Red Lounge Saint

Making Antlers

East vs. West Coast

I was recently asked to teach a small craft workshop on a Saturday afternoon. As I make costumes that light up, could I teach others how to light up?

Most of my projects require weeks of tedious tinkering, cutting, soldering, and sewing – too much time for an afternoon workshop. I need to explain a simple project. I have turned a strand of Christmas lights into a rack of antlers that can be worn as a hat. The antler materials are few: battery-operated Christmas lights, 16-gauge wire, electrical tape, 24-hour epoxy, and Spackle. Trouble is, both the 24-hour epoxy and the Spackle harden overnight, requiring cure times that would be too long for an afternoon craft workshop. Furthermore, I don't have an endless supply of Christmas lights.

I decided best to pare down the class to a small group of a dedicated few. With enough perseverance, a participant could take home a wire antler frames and finish up the rest of the antlers on his own. I brought to the workshop antlers in various stages of construction. Like on a cooking show where the raw turkey goes into one oven with a cooked turkey coming out of another, I demonstrated over an afternoon how to take antlers through the construction stages:

Cut 16-gauge wire into a bunch of pieces. Wrap the wire pieces around themselves to build an antler armature. String the Christmas lights on the armature and tape the lights down to the wire. Cover the armature with 24-hour epoxy for strength. Cover the epoxy with Spackle for proper texture and color. Sand down the Spackle layer. Attach the antlers to a hat. Ta da! Easy!

Nobody finished a set of antlers. Sadness. This workshop may have taught me the difference between east and west coast ethos. I do generalize. The East Coast, where I'm from, has brutal winters. Cold lasts for months. People can feel trapped in their homes and so develop extensive basement projects in which patience and isolation are useful. For years, I painted fantasy miniatures and wrote code in assembly. Now I spend nights after biotech work doing the same bullshit craft work over and over again: cutting out plastic cones, sewing fabric, and soldering. It's not fun or glamorous work, but I like the flow. The climate is better in the West Coast so it is much easier just to hang out. Folks here like to perform. Drag is popular.

It is certainly easier and more relaxing to watch someone make antlers than make a set yourself. I got a couple of armatures built, but none of the epoxy applied. With so much going on in San Francisco, it can be hard to cache personal time for projects, especially projects done alone.

The workshop still was revelatory for me. I once was so protective of my “art”. Having tinkered for so long developing concepts and engineering, I oddly feared that showing another how to make a costume piece was tantamount to giving it away.

On the one hand, even with the instruction sheet, there is so much work involved that it is not worth it for most people. Many have asked if they could simply buy a set - or more likely four sets - to avoid the messiness that is tedious construction. Antlers are not going to spring up all over the city.

On the other hand, why not give it away? Why be so coy? There's immense joy in teaching others, watching them turn an idea into their own, and having them teach another down the chain. I learned so much from artists; I have so much to pay back.

There's also magic in having more than one of a costume piece. I have loaner antlers now for a friend! A giant new revelation for all this stuff I make is that I can bestow it on others: have other people wear light-up outfits, and spread widely and closely the specialness that comes from glowing.

A gang of antlers makes a group a recognizable set, a fraternity that is connectedness by dress. So lonely these days, I strongly desire connections. Costumes can help those who don’t normally stand out turn into rock stars.

Begin

I feel like my life stopped six months ago with the break-up. Friends tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself as I did the dumping - playing the victim is tacky, so apologies for my sadness. As what felt like everything came crashing down, I withdrew, I emptied, and I tried to rest. These six months have been a time of tremendous personal growth through counseling, exercise, self-reflection, communication, and reconnection with old friends. Yet it has been six months of singular obessive focus on the past, a spinning of my mental wheels over and over and over again. I don't sleep well. I am frequently frantic if I have energy or maudlin when I don't. I haven't moved on.

Many near and dear counsel that recovery from break-ups take time, much more time than the six months that have already passed. Although I still suffer and feel intense guilt, I finally want to peak out to the future for something, anything new. Here are a few projects I've put off that I would like to restart:

Redesign my web site: I still use venerable Netscape composer to set text and images on this site. Kids these days are likely unaware of Netscape. The pictures of the site don't format well, and a style designer would shudder at my overwhelming use of the color red. Time to update and learn some internet publishing. I have selected WordPress as the means to set this site; now I need to learn how to use WordPress.

Learn motors and make a kinetic art project: my days are ending working with light-up art. I have enough to wear. Larger scale lighting projects would involve more lights, wiring, space, and more money ($1000+) than I want to commit to the crowded creative field of light sculpture. I've been meaning for quite some time to learn how motors work. I want to make a kinetic light sculpture that whirls like the planets. This first whirlagig would be simple enough for me to grasp kinetic concepts. I already bought the motors; I need to work with them.

Learn programming languages and possibly program a phone: if I had my druthers, I would transition from chemistry into software engineering. At my ancient age of 40, that transition is likely difficult and not lucrative. Nonetheless, I have ideas of interactive video projects for which the Processing language could be useful. I also want to learn the ubiquitous Python. Furthermore, many of my art pieces could be controlled through either a cellphone or touch screen. I'd like to learn how to program either device.

Leave this job: I have been at this company at least a year too long. The salary is good and the responsibilities low. Five years of skills means I'm quite efficient but prone to both boredom and distractions; little here seems pressing anymore. Furthermore, I fight with my boss and lament the lack of career mobility and novelty. Time to go! I'm planning already to quit sometime in September but before my 41st birthday on the twenty-fifth. A possible scenario would be to take on another chemistry job, preferably at a small company, in or close to San Francisco. Another scenario would be to go without work for six months and live off savings. I'm scared of the uncertainty of unemployment, but I also want the break. Unlike my last 10-month respite in 2007 that commenced a trip across the country and living out of my car, I would spend this break mostly in San Francisco. Ideally, I would afterwards take on a job as a software engineer, but I'm unsure whether any company would want to hire me.

Find friends: I know so few near and dear to me in San Francisco. Old friends live in other cities. Many I know in the Bay Area are just casual acquaintances. I hunger for a set, a community in which the members look out for each other. This break-up has attuned me to what I'm looking for in friends: high-communicators, loyal, local, and an overlap in interests. This may mean trying out of a lot of people and making risks to get to know strangers better.

Date: Ack, on-line dating here I come. I am quite ready for a life-long partner. Let's try guys first on OK Cupid. I'll keep you posted.

Emptiness

It is spring and I declutter. I sorted my books and sent a quarter of them packing for resale to Phoenix Bookstore in Noe Valley. Due to a Kindle, I may never buy another paper product. I went through my closets and dropped off a bag of clothes, a skateboard , and a yoga map at the Goodwill near Market Street. I took down old posters - anything unframed. Gone Ibiza announcement, gone scandalous Iceland cartoons, gone silver-on-black portraits from Boston.

I perused everything I've made. My apartment is covered with my fabric and wire sculptures - on walls, under tables, and unfurling like plants on bookcases. Some projects - such good ideas at the time - I now dismantle back into components for other upcoming work. I shockingly realize that I don't need anything more for Burning Man. I am complete. I've built enough that lights up and can be worn for this one body of mine. If I can wear something different every day for a week, well a couple of weeks, isn't that enough?

It is a bit odd to think I may not make anything more for myself. I empathize with my carpenter father. After stuffing his house with his own furniture, he now asks sons if there is anything they want? He has dutifully and generously built for me a bench, bed, and bookcase. I should be making the light-up equivalents for a happy collaborator.

It is spring and I am emptying. I deplete my winter larder of meals from the freezer. I sorted the spice drawer, emptied unwanted toiletries, purged the storage locker, and even curated my iTunes collection to delete much of what was there.

It is spring and I am empty. I have spent two hard months getting rid of so much that I just a tidy shell remains. Is this the opposite of nesting? - I feel no great urge to buy a couch. Am I making room for the new or just making room for the empty? Out with Greg goes so much stuff. Perhaps I prepare to depart or for an unexpected change. I may live lighter but is this living?

It has been quite a long time since I felt that I both have so little and yet so little to look forward to. I hesitate to make plans. A future might involve stuff, and stuff is not what I want now. I crave experiences. A strong spring wind could blow me in any direction.

A Visit to the Doctor

Ow, my aching back

California is at an interesting cross-roads with regards to marijuana. The passage of State Proposition 215 legalized in 1996 medicinal marijuana. Since then, cannabis dispensaries have been popping up like grow-lamp weeds all over San Francisco and throughout California. The Feds have inexplicably shut down some of these businesses; detractors blame a pre-election initiative by President Obama to appear tough on crime. Cannabis is still federally prohibited making complex the interplay between state and federal law.

Just because medicinal marijuana has been legal in California for over ten years does not mean that just anybody can buy marijuana. Just to enter a dispensary, a consumer - rather, a patient - must carry a prescription signed by a registered doctor to treat a particular condition. Sounds restrictive to just a small portion of the citizenry, right? I gather from the prevalence of dispensaries, at least four within two blocks of my house, there must be a host of sick people with a wide range of miserable conditions ranging from inoperable cancer to degenerative glaucoma to the occasional trouble sleeping. A lot of Californians have cannabis prescriptions, and many of them are not deathly ill.

I have passed by dispensaries enough to be curious what happens within. Having lived in the Netherlands for two years, I certainly was well aware of Dutch coffeeshop culture, but remain ignorant of the Californian analog. I can't go into a California dispensary because I don't carry that all-important note from a doctor. Of course, I'm not about to call up my doctor.

On the recommendation of a friend, I made an appointment for a medical consultation on a Saturday afternoon. I have chronic back and shoulder pain that just might be alleviated by the magic of this illicit plant. I biked over to the shadier section of the Mission District on 20th street and climbed up three flights of stairs to Priceless Evaluations.

As my friend counseled, the prescription process is more akin to waiting at the DMV for license plates than sitting in a hospital. Along with a crowd of people ranging from Oakland thugs to gay hipsters, I filled out about eight pages of forms. I had to list pertinent identification like age and social security number as well a brief of my medical condition. I could at least corroborate with x-rays. Although some would worry that this prescription may put me on some government watch list that could possibly make finding work difficult, I think the chances are low and if an employer wants to disbar me because of this medical visit, then that is not the kind of job I want.

Two cheery college-kid receptionists efficiently marshaled the crowd in and out of two dingy waiting rooms. They set up a queue to be "on deck" outside of two doctor's offices. The forms I tackled sternly stated that I need to "put something on every line."

Much like at the DMV, I sat and sat for forty minutes. I overheard one receptionist make the same sales pitch over and over again to recently-approved patients for which dispensary to visit: Shambala, just around the corner. Me thinks this Shambala dispensary pays this doctors' office some sort of new customer bonus.

Finally I was on deck outside one of the doctor's office. I entered into a tiny white-walled room with a simple desk, two chairs, and some posters of anatomy, enough of a veneer of the professional medical, if professional meant Albania.

The doctor, German maybe, in his 50s maybe, spoke with me for about five minutes. He asked about my profession - chemist - and wanted to know more about DNA sequencing. We discussed my back for which he recommended massage and swimming. He prompted me for any other issues, and lit up when I said the magic word of "insomnia." He filled out a sheet in the universally-illegible script of doctors everywhere. I signed my embossed doctor's prescription and got up to leave. Adhering to efficiency, he said, "That is all. Get your documentation at the front desk. Leave the door open on your way out."

I exchanged $45 cash for a year's prescription for the right to buy cannabis for my medical needs. The receptionist stuffed an envelope with cannabis coupons and encouragement to visit Shambala, just around the corner. A prescription renewal in a year's time will cost $35. At roughly $40 for every 5 minutes of work, these doctors do well financially unless they get raided or question their ethics.

Oddly, I'm in no rush to visit a dispensary. Friends recommend home-delivery of medicinal marijuana as cheaper and more convenient. It certainly would be a stunt to host a dinner party interrupted by the ring of a THC delivery guy.

Mostly, I wanted to take part in this strange quasi-legal era of cannabis, like one of the few that got medical prescriptions for alcohol during prohibition. I suspect that in a couple or years or even a decade, the state and possibly federal law will change again, either making marijuana legal and regulated for all, or firmly prohibited. In the meantime, this cannabis shadow world is speakeasy fun.

Spring Cleaning

Making Room for the New

Spring has come earlier than anticipated to California. Mid-March and the surrounding cherry trees have already blossomed in epic pinks. While Boston still slogs through more chilly snow, Bay Area spirits lengthen with the brighter days.

On 14th street in San Francisco, I open the apartment windows and wield the broom. It is time for spring cleaning. For the first time in my five years here, I am methodically rummaging through all belongings with a simple binary assessment: keep or go. Oddly, my approach is not sentimental; it feels time to purge. I feel no pangs to throw out objects that may be of use some day. The day is now.

So far, I have tackled the kitchen. I threw out frozen cherries, spaghetti sauce, and marathon energy supplements. I repackaged and labelled spices. I have tackled the living room. I removed half of my books as no longer necessary. I will deliver these stacks to the Phoenix bookstore in Noe Valley with the hope they will take them. I next will pare down my clothes and then sort through the garage storage locker. I wiped away the mold from the window blinds and took the dust of the tables. I would like to give away some of my art creations; much of the fun was in their construction.

I aim to shed at least 20% of my belongings. I'm not usually one to have much stuff in the first place, living in an a 600 square-foot apartment and having once moved to California by car. Still, after five years, I've accumulated detritus.

Much of this spring cleaning is psychological. I want to live leaner and freer. I can't anticipate the future, but if there comes a time when I need to move and change, I'd like to be nimble now for the next chapter. I may need to cram all this stuff back in the same car and drive off into the American sunset.

I'm uncluttering. I try to think about less. I want to hold on to only two objects at once. I want to sleep until I'm rested. I don't drink as often. I stay home a lot. I'm stretching my hips upright and uncoiling my back. I breathe.

Removing so much stuff, I hope, will open up something new - perhaps not new stuff, but new experiences and people. I signed up for a weekend welding course. I booked a retreat in April. It is spring and I'm ready to wander. Do you want anything of mine?

Notes from the Dance Floor

Burnal Equinox

Saturday night, Public Works hosted a party called Burnal Equinox to celebrate the mid-point between the previous September's Burning Man and upcoming Burning Man. Sounds like a silly commemoration to me, but it is an opportunity for a party near my apartment, and I have not been to tired Burning-Man event in quite a while.

Earlier that Saturday night, I ushered Spinach and Giorgio out of my apartment after a great dinner and two bottles of red wine. Departing already drunk to party may not be a good idea, but seems more like standard business practice for me. On to that alcohol fire, I threw on a small medicinal edible that on the previous weekend made me giggly during the All Worlds Fair.

Before I left the apartment, I strapped on some white Aztec Wings that make me look more like a moth, and then marched down 14th Street with a left turn on to Mission.

