed like hours later, with a thud, we loaded Senor Rondo into the truck. Fortunately, the new apartment had a wider stairwell. The couch hit the livingroom and may never be moved again – or least until the relevant parties forget how hard it was too move. We had eaten the frog. There would be no more eating tonight.

Back at the old place, from the balcony I stared into the night sky at the lights of San Francisco. It was my last night. I watched barges in the bay and the twinkle of the triangular Transamerica pyramid. Why was I giving up all of this? Moving for the sake of moving? Two police cars zoomed by and traffic honked at the intersection. More brake dust settled on the windowsill. The crackhead on the first floor wanted to borrow five dollars. Oh, that’s why.

I picked up the new keys Friday at 7pm. I scheduled a move-out inspection for the old Sunday at 4pm. I had two days in which to move. Saturday morning, I hauled three loads of sundries in the Corrola. Procedure: park illegally, fill the elevator, empty the elevator, go back for more, drive to the new apartment, park illegally, unload the car. Exhaustion. Three loads. I didn’t want to do a fourth. I was fading.

The cavalry came. John insisted on an appearance just after lunch. Jim brought the truck. John brought Tom. I pointed at furniture; it disappeared. Magic. John is a miraculous packer. All the larger items that I thought would each take a separate trip, they all went together. Jim sailed off in the truck. Tom and John on bicycles shepherded the vehicle down the streets of San Francisco. I followed the parade in the blue-and-yellow Corrola.

Saturday evening and my belongings had been moved. I thought of heading out for adventure in the new neighborhood, but I could barely shuffle to my just-assembled bed.

Sunday, I got to work on the old place. I filled all the nail holes with Spackle. I cleaned the bathroom – shower stilled leaked – and then hit the kitchen. AJ was right, the refrigerator was a pain. How clean does an apartment need to be anyways for a proper move-out? The building manager, Larry, was sympathetic to write down all the faults: the heat never worked, the shower leaked, the oven’s plastic had melted, the floor buckled. I’m not sure I’ll see my two-thousand dollar deposit, but I’ll fight to keep it.

I’ve been at 576 14th St for three weeks. I still feel like I’m living out of a hotel room. It took me a few weeks and lots of consulting to figure out where to drop the couch, armchair, and table. I now have a room set up for living.

Impressions? This place is quiet, quite quiet. Look at a map and I’m situated in the geographic center of San Francisco. Ruben would be pleased. With the pedestrian view of an ivy wall and the backs of apartment buildings, I’m monastically sheltered. Gone are the four lanes of traffic, the police cars, and the folks just hanging out on the street.

Inside the apartment, I’ve got a lot of space, perhaps twice as much as before. My stuff has spread out into three closets and over a giant kitchen. The bathroom is tiny, built for midgets. The small sink basin feels as if it were at knee height. There’s no bathroom storage so my toiletries congregate like makeshift parishioners on the floor and in the hallway. The entryway is so dark that I avoid its murk and prefer to exit through the kitchen.

My plants have taken up residents on ledges and in various corners. Some of the leaf people are not happy. I can’t get the zinfandel vine to grow; its grape leaves slowly turn brown and fall off. The tomatoes are happier in the kitchen courtyard. Most of the tomatoes have fruited except two plants that contracted the plague. I ate my first crop, a single red tomato the size of a marble, that was nonetheless delectable in its shyness. The stunted chilies, though, pine away for more sun. All my crops should do better next season without the windblown torment of the Lower Haight.

I have met the neighbors and found them gracious. The savvy older couple that lives downstairs takes good care of us. They advise me on navigating the tortuous driveway. Their tomato plants are the size of bushes, and their potatoes and zucchinis look even better. At harvest the wife may drop on my doorstep swaddling vegetables. They both love baseball, and I think they have season tickets to all the Giants games. I’ll learn from them how to live well and small and happily. A single guy, Ethan?, lives across the way over a single woman whose name I’ve forgotten. I see rarely see either of these other apartment dwellers; we all work too much.

John has gotten me eager to paint the walls of the apartment. Previously, I was too afraid even to hang pictures. At some point all those nail holes will need to get repaired for a move-out inspection. Now, I’d rather live well and customize a place than concern myself with wear. I pay too much rent, almost two-thousand dollars each month, to live antiseptically. I’m thinking of tangerine and lime colors. Tom counsels that I tone down the hue. It’s gonna be a few fun months moving into this place. House-warming party anon.

Running out of Room

Twenty Miles around the City

I’ve run out of land. San Francisco is seven miles by seven miles. If I’m going to run twenty miles, I must criss-cross the city. Yesterday evening, I head out of my house with a bottle of juice and some gelatinous energy nuggets. Where to? I huffed east down Market St past the Muni stations disgorging rush-hour commuters. I hit bay water at the Ferry Building with its famed farmers’ market. From there, I ringed the city counter-clockwise, running north past all the piers. Tourists crowded a spray-paint artist in front of Pier 49.

I turned by a yacht club and west into the Marina. Fewer people were out as it was a Monday instead of my usual Sunday. A guy passed me on foot, knew better, and found me passing him. I ran up the hill at the end of the coastal sidewalk. I was out of land again.

I tapped the first balustrade of the Golden Gate Bridge and turned south into the Presidio Park. There are unexpected finds here. A hidden cemetery shelters identically-shaped white headstones. Three giants sculptures made from hay exhort from within a forest: nest from the inside out, resolve conflict with song, and – I can’t remember, I’ll have to run that path again. I exit the Presidio through a golf course, strange for the middle of San Francisco.

The golf course spits me out in the Sunset District, fitting because the sun is setting and the fog has rolled in. I run south past the new Chinese restaurants on Clement Street and past the families that finally found an affordable place to live.

I hit the park, the big park, Golden Gate Park, at the de Young Museum. At this hour, it is just a bunch of motorcyclists and other crazed runners. I turn west and head into the maze of intricate park lanes. Soon, I run out of land. The surf pounds Ocean Beach while groups huddle around bonfires on the sand.

I make a large turn and head back east into Golden Gate Park at a windmill. Grazing buffalo are a boon of fortune for me for the rest of the week. I run past the museum row: the de Young, the California Academy of Sciences, the Conservatory of Flowers. No more park.

I hit the streets of the Haight. Page Street is just residential. I cross iconic Ashbury and paddle down the steep hill into the Lower Haight. I’m in the home stretch and stretching to home is all I’m thinking about. There’s the Victorian with the custom sidewalk of blue and yellow circles to match. There’s the convenience store with the old Turkish guy that nods.

I make my last turn south, over Market Street, past the crazy bronze on the top of Dolores St, and into the Mission. Water and food call. Almost three hours have past and twenty miles have flown underfoot. Next week must be longer. Perhaps I’ll cross the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County on the northside?

The running isn’t the problem. It’s the aftermath. I must die. My hips hurt. I can’t bend over. Footsteps are less than a foot apart. I churn from too hot to freezing cold. I struggle through a shower and try to get other clothes on. The couch calls. I hurt too much to sleep. I’m not hungry enough to eat, and it’s a debate anyway whether I can figure out the microwave. Rabbit, rest. I have become an old man of 87.

On the Move

576 14th St #4

As I’m moving on June eighteenth. I’ll hire a truck, pack my stuff, carry everything down the apartment’s rickety elevator, and haul belongings way across town – I mean six blocks south. Six blocks! I dunno exactly why.

Winter had recently ebbed. It wasn’t exactly a long winter – this is California after all – but the rains fell more than usual, and I hit a spate of depression. Works troubles had built, San Francisco was no longer new, and I was wondering where life was heading next.

Furthermore, I had lived in my little twenty foot by twenty foot rat hole, I mean eyrie, for two years. The economy had plummeted since I signed the lease. Now was the time to re-evaluate the rental market and check whether I was paying fair market value for living on top of the hill.

In March, John and Tom precipitously moved into their dream mansion, a Victorian with a backyard hottub, on a tree-lined boudoir in the Mission. People were moving! I could move! With the return of the cherry blossoms, the city was changing.

I hit up a mortgage broker. With the E-Ink windfall, perhaps I should buy land. How much could I afford? $350,000 at a stretch. What does that get me? Almost nothing. I can’t buy. I’m not willing to mortgage my life’s saving to live in a crackhouse, I mean crackstudio. Renting, here I come.

Starting in April, I combed Craigslist. Tom suggested I draft criteria for the new place to focus the search. I wanted modern, warm, safe, preferably not on the ground floor, a bathroom located not through the bedroom, parking, a gas stove, quiet, central, paradoxically with a view but not on the hill, and a lay-out that worked.

San Francisco is a shitty place to rent an apartment for one. The elegant Victorian facades that the city so favors harbors 1880-1920’s homes that were designed for sprawling families and not for single bachelors. Old highrises were once hotels just for sleeping. In many of the units I inspected, kitchens are often an afterthought, with the refrigerator almost dropped in the bedroom. Brooklyn may be the land of lofts. In the Bay Area, lofts congregate downtown and along the Embarcadero, spots where I don’t want to live.

Nonetheless, I cracked open Craigslist several times a day. I went to a dozen open houses and then more. The rental market fortunately was softer than when I first looked in February 2008. I didn’t have to jump immediately on an opening. My current apartment contently was close to fair market value.

Still, few units looked appetizing. That one was dark, that other one was dilapidated, a third had a four-foot square room that the giddy agent said some tenants use for a cozy bedroom. I walked up a ton of stairs, peered into a lot of crappy bathrooms.

Once, I came close to renting that I hastily filled out a rental application in the unit’s kitchen. I then did what I do best; I demurred. It was a great modern apartment with a scintillating kitchen and bright windows. The price was high but reasonable. Yet, the building was shoved into a tight alley and once inside, I’d have to walk up five flights of stairs without an elevator. Where would I put my bicycle? Where would I park the car? I could see myself passing the days forgotten in a massive building.

The frustrating search continued. One landlord even called me back. Sensing my “power” job as a research scientist, she wanted badly to have me in her building. Nice street, dreary unit. Sigh. It was easy to say no, as I more and more, I realized how much I enjoyed where I lived. 600 Oak had a view, modern amenities poorly installed, an exterior staircase, elevator, and quick access to so much down the hill. I could wait.

Yet as the weeks went by, my current place also started to drag. Because rents are so high, couples occupy most of the boxes. The recent tenants below liked to party and had a yippy dog. At all hours, the fire engines cruised through the arterial streets of Oak and Fell. The heat didn’t work, the shower was chipping, and I felt like I was living with one leg in the building and one leg looking around the city.

I did spot a promising listing for a 3-story loft in the southern part of Mission. It came with parking, skylights, and oddities that suited me. Eagerly, I scouted the building two days before the open house. The place was crazy. This could work. I never got to sign a check. Someone more forceful than I called to schedule a tour before the open house. The place was rented in advance. Sigh, again.

The “Bay to Breakers” race ran past my apartment a day later on Sunday. I was pre-occupied with throwing a morning party alongside the race route. That weekend, few apartment listings looked promising. I had only one call-back for a three pm, Sunday showing in the Mission. The apartment ad included no pictures, and was posted so long ago that I had forgotten the text. Time to get this over with.

A man in a truck met me at the front door of the building. Once inside, my usual reservations fell away. Proper floor plan, check; small building, check; parking, check; rent?, high, but still within range, check; modern, check. I grew flustered because this place could work. I told the landlord that I would have to wait until the evening to decide. He genially told me to fill out an application anyway, and that he would put me, as first viewer, on the top of the pile.

I left him at four o’clock. I would call him back at eight o’clock. I had four hours to decide. My life went into a tizzy. I went to where I think. I went to the bar.

The process of looking for an apartment has taught me yet again that I’m poor at making snap decisions for what I believe are large life changes. I lack the insouciant gut that seamlessly directs choices. Instead, I make lists. I call friends.

Tom: clear your mind, take a walk back to the apartment building, pretend you live there. How do you feel?

Natasha: go for it!

Me: I dunno, I dunno.

Despite all that self-guessing, I apparently do have an internal compass. My current spot in the Lower Haight is so appropriate for me now that it is rather hard to leave. If I had blindly landed here, I would have taken any boat sailing out of the harbor.

The new place is only six blocks south of here! It’s only for, at the least, a year! You are not where you live. The perfectionist in me counsels otherwise.

As I calmed down, I realized I wanted this apartment. Because of the mid-June move-in, I could give thirty days notice and not pay double rent. The place has a garage and storage; I could build. I could shelter a motorcycle. Still, during all the agonizing, I did unknowingly leave my bike locked next to the bar for over a day. Fortunately, the bike was still there when I return in a panic on Monday night.

Ruben tells me he wants to move three blocks north and three blocks west. Given his perambulations, his desired spot is the centroid of his current life. Eleanor thinks he’s crazy for wanting to pack up and move so close to where they live now. I think Ruben just wants to maximize efficiency. Surprisingly, I’m moving to my centroid. Within a block, my new apartment is the weighted center of my San Francisco wanderings.

I did call the landlord back. I took the place.

I didn’t sleep well. I woke with second guesses. 576 14th St does not contain numbers that repeat in the way 600 Oak #33 does. That could be bad. The new place is 1960s chintz. The windows could be newer and they may leak heat. The stove is electric. Maybe I don’t want to be in the Mission. Chill. A friend reminded that second-thoughts just indicate that the decision is important.

The former tenant is a doctor. A stranger on the street peered at the printed ad on the building. I asked him if he thought it was could value. He beamed. I told him I was signing the lease. He said I would enjoy the neighborhood.

I’m moving! In mid-June. A new life, just six blocks away.

The Relay

199 miles from Calistoga to Santa Cruz

As the sun set, I got lost in downtown Petaluma. As the sun rose, lingering fog burnt off the Woodside reservoir. In the heat of the afternoon, I passed a quarry hidden in the alpine redwoods close to Santa Cruz. Quite a trip for just a weekend, and yet each time I was running as fast as my life could take me.

Twelve of us from work had signed up for a weekend away. Early Saturday morning, we took two vans from work to Calistoga, a spa town north of wine country. Our destination that weekend was Santa Cruz, far south of San Francisco. Cars, however, are so passé these days; we would go on foot. The twelve of us ran the 199 miles.

Of course, I didn’t run all 199 miles, although at least two entrants did run that entire distance on their own. This annual race is called “The Relay,” and it is a charity running relay held at the beginning of May to benefit organ donation.

In January, a work colleague named Primo heard that I run occasionally. That day, he signed me into his coven of twelve. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but the weekend event probably was a good way to get to know my workplace. In the ensuing months, Primo suggested lots of training, especially hills. Training? I don’t need training. I ran a half-marathon in February. That should be enough.

We packed sleeping bags, a little water (we stopped for more at gas stations), food, and changes of socks. Spirits were high as we cruised through decadent wine country on a sunny Saturday morning.

In Calistoga, we parked next to a bevy of vans. Not all the teams started at once. To encourage the two hundred teams of twelve to finish the relay at roughly the same time, starts were staggered depending on estimated speed. Our starting gun fired at noon; about a dozen teams left with us.

As this is a relay, from our group only Mikal ran at noon down a vineyard road and on to a small highway. The first van of five followed her, giving her water as needed at roadside pull-outs. My van of six motored past Mikal and on to the first checkpoint. We now had a few hours to buy provisions, rest, and get the lay of the land.

Our van drove on to Napa. Over lunch I got to know the group a bit better. While the first van of runners coursed through vineyards, we settled down in a field next to a church parking lot full of second vans. We consorted with the lean and limber, dozed under trees, and ate cookies that kindly old ladies served on silver platters. Despite the tranquility, nerves ran high. None of us had yet to put in miles and we worried what that would be like. My knees felt stiff.

Runners did not carry large batons. Instead they handed off a dinky green bracelet. Kinda lame. I’d rather send along to Santa Cruz something more meaningful like a message in a bottle. Around five o’clock on Saturday, the last runner from the first van handed off the green bracelet to our van’s first runner. Niel took off in the late afternoon sun.

The relay consists of thirty-sex pre-set legs. Each runner tackles three of these legs. I tackled legs 11, 23, and 35. An average run spanned six miles, but elevation changes varied wildly from flat to a climb of one thousand feet. Between legs, a runner had a break of about twelve hours until the next run. The twelve hours, though, were not spent sleeping, but trailing other runners for four to six hours, eating, conferring with the other van, and watching out for the enemy.

The group headed into the hills that separated Napa Valley from Sonoma. Primo took off overland, jumping two fences on private land that the vans could not follow. We were forewarned about leg number 10, Drew’s leg. In the assignments, Primo picked me as the second strongest runner. I was flattered, and then put-out;“I’m not the best?” Looking over this tenth leg for our top runner, I wished I was placed easier at fourth of fifth. Drew had a nine-mile run, one thousand feet up, through pasture and over mountain. I could not do.

The sun had set. I waited nervously in the cooling van as I was to take the baton from a tired Drew when he arrived. He descended the mountain with everything except the ten commandments.

He handed off the bracelet. I took off into downtown Petaluma. I crossed the major highway over a bridge. A runner from another team loped behind me. The pace was fast, too fast. Small signs advertised the turns for the relay race. I had written the streets on my hand. Nonetheless, cruising at 7 minutes to the mile, I looked up at a street sign and didn’t immediately see the “D Street” I wanted. I headed onward, now lost. I had not realized that the sign said “East D Street.” I circled through a Walgreen’s parking lot. Precious time had slipped. I headed back in the direction of the course.

