Red Lounge Saint

Leslie

Austin is a little darker

Austin, Texas changed: Leslie died last week. Leslie was a personality, a semi-homeless transvestite who brightened the world with a sparkle from his tiara or a swoosh of his feather boa. He was 60. Whether you enjoyed or were repulsed by his thongs, pink leisure suits for colder weather, and high heels, Leslie parted shocked bar crowds and drew photographs. He got by with odd-jobs, garnering donations for his pictures, licensing a set of refrigerator magnets that bore his likeness and his outfits, and basically did what he could. He brought in dishes at Bouldin Creek Cafe and ran for major three times. Leslie's brown hair and goatee were often blown in several directions. He had freckles in the most interesting of places.

I lived in Austin a long time ago from 2001 to 2003. For a stretch of months - it gets hazy - Ruben and I hit the bars and juke joints of 6th Street every night but Mondays, cause Mondays were slow. In our wanderings, we encountered Leslie a lot as well as several other street personalities. I made a little game of these sighting to narrow the pack down to a fantastic four of Austin's 6th Street: the dwarf who sold flowers (Ruben always thought he should be omitted), photographer Tim Pipe in his suit, the King of Sixth Street playing his bass guitar, and Leslie. Spot all four and you were guaranteed to have a good night. The dwarf and the King were easier as they had known stationary locales; Leslie and Tim Pipe moved around.

Leslie was easy to spot. Everyone knew of him, but Leslie knew few. All the new faces may have blended in for him. One night in 2003, Ruben and I spotted Leslie and one of his friends inside Club de Ville on Red River. We said hello. The friend happened to be his brother, recently out of prison. We bought both of them drinks. Leslie asked, "Where have you two been? I haven't seen you two around much." When you recognize Leslie, you know you've made it to Austin. When Leslie recognizes you, you may have been in Austin too long. Months later, I picked up stakes and moved on to the Netherlands.

Leslie died last week and a little sparkle of the city went with him. A memorial parade winded through the city with participants asked to dress a little like Leslie. I heard it was too cold for thongs so his sister opted for a tiara instead.

Now moved to San Francisco, I understand the man a bit better. Life's too short so why not be noticed. Sure, you don't have to wear a pink leisure suit, but there's a cartoon personality within you that other people want to meet. Do you want to be known for photographs, a singing voice, big hats, or furniture you make? Spend some time to find your own inner Leslie and make it your own thing. One hungover morning while I stood my neighborhood San Francisco cafe, a guy asked, "Are you the dinosaur?"

Here's to you Leslie. I'd buy you another drink if we both had the time. Instead, may your force of personality blow like dandelion blossoms to many more roaming around these fine city streets.

Energy

40-day Cycle for Renewal

I begin another forty-day cycle. These cycles attempt something new without permanent commitment. I can dive into these adventures for a change in perspective, to enlarge life, and for a bit of fun. I leave a cycle with bump in my orbit and resolve to improve.

The previous forty days of veganism took over food and exhausted the rest of me. I turn now to energy starting February 10, concluding March 20, coincidentally the first day of spring. I want more energy in my life, wish to use this energy more productively, and lastly enjoy its presence. I divide this exercise into three parts of energy in, energy out, and stasis.

Energy In

If I’m after more energy, I have to break the habits that squander it. So, no drinking alone for forty days. Friday afternoons, home from work, I sit with a glass of wine, a beer, a little whiskey, or all three. Repeat Saturday afternoon, Sunday noon. It’s the weekend, right? Trouble was, all that alcohol makes me scattered and tired. Well marinated, I fall asleep on the couch for two hours, wake up, and wonder where the early evening went. If I want to reclaim that energy, I got to forego the alcohol. Furthermore, that drinking is not about the ethanol, but the craving for a reward (I deserve it after that hard work), the altered state (time to relax), and the pause (no more concentrating on work). I need to find more constructive alternatives.

However, I’m not giving up drinking altogether. I’ve already gone on a 47-fast from alcohol to explore that route. Drinking with friends does socially lubricate for a shared experience.

For more reclamation of energy, no more frivolous internet use. Amazing how much time runs away with youtube searches and funny little videos. I don’t have a tv so the internet use is a need for passive entertainment. Although I can’t be maniacally focused all the time, instead of internet use, I could read a book or go for walk.

Energy Out

I’d like efficiently to harness all this regained energy. I need tools. Many visitors comment on my lack of stuff. Sure, I don’t own a salad spinner or stereo system, but I also don’t have storage jars, a vacuum cleaner, or baking dishes. Instead of making do, such as rigging together a tea kettle, I would like to identify useful items and go get them. My brother asks, “How do you define useful?” Any item not merely aesthetic that performs a task.

I’m scouting my apartment, noting what is missing or faulty, and composing shopping lists. I bought a wireless keyboard and mouse to make typing on a laptop more ergonomic. I’ve fixed the front door so it doesn’t creak. I need more rechargeable batteries, a drying rack that doesn’t mold, and jars for flour and salt.

Stasis

All this energy coming in and going out, I’d like to enjoy the flow. I’ll return to daily meditation, eleven minutes per day. I’ll slow more (or at least try) to watch, listen, reflect, enjoy. Perhaps my back will get better. There’s not a whole lot pressing in my life so why not enjoy this happy present? Ok, check me into the ashram.

Crossing the Line

Half Marathon through Golden Gate Park

Not another running story! Of all the sports, running may be among the most boring to break down into words. There’s no last-minute shot into the net, no ball hit out of the park, and definitely no tackle at the one-yard line. Basically, a runner puts one foot in front of the other as fast as possible. Nonetheless, I write, and run, and write about running.

Over the aggregated few long distance races I have run – three half marathons and two marathons – there are seconds in retrospect that I want back. If I could only save a minute’s time spread across a couple of races, I could smooth out some missed opportunities. I finished the 2010 Sacramento marathon at three hours, sixteen minutes, and forty-two seconds. If only I had run 43 quick seconds faster, I would have qualified for the Boston Marathon at their passing time of 3:15:59. Oh, well. Worse yet, I ran the San Francisco 2010 half marathon in 91 minutes and 53 seconds. Just eleven seconds faster and my pace time would have skated under a fleet seven minutes per mile. 11 seconds! I want those seconds back.

You see, runners rarely race against anyone else. Instead, you race against numeric time, often in 3 forms: racing to beat your personal best time for a particular distance (a PR); racing to beat a certain round number of minutes or hours such as finish in less than four hours or quicker than 100 minutes; or racing to beat a pace like seven minute miles.

This 2010 half-marathon time of 91:53 has stuck in my craw for two years. A little faster and I would have been free of that niggling 7:01 minute pace. Last Thanksgiving, Fiona asked whether I would consider running again the San Francisco half marathon in February. “Argh,” is how I answered with exasperation. Although unfinished business lingers in that race for me, I’m now two years older – almost forty – and not training hard. Not only would running faster than 91:53 mean unremitting suffering for more than an hour and half, but also I don’t know whether I can even do it.