As the edible kicked in, the evening got stranger with vignettes of confusion, giddiness, and excitement. It's getting harder and stranger to be fucked up wearing something that glows behind me to deal with that insanity along with my own internal insanity.

Downstairs on the dance floor, this little unfamiliar bear guy came up to talk to me. We exchanged some pleasantries until he said, "Roar!" Of course i had to roar back, so we kept roaring. I'm guessing he knows me from another event, but given his make-up as a little bear guy, the name and face were sadly unrecognizable. Such a drive-by roarer.

Later in the evening, Joseph with his vaguely Egyptian features and goatee emerged like the ghost from Bartleby the Scrivener. We talked briefly. He was between parties: Go Bang in SOMA and another event at the End-Up. He told me that clubs hate people like him: he only does guest list and doesn't drink, so he floats free through the night life.

I ran into old acquaintances: half of a Priceless contingent from a festival many, many July 4th's ago up in Sierra Mountains. The two of you had gone to sleep early that night and certainly slept soundly in your tent. I brought seven back to our campsite on the hill. Three of these seven recognized me at Priceless and wanted to know what I had been up to all these years. There was some attendant awkwardness on what to do next.

Around 1, the downstairs dance floor cleared to make way for a performance. Two drag queens marched in, dressed in red and blue cardboard rock-'em sock-'em robot costumes. They chased each other for a bit until one picked up a bat. He started swinging pretty hard at the other and managed to knock the red robot to the ground. I was stunned.

The evening ended for me with a vaguely Mexican indie-grunge band. They bridged a song with a really long but funny spoken word on waiting in line at Center Camp for coffee. I felt back at Center Camp, still at Public Works, but wait it was just another Saturday night.

I get so jaded with San Francisco, but I need to remember how still fresh lively the nightlife can be in this town.

The All Worlds Fair

Interdimensional Extra-reality

The All Worlds Fair descended on San Francisco for one brief weekend February 23-24, 2013. When the Fair was announced, I raced to buy tickets for the Norfolk group at 7:50pm on Saturday night. I had no idea what I was getting into.

As the night of the Fair approached, a few details emerged, more like random edicts to attendees. The Fair would be held at the Old Mint Building, yes, the San Francisco mint, a relic but survivor of the 1906 earthquake and fire. San Francisco is one of the country's three historic mint cities; the other two being Philadelphia and Denver.

Admittance would be for a group of about 300 for a particular time slot, such as our Norfolk 7:50pm slot. Once inside the Fair, the group would have about three hours to explore. No digital cameras are permitted. Attendees should wear monochrome: white with black, but mostly white.

I did know that impressario Chicken John organized the event, and even he had no idea what to expect, either success or a flop. We did expect the strange and interesting.

Our group of six Fair attendees convened at seven o'clock at Rob's apartment, located conveniently facing the Mint Building. We drank negroni cocktails, changed into white and black, but mostly white.

Once outside the Old Mint Building, we stood in line for entry with quite the fantastic bunch of attendees: white fur coats, black and white checkered scarves, hats with white wings.

Our attention turned towards the commotion of a parade of 20 identical women in red dresses and black antennae, led by a fop with a cane in a three-piece red suit. This parade, we learned, was passport control. After our group passed through a passport gate, we sat to fill out forms delivered by passport control: "Form, please," "Incomplete Form," "New Form," "Good Form," "Reform," "Next Form." The passport ladies would swipe one form from out clipboards to replace it with another. I answered questions like who in the group did I hate the most, or what did I dream last night?

Meanwhile, paramilitary troops sternly patrolled the crowd. A colorful few were singled out by the paramilitary and brought near the restrooms. Ah, too much color. Those who decided to flaunt the rules were wrapped in white butcher paper fastened with black duct tape. A man in a blue suit got wrapped in paper from neck to waist. A woman's large yellow bag was wrapped in white. Yellow!? What were you thinking?

After filling out countless forms, we were ushered between and under a row of elevated passport ladies. The red ladies berated and ripped and inquired until simultaneously they raised their arms to stamp a set of red passports that they distributed one to each attendee.

Grateful for our new red passports, we waited briefly in front of a loading dock. A man in a bowler pushed us together. He readied us to rush into what I thought was a freight elevator. The blast door opened and we raced into: PANDEMONIUM!

We rushed into a hallway, more like a city street, teeming with barkers, a blinking van, bell hops, mermaids, pirates. A bellhop gathered our group and charged us down the hall.

For two hours we explored little scenes in rooms on two floors of the Old Mint Building. Groups of artists had set up in the rooms different tableaux that spilled out into the hallway.

I got arrested for consorting with trolls and was sent to court; I was fortunately acquitted 3-2 by a jury of my peers even if the friends on the jury found me guilty. I bet on one of four racing contestants, each contestant fitted in electronic alternate-reality goggles; the contestants stumbled two laps around a race track. I tasted an elixir made out of the strangest of herbals. I got electrocuted while holding on to a fluorescent light bulb in a chain terminated by a tesla coil. Blindfolded, I swashbuckled a pirate with a cardboard saber. I rode a seesaw with Rob and Ruben in the shape of a mustache - of course this was a mustache ride.

Upstairs, the delights got stranger and even more delightful. I toured characters from the Book of Revelations while a prophet read the apocalypse. The Museum Mechanique had people not robots jerking like animatons: a woman creepily laughed and laughed much like the famous robot Laughing Sal; a grandmother snored on a couch until a girl emerged from under a table to clatter cymbals; a fortune teller pressed my forehead and then bestowed a fortune; a bellhop stamped passports frantically until his batteries ran low.

Another room was empty except for a dancer laying on the bare floor. A floor light cast her silhouette on the far wall. The crowd clung to the walls to give her room as she had 3-foot long table legs attached to her arms and feet. She whirled growing rhythmic circles with the ends of these long legs. Gazing further, I realized she was an amputee; the legs were prosthetics. Brave of her to feature what ostensibly might be a deformity. She inspires me to flaunt my own deformities, physical or other.

As the night wore on, the various rooms would simultaneously go mute. The crowd was ushered from the ground floor on to the second floor into more scenes.

When the second floor went dead, we were ushered into a larger dark ballroom filled with hanging strands of crumpled white paper. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed. Outside in the courtyard, figures in white, some on stilts executed an intricate drama that we did not fully understand. We crowded around windows to peer outside at the white players.

As the thunder ebbed, some of the players came into the ballroom. Five women in white, joined in a line at their waists, shuffled around the seated crowd. In a corner, five more women in white bowed and gyrated. When the two groups left, two dancers jumped in the middle of room. The female dancer did several headstands on my surprised lap. So many of us did not know what to expect.

When the final dance ended, we wandered outdoors in a daze . There were no customary T-shirts, goodbye wishers, or the typical concert detritus of beer bottles and fliers.

We knew we had just been part of something fantastic. I had gorged on a cake so rich that it would take a week to fully digest. John and I debated whether we should have joined the call for artists a month prior. I quite enjoyed watching the spectacle this time instead of building it.

So many of the original edicts made sense. No photography: no pictures remain of the event, no encapsulation, no frantic worry during the event of what exactly to photograph to upload immediately to Facebook for validation. We were present. Wear white and black, mostly black: the crowd was perhaps the singular best performer. Passports: I still have my red passport. Each stamp is the memento, the veritable photograph, for each of the rooms I visited.

More than just the creativity, the logistics of the Fair were impeccable. The organizers quite skillfully moved the crowd along from the ticket line, inside, through two floors of mayhem, to finish with a performance. We never felt bored, manipulated, or rushed. I did not see everything, but I did see many things. The event felt active, amazing, confusing, and deliriously fun.

The return to the street may have been the harshest transition. For three hours, San Francisco felt so far away.

FaceFuck

I finally liked

Facebook, the internet phenomenon I love to hate. So many waste so much time either posting pictures of their dinners or "liking" what others are eating. Through Facebook, new parents blast pictures of their new kid, the highschool classmates you wanted to avoid snoop back into your life, and drama queens fill the web with self-indulgent chatter. Friending - sadly now a codified verb - seems so frivolous and empty. Go outdoors and have a real conversation!

I held out from Facebook for so long with a pedantic sneer: Facebook is for other people, lonely people, vain people. However, many now use Facebook to organize upcoming events making it hard for me to learn times and locations without a Facebook profile. So I meekly signed up for a Facebook account but just to check information and lurk. Let's keep it quick and clean.

Something changed recently to covert me into one of the Facebook masses. Like it or not (ha, ha), Facebook has become the vehicle for social niceties. If I cut myself off from social networking, I cut myself off from socializing. It still feels painfully trite to click that "like" button or respond with a "that's too bad!" but that is me more accustomed to living in a cave.

Facebook also took over the need for chat rooms. A long time ago, you could chatter away on message board with people you had never met. It was easy but also empty and anonymous. At least with the chatter on the Facebook scroll, I am well-connected to my circles of Facebook friends. I do click refresh constantly for new posts like on an addictive Skinner box, but for content from people I care about.

Furthermore, I resisted Facebook for so long because I resisted exposing my own presence. What if those highschool classmates discover I am strange and exciting? Fuck 'em, is my new motto. I've got just one life to live and it's about time to share it with those shut up in Worcester with new babies.

So I'll be on Facebook posting pictures of my dinner, but hopefully dinner with drag queens. I'll be clicking "like" and would love to hear from you. Do remind me to go outside to have a real conversation.

Back to Yoga

Opening Up

It was a cold spring of 2008 and I had just moved into a drafty house in Cambridge, Massachusetts - my first apartment. The new job, but lack of new friends, put me out of sorts in lonely Boston. Friend Alyson suggested yoga. Hunh? My recent stint in the Netherlands certainly didn't make me feel new-agey. Nonetheless, I needed something to do.

One evening a week, I would march down Massachusetts Avenue after a hasty dinner to join the large class at Baptiste Yoga in Porter Square. For ninety minutes in their hot box, we would sweat, stretch, downward dog, and eventually slumber - I mean meditate. I was more out of shape than I had thought, and even the beginning classes beat me near to exhaustion.

Still, the instructors, especially Coehli, were incredible. She dispense dadvice both on physical forms but also mental approaches to life. She regularly broke down poses to explain how the limbs stacked and from where the strength built. I grew aware of my body, how I stood, how I curled improperly to bend.

For my two years at Baptiste Yoga, I never met anyone at their large, impersonal classes. Eventually, even my progress tapered. I started running and then ran away from Boston. Transient in New York and Texas, I tried a few drop-in yoga classes, like yoga in Times Square, but otherwise gave up the yoga practice.

When I landed in California, I took up running, and more running, and even more running to train for two marathons. Coworker Natasha started up an at-work exercise boot camp. Two evenings each week, Mondays and Wednesdays at 5:30pm, about six of us coworkers jump on half-domed bosus, bend into lunges, heave weights, and run in place. I'm in the best shape of my life with these bizarre new abs of steel.

Something still nags in my body: in spite of super strength, my back always hurts. I can't lie flat in bed. I wake up most mornings sore from neck to ass.

Greg suggested yoga. As to most of his suggestions, I responded with "not now" and "I already tried that." I was busy exercising at work, getting a weekly chair-massage, rowing twice-a-week on a machine, and doing push-ups at home. I don't have time for yoga.

As with most of his suggestions, Greg won.

I've only been twice, but once I get started with an activity, I usually regularly continue it. Tuesday evenings after a hasty dinner, I wander to Yoga Kula at 16th and Mission. There, Coehi's match, a very kind Chad Stose, leads us gently through poses.

I have returned to yoga, but this second foray is quite different: relaxed, intimate, serious, focused, open, growing. My first try in Boston felt much like a martial art or team sport or learning a new language - a lot of content and wonder without much individual guidance.

Here in San Francisco, there are usually only about eight in the Yoga Kula class, and Chad insists on names. We don't sweat in a hot box; he emphasizes finding your growing edge over exhaustion.

Moreover, I know this time around what I want to work on. I've lived so long unwell in my body that I better locate its locks. It may sound entirely cliche, but I so need to open up my heart and unlock my hips. Thus, I now downward dog with ever-spreading shoulder blades and I upward dog with ever-separating glutes. My shoulders and upper back are a knotted mass of compacted tissue. My legs buckle together on constricted hips.

In last week's class, as Chad bent me further in a wheel pose, I screamed at him, "I want this to open." Someday it will. I try now to walk differently, leisurely and square. The back still hurts but less so as my trunk sits in a better stack..

I've got a long road ahead, but I finally have a good map.

Silence

The Vajrapani Institute

Ever since I started meditating a decade ago, I’ve wondered what it would be like to take the solitary experience on the road, that is, to go overnight on a silent retreat. Contrary to my usual frantic demeanor, an overnight stay would open unencumbered time to sit, look, unfurl my back, walk, think, not think, and grieve. What would it be like not to speak for days? So much of me exists as a response to others and what is planned ever next. The well-known meditation center Spirit Rock rests nearby in Marin County north of the Golden Gate Bridge, but this center’s shortest overnight stay is for at least four nights, more time than I care spare from work.

When my counselor yelled at me one Wednesday to slow down and a friend Jay alerted me to a another meditation center, I booked a two-night stay at the Vajrapani Institute. Friday afternoon, I left work at four and drove south through the outskirts of San Jose and into the Santa Cruz mountains. As the sun set, I climbed elevation into redwood forest and left behind the two-lane highway to make way for a twisting road that became eventually dirt. I drove around ruts and muddy sink holes under two gates of colorful prayer flags in to the parking lot of the main building of the Vajrapani Institute.

A receptionist greeted me with a calm smile and drove me the quarter mile uphill to the meditation cabins. She looked at my few belongings and asked, “Is that all?” Unlike for either foreign travel or a festival like Burning Man, I had brought little. The Institute’s literature strongly suggested leaving behind laptops, reading material, work, even a cell phone. I packed some warm clothes, a toothbrush, and two empty water bottles.

The receptionist told me another guest checked in for thirty nights. I would stay just two nights from Friday sunset until Sunday morning. She showed me the communal bathroom, the showers, the two trailheads into forest, and then my cabin. I would stay in cabin number 5, the fifth of just six cabins, all of them defiantly single occupancy. This was not a place for couples or friends.

She opened the door to a 10x15 foot room with a sliding glass door leading to small porch with outdoor chair and sink. Inside there was a little gas heater, a two-burner Japanese gas camp stove, a single bed, a white Ikea chair, a meditation cushion, a small table, four candles, and a photograph of the Dalai Lama. After her fifteen-minute introduction, she wished me well on my weekend, told me that I could check out on my own, and then left me to my own devices.

Perhaps unlike other silent retreats, there were no guides for this one: no instruction, no lectures, no bowing at each other. Such a different type of trip for me! My usual inclinations would be to unpack thoroughly – but I had little to unpack, to read up on nearby restaurants and attractions – there was no place to go, and to call the friends I were to meet – there was nobody around.