The city fell behind me. I ran along the highway up into the dark hills. Vans cruised on by in an appreciative parade. The moon rose. I could hear voices in the distance. My breathing shortened. I was done.

At ten at night, we pulled into a diner in Novato. We craved plates of salt. After eating, our hotel tonight was the grass by the gift shop of the south side of San Francisco’s golden gate bridge. A party was in progress as this was a nexus of van exchanges. I met an older woman giving out coffee; she was a ten-year survivor of a liver transplant. The race’s money went to support organ donation. We were doing some good. For one or two hours, I hunkered down in a sleeping bag listening to runners.

For my second leg, I headed along Skyline boulevard in the dark. In the morning gloom, I ran along the long reservoir just to the west. Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy poured its Sierra water into this reservoir to satiate the thirst of the entire Bay Area. My feet slapped the pavement on the winding downhill. Twenty-four minutes later, the sun had risen and I was done.

Afterwards, our van drove to Drew’s house. We only had two hours to rest, but we wanted to be inside and quiet. Six sweaty runners barged in on a fortunately placid roommate. I slept under the coffee table. When we woke, we were still tired, but it felt like a new day.

Only one leg to go. We were envious of the other van. Many of those runners had finished all their legs. Rumors flew that the competing Applied Biosciences team, Yak II, were only minutes behind us. As a former Yak, our team captain Primo wanted badly to beat the Yaks.

We devoured sandwiches at a Subway in a gas station. I drove the van like a maniac into the foothills of Skyline Boulevard. It was Sunday morning and the sport motorcyclists were zooming around us in packs. We parked at a busy wooded intersection and waited.

Marc was running just three miles, one thousand feet up. This was a monster of an ascent. He handed off to Neil. Our van was finally on the move. A shirtless Drew took over like a tank and bulldozed his way up challenging stretches in the hot afternoon through alpine towns. We had one more crest to climb before the long descent to Santa Cruz and the ocean.

My last leg, number 35, was rated VH – Very Hard. I commenced in a quarry and headed up a truck road. The map warned me of the ascent. Unlike my previous legs, I started slowly. I hit the summit and then let gravity push me down the step decline. My legs churned under me as my feet slapped the pavement. Fast. Runner after runner fell away from view.

Studying the map earlier, I know of a large hill at mile five of six. I was doing so well, just one more mile. The wooded road started to climb, making switchback after switchback. Two days on the road, sixteen miles already ran, too little sleep, I faded. My breath grew ragged and then I asthmatically heaved air. My van had already continued on. Alone, I could stop. I did the unthinkable; I started walking. Eventually, I made it to the checkpoint through a combination of power walks and slow jogs. The switchbacks didn’t let up. Defeated, I was done.

We cheered our last runner, Richard, down the ocean highway and into the small town of Davenport.

27 hours and 35 minutes later, 12 of us had run 199 miles from Calistoga to Davenport. Thru the heat of day and the wind of night, one runner was running breakneck. We covered some of the most spectacular topography of the continent. We tore through vineyards, into valleys, over the Golden Gate Bridge, through San Francisco, up redwood passes, and along the ocean. Of two hundred or so teams, we finished about 32nd. Not so bad for a bunch of amateurs. We beat the Applied Biosystems’ second team of Yaks but five minutes.

At the finish line, the wind whipped the tired and elated. We just wanted to go home. Soon back at work parking lot, we wearily unpacked the vans, struggled with a missing key and cellphone, and eventually collapsed at our respective apartments.

Some already discussed next year. We would train more. We would decorate our vans. We would be faster.

Davis Day

A Shot with Dinner

Davis Day! Way back when I was a member of the Stanford Marching Band, the group would head annually north to the University of California at Davis. On this long Saturday by a lake, Stanford would raise some rabble in the battle of the marching bands against the school bands of Berkeley, Davis, the Lumberjacks of Humboldt, Irvine, even UC San Diego. The Stanford bandies were too busy playing music and getting drunk to see much of the campus. Once, we built a raft out of cardboard boxes, trashbags, and duct tape. The raft took on water and sunk hours later. For years all I knew of Davis was a swath of lake, a large crowd, and some deaf ducks.

Ruben, a Davis alum, suggested that we go to Picnic Day on Saturday. Picnic Day? Oh, that’s the day the Stanford Band called Davis Day. I hauled a bike in my car from my apartment up to Sacramento. The three of us hopped bikes, stopped at Temple for a coffee, took light rail to the Amtrak station, and rode the train fifteen minutes into Davis.

Once there, Ruben navigated us through the bustling town and on to campus. Biking made everything easy. We sat for a picnic by the lake. Eleanor had made sandwiches. We watched the bands set up. I recognized a drummer named Ethan from ten years ago. We chatted about lost time.

For Picnic Day, the university opens to the public a lot of academic buildings to exhibit art, science demonstrations, and theater spaces. We took a tour of the Mondavi Center, a new performance arts space that is the nicest concert hall I’ve seen – blond wood and amazing acoustics.

Afterwards, we wandered over to the Food Science center. Giant artichokes grew in the garden next to beets, chard, and wheat. Davis is known for food science and especially wine making. Mondavi got his start here.

A work colleague advised me to come early in the day to UC Davis’s viticulture center to pick up a grape vine. There was only one plant left standing, and I really, really wanted it. If I had come earlier, I could have picked up for free one of the several hundred grape vines the students distributed. Instead, I was late.

Still, there was one plant left standing, and rather than merely give it away, the center held a silent auction. I wrote my name down for ten bucks, and then circled back to beat up other bettors. I wrote Ruben’s name down for thirteen bucks. I really wanted this plant. About a foot tall, leafy-green maple leaves, a twig of a stem: so cute!

I won, I won. With this zinfandel grape plant grafted to a parasite-resistant root, I’m starting my own vineyard. I talked at length to a docent to learn how to take care of this grape plant. It will be two years until first harvest. In the meantime, I need to cut off all grape buds to encourage the plant to grow.

We nestled the plant into Eleanor’s canvas bag. She rode around Davis for the day with the thing shaking Charlie Brown-style on her front bike basket.

We settled by the lake to listen to the marching bands. Stanford was loud, colorful, chaotic, and fun. Ten years had passed since I had played with band, ten years that felt like thirty. I went closer to see if I recognized anyone besides Ethan. The music was fmiliar, but the faces were all different. College life can be difficult to return: everything stays the same, but your life moves on.

* * *

One of Eleanor’s co-workers brought her a dead bird. A hunter had shot it, and the co-worker thought the fowl too small for two to eat. Eleanor agreed to cook it for Friday night’s dinner. Trouble was, we didn’t know what it was. Too big for a quail. I suggested pheasant, but perhaps too small for pheasant. Someone suggested grouse. Perhaps, indeed, a grouse.

As the bird was smaller than a chicken, Eleanor roasted it with baby carrots, little potatoes, and pearl onions. It was a Victorian miniature Thanksgiving dinner. The carcass was saved for non-descript fowl stock. The meat was burgundy and flavorful – not chicken at all. Ruben picked out two tiny metal shot. Eleanor and Ruben eat like kings, little kings.

Money in the Mail

Repaying a Debt to Society

I received another greeting card today. As usual. The card this time, unlike previous cards, didn’t wish me a belated birthday, or congratulate me on being “one hell of an amazing woman,” or counsel me to trust in the Lord. No printed text this time, but still a handwritten poem: Without a Care/ Immune to a scare. Yesterday’s card read: Should you all sound restraint omit,/ The night will surely end in vomit. There’s always a couplet. I learned that the last word is always the first line’s last word plus an extra letter.

Then there’s the money. All the letters come with money. No, not your usual tens and twenties. I got one penny once. On a more generous day, I received a crisp fifty-dollar bill. Once, forty-eight cents were duct taped to a remnant laundry detergent box. First a two-dollar bill; later, a stack of two-dollar bills. I’m so pimp that I shower the strippers with two-dollar bills!

One letter suffered water damage. The post office carefully wrapped the card in a larger letter and sent the two along with an apology.

I come home, I open the mailbox, I take upstairs another greeting card. More pithy wisdom, more conundrums, more cash. One can get used to almost anything.

Ages ago, I received in the post a cardboard box stuffed with crumpled dollar bills. This is far more exciting.

Yip-Yips at Yuri's Night

Random Acts of Beauty

Festivals bore me. I’ve attended too house parties, warehouse parties, block parties, black-tie parties, raves, crazes, street fairs, meet-and-greet stares, green eggs and ham affairs.

To keep it fresh, more and more, I’m about the put-on. What can I do to make the event more interesting? What can I bring? What spectacle can I explode?

This is Silicon Valley. NASA is here, has been a while, long before start-ups, and even before Apple Computer. South of Palo Alto, east along highway 101, you can spot ginormous aircraft hangers alongside the Bay. I heard a rumor that the space shuttle was once repaired in one of these huge hangers of Moffett Field.

Although NASA’s popularity soared during the heady 1960s of lunar landings and space walks, kids these days don’t give a damn about statisticians launched into orbit. To combat waning ratings, every year NASA has a party at Moffett Field. Called Yuri’s night, this party celebrates Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space. Yuri’s celebrations occur at several spots around the county, although I’d like to think the NASA event at Moffett Field is the grandest of Yuri’s parties.

Two years ago, John Major and I assessed the madness of Yuri’s night. Last year, Yuri’s got moved from NASA to the California Academy of Sciences situated in Golden Gate Park. This year, Ruben and Eleanor wanted to blast off to the moon.

We drove to NASA down the Peninsula from San Francisco on a brisk Saturday afternoon. The bouncers at the gate allowed in bags only if carried by a woman, so we saddled Eleanor with Yip-Yip costumes. Once inside, we discovered the usual chaos of NASA under techno: a steampunk rocket ship, two stages, a poster session, and a lecture series for the public on space travel and exploration. I learned about shitting in space or what kind of life they are looking for on Mars.

We bounced a bit between the stages and the beer tent. It was time for a quick change. I wanted to see what would happen if aliens landed on NASA. Months ago, I had made two furry costumes based on the Sesame Street aliens called Yip-Yips. A Yip-yip costume is basically a burka bedsheet with a veiled mouth for seeing and two styrofoam balls with pipe cleaners on top of the head for comedy.

Yip-yip costumes put on, madness did begin. Ruben and I were the center of attention. Photographers everywhere. Folks squealed at us, “Yip-yip” and “telephone” and “me-ow.” Oddly, Yip-yips are chick magnets. I couldn’t see that well, but as soon as I thought, “She’s nice…” she ran over and wanted a photograph with me. Me? Me! Of course, she loves me merely as a yip-yip and not as her romeo surface chemist.

Yip-Yipping is exhausting. We crashed the SETI booths, ran around the beer tent, got photographed under the rocket ship, and danced at the stage. Fortunately, yip-yip costumes come off and go back on quickly so I didn’t have to be the only Yip-Yip all day long. I found Tom and John with Helen and friend. They got dubbed yip-yips. I unrolled the Yip-Yip burkas on them so I could run off.

AJ and Fiona arrived at Moffet Field with a bewildered Doctor Shaw in tow. We covered AJ and Fi with the yip-yips. They got to be the celebrities of the hour. At one point, a film crew interviewed them. I had a ball watching the blue and orange aliens bounce through the crowd. I had borrowed (stolen?) the design for the Yip-Yip outfits off on the internets from a free site called instructables. Apparently the author of this yip-yip instructable was at Yuri’s; he thought my version was well-constructed. Huzzah!

We danced until dark, said goodbye to the rocket, and set off in our car back to San Francisco.

One week later, I unrolled the Yip-yip costumes in Sacramento. Ruben had read of a house party with some college bands. It was nighttime Saturday. From the apartment, we had merry difficulty stumbling down 21 street in veiled darkness. Fortunately Eleanor guided us under the overpass and across the sidewalks.

Sacramento is not San Francisco. The doorgirl made all of our group pay the five-dollar cover charge. The classy promoter would have at least let the Yip-yips in for free. Once inside, Ruben and I discovered heat, loud, and energy. Bodies were careening. Three minutes from entry, and a guy ushered us down a hallway.

We were on stage! I banged up against the drum kit and moshed next to the bassist. So much happening at once. On stage with the band! As with Yuri’s night, Yip-Yip is exhausting. You are once the subject of attention and yet totally anonymous. I need social interaction that is more equitable than these extremes.

We fled the stage. Ruben grew hot. I was baking as well. We headed into the Sacramento night. Under the overpass, we removed the Yip-yip costumes. It was a first start toward random acts of beauty.

Victory Garden

on my balcony

This may be a tiny apartment, but I do have a balcony. The third floor looks east over downtown San Francisco with a hint of a Bay Bridge pylon. I can gauge the traffic coming off of highway 280 into the city and I watch the sun fade on the funny church on Russian Hill that looks like an agitator in a top-loading washing machine.

When I picked up this apartment, I thought I would spend many an afternoon on this balcony admiring the flow of cars down Oak St or hailing my neighbors walking below. Yet, San Francisco afternoons are frequently chilly and loud. My balcony, furthermore, is a scant three feet deep and nine feet across. I guess I could sleep outside if I want to rough it, but there would only room for me.

Instead, I store my bike on my balcony, locked now, since my previous bike – sniff, sniff – was stolen from this very balcony, probably taken from the roof not far enough above. Once, I hauled out to the balcony my kitchen’s end table and two chairs. I dined outside with Jim. Fun eats, but all the cars distract from food.

All this unused outdoor space, it was time to do something with it. Yeesh, I’ve lived here now for two years. So, today and two weeks ago, I stopped after work at a nursery. I perused plants. It’s spring and I’m now a farmer outstanding in my field.

At work, I consulted with a biologist for the types of plants I should buy. He recommend herbs, chilis, tomato plants, perhaps even an ornamental citrus tree. At the nursery, I did buy a bed of herbs: basil, cilantro (scraggly), Italian parsley (looks too much like cilantro), oregano (fragrant), thyme, and chives. I picked up five tomato plants and a flat of chilis.

Back home, I made two planters from cardboard boxes, trash bags, and duct tape (probably could have used duct tape alone). The herbs went into one box, the chilis in another, and the tomato plants found their way into individual pots.

My sole plant outside, the drowned jade tree, got pushed to the far side of the balcony. I put my new vegetable garden by the sliding glass door so I can inspect from inside the fruits of my labor. Like a farmer, I’m now concerned about the weather. A late spring cold snap could snap my plants. I need moist days, but not rain. Perhaps I’ll win the prize at the county fair for largest tomato.

All said, I have no idea what I’m doing. From my childhood, I have vague memories of my father dabbling in agriculture. He often was consummate in whatever endeavor he explored. He converted the grass in the back yard into a large field. He sunk three twenty-foot bean poles for beans. He filled dirt rows with vegetables. I vaguely remember pumpkins and zucchinis. The ground smelled fragrant and real.

Like a doctor who doesn’t like working with sick people, problem was, our family didn’t eat vegetables. The farmer – my father – did not cook, and my mother was sick of forcing us fussy kids to eat earthy foods. The farmers’ market revolution of the 1990s was ten years too late. The crops were not appreciated.

For a few seasons, the field fell fallow. One late fall – almost with frost on the ground – I remember getting forced to help turn yards of dirt in back of the house. The garden was gone. Sigh, instead of cultivating produce, it was easier to smooth over the bramble with dirt, grow grass, and have a swampy back yard.

I’ll give growing vegetables a try on my three-by-three plot of balcony.

Learning to Walk

The Gokhale Method

It’s Thursday night and I’m learning to walk (again). I’m pleased to have come this far, as walking is the last lesson. Before walking, I had to tackle lying down (my favorite!), sitting, standing, and bending. Walking, though, is hard.

You see, my back isn’t better. I sought medical help at the turn of the year whence I began weekly physical therapy. One examiner simply said that my rib cage is collapsing from years of hunching. All that compression has pushed out my shoulder blades (not down), pushed my neck forward, stretched my upper back, and tightened everything else. Daily exercises do help, and I ought to keep them up – the windmills, punches, and pull downs. My shoulders hopefully fly more backwards than before, and the grinding isn’t as audible.

You see, though, my back isn’t better. It’s not that I’m in agony, although one afternoon I thought I might throw up from exacerbation. I’m nearly all-the-time sore, discomforted, twinged as I jostle around my bag of joints that is my back and shoulders. It’s not the neck, shoulders, upper back, or lower – actually, the soreness comes from all four.

So I’m learning to walk again. It’s a new technique. A chronic back sufferer herself, Esther Gokhale devised a therapy that focuses less on high-impact exercises or even my physical-therapy proscribed series of stretches, but instead she raises awareness of our common postures: sitting, laying, standing, and walking. She ascribes the high incidence of back pain in Western Culture partially to the long held cultural misconception of correct posture. We all slouch. We’re taught to slouch. It was fashionable in the 1920s. We walk lazily, pelvis forward. We sit curled (as I am now) for hours to type, read, or surf the internet.

For solutions, Esther spent quite a while investigating the postures of less industrialized cultures as well as children for cues for more ancient biomechanics: stack your spine, stick out your ass, sit on your sitz bones. I’ve turned into a disciple.

I started with a read through Esther’s course book that Matt let me borrow. Sure, the book is quite self-aggrandizing, but I did pick up some good advice. I won’t say “it’s changed my world,” but I’m even more aware of how I carry myself.