In December, I halfheartedly registered for the race. Come January, I simultaneously went vegan and resumed practice half marathons every weekend. I followed my usual route heading to the Lower Haight, west on Page Street, into Golden Gate Park, around Stowe Lake, to the Pacific Ocean, past the bison (an omen for a lucky week), around Stowe Lake again, back out of the park, through the Haight, and home exhausted. One Sunday, Greg accompanied me on a bicycle, offering coconut water and support.

I didn’t bring a watch on these runs but I was clocking in about 1:45, much slower than the nearly 1:30 I would have to race. One week before race day, I did bring a chronometer. Too bad a full stomach made me stop three times and cut the practice race length down to a one-quarter marathon. Bad omens. Furthermore, through veganism I had lost five pounds, down to my lightest 132lbs. Where would I store energy?

Race day approached. The night before the run, I took AJ, Fiona, and Greg up to Alembic restaurant for cocktails and dinner. I had eaten two vegan sausages previously at Rosemunde. Beer is fuel, right? Before bed, the crew counseled more food. I ate a bowl of pasta.

I woke nervously. I scarfed a bagel, drank some orange juice, and jittered around the apartment. It’s somewhat crucial to shit before a race to get rid of the weight, even if the race starts – like this one – at an awful eight in the morning. I pinned to my shirt a brief message alerting medical personnel of my name, age, contact phone number, allergies, and wants. You see, I’ve been treated twice before in medical tents at the end of two races.

Map

Greg was so kind as to chauffeur us to the starting line in the midst of Golden Gate Park. I separated from Fiona and AJ to pee in the woods. I lined up at the 7-minute placard in a crowd of strangers. In just a T-shirt and shorts, I was grateful for the cold, as I run hot.

A young woman sang the National Anthem. I thought of the time ahead. Could I do it? This would be the last half marathon I would run this year, and perhaps ever. I’d either make the time of 91:42 that I wanted, or not. Still, it seemed nigh impossible, an exertion of almost every step of the way. Unspeakable suffering not just physical but the fear of failure. I had put a lot into this race. I needed to take a shit.

The bell rang. The crowd surged. We flew into the panhandle. I jackrabbited. Dammit. I’m a fortunate runner in that my legs, knees, and hips don’t give out. It’s my cardiovascular system that fails. Too fast and I wheeze. Way too fast and I gasp asthmatically. I try to run just under that cardiovascular threshold, to slow down when the wheezing commences, to slow down the steam boiler before an explosion. But what if that cardiovascular threshold is slower than my pace goal?

By mile two, I started wheezing. The race organizers were kind enough to station a clock reader under each mile flag counting off times: “fourteen ten, fourteen fifteen, fourteen twenty.” Races start usually slowly. I dodge and weave around the sluggish. At mile two, I was already at seven miles per minute.

By mile four, I felt drained. We ran by the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Trying to drink from my bottle, I inadvertently splashed coconut juice on my face. I considered stopping. Greg would be waiting in the park. Fiona and AJ would finish soon their 3km race. I could just walk over and see them, tell them that a half marathon was too much, and I would be done with running. Inexplicably, I kept going.

At mile five, we crested in the midst of the park and ran downhill to the ocean for two miles. I let my feet fall, my pace increase, and my lungs rest. A guy loudly and rhythmically breathed behind our pack, like a cartoon Darth Vader. Other runners smiled.

Chart

We hit the ocean at mile 7, barely over halfway done. A woman on the sideline yelled, “Stay in this race. The hard part is just starting. Focus.” She saved me. Focus.

The problem with this San Francisco Half Marathon is that miles seven through thirteen are one straight stretch of the Great Highway. With only one turnaround, the mind plays tricks with the long road. Mile markers don’t come fast enough, and when they do, it’s not the one you expected. You think mile ten, but the sign disappointingly says only nine. There’s the sound of the ocean, but the sun often beats down incessantly.

The clock reader at mile seven intoned something like forty-eight minute and thirty seconds. I was ahead, but I wasn’t going to make it. My head was down, my lungs were tired, and my spirit knew the hardest was upon me. I did something I’ve never done before in a race: I slowed down. Furthermore, I switched my running style, clenching my thighs so that the glutes were doing the work. My breathing calmed; I stopped wheezing.

I saw the lead runner coming back at us, escorted by a motorcycle brigade. I made the turn, ran past the ten-mile marker, and realized that I had perhaps a minute of cushion. I could do this, maybe. It’s only 13.1 total miles. Usually, I pick a point to exhaust myself like the last mile. This race, I would just cruise at the same pace through to the finish.

At almost thirteen miles, we turned back into the park and headed uphill. Agony. I hyperventilated. Yet, I saw the finish arch and the magnificent clock brilliantly ticking off 1:29:30. Greg, AJ, and Fiona cheered from the sideline.

I crossed the line just over 1:30:02 clock time (my time would be less, as I it took me a while to cross the starting line). I didn’t die. The trio pushed water and a banana on me. I grabbed a commemorative T-shirt – I have so many race shirts. We walked through the park, into the Sunset District, and to the car.

Later that day, I looked up my race time:

1:29:43, position 258 out of 5008 finishers, roughly top 5%, 43rd of 406 men aged 35-39, and

a pace of 6:53 per mile.

I had done it. I don’t know how. Not only had I beat my goal time of 1:29:42 by two minutes but also I clocked under the round 90 minutes. I glowed for days. All those long Sunday afternoons, all those leg exercises, all that preparation had been worth it. I erased the previous near miss of 11 seconds.

Running can be exciting because your time is enshrined for eternity. You can look up records for past years:

On this day of February 5, 2012, I, Steve Dudek, ran a half marathon in 89 minutes 43 seconds at a pace of 6:53 per mile, faster than seven minutes per mile. That record will not be erased. Furthermore, I’m done. I don’t plan ever to run a half marathon faster than 89:43. It’s more than enough. I don’t want to run faster. While filled with joy, I also suffer a tinge of melancholy, knowing that I had reached my peak and wonder then what other summits I may look forward to climb.

Still, 89 minutes is fast for an old man like me. Much success!

Vegan Well Done

Meeting Meat

Barley soup again for lunch? This breakfast cereal is so dry. Argh, another soy milk latte, coming right up. No, I can’t it that doughnut – I don’t know what’s in it.

I've been vegan for forty days, starting at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. Odd that vegan is classified grammatically as a state of being instead of an action verb, used like "eating vegan" or "having veganism." Nope, I'm vegan, or even I’m a vegan, a professional-sounding attribute that could either be a job title or resume builder. Forty days, however, hardly merits for me the position of Vegan Level 1.