Each day at noon, an invisible caretaker would deposit a bag of food for me after which he or she would ring a bell. The red food bag would contain a big hot lunch and a small cold dinner that I could heat on my own when I wanted. Breakfast I could make from their communal supply of provisions like granola, bread, and jam.

I was not sure what to expect from two days of solitude. Before I left, I joked to coworkers that I would be the one cabin with lots of roaring, or perhaps I would silently invite all the other retreaters over for a silent disco party.

Instead, I fell into my own sort of routine. I sat on the cushion and meditated until my hips hurt from sitting cross-legged at which point I sat on the nightstand and gazed towards the Dalai Lama. I practiced counting, of not-thinking, of noticing: “I’m hearing two crows, thinking about my return to San Francisco, caught up in future events, planning dinner, hearing one crow, leg hurts.” I stared at the twilight, watching as the few stars poked into view over the disappearing forest. I tried to think about Greg for resolution, but lost focus.

When night fell, I turned on the cabin lights and set about dinner. I reheated a ginger-coconut soup and unpacked a green salad with sesame dressing. Meals lasted over an hour (I did not keep track of time), much longer than my usual ten minutes of gobbling. I ate separately each salad leaf and plunged into the diverse flavors of the soup. None of the food was exotic or carnivorous, but the point may have been to awaken the sense of the rich multiple of mundane tastes. I drank a lot of tea, hoping that black tea in the morning would stave off a caffeine-deprived headache. It did.

Night fell. I lit a tea light. I meditated further. I cranked up the heat. Although I was still in California, the alpine climate and February time meant a frigid evening outside not conducive to lingering. I had forgotten a flashlight so I used my cell phone to find my way to the bathroom and back. Every footfall was slow and deliberate, especially since I could not find the unfamiliar trail.

There’s not much to do on a silent retreat after dark. I probably stayed up two more hours and then went to bed, sleeping until sunrise. I understand why monasteries keep early hours in time with the rhythm of daylight. Dinners are smaller than lunch as one does not want to sleep on a full stomach.

In the morning, I meditated some more and then performed a long bout of yoga within the cabin. I finally unkinked my bag and discovered that half of my posture problems stem from clogged hips. I should not cross my legs so much and try to open my (um) groin more – my upper spinal column will thank me.

I was excited to brown toast on a camping rack mounted at an angle on the gas burner. After a diet of simple foods, a small round of cheese tasted exceptionally sour and sharp. I napped midday.

In the center of the Institute’s grounds is a bright white funerary monument to the Nepalese founder, a man who passed away in his fifties around 1984. A poster discussed his life teachings and showed his portrait as well as a picture of his skull on cremation. Life can be brutally short.

In the afternoon, I left the Institute to walk up a path through the redwoods to Castle Rock State Park. Although I walked only a mile, I plodded so deliberately that my steps took at least hour to get there and another hour back. I brought along a snack but no keys, water, cell phone, wallet, or camera. The granola bar from work tasted exceptionally sugary.

Funny about solitary retreats is that guests go out their way to avoid each other. When the noon bell rang, I waited ten minutes lest I saw someone else silently marching to get his or her lunch. I did spy two women on retreat. They looked German.

The day passed and darkness returned. I meditated some more and discovered that the Institute did not supply towels for the outdoor shower. I watched the stars appear again and thought about home. My body felt better but my mind was not at rest.

Sunday morning, I rose again at sunrise, the time I usually get up for work. I made breakfast of granola and yoghurt, did some more yoga, packed my bag, and nodded goodbye to my weekend companion, the Dalai Lama. I took the stairs down to the main complex and found my car. A member has placed an exit questionnaire on the passenger seat.

I drove off into civilization. The first few hours were strange zooming through the alpine roads of Woodside. Much like in a car commercial, I zipped by motorcyclists, adventure bicyclists, and sports cars. How quickly to move from so slow to so fast.

I’m glad for the silent experience, but I need not return soon. Instead, I shall bring the silent retreat in to my loud world. I’ll try to savor meals more slowly, to unlock my back, to walk more gently, to hold at most two things at once, to be more present and appreciative of the current moment, to cherish those near and dear, and to live more simply. Although not intended for work, those cabins could be helpful for time apart to focus on a project like writing a novel. I learned that I quite hard on myself and do wish to live more gently and compassionately. Thank you, Vajrapani. Maybe next time I will be the house that roars.

January

A beginning?

Ah, January, such a hard month. Returning New Year's Eve from the happy tumult of Mexico, I assumed that the incoming 2013 would herald rest and relaxation. Instead, the first cruel month of the year commenced with a bender that has not quite unraveled.

For New Year's Eve, I wandered the four blocks over to Public Works, a local club, for my third New Year's Eve there. This third time felt different and empty without Greg also present, but I was already discombobulated from waking up that morning in Mexico City. John Major urged me onward after Public Works at 4am to Beat Box where he had set up my LED flowers in a lotus configuration. Miss Jupiter wore one light for a time on her chest. John ably navigated the building's fire alarm from the DJ decks. By a bleary 8am, I trundled home through the oncoming sunshine. January 1st was spent half in bed and the living room.

The long nights kept coming through January. Greg and I met one Saturday morning at Four Barrel coffee for an unexpected day of the 5th we both now call "24-hour lunch." Another evening on the 12th, after too much tiredness and too much to drink, I passed out on John Major's living room couch amidst a party, only to wake well past dawn. I soundlessly recollected myself that morning, escaped, and had a confused coffee at Four Barrel. Was I still up after a long night, or should I consider this morning the start of a new day?

Ruben blew into town for the Edwardian Ball on the 19th. I tied for the first time an Elredge knot in a yellow necktie. With a lightbrella and the suit Eleanor made for Ruben, we ventured off Saturday night to dine at a local Izekaya and then on to the Regency Ballroom. The Edwardian Ball is always the year's snazziest party as the dapper guests are the main attraction. I noted a lot of women this year wearing boats and chandeliers as hats. In the Masonic attic, a tout hammered a nail into his nostril, the scorpion girl welcomed attendees, and a blues musician played an electric shovel. On our 2am walk home, Ruben and I encountered two bizarre fist-fights between wild-swinging men and women.

Blearily the next morning, we struggled to get into the Hayes Valley beer garden to be told to return when they opened at 1pm. Instead, we had circus food at Straw restaurant. Later in the afternoon, we cooked the pheasant Ruben brought down from the Sacramento farmers market. Ruben suggested to cook the bird like chicken and rice; I input that we could just make pheasant risotto, and so we did along with the strangest of zucotta cakes.

Tom helped me hang flower lights at our monthly party at Mission Control on the 18th. It wasn't fun to take them down at 4am. I spent a few days afterwards fixing the lights and spooling the phone cabling. I have reprogrammed the flower lights so they aren't as jittery, perhaps a metaphor for life currently. I sewed and lit a jaguar hat inspired by Mexican ruins.

January was a month of leaving. Greg and I tearily separated for the last time on the 24th. He is a better man than I, biking through a dark San Francisco to discuss difficult and uncomfortable departures.

I stopped regular meditation and my daily regimen of 70-pushups. I don't have zealous energy any more. I still Serbicize twice a week. Although I have abs of steel, my back hurts almost more than ever. I tried running for the first time since my half-marathon in February 2012. I ran 11 miles on the 26th to the ocean (Pacific!) and back to my apartment. My right hip ached during the run; my legs and back were murdered the following few days. I am officially an old man.

I reconnected with old friends Holly by telephone in Seattle and Jay by beer on the hill of Guerrero. Both provide invaluable counsel.

Work drags on rather listlessly.

I spend most of my time by myself. I see movies, go to shows, and in bars drink far more than should. I'm empty and lonely these days, but into emptiness often comes new life. It is January after all, the darkest of months.

Mexico City

All Things Aztec

Usually, the time between Christmas and New Year is an indolent week at work catching up on projects, trying outlandish experiments, and celebrating the end of the year with the few that remain. The holidays are hard for travel because of congested airports, the threat of blizzards, and high ticket prices.

This year, the company shut down between Christmas and New Year, stripping employees of three vacation days and sending us to the street. Then I must travel. Yet not home: I saw family in the Boston area for both June and October.

Brother Ray and I used to travel a lot together. However, with his academic schedule and my few vacation days, we have not linked up recently on a trip. The planets aligned because of the company closure, and this December we had the same time off.

We sought destinations that were warm (no Iceland in December), affordable, and did not celebrate Christmas extensively. For strongly Christian countries, we feared a week of closed attractions and restaurants. We looked into Morocco, but calculated a trip there would take 22 hours and $2200. Rio proved similarly exotic and expensive.

What about Mexico? Ray and I toured the Yucatan Peninsula ten years ago in an exploration of all things Mayan. This time, we could check out Aztec Mexico which meant the central area around Mexico City.

Ray invited Lee, his college friend. Lee could drive! I invited my graduate-school friend Ruben. Of Mexican heritage, Ruben could translate! So off we set, four recently-single 40 year olds on holiday in Mexico. Sounds like the set-up for a Judd Apatow film.

We booked nine nights in Mexico. The capital city might be overwhelming so I wanted an initial break somewhere smaller. We would land in Mexico City, drive from the airport to the small city of Puebla to spend the night there to eat Puebla’s famous mole. In the morning, we would drive further south to highland Oaxaca. There, we could take a cooking class, eat well, and check out Oaxacan markets. We would swing the car around for five nights in Mexico City, flying out on New Year’s Eve to get back to the States in time for 2013.

Unfortunately, shady AirTran Airways called me in San Francisco the night before my flight to announce that my flight out to Mexico City had been cancelled. AirTran could rebook me on another flight, but not until 3 days later! I argued and lost. Panic. Furthermore, if I arrived later, the other 3 travelers would have already left Mexico City for southern Oaxaca.

While I jumped around my apartment, Lee and Ray from Houston coaxed me into looking into last-minute flights on other carriers. United could fly me open-jaw one day later to Oaxaca and then send me home from Mexico City. Trouble was the obscene $1800 price tag, a thousand more dollars than the original flight. I hemmed and hawed until Ray reminded me that it was only money.

One day later than expected, I flew out early morning from San Francisco to Oaxaca. I had sent pictures of Ruben to Ray and Lee so they would know whom to meet in the Mexico City airport. I stupidly left my phone at home, making me anxious whether the group would find me in the Oaxaca airport or leave me to fend for myself. As I gathered my bags from the small airport carousel, I did happily see three familiar faces with a rental car. We were re-united for our Mexico adventure.

We had no rain for nine days with warm – almost hot – days and brisk nights. Our business resort hotel in Oaxaca had a chill outdoor pool in which I tried laps one morning. Ray got sunburnt tromping through the ruins of Monte Alban; the rest of us wore sunscreen.

I was once infamous for my Gestapo Tours – rushed adventures through sites, topography, and cuisine. Breaks during these tours were few because there was so much to see. Despite budgeting more time on this Mexico trip – three days in Oaxaca and five in Mexico City – we were still often on the move.

Oaxaca is quite the sleepy highland town, and a fine introduction to Mexico. One afternoon, we took a cooking class with Oscar who led us in the morning through a grocery market to buy provisions for lunch. Back at his restaurant, our group made two types of tortilla on a metal press, cooked a chocolate mole with 18 ingredients, blended four kinds of salsa (one with avocado leaf, another with an agave worm), boiled a squash-blossom soup, soaked rice with almonds for an horchata drink, and froze chocolate ice cream. Oscar efficiently orchestrated the four hours to prepare many dishes. Just as much fun as the cooking were the other participants: two Dutch girls, an American and Australia that jokingly called us “pathetic spaghetti,” and a family from Mexico City that took a lot of photographs.

In Oaxaca, we checked out the large church, poked our head into an art gallery, had weird bagels and local coffee, and shopped for tequila. Our last night in Oaxaca, we ate dinner grandly outdoors at Casa Oaxaca. I had venison in mole with a bottle of Mexican red wine.

Since it was the Christmas season, we got drawn into the Oaxacan festive calendar. Mexico’s native religion is more a celebratory blend of Catholic and pagan traditions. December 23 was “Night of the Radishes,” in which local artists sculpt figures and scenes into large red-and-white radishes. We though the city might be dead Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Not at all! Unlike in the United States, Christmas is a time for outdoor parties. On Christmas Eve, each of the surrounding villages parades a float with a flotilla of children around the main square. Men carry poles topped with fireworks, and others wave large puppets of Jesus, Mary, and even Bart Simpson. We drank beer at a café on the main square and realized how far away were the snows of the Northeast.

We spent Christmas at the nearby ruins of Monte Alban, the best known of the Zapotec sites. We climbed pyramids, looked into excavated tombs, and had tequila at the museum. Ruben can handle heights, but only if he is at least a little tipsy. Lee poked at a huge black tarantula.

Every one of us got a little ill during the trip, necessitating a night in. On Christmas Day, I left the other three to play billiards late at the Oaxaca hotel so I could sleep early. On another night, Ray felt squeamish from something he ate. Ruben faded on our last day in Mexico City.

We checked out of the hotel in Oaxaca on December 26 for the long drive back into Mexico City. Lee expertly navigated the chaos of the roads. Most of central Mexico is high desert, punctuated by brown hills, green saguaro cacti, and expensive tolls. We fortunately did not run out of gas and returned the car to the Mexico City airport before dark.

Five nights in Mexico City, a city of 23 million people, approximately the sixth-largest agglomeration in the world. I feared implacable crowds, unending squalor, and deafening chaos. When you set your expectations this low, a place can really impress you: Mexico City is quite wonderful.

We booked two Holiday Inn hotel rooms in the very center of Mexico City, overlooking the busy Zocalo. The main square was decked out for three weeks of the winter season with a skating rink, ski slope, and snowmobile loop. Ruben and I checked into the fifth floor, while Lee and Ray took the second. The rooftop restaurant was a great place to have a sunset beer or for Ruben to finish grading exams.

Our first step out of the hotel, we got crushed by the Mexico City’s early-evening crowd. Surrounded by wall-to-wall people, we got swept along the pedestrian corridor. Dispirited, we settled down for dinner at the fancy branch of Sanborns’s department store.

We later inferred that Mexico City is a monoculture. With many inhabitants of the same area, religion, and tradition, the city moves to a unified rhythm. Shops get slammed in the late afternoon; the city center empties of people around ten at night; everyone sleeps in. As long as you think differently than the herd, you can avoid the crush of the crowd.

A city this large has something for everyone, and we sampled a lot:

Mexico City congregates the country’s best museums. Ray and I explored all things Mesoamerican at the impressive Anthropology Museum. We surveyed scale models of Tenoctitlan and Teohuacan. We learned about the horrors of Aztec sacrifice, gazed at the enormous Aztec sun stone unearthed from under Mexico City, and found giant Olmec heads from one of Mexico’s oldest civilizations. Mexico for centuries has been home to a large number of peoples: Olmecs, Toltecs, Mixtec, Zapotecs, Mayans, and Aztecs. In one wing of the museum, we stumbled on cut-rock sculptures from a contemporary artist, quite a welcome change from all the text in the rest of the museum.