Esther conveniently has her posture center in Palo Alto as she has educational ties to Stanford. Because her 9-hour class is so expensive ($450!), she does offer free informational sessions to see whether you would like to enroll. On a Monday evening after work, I packed up Natasha and Alicia for cult induction.

Esther’s daughter took us through an hour of sitting and walking. Maya reiterated the focus of the book, listened to our back complaints, and told us what to expect from the class. We even shuffled like Frankenstein down the hallway and back. Maya kept telling me to contract my glut. Where’s my glut? How do I contract it? I had a breakthrough when she described the proper walk a little like a hockey player pushing off his skates.

A few days later and my gluts hurt. I’m still practicing “glidewalking” imagining a hockey player pushing off his skates although I’m in Californian in 70-degree heat. From the posture center, I bought a cushion to rest my back in the car when I’m driving. I don’t know whether Esther’s method is the “answer” for my chronic back ailment, but it’s going to be a long road ahead anyway to wellness. In the meantime, I’m even more a vigilant Posture Police. All of ya, sit up straight, dammit!

Russian Ridge

In search of spring

I don’t do well with darkness. The winter months might not draw me completely indoors – this is California after all – but once the clocks spring forth in March, I feel as light as the day. The blooming season is short. At work, I exhort John to pull a chair on to the sidewalk and watch the trees as they flower. Too soon the cherry blossoms will be just pink confetti under cars.

Last Thursday, I went in search of spring. Work started too early that morning at seven. When I finally escaped at three, I drove west and up into the foothills. Skyline Boulevard meanders south from San Francisco through the Peninsula on top of the vertical coastal range. The road is a popular destination for bicyclists, hikers, film crews for car commercials, and those wanting a view. In some spots, you can look west over Stanford University and the Bay down below. Turn to the east and you can see the Pacific.

I drove south along Skyline and pulled into the parking lot of the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve at the corner with Page Mill Road. I was seeking memories and California’s orange poppies. Years ago, Holly got married here. One morning then, a group assembled in this parking lot and wandered up the hill. At the top, she wed husband Steve surrounded by pageantry and field of poppies. Once the vows were exchange, the entourage descended the hill for lunch at her mother’s house.

Much has changed since then. The marriage didn’t last. Today, I wasn’t with a group – just me feeling lonely. The trail to the top was shorter than I remembered, almost in the way the hallways of elementary schools are narrower at reunions. I passed two guys flying kites and an older couple on the way down. Otherwise, nobody was about.

The sun ducked behind clouds and the wind picked up. Alas, I was too early for the poppies. Among the verdant hills, I found maybe five or so bits of orange tightly closed. I found the rock circle in which the marriage happened. Was I here to consecrate the divorce?

A bit melancholy at the change, I took another trail on the way back, invitingly named “Ancient Oaks.” I wandered into a mossy glen full of undergrowth, odd flowers, and a twisting path. A rabbit hardly jumped in front of me. It was wonderfully unexpected.

I can’t recapture the past. Often my visits to old stomping grounds seem perfunctory salvos to honor either former friends or former instances of myself. Going to this old place, I found a new place, a spot even older.

In my late twenties, it would be Holly that would plan a trip for us. We would walk into the hills and then go afterwards for a meal and a movie. Back then I may have found all that simple wandering too boring. Where were the parties with the explosions? I’m ten years older and now understand her zeal. I’ve had enough explosions. I’d rather walk up a hill with some friends, descend for a good meal, and then make our own evenings adventures. She was on to something. I knew it then, but wasn’t aware of it.

ACS 2010

San Francisco Meeting for 3

If a party joke involves chemists, I can’t fathom the punch line. If a group of crows is a murder, if a group of sheep is a flock, what is a group of chemists? Besides dull. I nominate an ensemble of chemists, but those more organically minded may suggest instead a reaction of chemists. Though, chemists don’t react to much.

Why all this pondering over chemists? Well, the biannual national meeting of the American Chemical Society descended last week on my city of San Francisco. You might not think this is a big deal, but the ACS is purported to be the largest scientific society in the world. The number of chemists descending was over twenty-five thousand. Perhaps with such a large ensemble of chemists, the mass could be approximated as macroscopic. Even my chemistry jokes escape humor.

The canonical chemistry hoard took over both wings of the Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco as well as two massive nearby hotels, the Hilton and Parc 55. We have clout. I say “we” as the meeting encouraged me to re-enroll in the American Chemical Society.

I found myself Monday morning pouring through a thick schedule book of the conference proceedings, deliberating between the surface & colloids talks in the Moscone Center or the equally fascinating polymer and materials talks back at the Hilton Hotel. Choices, choices. Most lectures lasted just thirty minutes. The juggle of timing reminded me of a few days prior at the SXSW music festival, deciding between Chilean rock bands and Canadian fuzz instrumental bands. Choices, choices. My life does slingshot between the serious and silly with hats hastily exchanged.

Fortunately, my boss paid our conference fees and gave us a little leeway from the lab to attend the conference for a day or two. All the academic fervor reinvigorated my like of chemical structures and materials. It’s neat to see how modifications of chemical bonds can lead predictable to changes in properties. I less likely these days to join the ranks of faculty, that road is too arduous, but I will continue to peruse the scientific literature from my armchair.

At the conference, I did not run into any work colleagues – heck, there are twenty-five thousand chemists milling about – but I did reunite with chums from my Texas and Netherlands days. I’ve been part of a secret scientist society for over a decade. Like an overgrown Facebook account, I’m connected to an extended family of quirks, geeks, misanthropes, bon vivants, and wonks.

Oddly, though, when I write family, I do mean family. Earlier, when I asked the American Chemical Society to change my mailing address, they wanted to know for whom? My parents are members of the ACS. Two of my brothers are members of the ACS. It’s a family affair.

Furthermore, for this meeting John and Ray came west to San Francisco. Although just for three quick days, they did sample the city and chaperone college kids through the conference. Now, my brothers at their schools do not dabble in high-powered graduate science. Instead, they wade college kids into the research pool and hope their students will be inspired to enroll after college graduation into Ph.D programs. Both brothers trucked along three college kids who presented posters of their senior work. All of them crammed into a few rooms in the Hilton Hotel downtown.

Because of my prior SXSW plans, I didn’t overlap with the others during the weekend. Instead, I met up Monday morning with John and Ray for breakfast at Blue Bottle Café, purveyor of perhaps the best cup of coffee in the city. We drank induction-heated, smooth coffee while munching on Acme toast and waffles. Afterwards, we wandered down Market St to the Ferry Building. Ray bought cheese and dried meats. John and I watched the harbor bridge and the ferries sailing in to the terminal. We lunched outside at a gourmet tacqueria, and then hustled back to the convention center for afternoon meetings.

I got to look at John’s work on cavity ring-down spectroscopy. The three of us roved as unit between the assembled posters, hundreds! Parting, I headed to talks on polymer science. The other two went their own ways. It had been over a year since I’ve seen John.

Done for the day, we met at the Hilton. I hailed a cab and we took the fast, short ride to the Lower Haight. Ray had bestowed me with Christmas gifts including a triptych of photos from my beloved Davis Square in Somerville. I showed them my tiny apartment. We then hit four fine drinking establishments on Haight Street: Noc Noc, Magnolia, Alembic, and Toronado.

While the sun set, we had a sumptuous dinner for three at Alembic. The small plates of sashimi, pork belly, salmon sliders, and dried peppers were triumphant. The ornate cocktails like the Promissory Note were even better.

The night grew long and we grew drunker. I had work on Tuesday morning, and they both had college kids to chaperone. I ushered them into the 71 bus back to Union Square and wished them well. It was but a brief day in San Francisco, but much fun to see us reunited – quite the family of chemists.

SXSW 2010

Austin, you are my bitch

The ticket window closed at midnight. My plane hit the Austin tarmac with a light thud at 11:01pm. I had fifty-nine minutes. Gentlemen, start your engines. 59 minutes to grab my bag out of the airplane’s overhead compartment, shuffle down the aisle, catch outside the last 100 bus (taxi? Me, never) into Austin – the bus arrived late, make it fifty-three minutes now - get off the bus at busy intersection of 6th and Congress, hustle, no, make it run to the Convention Center at 4th and Neches, find the appropriate conference hall – not the same as last year, get a wristband because Ruben and I are now Austin natives, convince the concierge at the Hilton Hotel to store my backpack for a few hours since I look like a musician or record exec, and hop the 5 blocks to Buffalo Billiards to catch the two-hour energy set of Andrew WK. 59 minutes? Easy. I had a beer upstairs at Buffalo Billiards by 12:05. Austin, you are my bitch.

Some days, I daydream that Ruben Martinez and I have formed an indie record label called Jesus Martin Records. We have yet to promote an album or sign a band, but, nonetheless, Jesus Martin Records is on the hunt for new talent.

It’s been almost seven years, yikes, since I left Austin after a twenty month postdoc at the University of Texas. Sure, I might not have got a lot of chemistry accomplished – those texaphyrins will have to wait, but I did get the lay of the land. I watched more shows then and drank more beer than perhaps for all my previous life. I wasn’t partying much when I was six.

For last five years, I return annually to Austin for the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival. For me, it is an opportunity to jumpstart primavera in warmer Austin, reconnect with Ruben, Chris Duarte, and Andrea, check out what the hipsters are up to, discover new music talent, wander the alleys and empty lots of Austin, and perhaps ask Moby for the location of the restroom. Chris and Andrea are likely to move out of Austin this coming year. Ruben and I are likely to have our last SXSW for a while.

Five SXSWes and we have a few traditions. With over two hundred venues and over two thousand performances, how does a pleb organize the madness? Bands typically play for just an hour, often, but not always, on the hour. Ruben needs no Microsoft’s Excel. Instead, he draws a grid on an 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper and pens in the best possibilities for each time slot. For the busier midnight and one am time slots, he penned in over ten alternatives. Can’t make Shout Out Out Out? What about Holy Fuck, Chilean Night, or a midget harpsicordist? Ruben puts in a bit of sweat to draw out and fill in these grids – just look at all the photos of him working away, but consult these mastersheets frequently when slogging through the lines at Emo’s.

I landed in Austin on Wednesday night and caught the first night of music at SXSW. Ruben arrived a day before. So we would have a place to stay, Chris Duarte was so gracious to vacate his apartment and bunk with the lovely-and-talent Andrea. She even made homemade twinkies that kicked the $%&(# out of the inferior Hostess product.

Mornings, Ruben and I hopped a bus north up the drag (Guadalupe) to Spiderhouse Coffee, still my favorite place in the country to have a coffee. Perhaps the coffee at Spiderhouse isn’t the nation’s best, but the venue has funky indoor rooms, an expansive patio with creaky furniture, three band stages, and tacos! While Ruben worked on his grids, I read the day’s Austin Chronicle. Usually, the Chronicle comes out weekly on Thursdays, but for SXSW, they print a daily encapsulation. I like to read which shows the Chronicle recommends for the evening and look at the photos from the previous day to see whether the Chronicle reported the bands we heard.

A coffee, a few beers in us, and we were happy in the noon. Few people are awake at Spiderhouse this early except for all the bands hanging out, setting up, and waiting to go on. We found a table at each stage to read, drink, and heckle. I shouted, “Where are you from?” I was so happy to hear a Brooklyn band called La Strada. These scruffians incorporate inventively a cello, violin, and accordion. We purchased their only album.

On Thursday morning, the coffee socked us. Fall-out of distracted jitters. Friday morning, I carted Ruben to Trudy’s next door for worse-than-remembered tacos but stronger-than-remembered Mexican Martini’s. The drink is basically a large marguerita mixed in a stainless steel cocktail shaker and served by yourself into a martini glass with a skewer of pimentoed olives.

SXSW attracts mostly unsigned indie (independent) bands and a few big name acts that angle for a second break. In previous years, we caught Devo, the Indigo Girls, and Tricky. This year, the sole well-known performer was the keynote speaker Smokey Robinson. I’m content with the unknown. For this SXSW, we mostly satiated our ears on the instrumental noise bands we had heard in previous years: Shout Out Out Out, Holy Fuck, DD/MM/YYYY. Oddly, all of three groups are completely male, completely Canadian, and completely frazzled due to a schedule of over twenty shows each over four days. Go figure.

Workies want a SXSW synopsis. “Tell us something crazy!” This year, I can’t say that I didn’t ask Moby for the bathroom, or say I saw a shy Chinese girl band sing “B-E-I-J-I-N-G, Beijing, Beijing.” I didn’t watch a man in a banana suit on a tricycle knock down oversized bowling pins.

Nonetheless, like at the fall’s Burning Man festival, Ruben and I have figured out SXSW. We saw fifty shows. We wandered east Austin. We drank several (cheap) homebrew pints at Lovejoy’s and snacked on free nachos. We had gourmet franks at Frank. We listened to an orchestral Octopus Project show in the parking lot of a Whole Foods. San Francisco based “Or, The Whale” bought us beers – ok, one of the singers passed us drink tickets.

It was easy. It was fun. It was efficient. It was good. We know how to do it, almost effortlessly. For an out-of-towner that wishes unlimited access to all the SXSW shows, a badge costs over $650. For a local, a wristband runs $129. I live in San Francisco. I bought a wristband. I probably shouldn’t put this fact in print. Still, I know few people that know Austin better than Ruben and myself. You can name a venue like Mohawks at the tip of Red River and Ruben can tell you all the previous names that venue had, where the bathrooms are, what’s on tap, and when to see a show there. I’ve done more positive public relations work for the grand city of Austin than those that bought lofts in the new but ugly atrocities of skyscrapers downtown. As the bartender at San Francisco’s Toranado told Ruben, “I know more people in Austin than people in Austin know people.”

Trends? The hipster look still rages. Flannel has returned, but more plaid and less scratchy-furry. Hold on to your oversized sunglasses. Continue to avoid showers. Avoid shaving too. The Times profiled the music trend of GloFi, small groups of performers beating up casio keyboards, but we missed those kinds of groups.

I don’t want to remember SXSW 2010 as the year of the cold, but it did freeze. Friday afternoon in the yards of East Austin, we were baking in the sun. Later that evening, it’s three in the morning and the streets of West Campus are crowded, yes, crowded with kids heading every which way, mostly towards the 21st Street co-op and their full lawn ready for the after-hours Andrew WK show. I was tired. Armed with a few of Andrea’s homemade twinkies, I had to get home and sleep after fifteen hours of performances.

Saturday morning, cold had descended. Winds blew mightily. Temperatures sunk to the forties during the day and thirties at night. I layered almost everything I brought along. Saturday noon Ruben and I hunkered by the door of The Gingerman to drink strong craft beer, eat empanadas, check show listings, and listen to three bands belt it out anyway in the whistling cold.

More and more vendors sell food out of carts, airstream trailers, and coolers. Austin supports guerrilla free markets and perhaps is lax on rigorous inspection. Huzzah! I hope other cities trend the same way.

Austin is crowded! I know SXSW brings in the crowds, but after an afternoon on 6th Street, I wanted a stick to keep people at arms length. I’m getting more agoraphobic as I get older, more foraphilic.

By Sunday, my ears were full. I gathered my few belongings, shut the door quietly to Chris’s apartment, and walked a route through the University of Texas campus. I had worked there once, but that chemistry building seemed far away and for a different person. Contractors had torn down the ramshackle co-op in which Ruben, Chris, and I had lived, replacing it with a foreign prison monstrosity.

SXSW plays to my attention deficient. I like the scheduling, the cornucopia of possibilities. At one point, Ruben and I ducked out of one venue. We caught a fraction of a song of Ear Pwr at Wave, a bit of Band of Horses by the creek outside Stubb’s, a little of something at Spill, and two bands at Beauty Bar. All in less than an hour, because we could, because we knew where we were going, because I can’t sit still.

This SXSW, mostly I needed a break from work. My last vacation was six month’s prior in September. I needed to get away to a place where start-ups biotechs, reagent analysis, and bridges no longer mattered. Where bass with jumbled lyrics counted. Where the goal was to score some free beer, listen to a new band, and catch five shows in the same hour.

From Ruben:

Here's the band list of things we saw this year. Last year, I only
counted bands where we saw the majority of their set. Under that
rule, Eleanor and I saw 50 bands. This year, it was 60 bands if you
count duplicates. Below my list is a transcript of text messages you
sent me describing bands. I left out random comments, just bands (and
the occasional funny remark). My data was thorough in that I wrote
*something* about each band we saw, but had to figure out times and
often band names from your texts, the Chronicle, or
bandlistaustin.com. That means that some times will be actual times
they played, some are scheduled times.