Friends ask, "How's veganism?" as if my diet is a passing cloud or foul mood. My first vegan week required dedicated substitutions. From Rainbow Grocery, I bought odd vegan sticks of buttery-like product. I stockpiled nuts. I made friends with soy milk. I carefully inspected ingredient lists to avoid the landmines (rather meatmines) of whey, gelatin, and honey.

Mostly, veganism has not been a problem. I cook most of my dinners, bestowing control over modifying recipes or changing menus. Eggs? I think the recipe meant flax seeds. I've experimented with nutritional yeast, an ochre dust that is supposed to resemble powdered parmesan - it's doesn't. I ground up dates for a honey substitute. I cut seaweed wrappers to restore unami flavor.

In spite of all these new food additions, my diet is framed more by lack than by presence. At work, I can snack on only a few items like peanut Clif Bars or hummus and chips. My late-night repast is always the same: nut butter on toast. My lunch at work rotates between 3 types of Amy’s cans: vegan chili, lentils, or barley soup. If food is not the focus of your life, you get used to shoveling down anything just to cure hunger and move on with the day. My plant food book counsels, “If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, you are not hungry.” Perhaps I put up with boring foods better than most dieters.

The harder part has been dining out with others. Restaurants don't understand veganism. The Singaporean place offers two vegan dishes, Sayor Lodeh and string beans, both of which I now know far too well. The French-themed cafe has nothing I can eat. I avoid the sushi place because even vegetable tempura contains evil egg batter. Planning ahead for a particular fancy restaurant, I ate alone beforehand and then snacked on cocktails and a bowl of roast shishito peppers.

Still, veganity is far easier in San Francisco than most US cities. Close to my apartment, there are 3 exclusively-vegan restaurants: Japanese Cha-ya, Mexican Gracias Madre, and pan-Asian Loving Hut. Even the sausage empire Rosemunde offers two tasty vegan sausages (no casing!) and an occasional third vegan special. These kinds of restaurants make a world of difference as vegans suffer most from lack of choice.

For a brief while, I craved meats. Like most Americans, I like my hamburgers. Then I hungered for dairy, especially the richness of cheese. Even that longing has ebbed. My palate misses fats and oils. I wish there were greasy vegan diners. I've dabbled with vegan baking. Directed by outlandish recipes, I added a can of black beans to moisten brownies, whipped tofu with cocoa to make a chocolate mousse, and poured pumpkin puree into flour to make a vegetable bread. It is possible to bake vegan, but the possibilities are more limited.

Instead of fat, I indulge in smugness. I pop up to ask, “is it vegan?” I chide others for their wanton animal cruelty. I gasp at the employees that dive into the tub of cottage cheese. I shine my mock halo and put on my monk’s robe.

But at the end, the vegan diet has settled into no big deal. I plan, I cook, I eat, I feel full.

Still, it has been an amazing 40 days of testing other people's conceptions of food, diet, and health. Many thought I would waste away. Others thought I'd quickly give into sweet meat temptation. I have lost weight, and I did not weigh much to begin with. Veganism coupled with twice-weekly gym work-outs and Sunday half-marathons has thinned me down to 135 lbs. I don't look thinner, just leaner and more muscular. I try to supplement my solid calories with beer fuel. I'm perhaps in the best shape of my life, better than my strength-crazed, gluttonous college years. Last Sunday, I ran a fleet 89-minute half-marathon.

Tonight, I conclude forty days of veganism. I thought I would scarf at midnight a symbolic cupcake, a dessert I craved. Yet, the cravings are gone. Some suggest a giant steak to break the meat fast. I never ate much meat. One argued that I’m not a “real” vegan if I’m just dabbling. I am just dabbling – that’s the point. In forty days, I cooked in new ways, learned more about nutrition, exposed others to meatless meals, dined at restaurant new to me, and made my days perhaps more difficult, but also more interesting.

I return to honey, dairy, even meat. As my diet expands, I hope still to keep plants at the center and meats as a luxury. Current research hints that we may be deluding ourselves with a protein-packed, Atkin’s-style diet.

I raise my glass to creamy milk; here’s to rich chocolate cake; here’s to the hamburger. Do any of you want a jar of nutritional yeast? I don’t think I’ll be needing it much longer.

Vegan

40 Days of Kelp

Last year, friends introduced me to 40-day personal cycles. Pick someone you wish to work on, and try it out for forty days: examples include swim daily, call an old friend each day, meditate, or give something away daily. Forty days is long enough to establish a rhythm, but short enough that your life is not irreparably changed for years unless you want it to. Last Lent, I gave up alcohol. Much suffering ensued.

January 1 heralded a new year, 2012. I became vegan. As my wont, I knew little about what I had proposed. Veganism sounded extreme, exotic, ascetic, and yet feasible. Research (to the interwebs!) elucidated the vegan edicts: no meat, no fish, no animal products like Worchestershire sauce, no milk, no cheese, no whey, not even honey. Bees should not be oppressed! I do not plan to adhere to the full vegan commitments of no silk, no leather, no wool. Vegans have trouble buying shoes.

I already cook vegetarian so the no meat restriction is not difficult at home. Still, I consume a lot of butter, milk, and cheese so my menu planning has become more challenging and restrictive. Restaurants are either disastrous or impossible. For example, the local yuppie cafe near work (Cafe Borrone) offers no possibilities as their vegetarian options, like salads, feature cheese.

As 2011 winded down, I savored the rest of my butter, gave away three eggs, and stocked up on nuts and berries: bags of dried fruit, peanut butter, almond butter, rye bread. Snacks prevent ravenous attacks of non-vegan eating. Fortunately, most breads are vegan, including bagels. A lot of chocolate is vegan as milk has often been replaced by soy lechitin; the soy product has a longer shelf-life than milk. As protocol, I read ingredient lists carefully; if I don't see the verboten words of honey, milk, cheese, dead baby, or whey, then I can eat the product. Some warn me that this wine may be filtered over animal bones or that beer uses scant fish oils to clarify, but I'm currently not willing to do all that research on unlisted ingredients.

Much of veganism just requires swaps. I drink cappucinos with soy milk. Strangely, coffee shops charge more for soy milk. I eat vegan butter, some sort of solidified oil. I have yet to venture into vegan cheeses, but I have found bacon substitutes that are vaguely appealing. Baked goods are problematic. I don't look anymore at desserts. I can bake at home fairly tasty chocolate cookies by leaving out the egg and adding in vegan butter.