On Sunday, the free museum day, we hit the Modern and Contemporary Art Museums. Although the Rufino Tamayo collection did not impress us, we did enjoy the museum building and the unexpected lack of a crowd. It was a different story next door in the Modern Art Museum. The collection there of female surrealist art proved one of the strongest art exhibitions I have ever seen. I spotted two famous Frida Kahlo portraits and some awesome surrealist art.

In Mexico City, we ate both high end and low end. One night, we took the subway to the fancy district of Polanco where the Porsche dealer lies conveniently next to the Cartier shop. In Polanco, we settled down for dinner at Izote restaurant, the supposed birthplace of nueva cocina Mexicana under chef Patricia Quinta. I ate a great fish crusted with mole, preceded by a corn and poblano soup. Ruben tried a quesadilla with huitlacoche quesadilla, the dark gray fungus that grows on corn.

For low end, we ate lunch from a stall in Allende Square. Ruben had the street version of a huitlacoche quesadilla while Ray and I sampled the local Chilango snacks of pambazo and huarache. While the chef grilled up our food, we shot bee-bee guns at small silver targets; the bored police came over to see why adults would shoot at a kids’ game.

We toured the huge edifices of the opera house and palace, both of which house amazing Diego Rivera murals so intricate that I spent thirty minutes identifying the characters. The Belles Artes opera house is the best example of art deco that I have seen: chunky silver chandeliers, signs with old fonts, roof faces in the shape of Aztec eagles.

Mexico City wasn’t all eating and art. We drank plenty, and the full gamut of beer, wine, and liquor. Mexican wine is having a bit of a renaissance, and much of it comes from Baja California. Ray picked out a good red at Casa Oaxaca; Ruben followed up with an excellent Mexican cabernet sauvignon at Izote restaurant.

Mexico has many brands of beer, most of it lighter lagers, and most of it in bottles. Ray quickly identified darker Indio as his favorite. Mexicans have an odd tradition of mixing their beer with other substances to form a Michealada. Standard Michealadas consist of beer and lime juice or beer and bloody-mary mix. One night at a Michealada bar in the Condesa distrct, Ruben saw on the menu Marisco Michealdas (seafood!). He ordered an oyster drink and wound up with a double oyster on the half shell perched on top of his beer glass. The waiter suggested he tilt the oyster into the beer; unfortunately, oysters don’t float like ice, but sink like sewage. Nasty.

Tequila is the fermented, aged, and distilled agave nectar from the region surrounding the city of Tequila. Mescal is the same product, but from anywhere in Mexico (or the world). We drank a lot of both tequila and mescal, usually neat, sometimes on the rocks. I dislike the wormy taste of some mescals. However, if Mexican beer proves too low in alcohol, mescal helps to get you where you want to go: drunk.

Pulque is the un-aged, undistilled sap from the agave plant. Pulqueria shops are making a comeback from former old-man dives to current hipster hangouts. On the bar row of Condesa, we ordered up three half-liter of pulque. Ruben and Ray found formidable the effervescent, slimy white beverage, but I degree it refreshing.

A bit tired of ruins and museums, Ruben wanted to see contemporary Mexico, especially where the kool kids hang out. Saturday night, we started out in La Zona Rosa in search of fun. Too bad this district proved a wild goose chase of chain restaurants, touts for strip clubs, and uncertain blandness. We redirected our hunt into the Roma and Condesa districts, but had to walk dark blocks from one possible bar to the next. Ray got frustrated leading a grumbling posse.

What we eventually found were amazing: two “entradas,” venues like underground clubs or European squats. Both entradas had the goth look that Ruben likes, and both were a warren of rooms. The second spot “Paranoid Visions” had several bars within, great sculptures, cool lighting, interesting people, no cover, and even a great band. We watched a little of the Swedish vampire film, “Let the Right One In,” while dancing to Cure songs. I don’t remember how many beers we had, but everyone was happy.

We hired a car to take us 90-minutes north to the ruined city of Teohuacan, better known in Mexico as Las Pyramidas. The largest Mesoamerican city was not Teohuacan, but the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan; in its heyday of the 16th century, Tenochtitlan was second in population to Rome. However, Cortes and the Spanish not only destroyed Tenochtitlan; they built Mexico City over it. Teohuacan’s apogee was a thousand years before Tenochtitlan; Cortes didn’t destroy it because Teohuacan was already abandoned and overgrown upon Spanish conquest.

Because of its age and lack of surviving documentation, not much is known about the Teohuacan ruins we visited. The people who built the structures were precursors of the Aztecs and had similar urban planning. We stood in line to climb the giant Sun Temple, the second largest pyramid in the world (Cheops in Cairo being the first). We all got a rush of vertigo navigating the narrow unrailed walkways on the various levels of the pyramid. The views, of course, are amazing. After descending from the Sun Temple, we climbed up the smaller Moon Temple.

Many call Mexico City the “Big Taco” in reference to New York’s appellation as the “Big Apple.” The two cities have a similar overwhelming, cosmopolitan atmosphere, but Mexico City’s crush can be thicker due to its monoculture. The two cities also treat congestion differently. In New York, people orderly queue up with citizens brusquely policing each other. If the rules are not followed, society breaks down. In Mexico City, you must be loud to survive the fray. Many shops and stalls have loudspeakers. In the subways, salesmen and saleswomen hawk everything from bootleg CDs to gum.

The flight back to San Francisco took just four hours. I’m surprised how close by sits this other world of Mexico City, teaming with masses on the subway, full of great food, despised by most Americans, and yet truly wonderful. I’m glad our band of four did not exhaust our itinerary in a week. I want to return to see more of Mexico’s capital.

2013

A Fresh Start

Somewhat silly for me to make resolutions for 2013 if the world ends next week. Nonetheless, I bet against disaster, and frequently win. I did well at completing most of my goals for 2012, so perhaps I should dream bigger for next year.

    Family

Hard to plan when or if I will visit my parents in 2013 as last year was the big year to celebrate birthday and anniversary milestones. Unless I leave my job for a sabbatical, I don’t foresee yet a trip east to commune with family. Vacation days are sadly tight. I would suggest they come visit me in sunny California, but I know that will not happen. Nonetheless, I’d like to persevere with my weekly call to Wellesley. I hope Dad makes me a chair.

    Spirit

I may be in the midst of a transformation. Relax! I’m trying to.

I have four months ahead of weekly therapy with Dr. Clinton that may end or curtail May Day when the money runs out. He’s definitely helping me introspect, accept complexity, prioritize and find solid ground.

Resolve with Greg.

I’d like to keep up my daily fifteen-minute meditation and see whether I can stretch it to one hour on the weekend.

Bake a birthday cake.

Ayahusca

    Health

Keep active. Keep Serbicizing.

I should return to yoga. Chad has a Tuesday evening yoga class that I want to try. Yoga may open my back and help me breathe.

I want to see the physical therapist that Dr. Clinton recommends. She may unlock my shoulders. In the meantime, I’ll keep rowing twice a week, doing seventy pushups daily, and seeing my chair-massage guy at work every week.

I want to enroll in an adult swim class at one of San Francisco’s pools. If the swimming goes well, I want to race an Olympic triathlon before the end of the year.

Surf!

I want my car to survive 2013. My stalwart vehicle will likely fail smog inspection in March 2014, and that may be the end of the yellow-and-blue beauty.

    Work

I’m having a fine time at the job (finally!), but this ongoing refocus to other parts of my life feels more like a temporary sinecure than a career. Of course, my thoughts could change if the company’s stock price jumps. By the end of 2013, I ought to move on from this position. In the meantime, however, I still have much research chemistry that I would like to incorporate into commercial products. Moreover, I have a company of my own to run.

    Art

I want to enter the SF Weekly newspaper Mastermind contest for new artists. Unfortunately, the contest deadline too soon approaches on January 4.

I want to host a runway show in 2013.

Sell a commissioned piece of art.

Give a lecture on the how’s and why’s of my art.

Learn how to weld, or rather braze copper. Make a fire sculpture (antlers!).

I want to make a kinetic sculpture. I also need to rework the parts from 2012’s Flowers project. Maybe the light boards can move kinetically.

I would like to find a better solution for my website.

    San Francisco

I want to see more new in San Francisco. I love you bars and clubs, but I don’t need so much of the same oonz-oonz. There be instead film festivals, music festivals, comedy nights, pop-up restaurants and gallery openings.

Stuff I would like to explore: Noisebridge Hacker Space, Noisepop Festival, Outside Lands music festival (might be a disaster), Writers with Drinks at the Make-Out Room, Cable Car Museum, Randall Museum, and a bonfire on the beach.

I would like to try dating again.

Throw a party at my apartment, maybe an afternoon event.

Start a monthly event.

    Travel

Get out of the country at least twice next year, and make one place a once-in-a-lifetime destination. Amanda and Patrick already suggested Istanbul. Maybe look into the Galapagos or Morocco.

Every year I say go to the National Parks, and every year I don’t. I would like to visit at least two National Parks, especially Crater Lake and Sequoia. I want to check out Portland again before Tess moves, visit Toronto, go back to SXSW, and attend the Kentucky Derby.

Take AJ to Commonwealth. Look into Benu or the French Laundry.

2012: The Year in Review

The Year of Upheavel

The calendar reads only early December and I am already summarizing the year, much like a newspaper or magazine too early closes out the year. Nonetheless, I depart to Mexico on December 22, a day after the world ends, and then in far flung tacque- and tequila- rias I won’t have much space to think about the past year.

Borrowing from the Mexican, Aye Carumba, what a year of upheaval. Much ended in the appropriately named “fall.” I spend the rest of the year picking through the pieces, questioning what is important to me.

Here’s a synopsis of 2012:

    Home

I still live happily on 14th street in San Francisco so no reason to move after roughly 2.5 years of occupancy. The cute neighbors downstairs yelled in glee through the Giants World Series victories, jump-started my car when the battery died, and urged me to eat more tomatoes from their driveway plants. My apartment may not be a mansion, but I’m learning that the small space has all I need and keeps my needs small. Dad built and sent me a bookcase this year to match the bed and bench he built last year. I put up on the walls more of my artwork so the apartment looks quite like Dr. Seuss’s home.

    Work

A proverbial hurricane hit the company in the fall of 2011 when the executives summarily laid off 30% of the workforce. Those that survived the purge realized that we were no longer the golden company and that our futures would be tenuous and uncertain.

2012 meant a year of rebuilding but also difficult and arbitrary re-organization. Almost all of my closest colleagues quit: Greg went back to Oregon, Jeremy and Ron took jobs at a competitor, and Bobby moved to New York City. Unannounced company changes jerked me into a new department. I was quite miserable for most of the spring and summer. Many of my colleagues behind the scenes interviewed at other companies; perhaps foolishly, I stayed put.

And yet when fall came, I calmed down with the company. Overhaul done, company pressure abated. I freed up my hours and refocused my life on priorities outside of work like mental and physical health.

The job is now just a job, and I am fine with that repurposing. I don’t ask fulfillment or rewards from my position, but simultaneously, I’m fine if experiments don’t always work or get delayed.

    Travel

I left the USA twice in 2012, a recent record for me, as I’m usually strapped to an office desk most of the year. In early spring, I returned to my old stomping grounds in the Netherlands to visit old friends in Eindhoven, empty out a Dutch bank account, speak some Netherlandish, and take a farewell tour of Amsterdam. I had not been back for seven years, but I still recognized many; Jolanda called me one of the “good Americans.” However, the visit to Dutchyland felt like a goodbye wave.

From Amsterdam, Greg and I took a train onward to meet Rob in Berlin where we stayed four nights at the blue-and-brown Motel One. Greg and I saw two museum exhibits featuring the art of Gerard Richter and then hit some far-too-late night bars and clubs, two of which were in former power plants. We saw some Easter snow one afternoon from a pleasant Berlin brown bar, the only snow I saw all year.

I leave in two weeks for Mexico to tour Mexico City and the highlands of Oaxaca with brother Ray, Ruben, and Lee. We’re renting a car, hoping to spend Christmas Day on a beach south of Oaxaca. Six days in Mexico City may exhaust us with its 19 million residents, but we are so looking forward to the food and Aztec ruins. Perhaps Ray and I will attend a Mexican wrestling match to bookend our visit long ago to Thai kickboxing.

I retired my old passport, almost full with a Dutch work visa, Jamaica stamps, and trips around Europe.

California suffered a drought at the beginning of 2012, forestalling any skiing for the year. Now that planners AJ and Fiona have a newborn son, our group may not soon ski again.

Which states did I visit in 2012? Wow, only 5 states including my home of California, and only two of these states do not abut California. I guess I like San Francisco so much that I hardly leave it.

    March: OR
    April: TN
    June: MA
    August: NV
    October: MA

In March, Natasha and I flew to Portland for a quick weekend to visit our former coworker Greg in his native Oregon. He took us to some great bars run by the McMenamin family and we took him to two famous restaurants: the earthy Woodsman Tavern and the Vietnamese-inspired Pok Pok. I’d like to move to Portland in less than five years.

At the end of April, I camped in Tennessee with John Major, Mutt, and Jason.

June was an auspicious month of anniversaries. I went home at the Summer Solstice to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary and my brother’s 8th wedding anniversary. We had a grand dinner for eight veritable-Dudeks at the Blue Ginger.

Most years are not complete if I don’t go back to the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada. This year, I went earlier than ever and had a wonderfully pleasant time for roughly ten days of not-rough desert camping.

I returned back home in October to surprise my father for his 80th birthday. He only turns eighty once, and my father is such a super guy. He was a little shocked to see both myself and brother Ray come through the front door unannounced.

    Body

The year started auspiciously with forty days of veganism. Many were mystified, but friends were quite supportive and joined me for vegan dinners. I enjoyed the restrictions, lost some weight, and got better connected to food.

In August, we dined famously at the San Francisco two-star restaurant named Saison. We choose it because we could walk there. Eighteen magnificent courses later, we had shed five-hundred dollars (each) for an amazing show of festing.

Twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays, I still go to the gym at work to “Serbicize.” I have my own corner in the class where we throw kettle-bell weights, jump on half-circle bosu’s, and do far too many push-ups. I’m in great health. It’s bit odd for me to have abs of steel, as for decades I never thought of my body as attractive.

I’ve given up on some of the athletics I used to do so often. I only went to one yoga class all year. I guess I have done enough downward dogs for a while, although I would like to get back in practice.