Wednesday Day: 1 show
4PM Riverboat Gamblers @ Antone's

Wed Night: 5 shows
10PM Papier Tigre @ Amsterdam Cafe (average)
10:15 Javelin @ Buffalo Billiards (terrible and annoying)
11:10 Japanther @ Buffalo B (telephones for microphones!)
12:05 Andrew WK @ Buffalo B (would have been better up front)
1AM Peanut Butter Wolf @ Speakeasy Cabaret (just DJing, boring)
1 General Fiasco @ Friends (awesome but short Irish set)

Thursday Day: 10 shows
noon La Strada @ Spiderhouse (awesome chill music)
1PM Sandwitches @ Spiderhouse (note spelling)
1:30 Or, The Whale @ Spiderhouse
2:30 Basia Bulat @ Lovejoy's
3:00 Diamond Rings @ Lovejoy's
3:30 The Ettes @ Shangri-La (E. 6th)
3:30 Mon Khmer @ The Music File (E. 6th) (Good chill music)
3:30 Jinny Oops @ The Typewriter Museum (E. 6th) (Japan day)
4:00 Timbre Timbre @ Scoot Inn inside stage (quirky folksy)
4:30 Holy Fuck @ Scoot Inn outside stage (awesome)

Thurs Night: 10 shows
9PM Amplified Heat @ Spill
10:15 Rogue Wave @ Emo's outside (we weren't impressed and didn't know
their name)
10:15 DD/MM/YYYY @ Emo's inside
10:50 Hollywood Holt @ Beauty Bar outside (charismatic MC)
11:00 Acid Girls @ Beauty Bar inside (very cool)
11:00 EarPwr @ Wave downstairs (bad set, tech problems)
11:00 Quiet Company @ Wave upstairs (OK, I think)
11:30 Band of Horses @ Stubb's "backyard" (creek)
12:00 Crystal Method @ Elysium (surprisingly good)
1AM Steve Aoki @ Elysium (holy crap, they rocked!)

Friday Day: 7 shows
12:30 Thick Shakes @ Waterloo Cycles (mediocre)
2:00 Saffron Sect @ Spiderhouse stage 1 (damn flute)
1:45 Little Secrets @ Spiderhouse stage 2
3:00 Andy Clockworth @ Red Eyed Fly (bandlistaustin.com says
different, but I think there was a lineup change)
3:30 Holly Miranda @ Club DeVille (Very good!)
4:00 AVI Buffalo @ Galaxy Room
4:30 Holy Fuck @ Galaxy Room

Fri Night: 10 shows (I counted Middle Class Rut because I talked to band)
7PM Octopus Project @ Whole Foods parking lot (through fence)
8:45 Harvard Bass @ Aces (Very Good!)
9:30 Bird Peterson @ Aces (Awesome!)
9:55 Cruiserweight @ Buffalo Billiards
10:00 DD/MM/YYYY @ Prague
11:00 Matthew Good @ Prague (meh)
11:00 Middle Class Rut @ Ghost Room (stayed until 11:35 and still
didn't start, tech problems)
11:45 LA Riots @ Aces (very good)
12:00 Balkan Beat Box @ Spill (went on very late, but good)
1AM Shout Out Out Out Out! @ Prague (still got it)

Saturday Day: 6 shows
1PM Ben Weaver @ Gingerman
1:30 Drink Up Buttercup @ Gingerman (Very good!)
2:30 The Jane Shermans @ Gingerman
2:30 The Black Irish @ Hoek's (awesome!)
3:30 Japanther @ 1001 E. 6th St. (Levi's Fader Fort?) (Saw Tomas from DDMMYYYY)
4:00 Schocholautte @ van on corner of 6th and Brush st. (very good!)

Sat Night: 11 shows
10PM Capsula @ Maggie Mae's downstairs (Spain)
11:00 The Surrender @ Elysium
11:00 Kill the Noise @ Beauty Bar inside (Very good!)
11:40 Wallpaper. @ Beauty Bar backyard
12:00 DJ Craze @ Beauty Bar inside (very updated style: good!)
12:00 Abe Vigoda @ Barbarella (terrible sound. Good band, bad show)
12:20 Golden Boys @ Encore Patio (Not sure, saw through fence behind
Barbarella, very good!)
1:00 Apoptygma Berzerk @ Elysium (very good!)
1:00 Riverboat Gamblers @ Emo's Annex (good but short show)
1:00 Anita Tijoux @ Maggie Mae's downstairs (female Chilean rapper)
1:00 Michael Monroe @ Maggie Mae's upstairs (wow, cheesy, terrible
hair band in their 50s)

Steve's texts (I expanded hard-to-decipher abbreviations and omitted
"hey where are you" type texts):

Andrew WK 12mid Wed. Buffalo Billiards
Peanut Butter Wolf 1AM Wed. Speakeasy Cabaret Room
La Strada noon Thur Spiderhouse stage 2
Sandwiches. 12.30PM Spiderhouse outside Thur. R chicks and a drummer
Or, The Whale. 1pm Thur Spiderhouse. Folkie rock with a girl that
gave us a drink ticket
"Woman singing" 2pm Thur Lovejoy's. Talking to Amund.
Another girl band with Asian lead singer. 1pm Thur Spiderhouse stage 2.
Baja Boolight ? 2pm Lovejoy's girl Thur on organ
Basia Bulat
Diamond Rings.3pm.Lovejoy's.Thur.Big gay guitarist in blue spandex
3.30 Thur afternoon. The Shangri-La The Ettes. Punky non-descript band
with Al Martinez
Monaco Mary from Brooklyn. 3.30pm. Random E.Austin Venue. Inside a
dark cinderbox. Kinda drunk, kinda sober.
[me:]Mon Khmer. At the Music File, E. 6th St.
Jinny Oops. 3.30pm Thurs. The Typewriter Museum. Japan Day. Kinda
drunk and tired.
[me:] Timbre Timbre 4:50 at Scoot Inn Singer songwriter plus
steelstring guitar plus violin. Quirky folksy.
Holy Fuck. 5pm Thur. Scoot Inn. Fuck fuck.
Amplified Heat. 9pm Thur. Spill.
"Band that sang starsign. Kinda generic." 10pm Thur. Emo's Main
Dd/mm/yyyy. Thurs 10.30. Emo's Jr.
11.30pm Thurs. Hollywood Holt. Beauty Bar Backyard. MC.
Band of Horses. 11.30pm Thurs. Stubbs "backyard".
The Holy Shakes? 12.30pm Fri. Waterloo Bicycles. Punkish band near Spiderhouse.
[me:] Little secrets @ spiderhouse stage 2 @ 2PM
Andy Clockworth. 3pm Fri Red Eyed Fly. British rock band after taxi
ride. Punk Elvis.
[me:] Holly Miranda 3:30 at Club DeVille
Yay! best singer yet. I see you. Staying put.
AVI Buffalo. 4PM Fri. Galaxy outside. Folk country rock with Ruben buying beer!
Holly Miranda 3:30 at Club DeVille
Holy Fuck. 4:30pm Thur. Galazxy backyard. 5-dollar Shiners (thanks,
Ruben) and Wholphin.
Octopus Project. 8pm Fri. Whole Foods parking lot. Theremin explosion.
Bird Peterson 9.30pm Fri Aces DJ from Sacramento
DF before Bird Peterson 9.15pm Friday Aces. Jazzy. Nameless.
Prague is 5th at Congress. $10. Fullish. Dank. DMY playing. Not bad.
Lots of room to the right of stage.
Ddmmyyyy 10pm Fri. Prague. Did I already do this?
[me:] Ghost room is the old Gingerman
Ha! Next group just going on.
Come back eventually. I'd like to get outta here 11.35 or so. Band ok,
but crowd fulla douchebags.
[me:] band slow to set up. Will give up soon.
Vancouver singer songwriter with douchebag crowd. 11pm Fri. Prague.
[me:] On my way. A bust. Still haven't played.
On airport bus. Thank you for a most amazing SXSW. More adventures
await, but in California. (O, Brother John just discovered Blue Bottle
Coffee.)

Snowboarding

Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Gnarly, dude. Thirty-seven is not too old to try snowboarding. I've skied for fifteen years. Although I'm not of olympic quality, I can hack my way down most ski slopes. I have to share these ski slopes, though, with snowboards. The boarders have a reputation for youth, insolence, and awkwardness. If you get hit hard, it's gotta be a snowboarder. Well, if I can't beat them, I'll join them!

One bright Sunday morning in early March found four of us at Sierra Ski Resort clad in soft, bulky boots and holding on to snowboards. None of us knew the proper way to connect the board to the shoes.

Fiona found a deal on the internet by which thirty-five dollars got us a day's snowboard rental, a lift ticket for the learner's lift, and a two-hour lesson. We were having that kind of weekend in which we arrived late for the lesson, but the instructors were still filling the classes. We jumped on to the next class that Lonna taught.

She ushered us into a van that drove us to the top of a tiny hill. Lonna showed our class of ten-or-so how to put on the board. We started with just one foot strapped in, using the other foot to push ourselves around. We strapped in the other foot. Crashes everywhere. Eventually, we found how to use the board edges to steer. We made our way precariously down the hill.

I couldn't sleep well the night before, so afraid I was of getting off the ski lift while strapped to a board. As a skier, I've seen so many packs of snowboarders collapse when getting out of the lift chair. Lonna gave us some pointers on chair-lift operation. We survived with the barest amount of pride intact.

Just after breakfast, I had stuffed a t-shirt down my ass and strapped my knees with tube-socks filled with paper towels. Neither cushion actually helped, but the combination made me psychologically less aggrieved to fall. Soon after, I pitched forward on my knees and back on my ass. Falls on my tailbone rattled my skull. My right wrist ached. Dammit, I need to eat more to develop padding. Fortunately, since both feet are strapped on to the board, the risk of knee injuries is low.

The four of us spent the rest of the day teetering to the bottom of the bunny slope, shuffling to the lift, riding to the top, and preparing to go down all over again. We broke for a greasy lunch and a much-needed beer. There are four ways to turn: left foot from the front edge, right foot from the front, left foot from the back edge, right foot from the back edge. I mastered one turn, the right foot from the back edge. From there, it was a puzzle. While sprawled on the ground, I could orient the board on the front edge. Getting up necessitated a turn from front to back. I pick up shaky mastery of the second type of turn.

By the end of the long afternoon, with those two turns, I could shamble down the mountain. Because both turns were to the right, I found myself veering far right into the steeper alley containing massive ski jumps. If I hit the fence, I reorientated myself and tried to veer left.

After flailing recently with skis on moguls, it was thrilling to improve so quickly on a snowboard. Matt found the snowboard mechanics far more natural for him than bearing with the torture-tight ski boots and assortment of poles. I'm not the convert he is, but I do want to try to get better with the board. It's like I'm a multi-class role-playing character, and I'm leveling up quickly with with the lowly snowboard. Fiona kindly proclaimed me the group's most natural snowboarder. Maybe it's all the marijuana. I beamed.

As I get older, new things get harder. The day before, I fretted over snowboarding. What if I fall? What if I get hurt? What if I can't figure it out? As usual, my fears were unfounded. I need to stop worrying so much. Life happens as it does. As I get older, I still luv learning. Surfing soon! Cooking school! Fire walking! Perhaps I'll be flying planes in my seventies.

Depression

A Dark March

Many know me as manic: hyper, jittery, excitable. There's also a depressive side, the crash after the mania ebbs. I hadn't been prone to depression until I moved to Boston in 2005. However, if I look futher back in my dreary Dutch writings of 2001-3, I can find clues that I've tackled depression for longer than I realize.

It's not that I'm sad all the time. Perhaps every six months, I have a bout with depression that magnifies into a true neurochemical downer. Nonetheless, these sullen episodes often require a mood and a trigger. This time, after a few weeks of running around at various parties, bars, and ski trips, I was amping out and depleting my serotonin. Life was on overdrive. Then bad news at work came along to trigger the bout of woe. My colleague had taken over the project on which we were both supposed to work; despite my expertise, my boss had passed a high-profile project away from me and to a colleague; I found days at work drifting by with only an hour of work for me to do. Bored, I was so bored. I don't handle boredom well at all.

This isn't where I wanted to be in a career at 37. I'm overlooked, bottom of the totem-pole, neglected. On bleary drives home, livid anger hit. Then despair. Once home, I retreated to where I always do: my couch, and thought about what I always think: my ceiling. Getting up was too much trouble. I skipped dinners. I didn't sleep much at night either. Fortunately, I did not seek solace in alcohol or e-mail nastygrams. Chopping vegetables wasn't pleasant; the knife looked too threatening.

So, I mulled. I shut down. I grew silent. I wanted to be alone, but still had to go to work and sit in front of a computer. My eyes felt heavy. I couldn't smile, even if I had wanted to, and I certainly did not want to. Bleah!

Often such a sour spell lingers for just a day or two. Some happy accident like Free Beer! sideswipes me away from my mopes. This episode was worse. The weekend passed. I was still sullen. Coworkers avoided me. I didn't want to eat with anyone. Society's little graces like smalltalk were repugnant.

Coincidentally, I read an article in the New York Times concerning the evolutionary purpose of depression. If 7% of Americans face depression, does it serve a purpose? A controversial neurologist purports that depression can be helpful. Depression leads the sufferer to withdraw, mull, and act objectively and critically. Depressed people notice more.

Whether I fully believe the neurologist, I was grateful to see my world changing while in the depths of my funk. Depression stripped away the extranalities to expose the basics. If I weren't saying much, what I had to say best be important.

I'm better now. Time passed, I took a sick day on Friday, I sat in a sauna on Thursday night, my endorphins came back. Perhaps my boss intervened while I was away, but my colleague is now eager to share the project. I feel useful. Huzzah!

Yet, I don't want to return to the happiness I had prior to the storm cloud. I had best learn from this darkest of moods. I'm quieter and stronger now. I don't care as much for the mass of people around me. I speak more freely and more measured. I used to need to fill silence with banter. I see all this talk, poking, and sarcasm as distracting. I'm aware how much people talk just to talk. I'm severing strained relationships. I'd like to cultivate integrity and joy. I'm middle-aged.

New policy: if it's not constructive and positive, it need not be said. Be direct, genuine, and compassionate.

Part of what caused this episode of depression was my inability to assert myself. I let too much bend until I broke. The sudden break into a deep funk was rather confusing to everyone else. Speak up!

Life!

Gabrielle Bouliane

I’ve been morbidly obsessed with death lately. No, I’m not going to kill myself. I’m one of the last to kill myself. Faced with conflict, I run away from problems; I shut down; I don’t commit seppuku. Knives? Ick.

Still, I turn 75/2 this month, halfway on a normal life expectancy. I’m middle-aged, in my middle passage. Some of this life is great; some of this life is not exactly where I want to be – of course, my statement begs where should people be anyway on their trajectories?

Mostly, though, I’m keenly aware that life is finite and my frivolous, energetic years of youth are fading. I may not die soon, but I’m not gonna run many more marathons a decade from now, although you never know – I am a late bloomer. A month ago, I wrote a rather arbitrary list of my 54 goals of what I wanted to do with my life. I’m trying (hard) to be more forthright, more precious with my time, and more measured with my energies.

It’s been an interesting thirties already. I’m coming into my own and letting the light within me shine a bit brighter. I’m closer to being who I’m meant to be, and that means a rather confused, excitable, thoughtful, and scattered person. Be well. Do well. I try.

The internet is full of frivolous, little videos that garner a chuckle on a sleepy Sunday evening. Cats with party hats and drunken men with ping-pong balls. The internet, though, rarely makes me cry. I read recently of the death from cancer of a slam poet, Gabrielle Bouliane, from Austin. She moved me. I may have even heard Gabrielle earlier this decade live at Ego’s on a smoky Wednesday night, she on the pulpit expounding, exhorting, shaking it up, three minutes at a time.

Her friend, Star St.Germain, posted a devotional site to Gabrielle. I laugh at Star’s drawn image of Gabrielle with rabbit ears. Star includes a poem of Gabrielle’s entitled “When you hear that I died, think of this.” Further below is video of Gabrielle’s last time slamming in Austin. I cry every time.

This is not morbid stuff! It is required viewing for the rest of us, the living. It’s a template for life, a call to arms! I ought to sit every month and re-read and re-watch and then get up and then make some noise. Dying, I believe Gabrielle realized life. There’s not a moment to lose. Be be be be. Now now now now.

http://thisisstar.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/remembering-gabrielle-bouliane/

And so I think these days often about death and the course to it. None of us have long to live. I’d like to make something of my life while I have it. I have put off so much, and there’s so much to do.

Infinite Jest

The Novel

Aaron named it his favorite book, but oddly was loathe to recommend it. Sage sequestered herself to pour through it, even creating a Halloween costume from one of the novel’s characters. Mike marked all the unfamiliar words on the back cover that he later looked up in the dictionary.

Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace. Almost one thousand1 large pages of small-type font. Furthermore, there are almost four hundred2 footnotes in the back, some of which are short stories in their own right and have their own appended footnotes. For tackling Infinite Jest, Aaron recommended two bookmarks, one for the main text and the other for the footnotes. If books were races, this one is the marathon, the killer, the ball-buster, the test of will, the work that divides readers into those who haven’t read and those who have, those that liked or those that hated.
1Actually 980 pages. 2388 footnotes.

Infinite Jest isn’t the ramble of Wordsworth’s Prelude, the epic parade of characters in Dickens’s Bleak House, or long saga of history in War and Peace. The Jest (aficionados would tar-and-feather me for such casual shorthand) may most resemble Joyce’s Ulysses, often cited by scholars as the best (or perhaps most game-changing) book of the twentieth century.3 Both Infinite Jest and Ulysses excel at erudite streams of consciousness to ponder the quotidian dark pleasures of living that are frequently omitted taboos in fine literature. In one scene, Wallace elaborates on a junkie’s grim death by drug overdose.
3I’m a bit surprised and smugly pleased to realize I’ve read all of these.