Lunch I eat mainly at work, rotating through the 3 Amy's-brand cans of vegan chili, vegan barley soup, and vegan lentils. Dinner, I eat a lot of vegetables at home accompanied by starches like rice or bread. Veganism suffers from monotony (chili, again, ug) for the sake of sustenance, yet my perseverance can beat boredom. Food just may not be that exciting this January. I can't eat out much anymore, as most standard restaurant have either none or one lame vegan option (pita!). As a treat, I venture to the few "safe" restaurants, mostly vegetarian-friendly Asian restaurants not known for dairy to have dishes like Indian curries and vegetarian sushi. I'm looking forward to a vegan sausage with beer at Rosemunde and the vegan pizza at Amici's.

In spite of only vegetables, I have energy. I run a half marathon every Sunday afternoon. I Serbicize twice a week at the gym. I am losing weight, perhaps too much. I've dropped from 140lbs. down to 135lbs. with even some more to go. I should buy more skinny jeans as they are likely to be regular for me. I've gone from human physique to elfin. I hunger most of the time for salt and fat. My digestion rumbles than usual, although my fear of losing meat-digesting enzymes has been debunked (does not happen in 40 days).

So why veganism? Really, the best answer is why not? Life is too short not to try out alternate food regimens, as long as they are healthy. I smile smugly over cruelty-free eating. During this slow January month, I have something new to focus upon - my diet and everything I now do without - while gaining a new, annoying topic of conversation with friends and co-workers. I'm eager to see how my body reacts to this biodiesel.

Nonetheless, I'm quite looking forward to February 10th with a forbidden cheeseburger.

Resolute 2012

The End of the World

Another year ends, a fresh year begins. Last year, I jotted down resolutions for 2011 as bullet-point tasks: build a quonset, go to a new festival, stay at two national parks. I'm habituated to action lists as I have been working too long at a company that demands concise deliverables. A resolution list makes it easy for me to score the year as a success or failure, but I also drown in all the tasks. For this coming year, I venture into more nebulous territory of "intentions."

    Family

2012 bodes auspicious for the Dudek clan:

40: The younger three each turn forty. (Sept 25)
50: Mom and Dad celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. (June 20)
75: Mother turns seventy-five. (Jan 21)
80: Father turns eighty. (Oct 15)

Celebrate. 2012 shall be the year to celebrate the family. Two brothers are tenured professors. We collectively are not likely to have more children (Mother probably laments only two grandchildren from four sons). In 2011, I did not do so well at getting home. I'd like in the coming year to visit my parents in warming spring and later fly back to surprise my father on October 15 for his eightieth birthday. I could celebrate 40 with my brothers, but that is less likely to happen. Instead, I want to plan better to see John and Ray together at some point, probably in March at the San Diego ACS meeting. I'll continue to call home every weekend; the short calls make me as happy as Mom and Dad.

    Spirit

Relax. I'm anxiously high-strung, always on the move. Yet, why? I don't have to rush for anything anymore. It would be great to finally relax, walk 20% slower, and shed the growing malcontent. Some combination of yoga, meditation, and a lighter calender may promote greater presence. In turn, I'd like to be more grateful for what I have, where I live, the job I work, and the marvelous people around me.

    Health

Keep active. Keep Serbicizing, keep stretching, keep running. I plan to run the half marathon through Golden Gate Park in February, but I don't foresee another run after that. Instead, I finally want to swim and bike. I'd like to get back to yoga, but with the right instructor who could help open my back. I'll continue to cut down on meats, fats, and alcohol. All three debaucheries are fine, but for special occasions. Forty days of veganism starts January First.

    Work

Branch. 2012 is the year of great career decisions. Ahead, I see three roads. One, I'd like to look locally in the first half of next year for other work and see whether I'd be better suited at another company. Two, I would like to see whether this company rights its sinking ship, and if it does, I want to stay on, focusing on personal contentment. Three, if neither this job nor another one looks promising, then the open road may call at the end of 2012. If I plan to travel long and far, I'll have to make plans this coming summer to wind down my operation in California. Regardless of the road ahead, I'd like to use the flexibility and competency at this current job to pursue hobbies, distractions, and travel adventures while staying engaged at work and reasonably at peace. I've been angry here for too long, and I would like to cleanse this foulness.

    Art

New projects. My current artistic inspiration wanes. There may still be a last coat to make, but I may be done with light-up clothing for a little while. As I break away, I'd like to focus on new endeavors: photography? writing? kinetic sculpture? My web site needs updating so I should learn some web publishing. I'll think hard about building hexaquonsets with a tower.

    San Francisco

Balance. I got to know you, San Francisco, quite well in 2011. I missed hardly a festival, party, or outing. Almost all weekdays were spent slogging at work with very few trips; weekends were out in San Francisco until the small hours of the morning at one unexpected party after another. I have seen a lot of nightlife. In 2012, I don't need to attend all the regularly-scheduled events. I would like to get away to see more of California's magnificence. Nonetheless, 2012 may be my last year in San Francisco, and I would like to bring closure (even if I do stay) to the city by checking out the remaining tourist sites I have yet to visit.

    Travel

Go away. It is about time I spend my vacation days. Greg is eager to explore the world. I would like to visit at least two National Parks, especially Crater Lake and Sequoia. I want to check out Portland, go back to Amsterdam, visit Toronto, see another Hawaiian island, tour Aztec ruins, and attend the Kentucky Derby. I can take time off from work without pay, but I should first calculate how much time I can afford to take.

There's a surprisingly lot of stuff that I don't need much to worry about, as they do well on their own: my apartment, furniture, the car, technological widgets, money, health, diet, my current job.

2011

A Quiet Year in Review

2011 ends with a whimper, not a bang. I find myself late December on a lonely day at work.

This has been the year of the dying company. At the end of 2010, the firm where I work raised over $200 million through an IPO with much fanfare and optimism. Employees priced Ferrari's and dreamt about new homes. In 2011, the company's revenue did not line up with its burn rate. Something had to give to prevent looming bankruptcy. So the company suddenly fired 30% of the workforce, about 130 people, and 5 out of 12 in the group in which I worked. I was spared. Fortunately? Severance for the departed does not run out until almost February 2012. It is too soon to know historically whether leaving will be worse than staying. Further work reorganizations after the lay-offs followed by many good people exiting on their own have future sapped my morale. In the downturn of 2011, the company changed from a glorious career to just another ornery job, one at which I don't know how much longer I am staying.

Despite the recession, 2011 was a personal year of stability. In the middle of the year, I got promoted at work. I didn't move San Francisco apartments, rather nested some more in the Hacienda with new art projects pinned to the wall and the purchase of a few remaining home accoutrements. I put up with the regular work commute, dividing transporation between the car and taking my bike half the time on the train to work. The old 1998 Toyota keeps running, although anxious December rumblings required a tune-up.

My health stayed well. It has been the year of the bad back, a somewhat recent phenomenon since my arrival in San Francisco (2008). This year, I explored chiropractic care for which AJ thankfully disuaded me. I laid physical therapy to rest and started weekly chair massages. The back is not getting better, although its status is hard to tell.