I no longer run either. My greatest feat of year was my last race in early February. I ran a half-marathon through Golden Gate Park in a lightning fast 89:43 minutes. The 6:51 minutes/mile broke my goal of under 7 minutes/mile, and was an accomplishment I barely expected. During the race, I urged myself to run slower to save breathe and energy. I’ll likely never run a faster half-marathon. After that happy dash, I hung up my shoes and retired from the sport.

2012 was a year of checking in. I saw my doctor who proclaimed me healthy.

My back still aches most of the time. I see a chair massage guy at work every Thursday at 1pm. He got me started rowing on a gym machine twice a week; brother John’s wife was quite helpful to instruct me on proper rowing form. Also because of the massage guy, I now do push-ups every day to strength my chest and shoulders. I visited a back doctor who surveyed neck and back x-rays; nothing wrong with my bones.

September, I got punched in the face while riding my bike Saturday night through San Francisco. Fortunately, I did not fall off, but I did wear two black eyes for a month. Was this cosmic vengeance?

    Mind

2012 was the year of Greg. We spent much time together and traveled a lot: to Europe, to Burning Man, to Oakland. However in the fall of 2012, mounting anxiety thunderously overtook complacent happy routines. I ran away on September 26 to much confusion and lamentation.

Three months later, we continue to sort through the wreckage. As bad as I am to date, I'm an even worse breaker-upper. Still, we have progressed from coldness to civility to a weekly commitment to figure out what went right and what went wrong.

The break-up prompted me to try therapy, even if the word rings creepy to me. Thursday afternoons I see a Dr. Clinton to discuss all things relationships. Even before tackling the failed relationship, we pouring through family, self, and priorities.

Many have counseled that I need to slow down. I’ve resumed meditating, work on breathing bigger, and try better to value friendship over the new. Progress is slow and hard to quantify. I may be poorer in wealth finishing 2012 than when I started, but I may be much better grounded.

    Art

My art has taken on a life, intensity, and zeal of its own. I still make clothes that light up, but both the clothes and the lights are getting more complicated and abstract. I figured out how to light up empty spaces supported by plastic frameworks. Now there are feathers, hexagons, and spikes. This year brought the creation of the Neon Indian, Turtle Shell, Hedgehog, and Mohawk. Tom called the Hedgehog the canonical ideal of what I’m trying to make. A rapper recently wore the Hedgehog for a song on stage.

I received an art grant from my Burning Man village. I spent much of the summer programming eight flower lights, made out of IKEA lamps, PVC poles, electronics boards, and infernal phone cable. Once out in the windy desert, the lamps threatened to snap but did not. I’m glad to have created the piece, and very much thank all the help, but the Flowers are not yet my masterwork.

    Life

In general, 2012 was the year of San Francisco. I started the year not knowing almost anyone, and ended the year a recognizable face, just by dint of going out a lot, meeting interconnected groups, and being myself.

I did not take on much that was new, but I tried to take stock of where I am at, and where I would like to go next.

Perusing my intentions for 2012, I did fairly well this year at keeping up with my goals. I intended to run a race, go home several times, try veganism, and slow down. I did not go to any national parks, learn to swim, or find new work. Next year!

Post -Consumterist

Beyond Stuff

Christmas approacheth and the masses have already invaded the malls on the wee hours of Black Friday to buy large tv's for a few bucks less. I stayed home that Firday, and will continue to stay home. My attitude towards stuff is undergoing a sea change.

When I was young, broke, and surrounded by classmates who were wealthier, savvier, and more popular, I thought that the missing link was simply stuff: if I just had the right computer, car, or shoes (we didn't have cell phones and cell-phone envy in the 80s), then I would be obviously as beautiful as everyone else. Stuff was my simple, coveted entry point into the secret club. Which stuff exactly meant exhausting noticing and inferences.

Or least that's what the culture pushed. If I just wore the right clothes, if I just had the right electronics, if I just owned the right furniture, then I would be happy, well-adjusted, sociable, and inevitably content. Trouble was, acquisitions beget more coveting beget more acquiring leading me further from, not closer to contentment.

I would wander malls alone with no singular purchase in mind. There might be something here that would fill a hole in my life so I had best look for it frequently. Giving stuff in the form of gifts signifies love, doesn't it? I had best see what everyone else is buying because that's what I should be getting next.

This is strange behavior coming from a family whose parents hardly acquired anything. My Mother and Father exited the consumerist rat race decades ago, much to my chagrin. Overloaded with aesthetic ennui and in the midst of a striving private school, I was rankled by the obliviousness of my parents. I fretted even more about stuff, especially all the stuff I didn't have. Why am I the only kid that walks up the hill to school while most of my classmates zoom on by in their fancy cars?

In my twenties, I entered graduate school. For the next seven years, I earned only about $20,000 each year, and yet felt rich. Although even a beer in a bar felt extravagant, I was in California and just wandering the hills was more than what could be for sale back east. I had a bike, friends, and money to travel.

As my income has advanced to much more than $20,000 each year, my expenditures did not keep pace. It was as if I hit some sort of maximum spending ceiling. The rest got converted to savings. Sure, I'll buy a laptop computer when the old one breaks, and that laptop purchase won't break the bank.

Recently I looked around to find that I don't need anything more. I tried buying small kitchen gadgets, like bowls, a year ago, and that didn't do much for me. Sure, there could be plenty of purchases: my car is old, coworkers brandish fancy iPhones, and I could eat at great restaurants, but I don't want anything more. I no longer even troll malls and shops thinking that they contain something that could fulfill me, because I've dropped the notion that stuff fulfills. It's quite empowering to be free of stuff. I'm officially post-consumerist.

But also quite isolating. Our consumerist culture is predicated on acquisitions, and much of our social space is peppered with advertising to prop up the acquiring. If stuff won't make me happy, what will? The earlier equation of stuff = happiness was false but simple.

The new equation is frighteningly open-ended. I've left the herd, but not necessarily found another way of being. What then are my goals? What does money signify? What make me happy? It far easier if a new toaster made me happier for a week, as that purchase is a navigable transaction that I (and anyone) can do for the exchange of money.

I do find myself still wistfully looking at stuff in shop windows. Picking up stuff with a price tag, I ask myself questions: is this object useful? do I already own something that either looks like this or serves a similar purpose? would I be willing to shed stuff to add this stuff? am I just following a fad? Those orange running shoes at Sports Basement resemble the orange shoes I already own; so I like orange shoes, but I don't need another pair. I have so many green shirts, so no more green shirts although I'm sure to find others.

It's not like I don't buy anything. The purchasing now is much easier freed of the fulfillment expectation. I get wet biking to work. So buy a raincoat. Ok. Will this raincoat make me sexier and more desirable? No. Then get the raincoat that is constructed well, reasonably priced, and - crazy - a color that I like. There's a lot less anguish over every purchase. This rationale purchasing may be natural for you, advanced beings, comes new to me.

Many have suggested that experiences can be more enriching than stuff. Stuff is acquired, incorporated into one's world, and then quickly taken for granted. That BMW was flashy for a while, but now it is just the car, and one that is expensive to fix. An experience like a trip or a good meal or even scintillating conversation (if we could just pay by the word) involves complexity and temporal components making the overall experience's incorporation less easy to take for granted. I may not get much time off work to travel, but I would like to go to far flung places to do amazing things.

These days I spend a fortune on physical and psychological improvement, yet at the end of the day, I don't receive a worldly good I can hold, like a toaster, for all this money spent on counseling. It would be nice to display this toaster to others as a signifier or my increased wellness and attractiveness. Still the trade of income for physical and mental wellness is money well spent.

Coupled with my post-consumerism is a more disturbing trend: I'm becoming post-people. Spending is an activity done often with people in mind: exchanging money for services you can't do yourself, like a hair cut, or going out to dinner because you don't like to cook. I've become quite self-sufficient. If I have all I need and can feed and water myself quite well, then why do I need people? There may be good reasons why some monks become hermits.

Stuff does not fulfill happiness, but does this mean that social and cultural events also do not fulfill happiness? If the new phone won't make me better than perhaps that beer or show may also not make me better. What is better and why the need to quantify? Still I have a surplus of the twin limited resources of time and money and would like to allocate them productively.

If I had my druthers, I certainly would stay home all the time to build and explore, but implacable loneliness eventually drives me out of the house. Maybe instead I just need more stuff.

In the Shop

Fixing to Fix Myself

This fall, I've spent some time fixing myself and my surroundings. I'm not usually the type who makes appointments with doctors and mechanics, but turning forty sent me in for a check-up and an oil change.

HEALTH

Men don't visit doctors unless something is terrible wrong. A poor friend's father went in with chest pains; his doctor told the father he had inoperable. The doctor couldn't understand how the father lived for years carrying such pain. Men bend until they break.

I buck the trend and see a doctor every two years whether I like it or not. The unlike part is that a doctor’s visit necessitates the almost unspeakable blood work (fainting as I write this). Fortunately, my sympathetic nurse practioner prescribed Xanax to blunt the anxiety. Thanks to modern medicine in form of a pill, I no longer crumple to the phlebotomist's floor.

Because the nurse practioner moved on to greener pastures to direct a college's health services, this fall I faced a new doctor named Mark. I was surprised that my examination took less than twenty minutes. I learned that forty year-old face few health concerns except to maintain proper diet, exercise, and no smoking. When I reported to the doctor that my back still hurts, he referred me to a back specialist.

MY BACK

And so a couple weeks later, I found myself upstairs of a hospital in the waiting room of a back specialist. Like with the new nurse practioner, I was surprised at the brevity of the examination. The back doctor kneaded my fingers and arms to ensure that had not suffered extremity nerve damage. All good, he sent me to the hospital basement for x-rays of my neck and shoulder.

X-ray cameras don't use film anymore so no longer are there translucent sheets that doctors snap to vertical light boxes. The camera operator ran the machine like on school-picture day: head a little to the right, a little forward, good! I was rewarded with a DVD of my skeleton.

Back in the specialist’s office, the doctor ruminated over my x-rays to announce that no bones were amiss. The vertebrae were properly spaced and I lacked bone spurs. Any discomfort would be from muscular anomalies that could better be seen through MRI. Done with me, I was free to go.

On the one hand, I was saddened that my chronic back pain did not have a quick fix or explanation. On the other hand, it was not a tumor.

Once, I envied doctors and their jet-set lifestyle. My visit to this back doctor did not arouse occupational envy. He works in a cramped windowless office, examining malformed backs all day. He seemed quite interested in news from the outside world - any place but that office. Still, he works just a couple days each week, and probably billed a fortune to my health insurer.

Taking care of myself, I get a chair massage every week for thirty minutes from our corporate massage guy named Ray. Every Thursday at 1pm, Ray and I trade stories of the weekend's adventures while he adjusts my shoulders and pokes my scapula. He's not a doctor, but unlike a doctor, he actually touches my back and can feel which parts grind.

Hippie Massage Guy finds me a puzzle; I'm in good health, but why such a bad back? He suggested rowing to build up the trapezius muscles so I row twice a week on a machine in the gym. He suggested bulking up my pectorals to support the shoulder so I do daily at least fifty push-ups. We have discussed chiropractic work (charlatans!), physical therapy, and rehabilitation.

This Saturday, I spend a small fortune on an initial consultation with a San Francisco physical therapist/masseuse who I hope will diagnose the conundrum that is my back. I’d want him to point out where my vertebrae should align and which muscles I could strengthen.

EYES and TEETH

The body is not just the back. I saw my dentist recently for the standard six-month cleaning. He wants to replace my metal fillings, but otherwise my sealants hold up well from my youth. Dentists these days seem to make their living off of externalities like cosmetic adjustments or replacement fillings.

The eye doctor says my vision has not deteriorated and that there was no apparent damage from the punch to the face. I spent some extra money to get a digital picture of my retinas. I may not need bifocals until I’m fifty.

THE CAR

Besides myself, the car is the machine I need regularly to maintain. Like most men, I don’t repair much until catastrophe. Ever since Burning Man, the car jostled. I knew the front struts were dying. Shocks and struts are expensive to replace – I renewed the back ones after driving my heavy belongings across the country in the trunk.

The wobble got more wobbly until the car chattered. I was humming (more like shaking) down highway 101 on the way to work when – bam! – the right-front tire popped and smoked. I calmly swerved the car to the highway’s retaining wall. Yup, the sidewall of the tire had shattered in several places. I jacked up the front fender, got the donut tire out from the trunk, and loosened the flattened tire’s bolts. A repairman pulled up to tell me that the car was rolling on the jack cause I didn’t engage the parking brake. Whoops. Nonetheless, five minutes later I was driving on a tiny tire through the town of Millbrae in search of a garage. A couple hours later and $360 spent, the car had four new tires. Silly that I wait for a tire to explode before I get new ones.

On my last oil change, the mechanic noted that the battery was on its way out. To me that means I have at least a year of battery life. One Monday morning, I wake to find that the engine won’t turn. In response, I turn the ignition again and again. Norm from downstairs pokes his head on the window to announce, “Your battery is dead. I’ll get the jumper cables.” I live with some great people. A few hours later and $100 spent, the car has a new battery. Silly that I wait for a dead battery before I get a new one.

Did I tell you that I recently saw a doctor, a back specialist, a dentist, and an eye doctor?

The Rapy

Thursdays at 4:30

I just finished speaking, or rather flailing, and my utterances hung in the air. From his chair across the room, he looked back quizzically and silently. Dr. Clinton pushed the silence further back to me almost palpably. All was quiet. Was I to say more and dig the hole further? Or was this some sort of silent test? I do like to fill empty spaces, but am I paying too much to sit in silence? Thus continued another Thursday afternoon adventure in a small home-office on 14th St, San Francisco.

I had a relationship blow up on me in September, or - more precisely - I squashed it rather inexplicably and ran the other way. Greg and others suggested counseling to sort through the wreckage. Trouble is, I don't do counseling. I'm from silent, analytical New England stock. Counseling, or worse that term "therapy," connotes self-obsessed muddling, even insanity.

Nonetheless, in September and October I had hit some sort of bottom - not a I'm-going-to-kill-myself bottom, but more that I couldn't figure out what was happening. I so wanted a clearer assessment of my personal motivations and see whether my actions were true to my feelings (ack, feelings, run!). Mostly, I have been stuck in the same ruts for too long.

So I called Dr. Clinton for an initial consultation. I still don't know whether he's actually a doctor; heck, even I am an doctor, but not a doctor-doctor. Apparently, therapy comes in all sorts of styles, such as shouting, visualization, or dog-like barking. Dr. Clinton practices clinical behavioral psychotherapy (ack, the word psycho). On-line reading suggested to me that clinical psychotherapy rose in opposition to the 50s prevalence of Freudian psychology with its symbolism and obsession with the Mother. This new school of clinical psychotherapy encouraged clients (patients?) to grow aware of their actions and the impulses that cause them. The behavioral stuff came later; once a client is aware of his actions, it's time then to modify the behavior.