Having heard about Infinite Jest for years, it was time for the plunge. Winters are relatively slow in San Francisco with the cloister of light rain. I planned to sequester myself for four months to read one thousand pages, emerging like a butterfly in early March with the rudy sheen of enlightenment and perhaps a mail-order certificate of completeness of readership.

The author and I had some connections. We’re both authors. No, no, no. David Foster Wallace attended tiny Amherst College before me, shared some of the same English professors, and moved on later to live in Boston, the intimate setting of Infinite Jest, as well as my stomping grounds. Wallace has extensive familiarity with pharmaceuticals, chemistry, and addiction to which I have more than passing knowledge. Facing some mild depression recently, I empathize with Wallace’s much more engulfing darkness.

I was warned about the novel’s structure. It opens in media res, with the attendant confusion of a Wallacean jargon. Fortunately, Wallace isn’t obscure like Joyce. Wallace’s sentences read clean. His paragraphs march onward, although single paragraphs can consume te maddening length of over four pages. Despite the clarity of the individual grains, one chapter’s set piece jolts into another without explanation or connection. It’s like a movie camera cutting from tableau after another without the reassuring monologue.

Slowly, characters gel. Personalities emerge. Certain sections definitely signal exposition; pay attention: Wallace writes this conversation to explain his world. Infinite Jest could be categorized as science fiction although the story is set in the near future of the early 2000s, and the differences from our current reality are slight: Canada, the United States, and Mexico have merged into one country; the collective nation flings its trash into a wasteland located in the former area of Quebec and northern New England; all video (tv, movies, etc.) is displayed on TP recorders, distributed by a highly politicized and commercialized parent organization.

I got drawn in to the setting. I can’t think of another piece of literature that is so exquisitely set in a particular location. I can locate particular shops, driving routes, subways lines, and dark corners. Surprisingly, this location is Boston, and the Boston of my youth as well as my dark years in Cambridge of 2005-8. A Quebecoise video shop is set on Prospect Street one block from where Kim and Kyle lived on Tremont. Add in MIT, Chinatown, Inman Square, and Harvard Square.

Wallace may obviously have been fascinated with parochial Boston, love it or hate it (I hate it). He captures well the working North Shore culture of Revere and Beverly abutting the wealth of Commonwealth Ave and Chestnut Hill. A native Midwesterner (Nebraskan?), Wallace still has more command of the accents and foibles of Boston than I ever did. I ran away from the “trash”; Wallace documents it.

The story centers on a few places: a young persons’ tennis academy near Newton (Enfield), an abutting drug-treatment house, a mountain slope overlooking Tucson, and the wilds of urban Boston. Wallace spends hundred of pages explicating the culture of each spot. If you ever wanted to know the rhythms of a tennis academy or the trials of junkie dependence, this is the novel for you.

Plot spoilers ahead. The deceased director of the tennis academy has created a video that is so beautiful that every viewer dies from pleasure. The Quebecoise separatist group wants this video to poison the America-Canada-Mexico government. It takes quite a while to deduce this much. I got much pleasure from the slow connections of the various characters.

If the novel is about any one thing – and that is hard to say for one thousand jeweled pages of illuminated manuscript – it is about addiction. We delve into a drug treatment house, experience the downward spiral of junkies at their ends, and chart the grueling day of boys at a tennis academy. Wallace brings rationality, or at least a lens, to what is perceived as the irrationality of addiction. I now know more about opiates, heroin, cocaine, backhand volleys, and lobs than I have ever wanted to. But this isn’t just the addiction of the furtive junkie, perhaps more prevalent in San Francisco and Amsterdam, but the more common addictions of the rest of us rabble: addiction to work, over-eating, weight-loss, euphoria, sex and drinking. I go through similar binge and purge cycles in my own life, and don’t like to see the drivers behind them.

Infinite Jest is one of the darkest written of texts. I suspect Wallace attracts misanthropes in solitary droves, those whose cockeyed view of life is askew to the rainbows and unicorns the rest of us espouse. Wallace speaks sardonically and realistically of the nethers, the groin of humanity. It was a darkness that consumed Wallace. A lifelong sufferer of depression, he hung himself on September 12, 2008. He was a Professor of English at Pomona College.

Six hundred pages in, four hundred pages to go, I desperately want to be present when the separate narratives collide, as they must like ornate Orient Express trains. The explosion will be fantastic and, in Wallace-style, unpredictable. What’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen?

Nothing. More spoilers ahead. After generating intricate momentum, Wallace ends his novel with a whimper, long before a satisfying ending. To pursue the train analogy further, it’s as if the ninety mph trains just ran out of coal, each stranded on their own boring tundra. Does the hero get the girl? Does the boxer win the fight? After detailing the lives of the hero, the girl, and the boxer – down to their underwear - Wallace concludes not even with the hero on the way to the girl or the boxer getting ready for the match. He picks almost a random moment to end, such as the boxer buying a newspaper.

A small part of me acquiesces to this type of ending as a statement about closure and art(to which I will get to momentarily), but this reader (me!) who tries as well to be an author (a bad one at that) calls the Wallace ending cowardice. Wrapping up is a necessary part of a plot arc. The boats must beat against the shore. The green light must shine in the distance.4 The cook can’t mix up cake batter and then neglect to put it in the oven. Otherwise, to use a tennis metaphor from Wallace, the player excels at serving, but doesn’t know how lob or approach the net. Fine for a short story; not so cool for nine hundred pages of the reader’s involvement.
4The Great Gatsby is the best book of the twentieth century.

But I must pull this punch. Certainly, Wallace’s running out of steam is deliberate. He intends to be unsatisfying. It’s a perverse statement about the role of art. Wallace excels in set pieces, five, ten, or twenty pages of contained prose that explores characters not usually depicted: addicts, assassins, auteurs, Armenians (well, not Armenians). Life isn’t satisfying. The only closure one gets with life is death (not to be morbid). Life instead is a rambling collection of set pieces – a job, a move, a divorce, a dinner, a trip. Finding order there and finishing with a grace note is often antithetical to its reality.

Towards the end of Infinite Jest, the unlikely protagonist or anti-hero, Don Gately, does meditate in a semi-coma state for perhaps one hundred pages. To me, Gately’s stream of consciousness resembles the close of Joyce’s Ulysses. While Joyce ends on “Yes, yes, yes,” I feel that dour Wallace concludes with “No, no, no.” Obviously, the unsatisfying ending has at least provoked a reaction in me, dear reader, and that may be Wallace’s intent. We’ll see how I live on with Infinite Jest. Like Aaron, I do love the novel, but am loathe to recommend it.

Faire du Ski

Presidents Day Weekend

The sign at the top of the woods posted “Experts Only.” Further on, I read, “Caution: Unmarked Obstacles.” The ski map suggested a double-black diamond trail, but except for a few tracks, I couldn’t make out an obvious route. AJ and Avinash had already commenced their descent a ways back. Alone, I pointed my skis down Mott Canyon and held on to my breath.

What the hell? I’m not a skier, or at least never thought of myself as one. If I were an animal, I would be a flounder. And yet, here I was at Heavenly Ski Resort, somewhere in Nevada, heading into a precarious canyon. Actually, the proper preposition is “down.” The previous day, we jumped cornices at Kirkwood.

Oddly, on this trail I wasn’t scared. I could pick my way steadily from large mogul hillock to the next. A fall meant leaning over into the hill of snow. A section of unmanageable brambles steered me to right. Nonetheless, watching me, don’t think you would spot an Olympian schussing on the piste. I can do a mean snowplow when required.

I try to ski five days a year. Due to the expense and the time away from San Francisco, I at best make two weekends each winter to Lake Tahoe. For the long Presidents Day weekend, we took an extra day off, the Tuesday, and made four days of skiing.

Five of us departed Friday afternoon from Redwood City in a rented SUV that barely held all of us. The poor passenger in the rear right had to huddle under an extended pile of skis and poles. We stopped in Davis for coffee to keep the driver up during the last leg through the mountains.

Fiona rented a sizable house for us in town of South Lake Tahoe. We had three bedrooms upstairs, a large kitchen and living room downstairs, even a garage. For me, the first night of a ski trip can be rough as we usually pull in at 12:30am. The following morning, some ass gets everyone up sometime around 7am for a full day of skiing. Time is money; you don’t pay for each ski run, but pay rather for the whole day. That ass is me.

We hit the little-known ski resort of Homewood for the first day, Kirkwood the next, then a half-day at Heavenly, and finished with a group favorite: Sierra. Skiing isn’t cheap; our financial coordinator Fiona tallied a bill of $620 per person. Nonetheless, after a decade of skiing, we’ve figure out the mechanics of a trip to maximize time on the slopes, minimize cost, and not suffer too much. We laughed a lot. That was extra.

I’ve seen so much of the sleepy town of Lake Tahoe and been enough in the casinos nervously gambling at craps tables, that these days I much prefer spending my après-ski back at the house with the group. We made runs each afternoon after skiing to Safeway to pick up the essentials like coffee, pancake mix, and peppermint schnapps. I cooked Julia Childs’s famous butter burgers. Avanash made a mighty dinner for Sunday night.

We’re now officially yuppies. Our shack had a hot tub in the backyard. Soaking in the heat, we watched the stars, tried to turn off the psychedelic light show that was pre-set, and ate a tray of rice krispie treats that Matt whipped up. Mmmm, rice krispie treats in a hot tub with snow on the ground. The tub, though, wouldn’t go off. The bubbling sounds kept AJ up at night, that and the coyotes that prowled the backyard. Naturally, I slept through the commotion. He’ll take of any disturbance.

The garage had a foosball table. I got to relive in Lake Tahoe my four years of defense on the table at Terra co-operative house. AJ discovered that foosball is much more fun when three balls are simultaneously in play. Three balls constricted consciousness to just the now, the flailing, like those infernal moguls on ski slopes.

I don’t own a tv. The winter Olympic games in Vancouver had started. What decadence, then, to spend our ski evenings watching each night four hours of Olympic coverage. Matt instructed us on the fine points of hockey and figure skating. We yelled at the screen when the skaters fell. I was surprised how little time the network spent on showing events and how much time it spent instead on biopics and commercials. We followed America’s national sport: drinking and watching the Olympics.

And yet during the day, we rode the lifts, attempted cornice jumping, and zoomed down through fields of moguls. We’re not athletes. We’re the geeky kids that did well in algebra. I’m recently discovering that my perception of myself is rather wrong. I’ve turned into a skier. I run races. While my former classmates stay home with the kids and nurse their gut, I’m out on the slopes. Perhaps I can ski after all. Our group certainly has figure out how.

Running with the Bison

91:53

A year ago I foolishly lined up for a half-marathon through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. On this particular early February’s early Sunday in 2009, I huffed and puffed around the Panhandle, into the Park, and along the ocean. At about mile seven, I felt the agony. Further on, I misjudged a mile banner to read a higher mile number than it did. It was gonna be a loooong race as my energy ebbed. Nonetheless, through force of will and hurrying people around me, I stumbled over the finish line at 96:26.

Every step of this race, I told myself, “Do this, and you are done. No more long races.” January rolls around this year, and what do I do? Re-enroll for the same half-marathon! I had not run for ages, so I set aside just one month, January, to get my legs back. During work’s lunchtime, I ran out to the marsh and around the greening hill. On the weekends, I headed out my San Franciscan front door and went west to the Lower Haight, to the Upper Haight, into the park, to the ocean – why not? – and back, as I had run out of land.

This time, I knew the racecourse. This time, I bought nutritional supplements so I would not run out of energy. This time, I’d try to drink water.

The weather forecast inauspiciously predicated rain. Sunday morning, I woke at six in the dark, put on my sneakers, pinned my number 600 to my shirt, and walked to the bus stop. The bus was late. Oh, dear. I boarded a bus crowded with other runners. I made it to the start line just a few minutes before the beginning bell. I had just enough hurried time to drop off a backpack, find a convenient tree for a bathroom, and join the mob of the expectant.

The cable-car bell rang. We were off – ten thousand of us. It was sunny, cool, and merry. At each mile marker, a volunteer with a megaphone boomed out elapsed time: …sixteen thirty-five, forty, forty-five, sixteen fifty. Listening, I ran the numbers in the spaces between strides. I so wanted to run the race under a pace of seven minutes to the mile. I started slowly at eight minutes to the mile, and tried to shave off more time.

I didn’t die! I hit the ocean at mile eight and knew the monotonous flats. I ran slower than the body would allow. I ripped open silver packets of Gu and awkwardly squished artificial, sticky purple sugars on my hands, over my face, in my mouth. Gag. I attempted to grab water cups from lined-up volunteers to find that I could not gulp and run. I overtook so many over runners.

At about mile thirteen, I was tired. Fortunately, just a tenth of a mile churn uphill to finish. Done. And not done badly. I grabbed my souvenir shirt, a token bag of nuts, and some beverages. I went to the beach and sat alone to look at the waves. I boarded the same bus and headed back home.

In the afternoon, I read my race result: 91:53. 321st out of 6092. A mile pace of 7:00.8 seconds. Durn. 12 seconds faster and I would have recorded a six-minute (and change) pace for each mile. Perhaps if I had queued closer to the start. Perhaps if I had pushed myself more. Perhaps if I had sprinted at the end. Oh, well, another day.

There was sadness while I ran. This time, I told myself, “Do this one, and you have just begun. Do this one, and you will run the marathon.” Today, I signed up. July. The San Francisco marathon. Gag. I have just begun.

What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?

The List

Lately, I’ve been a bit obsessed with death. This mortality craze started, as fads usually do, with MTV. I read a story last week in the New York Times travel section about four 23-year old Canadians. http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/qa-with-ben-nemtin-from-the-buried-life-four-guys-and-a-bucket-list/ Trapped by pointless jobs in oil fields or marketing, the four friends drafted lists of what they wanted to do before they died. They bought a van on the cheap and took to the road to fulfill their goals. En route, the adventurers asked those they met what they wanted to do before they died and – like Boddhisatvas – helped others reach their dreams. It’s a great story, so much made for MTV that the station picked up the four’s adventure for a weekly television show.

Reading this story at work one morning, I had to write my own list. What do I want to do before I die? I’m a master at lists. Each week, before I leave work for the weekend, I compose a work list to revisit on Monday morning. When I return home on Friday afternoon, I write out a list of activities for the weekend. I enjoy the cogitating of lists, the doing, the eventual crossing off.

This list of life goals is the ultimate list. Before I go further with ground rules for composing my list, I must list the limitations of lists, especially this list. Compartmentalizing life into 100 tasks needlessly cheapens the rest of the experience. Life is more than the brief moment of jumping out of a plane; it also is the mundane, the unexpected, and the joyously simple. Live the daily well. Furthermore, life ought to be lived in the present. Thinking about the far-flung future of a cruise to Alaska pulls away from the only reality which is the present. The list of 100 ought to be: live today as best as I can, live tomorrow as best as I can, live the next day as best as I can, and so forth.

And yet there is value to writing a list of goals. The process assesses my current values and raises awareness of how much I have already done. But putting goals out there in the ether, I’m much more like to do today what might linger until much later. I don’t want to learn that I have a terminal disease and then spend the next six months cramming in all those unfulfilled dreams. Do now! Why wait?

Now the ground rules. A list item must have clear success criteria. None of this: be more happy, as happiness is not quantifiable and even if it were, it would be difficult to know when that “more happiness” happened. With few exceptions, an item on the list cannot be an extrapolation of something I’ve already done. I may have botched my first attempt at a goal, but I’d rather not try for the rest of my like to perfect a visualization of the past. For example, “Life abroad, but not in Europe” is not a suitable item as it is clarification of something I’ve already done.

I’ve compartmentalized the 100 items. Did I mention that I’m a scientist?

Family

    1. Get married
    2. Have/take care of a kid
    3. Surprise my parents for their birthdays
    4. Make furniture with my Dad
    5. Bake a birthday cake
    6. Take my nieces out for dinner unaccompanied
    7. Take my brothers to Burning Man

Career / Money

    8. Be someone’s boss
    9. Direct a project
    10. Invent something that goes into a product
    11. Buy property

Side Jobs

    12. Teach a course
    13. Join the Peace Corps
    14. Be a park ranger
    15. Be a tour guide
    16. Own a coffee shop or bar
    17. Chef at a restaurant
    18. Sell something I made
    19. Work on a farm

Athletic / Experience

    20. Run a marathon
    21. Skydive
    22. Scuba
    23. Surf
    24. Snowboard
    25. Ride a horse
    26. Go up in a hot-air balloon
    27. Ayahuasca
    28. Go on a silent, overnight retreat
    29. Get in a sensory-deprivation tank
    30. …
    31. …

Travel

    32. Visit 6 continents (not Antarctica). I’m missing one: Africa.
    33. Visit all 50 states. I’m missing 15: West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa,      Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, Alaska.
    34. Galapagos
    35. The Pyramids
    36. The Taj Mahal
    37. The Great Wall
    38. Rio
    39. Hike the Appalachian or Pacific Coast Trail
    40. Take a cruise, even if on a sailboat
    41. See the Northern Lights
    42. Attend the Kentucky Derby
    43. Attend the Olympics
    44. Attend a Presidential Inauguration

Art / Skill

    45. Slam poetry
    46. Weld
    47. Make a fire sculpture
    48. Be a VJ
    49. Brew beer

Community

    50. Play in a small band
    51. Throw a large party
    52. Start a monthly/weekly event
    53. Plant a tree
    54. Give a speech in a public forum

The List, Annotated

Commentary

Why these answers? For the record, this list was written a month before my 37th and one-half birthday, or halfway to 75. I’m single, healthy, materially happy.