I traveled outside California infrequently, but mostly to spots I already knew, either for festivals or friends. I returned to Burning Man for a fun week in September, but with a fancy new quonset hut and a large group of people. In June, I went back to the Mutek music festival in Montreal and from there continued my triangle to Boston for hello's to Mom, Dad, John, and Rob and on to New York City. I spent my first time ever in Tennessee in May for the Beltane Festival. Alyson got sick of phone messages, so I saw her for a quick 36-hour stay in Austin for a rather mild August Saturday. On a similarly short journey, John and I flew to Los Angeles in December to check out the sprawling metropolis; twas grand, but I'm not swayed to move to LA. Except for Montreal, I did not make it out of the country this year.

    Jan: CA, NV (skiing)
    Feb:
    Mar:
    Apr: TN
    May:
    Jun: Montreal, MA, NY
    Jul:
    Aug: TX
    Sep:
    Oct:
    Nov:
    Dec:

My somewhat traumatic finish to the Sacramento marathon in December 2010 put me off running. I shelved any running until November this year at which point a turkey trot in San Jose spurred me to hustle again. At a happy 6:47 per mile, I finished 130th out of 6025. This Turkey Trot was the only race I ran in 2011. I intended this year to learn how to swim for a triathlon, but I never made it into a pool. Jeremy and I did ride three times in the fall the 36 miles from San Francisco to work. I yoga'd just once. Instead, I became a fervent regular at the twice-weekly work Serbicize, an 80-minute boot camp of exercises that pushed me into my best shape. Come winter with snows the highest in many a season, I skiied three weekends with AJ, Fiona, and crew. We suffered a horrible night in a car, stuck in a drift on a mountain pass. But there were good memories like the deathly Quail's Face bowl and skiing from the Homewood slopes to our cabin past bears.

For the forty-seven days of Lent, I gave up drinking. I needed a break from alcohol and the attendant hangovers and long nights. Through the experiment, I learned how much alcohol fuels San Francisco (and most cities). Drinking and not-drinking, however, are not that different.

It wasn't much a year for family. I stayed with my parents for 3 days in June, saw brother John for a day's wander through Boston. I wish all the Dudeks well, but I'm these years I'm going home less and less. We will reconnect some day, I hope.

Ruben finished his History doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin after 15 years of study. Sadly, Dr. Martinez and Eleanor parted ways (temporarily, I hope).

2011 was the year of two people.

San Francisco. I did not travel much because I like home. I spent much of the year exploring San Francisco, getting to know its rhythms, and enjoying its festivals. I'm not a regular anywhere in particular, but more people recognize me than in the past. I like to live in San Francisco as if I'm leaving next year - maybe I will, but nothing would compare to San Francisco's charm, creativity, passion, and play.

Greg Brown. Gosh, a boyfriend. How novel. We met at a party on the end of July, and have been together since. Miraculous. He's cute, smart, thoughtful, even age-appropriate. I'm learning a lot about myself, relationships, and myriad things I have to work on. I struggle with loneliness, but worry about commitments. We push on together into 2012.

Birthday

On Sunday, I turn 39. This number feels ancient, as I no longer can call myself young. Next year’s triumphant 40 may feel more reasonable. That round zero resets a clock. For a youth-obsessed thirty-nine year old like myself, aging can be problematic.

I heard an acronym today at lunch: FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out. One’s thirties is a critical period of life when one’s career solidifies, promotions occur, one gets married, and one has all the kids one is going to have. Everything happens in this decade, and if one misses all these opportunities, well – those chances are not coming again. I say “one,” when I really mean some of my friends. I say “one,” and ask shouldn’t this have happened to me as well? Has the boat sailed away from the dock?

Instead, I have chosen a different, slower, scenic, and curved path. My shyness with high school followed by conservatism in college may have stunted my development. I’m a late bloomer, still going to bars and concerts well into my late thirties. Only recently have I contemplated settling down. However, as I watch my contemporaries face difficult marriages and constrictive parenting, I keep my head in the clouds.

I used to worry that I had not done enough to merit the age I had marked. Should I have had a world tour by thirty? Oh, wait, I did. Now in San Francisco I find – no, planned carefully – a happy career, a strong sense of self, many creative endeavors, and a cadre of friends. 39 sounds quite reasonable to me. I would not trade away all the experiences, some more dull and others more exciting, that got me here. My thirties have been truly grand.

So on Sunday, I shall wake late to make a round of phone calls. I will ring my dear parents and thank them heartily for my birth. I remember long ago a red cake for S, a blue cake for J, and a green cake for R. Mom and Dad gave up so much and did so well for us. Afterwards, I will call my two brothers to wish them the happiest of birthdays. Their birthdates are quite hard to forget. Thanks everyone for making these moments so wonderful. I owe you birthday gifts!

Burning Man 2011

The Year that Worked

Typing away in the local laundromat, I listen to the churn of the laundry machine as it strains to separate dust from a jumpsuit, carpet, and odd clothes. Last weekend, I unfurled a tent in the back driveway of the apartment and gave the hose to the tent and fly. A river of gray flowed into the driveway drain. Inside, I unbent twisted wire and checked dusty electronics. The Playa is hard on materials.

Burning Man has ended. I survived.

This was the year that worked. The unruly weather can dictate much of the tone of the festival. 2011 cooperated with hot days, warmish nights under new moon’s darkness, still winds, and no rain. Creaky quonsets and dubious domes were not tested this year by high winds and torrents of gravel.

What feels like a month ago, I departed San Francisco on as sunny Saturday afternoon in a car full of bins and baggage. I spent a refreshing night with Ruben in Sacramento. We holed up in a British pub listening to a band with just a guitarist and an upright bassist. The next morning, Sunday, I departed Sacramento just before noon. I drove east to Reno and opened a storage locker there, retrieving a dusty bicycle and fistfuls of rebar. Reno’s hot and dry portended a scorching week ahead. Arrival on the Playa with the Sunday sunset took four hours of standstill waiting in a line of cars. The crowd of us surreptitiously drank Tecate as the line of vehicles crept forward to the guard towers.

A week later, I left Black Rock City on the dreaded Exodus Monday. I thought a still dark, 5 a.m. departure would shorten the exit line, but I still waited a very tired four hours to reach the main road. I retraced my steps back into the world. I dropped off a bicycle and rebar in Reno at the storage shed co-conspirator Junaid had already unlocked. Only when I hit the pass over the Sierra Mountains did extreme tiredness flatten me. I pulled over at a highway rest stop for a deserved interminable sleep in the car. I landfalled in San Francisco at 8 p.m., fifteen long hours after I had left the desert.