After an initial consultation, Dr. Clinton and I settled on a weekly time of 4:30 on Thursdays. I pay him an enormous $165 for each forty-five minute session; the math balloons to $8250 for a year of this treatment, none of it covered by insurance, although I hope to flex-spend the shit out of it next year.

In this country, we pay exorbitant amounts for people to do things for us. In gyms, we hire personal trainers. Some fancy ladies get extravagant haircuts. We have doctors run tests and mechanics fix our cars. Think of therapy as money spent to fix the psyche. If the couching makes me a happier, well-adjusted person, then almost no price is too high, and this therapy should have been done sooner than when I turned 40.

"What's wrong?" many ask. "You seem fine to me." I can hold a decent job, undertake all sorts of new athletic and travel endeavors, build whimsical projects. Trouble is, almost anything that involves someone else engenders difficulties. The world would be quite easier for me if everyone just disappeared.

So every Thursday afternoon, I cut out of work inexplicably early to zoom north on scenic highway 280 back to San Francisco. I hastily park the car at my apartment and rush up 14th St to a Victorian. Dr. Clinton sits in one overstuffed chair and I sit in another. We talk.

I haven't been going enough to figure out what should be happening. He says little, actually nothing about his own life. Mostly, I do the talking, and he does the noticing. As a scientist, I wish he were more prescriptive, "Oh, I see you do this thing. Stop that problem by doing this solution instead." He doesn't prescribe; I guess I'm supposed to come up with the conclusions on my own and thus foment my own cure.

In the five or so sessions, I've aired many big concerns. So far, we have mostly we've just looked at these concerns, much like a tour through a museum. We've discussed relationships, parties, family, my youth, and anxieties. I haven't done yet any behavior modification.

I'm a list maker, and so far I've created a list of 13 interrelated issues that I've like to work on. I guess they are personal but still quite general: 1. Breathing/My Back, 2. Choice/Commitment, 3. Anxiety, 4. Fast-Fast-Fast/Efficiency, 5. Fear of Missing Out, 6. Spontaneity/Flexibility, 7. Control/Order, 8. Intimacy/Communication, 9. Whole Filling, 10. Wanting/Coveting, 11. Loneliness/Independence, 12. Black and White, 13. Sex and Drugs.

Whew. We do tackle behaviors, namely my poor behavior. Currently, I'm feeling quite stuck. We've diagnosed that many of my interactive behaviors are neither effective nor productive. So what then? It makes me just want to go home and sleep. If the outside involves people and my involvement with people isn't working than my bed is a much safer place to be.

Furthermore, all this self-evaluation promotes cycles of insecurity. As I analyze the reasons behind why I do everything, then everything I do becomes a source of doubt. I'm learning that there are many wrong ways - which are my ways; but I have yet to learn new ways to do things right. Or write.

The one prescription Dr. Clinton dispensed was for me to dispense with my chronic habit of the e-mail bomb. a lengthy message (quite like this one) that is unilateral and at times overwhelming. Dr. Clinton suggested that such an e-mail device is not as effective or interactive as more direct conversation. But conversations are scary.

The analogy of a psychotherapist to a physical trainer does break down. With a physical trainer, there are gradual but quantitative gains that can be made at a gym: I've gone from 4 push-ups to 40 and I look more muscly. With a therapist, I can't quantify and may never be able to quantify gains with Dr. Clinton. Perhaps this whole therapy business is an elaborate charade to separate wealthy, neurotic San Franciscans from their cash.

The Thursday before Halloween I put on a Max costume from Where the Wild Things Are and took it to his office. It's my money and I'd like him to figure it out. Trouble is, he's not there to figure it out. I'm supposed to.

When the session ends at 5:15, I skulk out of the living room. He stays behind seated, I wonder, to make notes? I'm surmising he's got some sort of master sheet with check boxes. Which boxes did he check? What would he prescribe? It's a game where I'm not told half of the equation.

Nonetheless, every Thursday, I'll be heading up the hill. He suggests that developing sound communication with him will enable sound communication with the rest of the world. In the meantime, I continue to hide under my desk. You can ask me which of the 13 things I'm working on. All of them!

The Boyfriend

Greg

So much beating around the bush. I grew up in an upstanding New England family of the silent generation. Work and education were paramount. The other details like happiness, relationships, and marriage were not so consequential and little spoken about, almost as if they would just quietly sort themselves out.

Life took an unexpected turn at end of July 2011: a party. I met a guy. We hit it off. A lot connected: we find each other attractive, have similar values, are age appropriate, live in the same neighborhood, and most importantly are both single and want this to work.

We started dating. I thought the world would collapse. It's shocking to tell the world that perpetually-alone me is not only dating but also dating a he. I sent out trepidatious e-mail. Oddly, the world didn't collapse. Friends were thrilled to find me happily coupled with an impeccable boyfriend.

Boyfriend. Such a strange word for me, one that I still have trouble speaking. Much easier to say with subterfuge, “Meet my friend,” or “My friend and I, we’re going to the beach.” There’s a commitment and connotation to boyfriend that rings foreign to me.

Greg. Long-term San Francisco resident who remembers those go-go dot-com days of the late nineties. Software programmer through many start-ups. Indie-music aficionado. Book devourer. Would be irked to read all this. Screen printer. Clothes piler. Kale hoarder. Penguin. Oh, those last few don't make sense, but they do to me.

As we know many wastrel vagabonds in our social circles, we had an exciting time vetting each other. Upon surveying my apartment, he asked, "Do you live here alone?" I was surprised that he owned property and was over the age of twenty-nine. So responsible. Furthermore, he didn't have an obvious drug problem, except for a peculiar preference for nuts and cruciferous vegetables.

"I'm new to all this," I protested. Still, I vowed to take a day at a time and see whether one day would lead to another. We climbed the hill outside his apartment, spent a weekend away at a Northern California hot spring, celebrated New Year's together, flew to Europe to see Amsterdam and Berlin, met his brother the Medievalist, and camped together at Burning Man. The days accumulated into months and the months into a year. Whoa, farther than I had been in quite a while.

Trouble is, after the shock and newness of dating a guy wore off, I started to confront whether this is what I wanted. I answered myself in my classic style, "I dunno."

Mounting anxiety thunderously overtook complacent happy routines. I ran away on September 26 to much confusion and lamentation. Jargon is tricky for me; a friend said, “You two didn’t separate; you dumped him.” I’m learning. Among other things, I learned not to abandon a relationship when your boyfriend has already planned your surprise fortieth birthday party (dinosaur themed – roar!).

Two months later, we sort through the wreckage. As bad as I am to date, I'm an even worse breaker-upper. Still, we have progressed from coldness to civility to a weekly commitment to figure out what went right and what went wrong. If we both are terrible at communicating, perhaps we can learn from this tragedy how to communicate better with each other and the world at large.

I know, crass to write about my boyfriend now that he is gone. These topics are new and difficult for me. Through the fourteen months, I took on all the anticipated responses of friends and family. Gradually and finally, I can say fuck ‘em, and carry on.

Friends are sad for me, and even sadder that Greg is no longer around. Ruben doesn’t have someone anymore with whom to beat me at Settlers of Catan. Greg’s departure has upended my world. The turmoil prompts a lot of self-evaluation, re-prioritization, and doubt. This story is not yet finished.

Punched

One Night in San Francisco

I've been warned about San Francisco's dirt and crime. With all those people crammed on a peninsula, something nefarious is bound to happen. In five years, I have "lost" to the city: three bike seats, many bike lights, and two bicycles. A friend got mugged at gun point; god bless him, he grabbed the gun.

A Saturday night in September, 10:30pm, cool but not rainy, I'm biking in the south of Market (SOMA) area of San Francisco accompanied by two friends also on bicycles. Slightly drunk, we just left the theater to head to a bar.

They ride ahead of me. I take a left turn from 9th St on to Folsom. There's a standing gentleman gesticulating in the bicycle lane, not unusual because many do hail taxis way out in the street. However, he's not hailing a taxi; he's swinging at people.

My two friends ahead swerve around him. He punches me right between the eyes. I don't remember what he looked like. Everything goes dark. Miraculously I stay on the bike and travel down the street.

It didn't hurt much; I have a large nose to begin with. I go about half a block and then feel a lot of wetness. Argh, I'm bleeding. A lot. I pull between two cars and see the pavement shower with a copper spatter. Tom asked if I'm alright. No, I'm not. Tom brandishes a bike chain and threatens to go back and get the guy. I just want to stop bleeding. He puts away the bike chain and pulls out a pink handkerchief.

WTF?

A woman has run across the street. She declaims that she saw everything. She's throwing a fundraiser party next door. Would I come by to clean up and have a cocktail? I continue to bleed in the street. She's more insistent. Would I come by to clean up and have a cocktail? I think she grabs the bike. We're going to a party.

She leads the three of us bicyclists into a loft space. I go upstairs into a bathroom to rinse off in a sink. I'm sorry to have bled on me, on her. Fortunately, she - Hannah - is wearing red.

She pours me a beer. It's comfort food. Her company is unveiling their new product: furry, costume animal ears whose motions are controlled by your brain waves. Cool! The product is called Emoki, and they are raising money for it on Kickstarter. I tell her that I make clothes that light up.

Guests look at me both confused and sympathetic. I'm the random bloody one. A few of the party people were outside watching the crazy guy from across the street when I got punched. I thank my damsel in shining armor for saving this knight in distress.

The three of us did not stay long at the fundraiser, maybe thirty minutes. John was waiting for us at a bar. I was out of sorts still bleeding, not much for socializing.

Ruben often told me that I should get punched in the face to feel that experience. Well, I have. Former colleague Greg mentioned high school rumbles where he punched and got punched in the face. "Never gotten punched in the face?" he asked increduously. Usually (I think) when you get punched in the face, you see the punch coming and you know who threw it - like, yeah, I shouldn't have harrassed that guy that much. My unannounced punch didn't hurt that much - just shocking.

I was lucky not to be wearing glasses, not to fall off the bike (am I glued to the gyroscope?), and not to get hit on the side of the nose. A glancing blow may have broken my nose and tumbled me to the street.

Still, I was wearing a helmet and it was quite a well-aimed blow to get me below the visor and between the eyes. I had been suffering a poor week with lots of interpersonal angst. Nothing like a random punch from the heavens to say, "hey, you, stop that."

The next afternoon after the punch, I attended the outdoor Burning Man Decompression party. I ran into a few people that remembered me from the fundraiser and asked about the nose. No, Hannah. Other friends at Decompression wanted to know what happened.

My nose swelled but did not bruise as I got smacked right on the bone. However, blood pooled and clotted into both the left and right sinus under either eye. I had black eyes for about a month, bright magenta initially than fading and filling in.

Facial bruises are difficult to hide and set off alarm bells. Many conjecture bar fights or domestic violence. At the Decompression street festival, I devised a poor game of, "What would be the most awkward explanation at work on Monday morning?" Winners were, "He loves me; he really loves me," and "Sometimes no does mean no," and "Don't practice limboing around the house."

I'm surprisingly okay with the incident, because it was so random. I could have been hurt much worse. I'm glad Tom didn't go back to beat up the guy. I'm glad we didn't linger all night to press charges. Maybe he was hailing a taxi? He certainly didn't come back to find out. Maybe I got what I deserved.

Nonetheless, I experienced the worst and best of San Francisco in five minutes. Get hit then go to a party. What I call it: Punch Drunk.

Electric Hedgehog

Halloween 2012

San Francisco is perhaps the best city in the world to celebrate Halloween. Temperatures are balmier than in the frigid Northeast, and the Bay Area’s creative community supports a ton of Halloween events. Even my workplace hosts a costume contest on the Friday afternoon before Halloween.

My favorite holiday is Halloween. I like the outfits, the parties, the trick-or-treating. It’s a secular holiday with no gifts or cards required. As someone who makes a lot of costumes, this is the season to wear them.

It has been a tough fall. I turned an unsettled forty in September and then went through a break-up. Work has been steadily sliding away with my confidence. I need armor. This Halloween, I planned to be a hedgehog with spines to protect myself and keep people at a distance. Of course the spines had to light up, and the whole outfit needed to be sturdy, comfortable, and warm. I got the hedgehog idea from a kooshball costume I saw years ago at Burning Man and later at a hay-maze party in Half Moon Bay.

A month before Halloween, I made a pattern for a sleeveless hoodie out of newspaper, based on a hooded vest from Ayyawear. From the pattern, I sewed two hoodies: a brown fleece outside and a green fleece inside. As much as I could, I used up fabric scraps from previous projects, like the green fleece is a remnant from the famous dinosaur costume.

I planned to mount 50 white spines on the back of the hoodie. Side spines, I would bump into, and front spines would look weird. How to illuminate an empty spine cone but yet give the cone structural support? I could fill the cone’s matrix with supportive foam, but the foam would dim the light. I discovered that I could cut and staple a cone out of clear plastic and mount the LED in the cone’s base. The lights are two full-color 25-LED strands available from either Sparkfun or Adafruit. From the spacing of the LEDs on the strand, I spaced the cones at their maximum distance, making stringing the cones into the hoodie quite a challenging maze.

I studied geometry to learn how to cut a cone properly from a flat disk. I cut 50 holes out of the hoodie – let’s hope this works as I just ruined the garment I made. I set the cones on a square grid array turned 45 degrees. Originally, I thought I would mount the lights directly to the green lining, but I discovered that I could mount each light on a plastic strip stapled to bottom of each plastic cone.

With a weekend away in Sacramento to celebrate Ruben’s 40th birthday and projects incoming at work, I raced to finish the hedgehog before Halloween. I sewed 50 white cones into the brown fleece. I stapled 50 clear plastic cones to the LED strands. Now for the uncertainty: I put the plastic cones into the garment, attached the green lining, and inverted the outfit. Would the hedgehog work? Definitely yes!

I spent an evening madly programming light shows based on the code Greg wrote for the Turtle shell. Since I could not see the back of the hedgehog, I wanted the lights to blink automatically and not be controlled by a keypad or buttons. As John Major complained that my projects were too blinky, I put in long delays between light shows so that the outfit would be dark.

Many, including myself, ask why I make these outrageous costumes. For me, a lot of the pleasure is all that text above: the puzzle of constructing something no one has made before. I have an idea for a hedgehog – now how to make it? I don’t know what the finished product will look like, and the engineering often dictates the outcome.

The Halloween season commenced Friday night with a show and dance party at DNA Lounge. I found that I could bike fine through San Francisco as a hedgehog. Life got immediately interesting when a couple ran up to me just as I was locking my bike in front of the club. They wanted a photo.

I became a celebrity for a weekend of cameras, videos, high-fives, did you make that?, and I want one. I enjoy the attention, but the interaction is both non-stop and transitory. When asking about construction, people just want to hear “LEDs,” and not the details. I met many, many people, but few faces stick in my memory. There is no place to hide; electric hedgehogs are not wallflowers.