Pondering the 100 items, I’m nostalgic for all that I have done. I’m surprised that it is hard for me to think of more than fifty-four accomplishments. I don’t need more things. In my wanders across the world, I’ve already explored so much. A younger person seeks experience: jump out of a plane, play 36-holes of golf. I’ve done most of that; my goals feature connections to those I know and those I would like to meet.

Family

I put this category first. Thought it is important.

    1. Get married

I know, I know, perpetually single, and I want to get married? I’d like to experience a wedding. I want to settle down, tie my life to another, and grow together. Sappy, sure.

    2. Have/take care of a kid

Another surprise for a single, 37-year old. My biological clock is ticking, despite what women ruefully tell me about husbands of any age sprouting babies. Frankly, I’m on the fence about raising a kid; it’s a large undertaking, but the joys may outweigh the sorrows. When patient, I’m good with kids. Would I be better with my own? Nearing forty, I’m pricing myself out of the baby market. I could always adopt, take on a kid from the wife’s previous marriage, or simply be the (creepy) guy next door that looks after the neighborhood. I haven’t figured it out, and may never.

    3. Surprise my parents for their birthdays

My Mom’s 75th birthday arrives in two years. My Dad turns 80 in three years. We’re not a family for birthdays or travel. It’d be fun to break that silences and show up unannounced at my parents’ door with a birthday cake, stay the day, and fly back, just because it’s so impractically sweet.

    4. Make furniture with my Dad

My Dad is a lifelong amateur carpenter, and a good one at that. Through my science career, I have so much trained to run instruments that I’d like to learn a useful skill from someone I care about, especially before Dad stops making furniture. It’d be several weeks of teaching, so this carpentry apprenticeship will have to wait until I take my next break.

    5. Bake a birthday cake

I cook tons. I’m surprised I’ve never made a birthday cake. I’d like to mix cake batter while thinking about the upcoming birthday. Yes, more treacle. As I get older, I think more about others and how to interact with them.

    6. Take my nieces out for dinner unaccompanied

I’ll have to wait a few years until they want to order Lobster Thermidor.

    7. Take my brothers to Burning Man

It’d be a trip, and oddly I would be the most sober and jaded of the crew. They can check out what I’ve been doing all these years.

Career / Money

Odd that I couldn’t think of anything specific to buy. Most have a dream object like a boat or car. I don’t. Yet.

    8. Be someone’s boss
    9. Direct a project
    10. Invent something that goes into a product

None of these professional items are specific to a career in chemistry, but do apply to a hierarchical work structure. Like everyone else, I’d want to get ahead at work, have some influence, and throw my slight weight around, hopefully for the better. As a post-doc, I have worked with graduate students, but no person has ever reported to me. I might be a crummy boss. Although I have been incorporated into patents - four or five - none of the patentable ideas made it to commercialization. I want one of my creative ideas to change the world… a Snuggie out of food.

    11. Buy property

Property would signify a permanent home base, an address. I don’t think I can afford much in expensive San Francisco, so that sprawling dream farmhouse may have to wait until the next chapter.

Side Jobs

I’ve got lots of ideas and passions for second careers. My hobbies distract me from work but round out my personality. In either case, I’m not a great long-term focuser.

    12. Teach a course

“Practical Organic Chemistry,” “Coat Making,” “Lighting Electronics,” “The Great American Novel.”

    13. Join the Peace Corps

Argghhh, when will I have two years to commit to the Peace Corps? I’d probably get assigned to science teaching at a run-down university in a shambling city. A Boston friend and Peace Corps recruiter named January would occasionally shake me down to get me to enroll. Some day, some year…

    14. Be a park ranger

I fell in love with the Park Service on my cross-country trip. Of course most rangers want to get situated at the cool parks like Yosemite or Yellowstone, but I’d like to enliven a smaller, more offbeat locale.

    15. Be a tour guide

I like showing off the places I know. My tours can be rather mechanical, though I specialize in funky and cheap.

    16. Own a coffee shop or bar

Some day, my brother Ray and I will split the same establishment. I’ll run the coffee shop during the day. He’ll take over the bar at night. I hate mornings though. It’s a tough business; so many establishments quickly go under.

    17. Chef at a restaurant

Full time cheffing is a grind: six days a week, twelve-hour shifts, standing, lots of chopping, rush-rush-rush. I love the line-work, but I don’t want to do it forever. I got my chops cheffing at college co-ops, cooking up four courses for fifty people in four hours.

    18. Sell something I made

Money doesn’t mean everything, but it does signify that something I made has value.

    19. Work on a farm

I’m not much of a rural person. I do want to get my hands dirty at the start of the food chain. The United States once was a nation of farmers. I want to go back to the roots.

Athletic / Experience

    20. Run a marathon

San Francisco marathon, this year? I run a half-marathon tomorrow. The marathon is perhaps the longest athletic contest that most people can enter. If I intend to complete the race, I had best get it done soon – I’m not getting any younger.

    21. Skydive
    22. Scuba
    23. Surf
    24. Snowboard
    25. Ride a horse
    26. Go up in a hot-air balloon

All of the above feature different forms of travel. I hate water so I’m surprised I consented to two watery activities like surfing (miserably cold, I hear) and scuba. I’m not great either with heights so skydiving and hot-air ballooning could be challenging to my comforts.

    27. Ayahuasca

Look it up. Probably the last of the pharmaceuticals I’d like to try. This one may not be a lot of fun, but could be enlightening.

    28. Go on a silent, overnight retreat
    29. Get in a sensory-deprivation tank

A need for quiet.

    30. …
    31. …

These two items I did not want to broadcast to the world.

Travel

    32. Visit 6 continents (not Antarctica). I’m missing one: Africa.
    33. Visit all 50 states. I’m missing 15: West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, Alaska.

I enjoy finishing sets. I don’t need to see the barren coldness of Antarctica. For the United States, I have yet to visit the center and southeast. I want to travel through as an anthropological reporter.

    34. Galapagos
    35. The Pyramids
    36. The Taj Mahal
    37. The Great Wall
    38. Rio

The Galapagos is perhaps the greatest of the remaining natural wonders. The Pyramids, Taj Mahal, and the Great Wall are perhaps the greatest of man’s ancient wonders. Furthermore, visiting these edifi gets me to tour the two massive, emerging, history-rich, impoverished civilizations of the world: China and India. I threw in Rio because it is so different from what I know.

    39. Hike the Appalachian or Pacific Coast Trail
    40. Take a cruise, even if on a sailboat

Travel as movement and not destination. I’ve been on ferries before between islands and countries, but these boats were full of lunch counters, slot machines, and tired commuters.

    41. See the Northern Lights

Could spot from a number of places: Alaska, Scandinavia, Siberia.

    42. Attend the Kentucky Derby
    43. Attend the Olympics
    44. Attend a Presidential Inauguration

I’ve been to Ibiza, SXSW, Burning Man. I list above a few of the festivals that I would like to attend. I guess the Kentucky Derby is the sole athletic event I’d like to witness. I’m not much for the hype of a Superbowl or baseball World Series.

Art / Skill

    45. Slam poetry

Austin’s slam scene inspired me to write some (bad) slam poetry. I never performed.

    46. Weld
    47. Make a fire sculpture

I like new tools for my toolbox. Light and heat are my friends.

    48. Be a VJ

I lack the rhythm and focus to be a DJ. There are so few video people out there. I’d like to come up with live, skittery movies to accompany music.

    49. Brew beer

To join the family hobby.

Community

    50. Play in a small band

I’ve already tooted a saxophone in the Stanford Marching Band. I’d like to play music and perform in a smaller, more intimate ensemble. This could be a challenge for the patience of my bandmates; see 48 above.

    51. Throw a large party
    52. Start a monthly/weekly event

Time to shake up my community. My grandparents excelled at inviting odd crowds to their farmhouse for adventures.

    53. Plant a tree

Continuity after my departure

    54. Give a speech in a public forum

Money Doesn't Make the World Go Round

E-Ink Popped

What seems like ages ago, when I lived in Boston, I toiled away for a start-up called E-Ink that made non-emissive, electrophoretic displays. Take a stare at an Amazon Kindle or a Sony eReader, and you are looking at E-Ink technology. For just over two years, I stirred paint – mostly black and white, coated films, and put together test parts. You can churn through the archives of this journal to find that I was not terribly happy on the job. The technology was mature enough that basic research was no longer a priority and I felt my skills at molecule-making under-utilized in cold Boston.

Still, all of the hundred or so at work were hoping to hit it big someday when the company went public and investment gold showered down. After two years, disillusioned and, frankly, just bored, I left the job and, soon after, the city. At my departure, I purchased my stock options with a check that had the Wizard of Oz on it. At the time, taking my stock was a cheap bet to make. I didn’t expect much of a return. In the years since, I’ve seen Amazon champion the Kindle and the New York Times write what-seems-to-be countless stories about electronic books.

Last summer, E-Ink announced that it would be acquired by a parts’ supplier, a Taiwanese company named Prime View International (PVI). I heard of the sale on a Friday. That weekend, I dreamed of a million dollars. I learned on Monday that I might get only a few thousand dollars. So much for an early retirement.

Six months later at the end of the calendar year of 2009, with lots of legal documents sent back and forth, the sale concluded. Often a sale of one company to another involves the exchange of the sold company’s shares for the new company’s stock. In this case, PVI paid off common investors like myself with cash.

I was rather surprised to receive a check in the mail last week. I cashed it today. It’s the largest amount I have ever seen on a check. Between twenty and thirty thousand dollars. A former work colleague said he would use the money to redo his kitchen. With my small apartment and even smaller kitchen, I could buy a new handle for the drawer in my kitchen.

Now, here’s when the story gets different: annoying, spiteful, ungrateful, hopeful, whatever you call it. Money, I learned, doesn’t necessarily make the world go round. The bank deposit just made the number in my account larger. I’m a saver, not a spender.

You see, I’m at the point in my career when all my immediate material needs are met. If I really wanted to own something, I would just go buy it. Funny thing, though, I don’t want much. Colleagues at work suggest I go get a new car. Others push me towards an iPhone. I like my two-tone, twelve-year old Toyota; I don’t want another car. I’d rather run this car until it stops. I don’t want an iPhone; I prefer my bargain-basement phone plan on Sprint. I can’t go on a huge trip; I don’t have vacation days. I don’t want skis; I don’t have room for them.

I’m actually quite happy to find myself in the extraordinarily lucky state of having all my immediate material needs met. Being able to get anything I want makes me conversely not want much. I put much greater value on the unpurchaseable attributes of friendship, family, experience, good laughs, joy, and community.

Still, this Spring I’ll flirt with buying property. Even with this windfall, I believe that I cannot afford to buy (mortgage) a 1-bedroom apartment comparable to what I rent now. San Francisco is just too expensive. So instead, I’ll sock the money into savings or investments. The E-Ink pay-out may eventually buy me an extra year on the road when I’m forty, and that’s a valuable experience.

The Edwardian Ball

Decadence Unbridled

<>It’s about time I grew up. Friday afternoon, from a high-end vintage shop on Market Street, I bought a bowtie, and not one of these pinched pasta shapes with a clip on the back - no, a real bowtie, basically a strip of fabric. Fortunately, the internet knows all. Many of the step-by-step cartoons confounded me. I would throw a few loops, make a twist, and end up not in knots. I did unearth a short video shot in the south that demonstrated the trick I was missing. Eureka is indeed California’s state motto.

As far as I can tell, with the standard cravat, the knot should be tight, small, and symmetric. With a bowtie, bets are off, or at least opposed. A large, rumpled knot with dangling loose ends signifies that the bowtie indeed, has been knotted with care not on the industrial scale in China, but by the humble, but sophisticated, gentleman whose neck it accentuates. This tie is of beige linen with little dark blue squares.

All this new haberdashery was the preparation for the Edwardian Ball. A week prior, I purchased three tickets to the ball from a ladies corset shop. During the week, couples bailed faster than two boy scouts trapped on a leaky canoe. John Major was ill, the third ticket I could sell at the venue, I shall attend alone! Decadent! Edwardian!

I had a fuzzy idea that Edwardian meant old, but not too old, perhaps 1850s until the 1920s – Civil War times, steam locomotives, and ascots. The internet knows all. The Edwardian period is named after the reign of Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from precisely 22 January 1901 until his death on 6 May 1910. More constrained than I thought, less than ten years, and roughly the first decade, the aughts, of the nineteen hundreds. The internet runs onward: “The Edwardian period, which covered Edward’s reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including powered flight and the rise of socialism and the Labour movement.” Thank you, Wikipedia.

What better venue than San Francisco’s grand Regency Ballroom, on Van Ness in Pacific Heights? The Ball, the 10th annual, was more than just a period throwback; it also was an homage to the visions of Edward Gorey, illustrator of dark children’s stories such as “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” that begins with “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.”

I put on a white button-down shirt, black pin-strip vest, black faux-lizard prints pants (creepy?), a gold pocket watch with fob, that beige bowtie – impeccably haphazardly tied, and a green baroque-print cap. As it were a misty night, I donned a furry overcoat with forty lit eyes, both for its creepy darkness but also its light. I didn’t want to get hit on my historically-inaccurate bicycle plowing through the streets of San Francisco. Where was my trusty old-timey, big-wheel bike when I needed it?

The line of revelers snaked around the corner of the Regency Ballroom. Looking at those assembled, I knew I was in for a treat that night. It was a sea of black top hats, spats, peacock feathers, corsets, ruffles, and canes. I readily sold the extra ticket, urged John to show, and found myself in the foyer staring up at a 20-foot tall man in a gray suit and gray top hat on stilts playing a violin.

San Francisco is a sophisticated city. Around the opera house, I do spy the occasional three-piece suit. I’ve never been at a party as lavish as this one. “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” Almost everyone attending outdid themselves with layers of decadent finery, the likes of which I would never know where to purchase or even how to put on.

Naturally, with the San Francisco community, it’s not just about the party’s ostensible theme, but about tweaking that theme a little further. I chatted with three veterans of the Boer and Crimea wars. A woman dressed as a locomotive, taffeta steam coming out of her hat, riding on white roller skates. Peacock feathers, curled mustache wax, six-foot long brown feathers sprouting from impossibly tall hats to poke me behind in the eye, pith helmets, monocles, a sooty chimney sweep, a man wearing a top hat that had swinging doors which swiveled open to reveal silent-movie text and a fantastic landscape for a rocket ship.

Downstairs from the ballroom, tailors and seamstresses sold corsets and period trinkets. I chatted with Miranda. I passed up the opportunity to buy a shirt that sloganed “The Revolution will not be Telegraphed.” Turf was laid for a croquet match. The wickets, though, were surreal spiders of black and white. Hedges prevent the balls from sailing too far into the vended fashion.

I wandered to the smoking porch. Two men in blue jumpsuits stoked a forge. They smelted iron link. Hesuz Cristo! I stupidly accepted a cigarette, my one of the year. The tobacco, plus the pints of Stella Artois, I was pounding at the bar upstairs, made me loopy. A surly traffic cop had the two blue jumpsuits shut the forge. The proper permits had not been yet obtained to smelt iron at midnight on San Francisco city streets. Ha!

There were performances in the ballroom. They were magical. But, it’s important to convey the wonderful crowd of Edwardian visions. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence desired my photograph. I suggested a daguerrotype. The ballroom sides were flanked by glassed curio cases of the natural disorder: stuffed stoats playing in a cow skull; a grisly, trepanned human skull; intricate mechanical wonders. By the bar in the side room, a photographer set up a studio in front of a large gilt frame. An entourage waited convivially for portraits. Alone, I didn’t want to spend the queue time. However, I suggest you spend a moment at the party and click the “photos” tab: http://www.edwardianball.com/

Yes, there were performances in the ballroom. A woman gamboled on a trapeze bar, holding herself aloft with a single finger. Later on, an orchestra played. The trombonist wielded a giant piece of convoluted chrome. Surreal montages flickered on a movie screen. Acrobats jumped. A pale woman, naked but for strands of leaves, playfully sprouted jets of real water from her hands over the body of her partner that she just had strangled to death. Three from the Dark Garden corsetry shop appeared. Two tied the long, white backstrings of one nubile lady’s corset. “Tighter, tighter!” the crowd yelled until, indeed, the poor woman vomited her red guts and collapsed on the stage. A panoply of the creepiest Edward Gorey figures wended through the audience and on to the stage to disrupt and corrupt courting Edwardian couples.

During a silent film, the audience circled out for a disruption in the ballroom. A fine gentleman with a microphone oversaw a self-defense demonstration. This is San Francisco! A total put-on! The combatants were Edwardian. How to use a cane to disarm a chimney sweep with a broom. How three women suffragettes can use their activist signs to fend off tweed misogynists with stiletto blades. Who has this imagination? Who has this verve? Brilliant! Amazing!