Nonetheless, Burning Man 2011 was quite a memorable year. I often gauge the overall experience by my willingness to return. I percolate now with grand schemes for the next Burn: bigger, faster, better. Although I can’t recount all of my week in the desert, I have selected below ten moments that shaped this Burn.

1. Quonset

Two years ago when I visited Tom and John’s encampment on the Playa, I was enthralled by their shade structure. They built an open quonset while the popularity trended towards the hexayurt, a hexagonal-shaped room built out of styrofoam panels and tape. Unfortunately, hexayurts so sequester occupants from the rest of the city that the denizens could have instead rented a hotel room in Reno.

Although I enjoyed the shade of Tom and John’s quonsets, such construction was far more complicated than my skills. I had never put together something so massive. However, this past summer Tom wrote out for me the manifest for Quonset supplies. I bought twelve pieces of electrical PVC conduit, a 20’x20’ square of agricultural shade netting, and a bag of grommets.

With Tom and John’s help on the Playa, the quonset went up in a couple of hours on Monday morning. The rest of the camp probably didn’t like my jackhammering at sunrise with a pneumatic drill, but rising heat and a need for shade impelled me to build before I wilted.

Throughout the week, I had a home. I put a tent under one end of the quonset, strung two strands of Christmas lights through the roof, and unfurled a large army cot for sitting, napping, and storage. I had space to invite folks over for cocktails.

Inspired, I want more next year. Tom calls me the evangelical John-the-Baptiste of quonsets. I’d like to put down a carpet (from a truck cover), build a more colorful roof, and install better lighting. I can expand: I’ll build a two-story, hexagonal gazebo and lay six quonsets in a star pattern around this tower. Will be epic.

2. Camping with Tom and John

Burning Man is a great way to reconnect with old friends. I’ve camped many years with crews from Boston, New York, and Austin. Trouble is, I no longer live in any of those cities. This time, I wanted neighbors on the Playa with whom I could grow throughout the rest of the year.

It was decadent camping next to Tom and John. These two San Franciscans rolled up in a pick-up truck filled with a 4-piece sectional sofa. They helped me set up camp, poked me late at night for adventures around the Playa, and made sure I was adequately fed and watered. They balance keeping their shit together and knowing when to let it all hang out. Tom fixed a flat bicycle tire as John collapsed on a chair after another sunrise on the Playa.

3. Sailing the Dinghy with a crew of 7

Will visited during the Saturday evening sunset. He usually is busy fixing the many solar panels that power camps like Comfort and Joy, but he asked whether I was free that evening. With a crew of seven, he wanted to drop acid, jump into a boat, and sail the Deep Playa. Although I only knew Will of the other six, I jumped at the opportunity.

Just after dark, a wizened chaperone distributed our wares along with a supply of valium in case our nerves got too frayed. We boarded our dinghy and set sail. The desert does not have water, so the craft was actually a modified car made to look more like a boat. Instead of a sail, we steered by pilot’s wheel, brake, and throttle. Dangling overhead Christmas lights provided ambiance and insurance that we wouldn’t get rammed on the waters.

We sailed to the deepest of playa quite near the trash fence. We dropped anchor, disembarked, and awaited hallucinations. The Man burned. One of the group wondered whether she was dying. I was dressed – as one should be – as an electrodinosaur. Will and I tromped off from the boat to fish from a pier. We caught nothing except for gummi bears, goldfish, and good cheer.

Despite my frequent anxious wish to be elsewhere else, it was a profound evening. The boat’s isolation in the desert shipwrecked me with crew and our island.

Our band of seven reacted in different ways much like those on Gilligan’s Island: some of us were catatonic, others fearful, some inquisitive, and others tired. Perhaps it’s my personality, but I desired adventure. The boat couldn’t go fast enough. Lights couldn’t be bright enough. People couldn’t be warmer. Roar, roar, roar was the mantra of this dinosaur.

4. Dinosaur on the Willow Tree

When we finally hauled in the anchor, the dinghy sailed onward to the geographic 2 o’clock corner. We headed to an ominous and loud dance camp. I suggested shore leave to greet the natives, but the crew clung fearful in our lifeboat. We avoided the dance camps and instead explored an archipelago of art until hunger and tiredness consumed us. It was time to head back, but what time was it? I posited the game of “What time does it feel like?” Will won with 1:47am.

We docked back at the 7:00 and D home base of Solar Snow Koan. The crew foraged in their tents for food and warmth. I knew my adventures on the ship were done. Still, the night was young. What to do at three in the morning? I did what I usually do: I hopped a bike and road out to find the world.

After some wavering on two wheels, I chartered my course of action: I would visit the two pieces of art that spoke to me earlier in the week. Since these two works lay on the opposite plazas of 9:00 and 3:00, I would have adventures travelling between. So I paid my respects to the glittering Gherkin at 9:00 and then biked across the desert to the 3:00 plaza. Georgie Boy was sadly broken.

Back on the Esplanade, looking out towards the Temple, I started to take it all in: what does this mean? What’s my role here? What did I learn? What should I be doing?

I jumped back on the bike and drifted from object to object. I sampled the atmosphere of each, looked around, and then rode onward to the next shiny thing. Perhaps I was looking for a new home.

I headed towards the Willow Tree. This two-story sculpture has trellised roots and trunk painted a white that resembles bone. Pendulous leafy branches glowed with colored LEDs. All week, I had stopped by the tree many times at night and day. Often, I would spot a maverick or two climbing up into the branches.

As I watched, a rather attractive woman descended slowly from the canopy to the floor. I wouldn’t get off my bike as it allowed a quick getaway. “Screw this,” I thought, as I pitched the bike aside. “It’s my turn to climb.”

Four in the morning. On a bit of LSD. Out in the Nevada desert. I dismounted the bike and placed the kickstand (thanks Linh). Once on the willow tree, my feet fit surprisingly well into the trunk. In no time at all, I had ascended to a perch on the main branch. I surveyed the Esplanade and all the Playa below. Such quiet reverie.

“Sexy dinosaur…”
“Sexy dinosaur!”

Oh, wait, that’s me. Below me dangled my green tail with a train of twenty lights. On the ground below, a fetching lass yelled up at me. I roared back at her. She asked for the call of a stegosaurus (roar-roar), then a brontosaurus (rooooar), and finally a pterodactyl (screech-screech).

I climbed down the tree to meet a posse of five-or-so of the most beautiful people. They wanted to know where I was from. Pangea? She wanted to hump the dinosaur. It was inspiring and powerful to find someone instantly enraptured by everything you are. To be gotten, to be understood. A guy enquired if I made stuff for the runway. “Runway? No, I’m just a chemist.” They asked, “Where to next?”

Argh, every Burning Man, I miss an opportunity for a connection. I’ve longed for a set of fun, shiny people with whom I can frolic the Playa. This new group was the opposite of the somber boat in which I sailed earlier that evening. It was 4am. I had to packing up the next day. It had already been a full night. Sadly, sadly, sadly, I demurred and road off into the sunset. Some day, some night, my joy will come.