The hedgehog took on a life of its on. People gather around its back to look at the lights, but stand back a few feet from perceived sharpness. Folks want to touch the cones; others want to lick them. When a show ends and the lights go out, some run up to tell me I am dark. Some demand a particular color or pattern, so are surprised when I tell them that I cannot control the lights.

At Dr. Ricks, a photographer asked whether I was the Pope one year. Why, yes, I was. At Public Works, a wonderful woman told me she taught robotics to disadvantages girls in Oakland. Outside of Beat Box, I kissed a spider. In the garden of Dr. Ricks, an insightful used-car salesman compared the hedgehog to the Joseph Campbell light piece hanging in the foyer of SF MOMA. I met a couple of women from the Netherlands. A crowd on 11th yelled across the street, “Turn it on, turn it on.”

Halloween evening brought rain. Fortunately, the critical electronics are sequestered in a side pocket, but biking in the rain spotted most of the lower cones with dirt. A few days after Halloween, I painfully separated the lining from the hoodie, pulled out the plastic cones, and washed the hedgehog in the sink. I felt like Superman on laundry day.

It was a great Halloween. What to make for next year?

Burning Man 2012

Victory

Ah, summer ends in usual Dudek fashion much like the swallows returning to Capistrano. I return to the hot and dusty Black Rock Desert for the annual Burning Man Festival. Looking through my previous Burning Man pictures on this site, I estimate that this year’s return was my eleventh Burning Man, or maybe tenth. Like an old man, my memory fades.

Back now in the “terrestrial” world, in this case San Francisco, the sky looks different and shiny. Fall has fallen and with it, the autumnal angst of schoolchildren, Halloween costumes, and harvest. San Francisco feels moist, cool, crowded, and fresh.

I spend subsequent days jetlagged and foggy from the disjoint between desert revelry and the concentration on routine work and colleague’s enquiries. Burning Man over, it is a period of dusting dust, repairing and putting away clothes, and taking stock of my world. What did I learn? What would I do differently? What do I want changed? What should I do next? This time of year, most appeal is a run away to join the circus.

To put each Burn in perspective, I try to catalogue ten ways this Burn was different than the rest. So, in no particular order of chronology, import or amazement:

1. Arriving early

Usually, I wait at the gates with the rest of the plebs for the officials to open the event. As Burning Man grows in popularity, the event starts earlier and earlier. I remember gate opening usually Sunday or even Monday at midnight. Supposedly this year, gates opened Sunday afternoon. However, I got to the Playa much earlier than that, Wednesday night, the earliest I have ever arrived to Burning Man. Greg and I prior arranged early-arrival passes to help set up the Comfort & Joy Village.

While driving out, Greg counseled spending a night in Reno to ease the transition from San Francisco to desert. I pushed instead for a long one-day drive from apartment to tent. Although it was quite a long day, I think we were both glad to avoid the night in Reno.

We departed an ironically rainy San Francisco at about ten on a quiet Wednesday morning. We stopped first at a storage locker in Reno to pick up PVC poles and rebar, parts to build our shade quonset, our home for the upcoming week.

Greg knew a veggie restaurant in Reno called the Pneumatic Café. We had an early dinner with beet juices and vegetables to fortify ourselves for the upcoming excess and desert canned goods. At a Reno CVS, we picked up one more case of Tecate beer and a few gallons of water.

We crossed gates quickly and got to the Comfort and Joy Village just after dark. Greg feared setting up a tent at nighttime, but with some bright lanterns and advice from Tom, we got busy with unpacking and constructing. It took us a couple of hours to put the tent and quonset together, but we were both glad suddenly to have a home. Exhaustion hit soon after and I incoherently crawled into bed.

We were already on the Playa on Wednesday night with gates not opening for almost four more days. It was a blissfully, relaxed time of setting up infrastructure and connecting with the rest of the early-arrival crew. I steered clear of most intoxicants, and enjoyed the clarity of sobriety to ease into this year’s Burning Man. On Saturday night Greg and I cooked way too much tagine, but the Mediterranean meal was appreciated, especially by the overworked kitchen managers Amanda and Mona Lott.

I think “early” is the new Burning Man, and I almost cannot conceive of arriving next time later than a few days early. I much rather help a party build than pack it up. However, such a long stay in the desert did mean sacrifice of seven of my fifteen vacation days for the year. I won’t be taking another holiday for quite some time.

2. Home

Many of my early visits to Burning Man required tackling infrastructure. I started with just a tent that got implacably hot by late morning and then cold by sunrise. I next built shade structures over these tents, but the impermeable tarps would flutter and sometimes snap in the wind.

Years ago, I quite envied the quonset that Tom designed made out of agricultural shade netting and joined pieces of electrical-conduit tube. Last year, I bought and set up a similar quonset based on Tom’s manifest and guidance. This year, we brought the quonset out again to the Playa. Within the quonset, we rigged up Christmas lights, lanterns, camp chairs, decorative fabric, and spots for all of our bins.

My second decade of Burning Man and I feel like I have “solved” shelter in the desert. The first night Rob was on the Playa, he confided, “Wow, Greg has never camped better than I have, until now.” Next year I want to bring a truck tarp to provide porous flooring. The Christmas lights could be amber or red instead of the clinical white. Still, home in the desert is indeed rather grand.

3. Flowers

For quite a while, I’ve been fooling around with color-changing LED lights and microcontrollers. This year, I applied for an art grant to build a sculpture bigger than what I could carry. The one-hundred person Comfort & Joy Village set aside funds to allot to art projects by camp members. The Village allotted me four hundred fifty dollars for a project called Flowers. Although I might be able to fund my project from my savings, the art grant provided the proverbial kick to get the project done and make it as grand as possible.

I built eight flowers in the desert, each with a color-changing light board. Each flower was a bright light housed in white-plastic IKEA lamp. The flowers were mounted on floppy PVC poles wrapped in pink-and-green organza fabric. I stuck two bright leaves on each pole.

I spent about two weeks at home drilling out electronic boards, sewing leaves, wrapping fabric, and soldering wiring. I built a control box with three dials and two buttons to control the colors, pacing, and patterns of the flowers. I attached motion sensors to each flower, but alas couldn’t get the detectors to work in the desert.

A few pieces of advice for playa art projects.

Probably no art work is finished to the satisfaction of the artist. As Tom said, “bring out the shambles of your art, and nobody will know that it is just shambles; they will think it brilliant.”
Do as much work as you can on your project before you arrive in the desert. We thought we might re-program the lights from the shelter of our quonset, but once the party started, we had neither the time nor inclination. When I set up a spindly sample flower by our tent, someone asked, “Did you prototype this before?” As the PVC threatened to crack in the wind, I realized I had not fully thought out the project. Every time the dust picked up, I rushed out to count eight flowers, fearing that at least one would blow away to the trash fence.
Most work on the playa takes much longer than you expect. We used Tom’s nail-gun to drive in eight pieces of rebar to stake up the flowers. I hooked up the electronics. Last step was simply to trench the phone cord underground to wire each flower to the central control box. How long should trenching take? Ten minutes? Greg astutely said that such arduous digging would require at least four people and four hours of time. We grumbled and yelled at each other but got the monotony done. He was right.

A week passed and the flowers surprisingly did not blow away. Only one of the light boards lost power in the red and green channels. Chickpea occasionally dusted the fabric to make the flowers glow bright under black light. Even a few people like the piece; the head of the Pink Mammoth dance camp called it his favorite part of Comfort & Joy. Nonetheless, the flower circle was my least favorite place to hang out. I’m a bit shy around my own creations and furthermore did not think it was representative of what I wanted to create. I was super-envious of Blitzy’s amazing windmills that twirled brightly and thunked sonorously like mills. Next time, I would like to make something more interactive and more kinetics. Color-changing LEDs may be played out. Still, I learned much at putting together a big piece and thank Comfort & Joy tremendously for their art grant.

4. Getting to Know Drag Queens

One delight of arriving early on the playa is the extended time to get to know the rest of the early-arrival crew, notably in this case, a bunch of drag queens. Mona Lott and Amanda competently and unflappably ran the kitchen. Ultra daily delivered ice. Chickpea and alter-ego Amber Alert set up massive day-glo flags, hoops, and pennants. Neon and alter-ego Playa Hole erected long columns of Mylar Rain that delighted many who walked or rode through it at all hours of the day and night.

Drag queens are real people, fun to see the transition “in face” and after. Our group went Sunday night at midnight to Center Camp to watch the queens put on a cabaret as appreciation to the workers of Center Camp. On reaching the venue, a barricade told us that Center Camp was closed, to which Patrick barged through, yelling, “Radical Self-Entitlement!”

Ultra was the mistress-of-ceremonies and never is at a loss for a charming word. She threw down a wonderfully cathartic number partially as a way to get over difficulties from the close of last year’s Burning Man. Even Amber Alert sang about a stolen purse.

5. The Main Tent

Over the years, Comfort & Joy has garnered notoriety for its main tent, a place for “play,” or rather sex, and not just the man-on-man kind. The reputation for the Main Tent grew enough that Kitten requested that Comfort & Joy be left off the main map so that only those in the know would find their way to our village.

Nonetheless, over the course of the week the main tent often was a heavy mass of furtive, lecherous, and often not-attractive bodies. When our flaky power cut out, John would rouse from his quonset and rush to the main tent to turn on lights and music lest the sex zombies take over the space much like cockroaches invading a dirty kitchen.

We tried to defuse the creepy sex of the main tent. One night, John busted into the structure to announce, “I have cancer!” There were some shocked looks. A girl ran out to tell him, “but you still can have an orgy.”

On our last night, John implored us to put on the Sesame Street yip-yip costumes. In the near darkness, our furry forms shuffled into the main tent to harass the humping sex workers. I couldn’t see much through the four layers of black netting in front of my face, but the peoples kept fornicating in spite of the “yip, yip, yarg, yarg.”

6. Mob of Yip-Yips

Last year, I brought two Yip-Yip oufits to the playa. These Sesame-Street costumes resemble furry burkas. One is orange and the other is blue. Due to the veil over the face that lowers visibility, you can wear the outfits pretty much only during the day. Due to the heavy fur, you can’t wear the outfits in extreme heat. Last year, two Yip-Yips would venture out from Serenity Giant Games Camp in the early afternoon to invade other circles of people recuperating from their long evenings. The Yip-yYp invasion was so unexpected and yet playful that we got a round of applause from one group.

This past winter, Jack from Serenity Giant Games contacted me about the construction of the Yip-Yip costumes. He, Rose, Patrick, and Amanda made seven more Yip-Yips.

We arranged to get the nine Yip-Yips together one afternoon on the playa for a Friday sunset tour. The art car across the street agreed to drive us aliens to Center Camp. We suited up in our furry burkas, boarded something that looked like a cable car, and set off on a slow drive to the center of it all. I was surprised how hard it can be for an art car to navigate around bicycles and a cacophony of other mutant vehices.

Once parked outside Center Camp, we disembarked to cause mayhem. I lost track who was wearing which Yip-Yip. Many strangers wanted to photograph us, but Yip-Yips will not be wrangled! After bopping around, one of us came up with the great idea of mobbing one individual. We would circle unsuspecting prey, one Yip-Yip after another until we trapped a person in a mass of fake fur.

After a long week and an especially energetic Wednesday night, I was an unusually subdued Yip-Yip. Nonetheless, the group loved the adventure, and with such a large group of us, it was a new and unusual dynamic. As the sun set, we boarded the cable car for our return trip back to Serenity Giant Games Camp. On our way back, an enterprising and aggressive nurse with a megaphone waylaid our art car into her marguerita bar.

7. Rockit Collective

Most nights during the week, the Main Tent of Comfort & Joy hosts a late-night party called Afterglow that culminates on Friday with the legendary dance event called Honey Dusted. By Friday, I’m often worn out that the large crowd of Honey Dusted overwhelms me. I prefer the Afterglow parties earlier in the week.

Tuesday night, or was it Monday?, San-Francisco based DJ group Rockit Collective took over the Main Tent for the best dancey-dancey I did all week. Vocalless, the music beeped and blipped like a harbinger of a future utopia. The crowd was similarly futuristic and hot in metallics and sparkles. Who needs Las Vegas if I have Rockit Collective playing a midweek desert party in my home camp?

8. Max

A couple years ago, I made a Max costume from the Maurice Sendak book “Where the Wild Things Are.” The off-white outfit has black ears, pipe-cleaner whiskers, pockets, a long black tail with Christmas lights, a crown that lights up, and enough absurdity for a child about to turn 40. One Halloween, outside a San Francisco bar, a couple from Canada instructed me better on how to channel my mischievous inner fourteen year old. The training ended with me knocking her down to the sidewalk. Oh, well.

Like my other Burning-Man outfits, Max now comes out just one evening a year for an occasion on the Playa. This time, neighboring camp “Glam Cocks” fortuitously hosted a Wednesday sunset party called “Where the Wild Things Are.” Greg and I had finished cooking dinner for one hundred. Too bad the Glam Cocks paid Max no heed.

I designed the Max outfit as a one-piece with deep pockets for those evenings when sanity leaves and everything I wish to keep at sunrise need be firmly attached to me or else lost to the dust. Needless to say, by midnight, sanity did leave. Max took over and I searched for trouble. We ushered something ridiculous from the drag closet to John and Tom’s quonset. There was drinking and dancing and bicycling and onward until dawn!

Greg and I saw the moon dramatically set over the mountains and much later the sun rise in the east. I must have been loco, because Greg convinced us to bike after sunrise over to the Steambath Project for use of their sauna. In the advancing light, we found the steambath door open and the project turned off.

Max demands a lot of energy.

9. Burn in the Deep Playa

Saturday night on the playa, Burning Man culminates with the namesake burning of the man. For most, a night of excess and reflection, yet I have had trying Burn nights. One year, I waited hours eventually to video the Boston fire collective. Another year, I lay in a tent with companions dysentery and fever. The night the Man burns is often a night of dark energy and a bridge too far. The Man that anchors the map of the playa suddenly and spectacularly leaves. What, then, else to do?

Last year, for the Burning of the Man, I accompanied a group of seven on a little boat art car to the far reach of the trash fence. I got to roar as a dinosaur while the Man burned and one of our group thought she was dying from too much acid.

This year, I assembled a group of five on bicycles: Greg, Patrick, Amanda, and their friend whose name I ought to remember. We set off past the Man and its infinite waiting to the Temple and beyond. Greg and I were looking for an art piece called the Kelp Forest. Although we eventually found the underwhelming forest, the destination did provide a pretext for exploring everything else.

Out in the deep playa, we biked from one little project to the next, encountering a small island of isolated people, much like the Little Prince visiting planets. Each stop, we dismounted, drank some Scotch, checked our bearings, and kicked the tires of the art piece. Although nothing in the deep playa was life-changing or awe-inspiring, I much enjoyed this quiet bike around to reconnect with New York friends Patrick and Amanda, and see the Man burn in our proverbial rearview mirror.