The night grew hazy. I was glad at least to arrive mostly sober, but then I had a case of the vapors. It was harder than usual to be invisible. In a dark ballroom of black ties, I wore one of the few lit objects, this one staring with forty eyeballs. I met a wonderful Leslie in lace, strings, and eyelashes that were practically feathers. She was entranced that I was a chemist. I found her a fascinated civil engineer. She advised wineries on branding and wanted to move to New York.

I was drunk. Perhaps she was too. We discussed our life passions. “I want to make molecules,” I screamed. She introduced me to her friend who happened to be one of the organizers of the event. Too much, too fast. I should have left a calling card, or gotten her phone number.

Eventually, the croquet balls flew too crazily. I do remember tamping my foot to send a hit ball careening. The cigarette agitated me. It was one thirty and snake-in-silver, $tephen Ra$pa, a San Francisco impresario, opened the floor up to dancing to close the evening. I stumbled outside, inspected the 10-foot tall brass snail that had parked at the kerb, hopped my bicycle, and with coat of 40-eyes staring more soundly than my own, I sailed up and down the hills of Pacific Heights on my bicycle back to my small apartment in the sky.

There is hope.

Run, run, run

Long Strides

January brings uncharacteristic slowness to San Francisco. Festivals are months away, and the rains have come. Lethargy sets in. The world turns indoors. I run.

Back in October, I foolishly signed up for the half-marathon race through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park occurring at the beginning of February. At the time, I wasn’t even running; I was Natashacizing (another story, another time). So once the Christmas and the New Year’s holidays passed, I hit the pavement again.

Saturday mornings, I take five miles in Golden Gate Park. Twice a week at work during the lunch hour, I run. I cruise out of the building, down University Avenue, east towards the bay. I cut around the former Sun Microsystems’ campus and on to a long stretch of Marsh road. Usually, it’s just me, tall sage grass, the gophers, and irascible Canadian geese. I churn into a hilly park that sticks out of the marsh to do a few loops. Once done with my park circles, I turn around and return down Marsh road, around the Sun campus, and back to work. One loop in the park means 7 miles; two loops are 9 miles. I’m working up to three loops.

Yesterday was a holiday, Martin Luther King Day, so no running at work. Instead, I headed out of my apartment, turned west, and pounded the pavement of Page Street. I passed collections of eccentric Victorians and stray dog walkers. Page Street finishes at Golden Gate Park so I entered. I made it past the de Young Museum and the square of disco roller-skaters.

Rain threatened and then dumped some. Turn back? I hit a dirt trail and followed it west. Run, run, run. The road, now a moat, had filled with rain water. I found higher ground through the trees. Eventually, the ocean. The waves seethed with winter storms; the deities were angry with the city. I spotted the Cliff House, Wilhemina’s windmill, and headed back into Golden Gate Park. The bison grazed closer to the path. Spreckles Lake was empty of model boats. I had come so far, but there was no faster way to go than back. It’s January and not cold.

I ran this half marathon last year. After the race, wanting to die, I sat in the sand to watch the ocean. I checked my time: 96 minutes for 7:26 minutes per mile. And I want to do better this year? Yarg. I’ve got three more weeks of running.

My body changes during these times. Right after a run, I heat up. One hour later, I’m cold. In the afternoons after a 10-miler, I pass out at my desk. In the evenings, I eat voraciously, in search of endless carbohydrates. On off days, I’m on, irrepressibly bouncy, sometimes not so fun for the mellower around me. Still, at about mile 7, my legs kick and I float. The world passes mutely under me like a film strip. It makes it all worth it.

Back Off, Back On

Adventures in Physical Therapy

All these years and my health has been pretty good. Heck, I even regularly go to the doctor to get the typical exams and screens. My blood (yuck) is hale and my genetics are hearty. Nonetheless, something has been bugging me for decades: my upper back. I spend much of the day adjusting my shoulders, elongating my neck, grinding my shoulder blades into my torso. I wake up sore and go to bed more sore. This is normal, right?

Over the past few years, I've read posture web sites, talked to others about chiropractic work, and attempted to self-diagnose what probably is a typical western world malaise of too much computer time and not enough stretching. Still, I've put off a professional diagnosis for years. I run, I do yoga, it's not like I have trouble lifting objects...

Nonetheless, I have health insurance. I should get this fixed. Much of the cogent advice simply suggested to see my doctor. And so I did in October. He bumped my back, wondered about cancer, and then referred me to physical therapy. Physical therapy? I'm an old man now. Naturally, like an old man, I waited many more months to follow up on the physical therapy referral. It's not like I have trouble lifting objects...

On a Tuesday morning, I entered the California-Pacific Medical Center and found my way to the little physical therapy out-building. In the waiting room, I sat next to the codgers, some with canes. My assigned therapist, Jeff, escorted me to his examination room. I felt silly; it's not like I have trouble lifting objects...

Jeff wrote down my complaints, raised my arms, tested my spine, pressed against my back, looked again. Well, he said, ten years of poor posture has caused your rib cage to cave in and forward. It all made sense. The collapse of my rib cage tightened up the surrounding muscles as they have to cover more ground back there. My shoulder blades grind against my ribs cause they have no place to go. I can't inhale fully cause there isn't space for the lungs. My neck sticks up and backwards like a < because the torso has curved forward so much.

I think some of this long-coming posture problem is psychological. I spent my teens and twenties not sure of who I was. Uncertain, I habitually and protectively drew my shoulders forward and head down like a turtle. People won't notice me if I'm smaller. Physically, I've worked on projects both as a chemist at work and tinkering at home that have required my hands to flail for hours like a tyrannosaurusand my neck to collapse like an ostrich.

Jeff put me on an exercise regimen. I have five daily exercises, none of them strenuous. Standing, I pull on elastic ropes jammed into a door frame. Lying, I raise my arms up and down and then windmill them. I'm strengthening my back, opening my chest, and expanding the motion of my shoulders. The last exercise I like the best: I lie down on a vertical column and spread my arms open. For the five minutes, I meditate and open myself to the world.

If the posture problem has a psychological connection, this straightening will have a psychological boon. I'll walk taller and learn to be okay with presenting myself to the world. Jeff said, though, don't expect weeks of physical therapy to fix decades of misuse. Still, I like directions, fads, and self-improvement. I'm got a plan and hopefully a new approach to world. 2010 could be the year of the back. I go back every Tuesday morning for 8 weeks. Next time you see me, I'll be 6'2".

New Year's Eve 2009

Temple with 8

Good friends Patrick and Amanda flew out from Boston to spend in San Francisco the week leading up to New Year’s Day. Those two, the Panda, have already seen it all: Burning Man, Manhattan (where Amanda lives), the Red Lounge, Italy, perhaps even Cincinnati. New Year’s Eve in San Francisco? Sure, come on in; the water’s fine. Likewise AJ and Fiona in Redwood City asked if there was anything going on.

Anything going on? Newspaper listings went on for pages. Every bar and club in the city trotted out its variant of the New Year’s Eve party. Trouble is, nothing struck me. In a quieter city like Boston, I might put my hopes on First Night (kinda lame) or hunker down all night with the burner folks at Red Tail (not lame). However in San Francisco, the club kids spread out over the city. The “Sea of Dreams” party at a convention center looked spectacular, but in the past, I found convention centers not terribly intimate.

One veteran San Franciscan counseled an early sleep. New Year’s Eve, he dubbed the city’s largest amateur night in which tourists bus in to drink incompetently and fall over in the streets.

New Year's Eve 2009

So in the prior week, I rolled the dice and decided on Temple for New Year’s Eve. Temple is perhaps the nicest looking club in San Francisco. There’s a main dance floor lit white with columns reminiscent of Miami. Downstairs lies a grittier catacomb, and off of the catacomb heats up a small red room. Furthermore, Temple advertised a theme of luminance. Attendees were supposed to express their “aura” (cheeseball) with light-up costumes. We’ll come to the “supposed to” later on in this story.

Patrick and Amanda and me make three. AJ and Fiona now are five. Add their friends Chrissy and Nicole and we’re up to seven. Throw in David Garfield, old bandy and fellow alto saxophonist from Stanford, and the party was eight. Ye gods.

I had to “work” on New Year’s Eve, work in quotes because little got done at the office, and most slipped out of the building after two in the afternoon. The eight of us met at my little apartment around six. We hit the drinks – AJ made lemondrops - and then we ordered an Indian feast for take-out from India Oven restaurant just a few blocks away. Fiona was so kind to pick up the bill. AJ, Garfield, and I trekked out for coffee and the meal.

I’m glad AJ and Fiona brought plates with them as I didn’t have enough in the apartment. While we ate, we sorted out portable lights for the evening. I had constructed a crown out of gold paper, wire, LEDs, and ping-pong balls. Crissy wore my blue bubble-fur coat; Nicole got the black scarf with the chain of lights; Fiona put a strand of red lights in her corset; AJ had removed a Christmas decoration of an LED star and had cleverly pinned it to a T-shirt; Garfield donned a top hat with a peacock feather and a strand of blue lights.

Lit in more ways than one, we were ready to embark. Out the door and just around the corner, we ran into an ecstatic woman by the liquor store who kept saying “Happy New Year” to us. We stopped first at a quiet Noc Noc bar for a beer. One patron there wanted to know where we were going later that night. We were the party, and folks wanted tickets for the ride.

After Noc Noc, we bar crawled through Lucky 13 and on to the Muni. The subway was free all night. The subway car we climbed aboard was packed. However, the most cracked out was the driver! In a blond wig, she kept yelling over the loudspeaker “Happy New Year everybody…soul train…Happy New Year everybody…woo hooo.”. It was going be an interesting night.

AJ got drunk en route on vodka, cleverly disguised in an iced-tea bottle. The additive in our liquor made the Panda and I pretty jittery. Nicole swilled some vile Lambrusco.

Temple nightclub. Um. Down the block from Temple, I could see a line of people snake away from its door. This could be a while to get in. Furthermore, surveying the crowd, we saw just a herd of douchebags. Argh, where were the lights? What happened to luminance?

Membership, though, has its privileges. Before we got in line, a nightclub manager congratulated us on the lights and told us we were going right in. Cool. He gave us a ticket for complimentary champagne. Better.

The club had outfitted the ceiling with white inflatable urchins. Two go-go dancers in eastern attire gyrated atop boxes. Downstairs was equally full. Too bad the Asian mafia had showed up. We parted a sea of identical suits and little black cocktail dresses. Fortunately, it was easy to keep track the lit members of our group.

The general manager told us to come to the bar and get drinks. Anything we wanted, on the house. The night got fuzzy. Digital and video cameras were in our faces. AJ found tequila. He offered me a drink and then knocked it out of my hand. I shouted, “Not only are they buying us drinks, but also we’re throwing them to the floor!” This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to us. We’re in one of San Francisco’s nicest clubs on the busiest night of the year and the club is buying us drinks! The manager asked if I needed anything. Apparently I screamed, “Batteries! I need more batteries!”

Around midnight, the fog machines kicked in. We were stationed in front of the stage. The crowd counted down. Everything got fuzzy for a lot of reasons. Had it been a good year?

The battery died on my crown. I swapped it out for a spare. We caught a breath outside on the smoking porch. Nicole was trashed. Patrick, or was it Amanda?, fell over, maybe both. A lot of us were teetering. Two o’clock hit; it was time to go home.

Outside was a war zone of collapsed bodies. A few had too much to drink. We trooped back to the Muni on Market and boarded to head west. Just before boarding, we waved goodbye to the Panda heading on its own for bamboo shoots in Union Square. On the other end of the Muni ride, we headed up he hill. Walking up Church street, Nicole took off her heels.

But the night was only getting started? There was a 5am party at Triple Crown and Mission Kelly Rocks. What about Breakfast of Champions? What about Supperclub’s Breakfast in Bed? Not this year. The six of us were done. In the tiny apartment, we fit two on the couch, two in my bed, one on an army cot, and poor Garfield on the floor. Indian food was hastily eaten at three in the morning.

It was an auspicious start to the New Year. Crazy, hazy, clever, ever again.

2010 Look Forward

Efficency and Reconnection

A new year approaches with the simple name of 2010. Nice round numbers. Perhaps a good way to start off a decade. 2k Ten. Two-oh one-oh. Twenty ten.

At the end of each year, I look forward to the next with lists, lists of stuff to do, places to go, traits to work on.

This year is no exception. For 2010, I do not predict large life changes, although the largest changes are frequently the least expected. I ought to finish this coming year with the same job. Great things, though, may transpire at the company. This spring, I'll toy with looking for new accommodation, but after the search I will likely stay on the corner of Oak and Webster in my tiny apartment in the sky. It would be odd to be married by the end of 2010, but just shedding the single status would be a sea change for me.

Let's study my prognostication. Two words anchor the upcoming year:

EFFICIENCY

As my freetime shrinks, shaved away by commutes and long hours at work, I would like better to maximize the hours. I want to work more at work, go out to the party in the weekend, and sleep when it is time to sleep. Previously, the bleed through of the various aspects of my life left me struggling. I'd slumber Monday morning at work, surf the internet absently bored on Thursday, stay up too late on a Wednesday, and find myself exhausted after work on a Friday. I can get it all done. I want better to compartmentalize my time. So, I’ll try sleeping seven-and-a-half hours each night. It is possible to get a drink at 10, go home immediately to bed, wake up, and still have a productive day. Likewise, exercise doesn't need to take all afternoon. There are scheduled classes.

RECONNECT

I've drifted too far from my family and friends. I'd like to reach out more and see how they are doing. I can be present in their lives even if I'm not in the same state. The newness of San Francisco has waned. It's time to savor the oldness of other places.

TRAVEL

I don't know why I always put travel first, as I don't travel much any more, and where I'm going these days is less important than whom I'm with and what I'm doing. Nonetheless, I'd like to go abroad again. I have little time but lots of money; a suitable destination would be an expensive island, like Iceland. Thus, I'm thinking of flying to Boston for Fourth of July. I could stop by home and then head to the rowdies at the Firefly Festival in Vermont. On my return from the festival, I would continue my eastward progress to Iceland for a few days and then make the long haul back to California.

I like festivals; I just want to try some different ones in 2010. The Burn, Transformus, and PDF, I put you to bed. I'll see you guys in a few years. Ruben and I already bought airline tickets for Austin's SXSW in March. The ravers here in San Francisco rave at the Priceless Festival over 4th of July weekend (conflicting with the Iceland plans above.) I'd go back to Mutek if I could form a posse.

Perhaps Ray wants to trek around Mexico City and the surrounding Aztec ruins. I previously wanted to herd the brothers to Flagstaff. We didn't make it to the parks this year. I owe two recent west-coaster each a visit: Tess in Portland and Steve Andrews in Seattle. Still, 2010 may be the year of Iceland.

Like last year, I want to ski 5 days. I cajoled AJ in attempting snowboarding. Might be wet, but might be different.

HEALTH

The doctor and the genetics screen say I'm doing alright. The physical therapist just read me the riot act on the miserable condition of my back. Could 2010 be the year of my back and revitalized posture? I'd like to be able to stand up straight without the aching soreness that I presumed was a normal effect of the industrialized world. I've got now exercises to do every day and vigilance to maintain. The posture police needs new regiments of cadets.

I'm running the half marathon gain through Golden Gate Park in February. With some training and toting some food this time, I'd like to beat my 7:36 minute/mile time. It's gonna be tricky to reach 7:30 or less. If I run the half marathon well, the full San Francisco marathon looms at the end of July. Gack.

Otherwise. I'll keep up with the Natasha twice a week at work as the class members swing kettle-bell weights and jump on squishy hemispheres. I want to resume yoga. JohnMajor recommends a Sunday class in the city. I should meditate when I have the chance on weekends and before work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Perhaps I should drink less? nah.

Sleep 7.5 hours each night. As the old people advise, nothing interesting happens after 1am.

BUY

Oddly, there isn't much I need. The little apartment is full. The walls are a bit bare, but I like to showcase my own art. I did pick up a sewing machine this year.

2010 might be the year of the motorcycle. Fun. Fun? Grant wants to unload his starter bike. I'll try not to kill myself.

I'm running out of projects. My line of coats has dwindled and I've completed most of what I've wanted to do with programmable ping-pong ball lights.

I would like to tinker with color-changing LEDs. I haven't thought yet of a good use. Robin left me with Legos and motors. Perhaps I can learn how to make kinetic sculptures.

It'd be fun to weld. I want to make fire sculptures.

I'll return to writing. Even these commandments herald a renewal of the written word. I still have a lot to talk about. I may even start a third book; it may be as crappy as the previous two but it is content.

I'll finish the 1000-page tome of Infinite Jest. It's been a pleasant read, but book, you've got to get done.

2009 Wrap-Up

The year of San Francisco

As the year winds to a chilly close in San Francisco, I pause to survey the road behind and sort through the postcards collected over the twelve months. It's been a year of stability. Now in December, I find myself with the same job, same apartment, and same singleness that I had in January. In retrospect, much of the year was spent with one eye turned towards start-up sequencing work and the other eye to settling into San Francisco to figure out what I want to do with California. No great shakes from me this year to announce to the world Twitter-style such as “I got married” or “I got fired.” I am the same, but the craziness around me has become more comfortable and assumed.