5. Stop Bass Couch

Burning Man promotes “Free Expression,” but I rarely see extreme forms of it, until the Bass Couch stopped. Earlier on, my Thursday night had crashed because of dead dinosaur batteries and a drunken posse straggling home towards more alcohol. I bicycled unaccompanied back to camp at 1am for a costume change and a fresh start. I was jittery and lost, combing through my tent in search of treasure. Neighboring and extraordinary soul John exhorted and wailed and waited. Like Clark Kent, I quick-change removed a dinosaur to put on Max from “Where the Wild Things Are.”

A small crew of us bicycled out to dance for a San Francisco-based DJ collective called Dirtybird. Destination, however, was a fucking-far 2:00 and K, at the other end of the world. Fortunately, we had bicycles. LSD had hit and I found myself on the ride both quiet and disoriented. Tom, with a brilliant crown and a bright front bicycle wheel, shepherded me much like a sheepdog wrangles a lonely sheep.

Circling the K street, we pedaled past dark camps to emerge on the 2:00 edge at a small disco camp called Bass Couch. With a hundred people under the desert night sky, it was hopping to thump, thump, thump music. Next: hours of dancing and screaming and beer-drinking beer and profundities.

Hark, a shocking moment. A dark fellow in sunglasses (nighttime!) and mohawk strutted through the dance floor, dragging a beach chair. The DJ’s at Bass Couch spun on top of a small elevated stage. The mohawk guy set his beach chair in the middle of the dance floor, about ten feet (centered) from the stage. He sat down and lifted up on a metal pole a regulation red-and-white Stop sign to face the DJs. He didn’t move or even tap his feet. He just glowered at the stage.

I initially found the confrontation funny. Would the party survive? Would I survive? Later, I found the Stop sign unnerving. I made an excuse to find a bathroom, any reason to leave. Others departed too. Does this guy go from dance floor to dance floor stopping music?

When I returned to Bass Couch, the mohawk fellow with the Stop sign had left. I asked how the encountered ended. To my dismay, nobody noticed the transition. What? One of the most confrontational events I have ever seen on the Playa? Not noticed?

6. The Great Quentini Hut

Early in the week, I took a mid-afternoon solo bike ride to photograph the art out on the Playa. I came across a desolate red hut. Cut-up milk bottles flapped over the circular building. I climbed up a tall ramp and into the hut. Portholes looked out into the desert. Interesting. Sort of. I exited and rode on.

Patrick, and then Tom, took me back on two different evenings to this nondescript hut. I didn’t realize that the hut had drama. Beneath each porthole hung a doll’s body that a viewer could control from outside the hut. Basically, you stick your face into a hole and control underneath your head a miniature set of arms and legs like a marionette.

Interrogating the dolls, Patrick managed creepily to take off the shirt of one doll and removed the stuffing within, much to comical screeching of the man operating the doll. On a different night, Tom managed to pull one of the little legs into his mouth and licked the rest of the doll’s body. Perhaps the artist did not intend either child sodomy or autofellatio, but both effects were the illogical disgusting conclusions of the art piece. I should bleach my eyes.

I was floored to learn that this wondrous hut was built by the Great Quentini, an Philadephian artist whom I had admired for many years at the Playa del Fuego regional burns in nearby Delaware. Back then, Quentin had built a suit with a black dropcloth in which he operated a doll beneath his wild-looking head. After such success with that costume, he democratized the hilarity of marionette for this hut where everyone can feel what it is like to operate an insane homunculus.

7. Georgie Boy

Patrick announced that his favorite art installation was “Georgie Boy.” I was intrigued, but the art was so far away from our home bases on the 7:30 spoke. Thursday evening our small group headed to Georgie Boy away from the embers of the New York part of the CORE (Circle of Regional Effigies) burn. We bee-lined across the Playa to the center of the 3:00 Plaza. In middle, we found Patrick’s favorite art installation.

It is pretty easy to see big and burning in Black Rock City. Groups vie with each other to build giant, flaming contraptions. Spinning, shooting, sparkling, motoring. For connoisseurs like ourselves, excellence appears in the unique.

Georgie Boy was an oblong box about the size of trailer. Within its diorama, animatronics of an older man in a bathrobe cradled a glass of brandy as he lay on a couch. He faced a small dog that cradled the receiver of a Princess phone. The audience, us, pressed a red button that set a dial in motion. Like a roulette wheel, a lighted section slowly halted on a theme like “Crying Jags,” or “Dosed.” Once set, the theme cued up a spoken set piece with animatronic motion between the two characters of Georgie Boy and the dog. Four dancing rats filled out a chorus while two malleable masks added color.

Listening to the audio vignettes, we learned that Georgie Boy is a retired gay actor holed up in a Reno hotel room. He reminisces over the old glory days while his dog friend yells at his overblown memories. The two characters make fun of each other, and in turn make fun of the stunned audience. As the conversation is animatronic, Georgie Boy keeps going long after you have gone to bed.

This is a work of colossal heft, a difficult mastering of animatronics, sets, voice-overs, humor, lighting, and vision. Who does this? Why? Why bring a Reno hotel room to life out in the desert?

Analyzing what would be required to make Georgie Boy, we suspected a large construction crew and a huge amount of pot smoking. One absurd idea would have to get layered on the next absurd idea until Georgie Boy got built. On Saturday afternoon, I cleared up my misconceptions by talking to the artist. Georgie Boy was mostly the vision of one guy with the help of many. This was the installation’s last stop; after Burning Man, the set would be taken apart and salvaged. The artist did the voices of both characters and probably wrote the whole script. Amazing.

8. Presence and Radical Honesty

With the hot days on the Playa and long benders at night, it can be challenging to make time for the many workshops that happen all the time at Burning Man. I aimed for one workshop per day, and ended up about 50% successful. Of the bunch, two workshops stick out.

One afternoon under an open parachute tent, I spent two hours with a group of about twenty to work on Presence. A wonderful instructor first led us through meditations to ground us in our surroundings and thoughts. Next, I paired up, one-after-another, with about half of the group. For some exercises, we just gazed into our partner’s eyes. For other exercises, the questioning partner repeatedly asked, “What excites you?” or “What do you find challenging?” while the answering partner spontaneously volleyed back answers.

We paired up with enough of the group that I wasn’t always partnered with someone I found instantly attractive. Yet each time, there was a strong connection. During one role-play exercise, I broke down when I had to role-play talking to someone with whom I had unfinished business. I got to say goodbye to one Greg and hello to another. Our instructor noted that Presence is powerful. Becoming fully yourself gives space to everyone around you to become fully him or herself. At the end of the two hours, I felt drained, relaxed, connected, and present.