10. Big Art

Many back in San Francisco, including my weekly hippie massage guy, ask for a quick story to sum up this Burning Man. Although I had a wonderful time this year, frankly there was no one heavenly explosions life-changing epiphany. Overall, the event was an affirmation of the course I have trod this last decade and a celebration of community, art, and survival.

Still, there was plenty of big art out there that bears mentioning. You want a story, well there was:

A giant three-story sunken ship at the end of a long pier leading from the Esplanade. Greg and I climbed up the bow and below decks until we hit the water of the hard playa.
The Mayan Calendar, an octahedral LED piece mounted on a swiveling gimble.
A giant (a frequent word on the playa is “giant”) rotating titled disc on which two large fires of logs burned and crashed.
The cubatron returned in toroidal form, upraised to allow mirthful folk to lay underneath. The cute ping-pong balls have been replaced by more sophisticated but less exciting rope LED lights. Proper viewing distance is about twenty feet away.
A giant circle of rock in the keyhole of Center Camp that a team can push with much force to rotate a central pendant of a giant boulder.
The steampunk octopus art car. Think of a giant copper-plated octopus that shoots fire, bugs out eyes and tentacles, and –of course– moves.
A woman in a blue dress with a Queen of England mask pulling a long strand of flags out of her vulva. Need more?

Return to Europe

Amsterdam and Berlin

Way back in the hazy period of July 2003 to November 2005, I lived in the Netherlands. I worked then as a post-doctoral researcher in the chemistry department of the Technical University of Eindhoven. I even wrote afterwards a little book called "Dutchyland" about my European stay. Since leaving Eindhoven in 2005, life got in the way of revisiting Europe: next I lived in Boston for two exhilarating and depressing years; I traveled the country for ten months, jobless and homeless, in a two-tone Toyota; and I eventually landed at a biotech company where I have been moored now for four years in San Francisco. Six years after departing the Netherlands, it was finally time for me to go back.

Two friends, Greg and Rob, have been learning German in a San Francisco adult-education night class. The two had a brief but great stay in Berlin six months ago. Greg now has a flexible work schedule permitting a long sojourn around Europe. The plan we three hatched was that Greg and Rob would spend a week in Berlin. At the end of the week, Greg would take the train to meet me in Amsterdam. Greg and I would tour Amsterdam for four days, take the train back to the German capital, and spend four more days in Berlin over the Easter holiday.

I've never flown from the west coast before directly to Europe, but I scored this time a 9-hour KLM flight from San Francisco to land at 9am in Amsterdam. In the prior month, Greg sent me a fasting plan to alleviate jet lag: basically, I had to figure out when breakfast should occur at my destination and then fast the 12-hours before that breakfast to mimic the circardian rhythm of sleep. Although I was bleary most of the first Sunday in the Netherlands, the fast did work to prevent jet lag from the nine-hour time change.

As my KLM flight landed in Amsterdam, I was surprised how quickly all-things-Dutch returned to my consciousness. I could read Dutch signs, understand the airline announcements, knew which trains to take, and how to find the right platforms. I helped the two Americans behind me in line buy tickets, and they may have been impressed by my local mad skilz. Sooner than I was ready for re-entry - just an hour after the plane touched down - I entered the lobby of the Swissotel on the Damplein in the heart of Amsterdam.

When we searched on-line for Amsterdam hotels, the Swissotel was a bit of a last resort when more promising hotels raised their rates or did not have vacancies. No heroin-fueled madness of the muraled Winston Hotel for us. Yet, despite the name of the hotel and the giant Swiss square flag handing outside, we still hadn't counted on the Swissotel being Swiss. We found out that Swiss is a great for a hotel. A cheerful chambermaid knocked three times a day to prepare the room. During the evening shift, the staff turned on the room lights and selected television music they thought would be appropriate. A bedside brochure advertised many types of specialty pillows available from the front desk. A small card listed tomorrow's weather in pictogram and temperature in centigrade. The morning crew bestowed nougat candies on the pillows and moved the more masculine hotel items like the tv remote to my nightstand, leaving the complementary women's magazines on Greg's nightstand, much to Greg's consternation. A note from Dagmar encouraged us to call the front desk if anything was amiss. In our room's spacious bathroom, a red cord ran the length of the tiled floor about four inches off the ground. An enterprising Greg pulled the cord one midnight setting off an alarm. Hilarity ensued, finishing with a concerned knock on the door. Apparently, we were staying in the mobility-challenged suite, and the cord was a safety alarm in case a wheelchair user fell over in the bathroom.

Amsterdam was much how I left it. I could somewhat remember the squares, bridges, and lanes. The old jenever shop behind the Hotel Krasnopolsky stilled served firewater alcohol in overflowing shot glasses. To drink the jenever properly, we were instructed to gulp the spirit bent over without picking up the glass. The pancake house "Pannekeuken Boven" still flipped all sorts of lunch and early-dinner pancakes. The ginger flavor pairs surprisingly well with Canadian bacon and melted Dutch cheese.

The big 3 Amsterdam museums were slammed with long lines, and I had seen all three many times before: the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rijksmuseum. Instead, Greg and I toured the FOAM museum for photography to look at a collection of New York Times photos as well as amateur pictures from the former Soviet republics. In the Monday morning Noodermarkt, we got jostled by eager shoppers. On a windswept Wednesday morning, we headed north of Amersterdam Central Station to Java island where we peered into the future of residential architecture.

Dutch cuisine does best in small measures. We scarfed classic Belgian french fries (fritz), served in a paper cone, scooped out with two-tined wooden cocktail forks. I had never before visited a Dutch fish shop (vijshandel) despite the posters of fetching women eating whole herring whole. In an alley behind the hotel, a kindly old fishmerchant cut the tails off small fish and prepared herring sandwiches smothered in onions and accompanied with cans of Heineken. I think he was amused that we were the only ones in his shop.

What doesn't travel far out of the Netherlands is food from Holland's former colony of Indonesia. The Indonesian standout is a comprehensive rijstafel, an meal of many little plates. On our first night, we had a small rijstafel off the Leidesplein at Bojo's, a little wicker restaurant I visited in 1992 and 2004. I guess I've been hitting Bojo's every decade now for three decades. The meat was gamey and a bit off, but reasonably priced. We upped the quality on our last night at the Antony Bourdain-recommended Tempoe Doloe, the finest Indonesian Restaurant in Amsterdam. Scouting Tempoe Doloe's fancy white linens, we postponed our dinner to the following night, returning with both a reservation and collared shirts. Tempoe Doloe did not disappoint: we leisurely devoured 26 amazing dishes with a gamut of spices ranging from sweet to savory to the hottest little dish I have ever eaten. A waiter ran to our table with a glass of guava juice to cool my burning throat.

I had forgotten Amsterdam's congestion. Everywhere, we almost got run down by pedestrians, bicycles, and trams. Sidewalks are narrow and often obstructed by metal bollards. Likewise, Amsterdam is much more conservative than I remembered. Absent are hipsters, piercings, and the outrageous colored hair common in San Francisco. The Dutch express their madness in architecture.

The city sleeps early, although we explored only Sunday to Wednesday. Bars are small and mostly empty after ten o'clock. At the same time, the streets had quieted from the frantic bustle of the morning and afternoon commutes. No worries about the dead night life; after a day of wandering Amsterdam, we were happy enough in our hotel room to watch a British soap called "The Syndicate."

I revered Dutch coffeeshops for social atmospheres more enlightening than alcohol-fueled bars. Yet on this trip, my beloved Rokerijen, a chain of 4 Amsterdam coffeeshops, were inexplicably closed. To make do, we visited Abraxas with its two floors and the appropriately-named Amnesia. In both cases, I didn't get my groove on. Either the music was wrong, or we were starring at a wall, or the people around us were too confusing. Oh, well, you can't always go back.

The main purpose of my Netherlands visit was a day trip to Eindhoven. For a brief 1.5 years, I lived and worked in the southern industrial town of Eindhoven, home to Philips Electronics and the famed PSV soccer team. Maybe because of Eindhoven's lack of tourist attractions, I worked alongside mostly Dutchies in a friendly but practical environment.

I took a Tuesday morning train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven. A voluble middle-aged American woman at the head of the train car explained to two Dutchies that she was revisiting Maastricht for the first time in ten years. Her halting Dutch was more courageous than my flustered language skills. As I stared at the passing Dutch countryside through the train window, I dug up memories.

Once the train stopped in Eindhoven, rote action took over. I barreled through the train station, across the boulevard to the university, and towards the chemistry building. Students surged to class. Little had changed. I flitted about the top floor, dodging vaguely familiar people, trying not to be too noticed. It is awkward to resurface six years later.

Faces recognized me in the hallway. I reported life in the United States. Many names I could not remember so I just nodded. I found my host, Michel, looking different and unshaven. In my brief afternoon, I was surprised who avoided me and who was overjoyed to say hello. The "Lab 2" manager Jolanda offered a second coffee and told me about her new love: New York City.

Our group lunched in the Kennisport, the fancy canteen on campus. Michel translated from the waitstaff that my restaurant receipt entered me in a raffle. I still couldn't figure out Dutch life. After lunch, I marched into town to the Rabobank to close out my Dutch bank account. "Too late," the Rabobank chided. In 2008, the bank closed my quiet account and transferred it to a new person in Hoek van Holland, on the other side of the country. I marched back to Michel for advice on fighting Dutch bureaucracy. It felt like old times, recalling my stalemates with the tax office, the social security office, the heating office, the post office, banks and the university. I spent a frantic hour making phone calls to Rabobanks around the country. On my return to the US, I received an e-mail from Rabobank stating that they had located the my acount-closing records and would wire me the final balance if I could fax documentation. I may have won. Still, the Nigerian promised that he would return my cashed cheque once he liquidated his oil reserves.

There's hope for Eindhoven in the unlikely guise of queer sculpture next to the Black Box building on the university grounds. An artist dredged a small pond, now full of bullrushes, to install giant floating black balls, each topped with a solar panel. When the time is right, a Buddha statue rises up from the pond, powered by the solar energy. Apparently, the Buddha got stuck going up and down. Furthermore, the dome surrounding the Buddha has shattered. Nonetheless, I laugh, laugh, laugh at the concentrated work of the university to install a Buddha with a stick up its ass rising with the sun from a man-made pond.

In the lab hallway, I met up with my former adviser for two minutes. He had just returned from Japan and rushed on to join an afternoon group meeting. Michel and I retreated for the rest of the afternoon to the city square for a biertje op de markt. It didn't take long for it to feel like old Dutch times, or perhaps that was just the alcohol. It may be hard to pop up unexpectedly for an afternoon (like a Buddha), but it is wonderful to feel welcome. Michel, thanks for the tour. Netherlands, thanks for harboring me for two years.

Four days in the Netherlands was enough. Greg and I bid farewell to the manicured Swissotel and hauled our suitcases to the train station. Amsterdam is a city of wheeled luggage, bumbling over awkward cobblestones to familiar rhythms. We rode the rails for six hours to Berlin with one change in Hilversum. At the German border, the language changed with a new crew of train conductors.

Four nights in Berlin, a city that pairs quite well with the Dutch capital. If Amsterdam is crowded, outwardly conservative, beating to specific circadian rhythms; Berlin is a sprawling, anarchic, and roaring well past dawn. In spring, central Europe is often more frigid than the coast. For our stay in Germany, the rains blew in with the cold, turning once into a spate of snow, a marvelous show for wayward San Franciscans.

All is new in Berlin due to the German bulldozers of modernity. Six years ago, I stayed a long October in my brother's Berlin apartment. Then, my brother and I exhausted the tourist sites in favor of bar crawls. I'm glad we saw so much in 2005 as on our 2012 trip, we barely saw anything ostensibly high-cultural in Berlin.

Greg took me to two art exhibitions, celebrating the famous German artist Gerhard Richter, who turned 80 this year (like my father). Two Berlin museums hosted a stupendous retrospective of Gerhard’s fifty years of creative work, ranging from his grey paintings, blurred photographic-like portraits, paintings of candles, colored mosaics, and large stacked panels of glass. Gerhard courageously makes what interests him, regardless of his expertise or curator desires. Most captivating for me are his two colorful profile portraits of girls. Most haunting is his morbid gray cycle about the killings of Oct 18, 1977.

Greg and I moved into Berlin with Rob, another San Francisco friend, now a week already acclimated to Berlin. We dropped our luggage at the Motel One, the Mitte location of a small German chain of affordable hotels, all of which feature the odd but enervating colors of turquoise and chocolate brown. In our room, I grew fond of the fish channel, a hotel television station that repeated a video of aquarium fish accompanied by ambient music. At noon, I would wake up to the fish; at dawn, I would fall asleep to the fish.

In the previous week, while I was still in the States, Greg wrote from Berlin to report bedtimes after 4am. I scoffed at such reckless behavior: while traveling, it is important to sleep early to enjoy the museums and morning markets of the big city. He was right. For our four nights in Berlin, the earliest we went to bed was 5am. Berlin just works that way. Young adults disco-nap from 5-8pm, go out for dinner at 9pm, and get ready to barhop at midnight. With so much of the city open late, we spent evenings traveling between one crowded bar and the next. Establishments overflowed at 1am. At the entrance of one packed bar, the doorman told us, "You can go in if you can fit." When we declined that firetrap invitation, a exciting customer said, "If it is too crowded, you are too old."

Berlin is a night city. Some parts of the subway run 24 hours. Bars list hours like 10pm-late. There are plenty of 24-hour florists, if you need to buy tulips at 4am. Most youth travel everywhere at night with an opened bottle of beer, a sort of security blanket. Parks are littered with broken glass.

The three of us ate heartily but not healthily. We filled our stomachs often with Berlin's dish: the doner kebab, a pita sandwich of shaved meat, hot sauce, and salad. For most of our meals, vegetables were absent. A chicken sandwich with french fries soured our delicate San Franciscan stomachs. Late one night, Rob brought in a take-out pizza. Our first afternoon, we picked up a soggy box of baklava as Berlin is a city of Turks. Still, the Germans love their potatoes and pilsners. German beer isn't exciting due to beer-purity laws forbidding additives, but the beer is of high quality and quantity.

Wandering around, recent construction blurred my memory of the German squares. I couldn't find my favorite pretzel shop on Alexanderplatz. I didn't know the way anymore to Hackeshermarkt.

Friday night and Saturday, we ventured to two clubs, Tresor and Berghaim, both once city power plants. I must now insert some dot-dot-dots, but I conclude the what was seen can not be unseen. We crashed into the real Berlin, a cartoonish dystopian nightmare of heat, darkness, bodies, and primal urges. Crowds were thick, beer was cheap, and I can't say much more about what happened lest I incriminate myself.