TRAVEL

I often tally years by where I have been: how many states, how many countries? What was new? What could I check off? Such as in 2008, quitting one job and going on the road, I slowed the international travel, stopping only once outside the country for a drive around Jamaica before exiting the building that was E-Ink. This year – 2k9, I did make it out of the country twice. I leapt over the continent for the minimal techno festival of Mutek in Montreal in May. Immediately afterwards, I jumped further over the pond to England, but for business. I toured a factory in Birmingham and then a polymer plant in Tubingen, Germany. Come October, I got sent back to Germany for work, this time to Stuttgart.

    January – Ski in Nevada
    February – More ski in Nevada
    March - SXSW
    April
    May – Mutek in Montreal, Birmingham, London, Tubingen
    June
    July – Tess gets married in Dayton, Ohio, Transformus in North Carolina
    August – Burning Man in Nevada
    September
    October - Stuttgart
    November
    December

On the balance, I returned to places instead of exploring new ones. I headed back to four familiar festivals: SXSW, Transformus, Burning Man, and Treasure Island. North Carolina and the Burn, you both are wonderful, but I need a break, a few years now to restore the novelty and bring back the challenges. Both Transformus and the Burn were atypically free of disastrous drama – no dysentery! – and oddly I missed the intensity.

WORK

Yup, work is work. Unlike the farmer, I am not outstanding in my field. The company grew with new faces every week. Since my arrival in February 2008, the workplace has expanded from one-hundred drones to three hundred, from two buildings to soon-to-be six. This company is likely to the best opportunity in my career to experience a successful (but draining) start-up. Plan the book tour.

The ten hours of commuting each week, the occasional weekend spent sequencing at work, all these long work days have eroded the balance of my life. At the end of the day when I return to my little apartment, I just want to sit, eat, and then – gosh – it’s time for bed. I do have a little time for home projects, but no leisure to tour as a tourist, skip town for a long weekend, or just hang out in a café. It’s always move, move, move or sleep, sleep, sleep cause I have enlisted into the embarrassing ranks of weekend warriors.

Nonetheless, like trying to lift a stack of weights with my triceps, I’m not engaging my full faculties at work. I was trained to make molecules and analyze them. Yet, our group already has decided which molecules it wants to use; even the analysis has slowly been stripped from me by newer teams. On the one hand, the company’s success is not predicated by the smarts of my job (huzzah!). Our crunch part in the technological build occurred last summer. On the other hand, I can only do so much virtual dozing at my desk. I still feel useful, but there’s a lot more I could be doing. There will be a lot more feeling my way in the future.

HEALTH

The year started running. I had to as well. I registered months in advance for my first 1/2-marathon slated for February. All January, I pushed my twice-weekly loop from six miles to twelve. When it was all done, I finished the Kaiser Permanente half-marathon through Golden Gate Park in 96 minutes at 7:34 minutes to the mile. Crashed on the beach, I was drained, but happy. Running halted all spring and summer, and I didn’t resume until Thanksgiving for a 10k race through downtown San Jose. No training this time, but I finished a respectable 42:42 minute time at 6:53 minutes per mile. Fine, fine.

Last March, my annual membership lapsed at the generic 24 Hour Fitness. Work installed a gym. I started lifting weights now at work and going for a run. Yet there was this wacky group in the tiny mat room bouncing on balls and leaping across squishy hemispheres. In summer, I got sucked into the exercise cult of Natasha. This co-worker leads an aerobics/weights class. I attend twice a week, and the ninety minutes of jumping, stretching, and squatting (what’s a glute?) is enough exercise for me.

I thought I’d bicycle more. Around March, bicycling got even more difficult: a thief stole my unlocked bike from my third-floor balcony. Black-and-red Jamis, I miss you. I think some asshole(s) climbed the interior staircase of the building to the fourth-floor roof access and just lifted my bike from the roof. Argggghhhh. Surprisingly, I don’t feel as violated as I should. A lengthy Craigslist-search later and I welcome a blue REI Novarro bike, now locked, to my fleet. I’ve biked just twice across the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d like one of these days to bicycle to Sausalito and then take the ferry back to San Francisco.

I got sick for way to long in October – some odd, unrelenting congestion in my lungs. I so hate giving blood, but after the doctor-ordered results came back the lab, my doctor says my cholesterol levels, white blood cells, and liver all are behaving as they should. The dentist gave me five (argh) superficial cavities without anesthetic (yikes) and since then, he no longer troubles me.

I wanted to ski five days last year. I managed four. It’s enough. The slopes felt great.

WEALTH

I’m trying to save a thousand bucks each month so that I can take a few years off when I take a break September 24, 2012 at 4:59pm.

After lots of wrangling and legal documents requiring overnight Fed-Ex deliveries, my former employer, E-Ink, popped. A bit cash-strapped, E-Ink sold itself (merged) to a Taiwanese supplier called Prime View International. The deal took months to iron out. I signed the last document in December at the eleventh hour of 2009. My shares that I originally bought at seven cents each may eventually be worth $1.19 each. The small amount I paid E-Ink on my departure may grow to $25,000 in the far-flung future. I can retire, well, only for a few months. The E-Ink cash, though, does buy me a year off so I’m certainly appreciative.

I find myself, though, in the enviable state of having my needs met. If I want something, I can go get it. If my car needs a catalytic converter (it might), I bitch about the cost but can afford to pay for it. I still drive a clunker and live in a 20 foot-by-20 foot box in the sky, but if I don’t ask for much, I am satisfied.

I’m trying to spend more on others.

COMMUNITY

Far-flung friends realized that I’m now in California to stay. I didn’t have my former energy to keep up with periodic phone calls. People slowly drifted out of my life. Maybe it’s a sign of middle-age when I shed those I once knew so well. This contraction of community saddens me, but I guess opens new space for future near-and-dear. Still, I haven’t forgotten you!

Much of the year, I hung out in San Francisco. I explored the Mission and the Haight, perfecting my tour of those funky neighborhoods.

Ruben and Eleanor were frequent visitors. When San Francisco cramped much, I hit the road and headed to their apartment in the land of free parking: Sacramento. AJ and Fiona likewise spent a few beer-fueled nights in the city. We got up to a lot of no-good and paid for it eventually with a towed car.

I’m still meeting folks here. Faces on the streets are more familiar.

I’d like still to jump into an artists’ collective and help build.

The party of the year? Easy. Tons of Sand at the American Steel Building in Oakland. Three folks ate lightbulbs, a fiery whip was cracked on stage, and the Spacecowboys’ Moog looked tiny in the huge warehouse.

Despite my pedestrian assessment of 2009, it was a year of firsts:

I took a motorcycle safety class and got my M1 license,
I figured out how to program LEDs with ping-pong lights and made a ton of light sculptures,
I traveled for the first time on business (and survived),
I got part of my DNA sequenced and found no surprises,
I started reading the epic novel of our time: Infinite Jest,
I ran a half-marathon (and may run another).

Burning Man 2008

Burning Man 7

It’s been forever since I wrote anything. After a year on the road driving past “the new” and commensurately documenting “the new,” I grew sick of “the new.” It’s really “new.” Landed in San Francisco in February and anchored in dry dock, I booked my first six stationary months to sit. No pictures, no text, no commensurate need to explain it all. Still, I have aches to comment on the nearby Victorian with a chain balustrade…

My six-month mark in San Francisco coincided with the Burning Man festival. Something must have happened there for I come back with explanations.

Burning Man 7, the latest of the series playing in the art movie houses is the Dusty Finale. Paramount Studio’s has set this mock-epic Bollywood drama in the desert of Outer Mongolia.

I returned home yesterday from the desert weary from a six-hour drive, four-thousand miles down in elevation, and several climatic zones cooler. Parked outside my apartment, I expended remnant vestigial energy. I hauled my playa’d belongings in and out of the elevator, re-sat my playa’d car, washed my playad body, and fell to bed at three thirty Sunday in the afternoon. My hands and wrists were scarred from rebar wounds, my fingernails were shredded from the dry, my sinuses hacked up dusty phlegm, my ears had filled to deafened, my hips oddly ached, and my butt still shat water. Ah, yes, it was that kind of Burning Man experience.

I slept. And slept. And slept some more. The light through the curtain vanished. I lost sense of where I lay, or if I were laying at all. Morning came. Sixteen hours later I rose. The world had changed.

If I wanted a vacation to chuck me out of my San Francisco routines, I found it. If I wanted a vacation to make the world new again, it leapt upon me. In the Monday morning stumble of Labor Day, I reacquainted with my California apartment shaking lose nostalgic dreams of a New England farmhouse.

In my week away, autumn fell. The San Franciscan light hung lower in the sky. My unfocused gaze elevated to rooftops as I tottered through my neighborhood of the Lower Haight in search of a coffee and a bagel. Everything on the street struck me as gleaming wondrous. I read forgotten signs. An abandoned sidewalk statue of a terracotta nun with her head smashed struck me funny.

What – indeed – had happened in the desert?

Burning Man 2008 started oddly. The organizers announced a controversial theme: the American Dream. Previously, themes rang lyrically with amorphous messages like “Hope and Fears” or “Sleep and Dreams.” Despite a rash of abashment, Burning Man focused this year on domesticity, the upcoming election, and that much-pursued American Dream. More controversially, the city streets were named after classic American cars: Allante, Bonneville, Corvair, Dart, and the E-street that I never reached.

On the Sunday of Burning Man, I drove out of San Francisco with a car full of stuff and lots of “Hopes and Dreams.” A year on the road away from an apartment and a half-year in San Francisco meant a lot of time drifting apart from those I knew from Boston and Brooklyn. Fortunately, on the Playa the New England village of the Hive reassembled for its second consecutive year. Most of those I knew were situated of the same desert city block.

During the haze of last year’s Burn, campmate Thomas Monroe concocted a tremendous idea. He proposed “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Simple, build a stage in the desert, cover the stage with a roof, veil it with curtains and a façade, fill the interior with chairs and flooring, and set up a theater. The camp denizens would be the audience, laying like trapdoor spiders in wait. Passersby would approach some curtains, read a sign about “the Greatest Show,” and sneak in expecting a circus. Maneuvering through veils, the unexpected would find themselves on stage, expected to perform. The Greatest Show on Earth, thus, is ourselves.

Terrific idea. For the last six months, a crew of ten scattered through Boston, New York, North Carolina, New Haven, and California designed, built, and packed pieces of the theater. Junaid and I last minute procured chairs and carpets for seating. He was kind enough to rent a trailer for his car tow away a posse of bicycles, a stack of plastic chairs, and a bundle of rolled up carpets.

Sunday morning, I packed up my two-toned Toyota and pulled out of San Francisco. My companion, Dr. Sewell, bailed as he swung a ride earlier to the playa and needed to make ranger training on Saturday. With extra space, I packed oddities like a bag full of just coats. “Anything worth doing is worth over-doing.” Finally, it felt right to go to Burning Man.

Late Sunday afternoon, I pulled into Black Rock City. Sage, Amanda, Dr. M, and Patrick greeted me from their posts of pounding rebar, manhandling PVC tubing, and setting out bins and boxes. I set up a tent, drank a lot of water, and cooked gnocchi. We had dinner in the dark seated on Andrew’s foldable picnic bench. It was a quiet start to a long week.

Seven times at Burning Man. Yeesh, I feel old. How to make the seventh trip different from the previous, most of which felt like Hunter S Thompson gone gonzo in the desert? At my departure, the oracle of Bobby’s Delphic iPhone issued forth for me the tarot card of Judgment. The card of the Judge signified not to be critical but rather to open up and let the cards – or rather the event – fall as it may.

My Burning Mans (Burning Men?) have matured. I’ve grown up. I traversed the cycle from awed but naive yearling to fatigued but competent raver. I cherish that arc for the lasting effects on the other fifty-one weeks of my year. Yet, completing the cycle, I’m ready for the next chapter. I want something more than party.

For my first trip to Burning Man, Holly dragged me unprepared from sheltered Stanford. For a week in stark, plum –almost frightened– amazement, I stood still as a brave new world totally foreign from me, like Venus from Pluto, danced like dazzled, drugged sugarplums. Fire, sand, sunrises, explosions, I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t fathom how it all got there.

There was a mad 3 a.m. croquet game played on the desert floor. I knocked an acrylic bowling ball that housed a skull. There were dark performers spinning circles of fire. There were endless quaffs of water, trips to the Port-a-potties, chapped lips, clay-stiffened hair, and unbearable warming mornings –all so otherworldly.

Returning to “real” life of graduate-school California, I wanted to return to be part of all of it. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, but I had to run away and join the circus out there. I wanted to dedicate my life to it.

I didn’t realize this dedication was gonna take time, six more visits to Black Rock City and ten years. On my first visit, I had brought a tent, a plastic jar for water, some t-shirts with funny writing, and lots of sunscreen. I didn’t have a shade structure – didn’t even know they existed. I didn’t have a shower, forgot to pack a theme camp, or a crate full of costumes.

And it wasn’t just the gear. I wasn’t a crazy, free-spirit, let-it-all-hang-out Burners. I was shy, invisible, fresh from a politically liberal, socially conservative east-coast school who hadn’t seen much of a tattoo, nor knew what a drug was except what Nancy Reagan warned us about.

In the middle years, I got half the picture right. My costumes grew so impractical, like a suit made out of flimsy CDs, that they broke emerging from their tins. I might have joined a theme camp, but I spent so much time circling the city away from camp, that I should have just bedded down by the trash fence. The booze and drugs piled up to enervate nights but crushed the following days. I woke with the noon blaze of the sun to lie like dusty, burnt pancake death in shade structure. It was about pushing limits to exhaustion – quantity, shear quantity. Sunset brought me alive to lather, rinse, repeat. Still, the magic was there and the unexpected hovered expectedly around desert pyramids and in geodesic domes.

This year I made peace with the festival. I figured it out. All of it. Okay, not all of it, but enough for closure. The camp’s project, the Greatest Show on Earth, worked better than expected. This time I packed what I required. I piled up a bin of costumes, two milk crates of foods: pear wine, parmesan cheese, ring pops. I finally figured out the packing puzzle.

In the first few days on the playa, our camp constructed all sorts of infrastructure: two Quonset huts out of tarps and PVC piping. The huts shaded rows of tents so we could sleep later than the infernal seven a.m. sunrise. A kitchen unfolded, Mercury’s dome got erected in a dust storm. Dr. M put together the shower. The crew hoisted a large Quonset for the theater.

Over the course of the week at Burning Man, I went to bed at reasonable hours. I actually got restorative sleep. No stay-up sunrises or agonizing noons. I didn’t binge. I didn’t purge. The playa bike I bought from a San Franciscan may have pedaled well, but with the playa surface torn up by crusty dunes, I did not make many far-flung excursions. As C. Wagner counseled, “there are as many interesting people here as over there, so why not just stay here?”

My Burn passed pleasantly and predictably. One morning in a Moroccan yurt I drew with charcoal naked people posed in compromising positions: Ho-hum. A mad afternoon dance party surrounded by a massive Wild West Saloon: seen it. Balinese monkey chant: been there.

Certainly there were moments of excitement and the unexpected. When asked by those that remained landward about oddities this year, I still smile cryptically, gaze into the distance, and mutter something about –um– the dust. Still, if the Burn was intended to shake my sensibilities like a faded rug beaten on a balcony, the festival no longer shocks and amazes. Nonetheless, I had a placid, joyful week reconnecting at this family reunion with so many dear and not-so near living in Boston, New York, and North Carolina.

Prior to arriving in Black Rock, I insisted on avoiding the culmination of the festival that is the burning of the man. I thought if I packed up early and scrambled out of the desert by sunset on Saturday, then the festival for me would never end. I would avoid the New Year’s Eve ball-drop, the closing minutes of the Superbowl, and the opening of Christmas presents.

I did miss the Burn. Suffering from a mild case of dysentery, I spent Saturday night bedridden, or rather air mattress-ridden in Sage’s tent. I couldn’t eat anything and I had stopped hydrating. Everything was coming out all wrong complicating the slow pick-up of the camp. My spirits flagged.

As the sun rose Sunday morning, Linh, John, Junaid, and a sick Dudek packed up the two cars and slunk out of the Black Rock desert. I parted ways with the posse at a gas station in Nevada. Like so many times in my cross-country journey, I charted solo the miles pushing until I must break. I reached the rest stop at Donner Summit, the top of the pass over the Sierra Mountains, where I closed my eyes and fell over in the parked passenger seat. Several minutes, hours? later I awoke. I was still sick. With a lot of concentration and will, I drive onward to San Francisco arriving at three o’clock Sunday afternoon.

I do thank the Burn. The decompression time afterwards felt magical. The sky sparkled blue. I noticed anew the crenellated tops of San Francisco buildings as if I had just moved again into the city. Returning from the desert, I knew I belonged in the west. Six months into my stay, I forcefully planned no longer to be a flittering tourist, but as an older man to accomplish what?

The Burn packed away – although the dust lingers – I feel empty but freed, a vessel emptied and scrubbed. I had accomplished what I wanted in the desert and had said my piece. I await the next chapter of life. I don’t know what autumn brings my way, but the light has changed in the week away to hang lower and sharper in the sky like a student in a library.

Lastly, I don’t want to convey that I suffered horribly in the desert. With all the expense, effort, planning, time, and deprivation, I should have had a phenomenal experience, shouldn’t I? In some ways, this seventh trip was the most fulfilling as it completed the cycle and brought closure. I can turn from a desert week’s playtime to the reality of the fifty-one other weeks of the year that I have since neglected. I’ll have to start my own festival now…