The following day, I attended a larger workshop on radical honesty. The group was too big to feel as intense as with the workshop on Presence. We paired up with partners to work on communication. I found valuable an exercise in which partners said, “I notice…” and then “I assume…” such as “I notice a white streak above your eye, and I assume you are wearing sunscreen.” These twined statements help separate facts from theory, making more apparent the assumptions the mind makes. Furthermore, communicating these noticings and assumptions to a partner vocalizes in a neutral way your apparent thought patterns. Such methodology could be helpful to resolve conflict: “I notice that you are quietly fidgeting,” and “I assume that you are angry at me.”

9. Catching up with Amanda for Horse Burn

There are nights when you want no more Burning Man, when you need to sequester yourself in a quiet tent, put on Enya, and think distant thoughts about hotel towels and frozen orange juice. When I’m exhausted, all I want to do is pull a chair up on the Esplanade and watch the world go by.

Friday night was punctuated by the burn of the Trojan Horse. Patrick and Amanda were already having a difficult Burn with the breakdown of four bicycles and car keys locked in their van. Patrick went to bed early distraught.

I suggested to Amanda that the two of us walk to the end of our street (7:00) to watch the Trojan Horse burn from afar. On the Esplanade, we found unoccupied the black couch I had spotted Tuesday night. Temperatures were dropping.

Nonetheless, for an hour of so in uninterrupted peace, we discussed life, the world, and the universe. Rarely is there space at Burning Man to catch up with far-flung friend – otherwise too much shinning, burning, and exploding comes in between. Amanda and I saw a little horse engulfed in a fiery red glow. Magic.

10. The Weather

The circadian rhythm of Burning Man is predicated on the weather. Poorer weather such as dust storms can aversely bring a camp together. Good weather makes Black Rock City life much more enjoyable.

This year’s random chance for weather turned up three cherries on the slot machine. We had hot days, warm-enough nights, and negligible winds. Late rains had filled the Playa lakebed earlier in the year resulting in a hard-packed, dust-free ground amendable to bicycles. What a delight it was just to cruise from one end of the city to the other.

Getting my House in Order

The year comes to close in August

    I cut my nails
    I cooked and froze a few meals
    I spent fifty bucks on a haircut

I’m preparing for Burning Man. It’s just one freakin’ week in the desert, but I’ve been drafting lists and running errands since I returned from the East Coast in mid-June. It’s as if every hour I spent out in Nevada needs to be backed by at least one hour here of preparation.

    I bought implements to build a quonset
    I got tension straps for my car
    I restocked my liquor cabinet

Like the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, Burning Man feels both like the end of a year (big party!), and the beginning of the next year (what will I do differently when I return?). However, all these preparations are useful onto themselves, even if the event does not happen: I’m getting my house in order.

    I got the car’s oil changed
    I made a pair of wings
    I bought sunglasses

Just preparing for Burning Man causes me to inventory my possessions, discard the dross, and enumerate what I might I collect next. This time of year, I’m more willing to take risks. I take stock of my life. What needs changing? What needs working on?

    I picked up spare batteries for my headlamp
    I deconstructed a longsleeve shirt
    I hauled twelve pieces of PVC pipe across town

On the Playa, I’d like to work on a few tenets: radical honesty, presence, and connectedness. None of these traits require physical effort or extreme creative demands, but for me, they require a change in mindset. Let’s see what happens.

Preparations for Burning Man

The Festival is Sold Out

I’m going to Burning Man this year. I took last year off. I needed a break. The desert detractions (heat, dust, cold, loneliness) were overwhelming the joys. This year, for a change, I’m camping with a bunch of drag queens as part of a huge, San Francisco-based camp called Comfort and Joy. Should definitely be different.

I’ve spent much of August pouring over preparations. Preparations? Haven’t I gone before? A lot of Burning Man seems about stuff, or rather, the right stuff: figuring out how to cram a tent, a bolt of fur, and a blender in a Honda Civic tricked out with a megawatt light system.

Fortunately, I’ve constructed enough odd and wondrous outfits through the year – Burning Man doesn’t go on hiatus in San Francisco – that I’m not in a mad rush to finish up a colossal endeavor before I drive out to Black Rock City. Instead, I’m itemizing what I have, making shopping lists for the rest of the supplies, and wondering whether all this glittery gear will fit in my car.

I am attempting a project larger than my usual scope: I’m building a quonset to shade my tent. As the heat can be unbearable on the desert, shade structures are paramount for survival. As the years progress, those that engineering savvy are already building hexayurts: small cabins made from styrofoam walls, complete even with window air-conditioners. Trouble is, those that settle into hexayurts should just stay in hotels; the structure isolates you from the festivities and the festivites from you.

A better structure, I assert, is a quonset from a design curated by Tom Landers: a twenty foot long half-cylinder made from PVC pipe (actually electrical conduit) and agricultural shade netting. Two joined lengths of bent conduit form an eight-foot tall arch while the netting keeps the sun off. However, the netting is porous enough that the wind doesn’t blow over the whole structure and the occupants within remain visible to the magical world percolating on the Playa.

So I trekked to Discount Building Hardward Supply to buy twelve poles of electrical conduit (and brought them back to the hardware store when I figured out they were too thin). I mail-ordered a giant, twenty-foot square of agricultural netting. Tom may even assist with the staking down and constructing up of the quonset on my arrival one Monday morning. I’ve never hauled around something so giant.

I’m hoping Comfort and Joy shall change my perspective on the Playa. I have battled ennui and loneliness before after too many years of pursuing the same ol’ Burning Man events. This year, I signed up for some kitchen shifts (food is provided) and should volunteer as well to wash dishes. I’ll bring my blinky art (now with rechargeable batteries). Most importantly, I’d like to connect better with my brethren that live in San Francisco.

In the meantime, I must figure out what I’m wearing Tuesday night. Antlers or stegosaurus?

Slides

Seward Street Slides

Yesterday was filled with kids’ fun, although children under the age of 30 were absent from our group. On a sunny, mid-August Sunday, Jim, Greg, and I climbed up the top of Corona Heights Park to spy the sweeping panorama of San Francisco. We identified the rough locations of our apartments and tried to spot Berkeley. Jim cavalierly picked up litter. We stopped at a sandy park to play on swings and slides.

Descending from Corona Heights, we searched for the most interesting way through neighborhoods. Much of San Francisco is built on hillsides, and hills mean stairs. In the Upper Market district, we discovered the Vulcan and Saturn staircases. No roads climb alongside the stairs, but residents have laid layered gardens between the wooden staircases. Jim rescued mail from a Caselli Street house whose residents were away on vacation.

I begged to stop at the Seward Street slides. I had read about them in an atlas, and had marked the slides as something I wanted to do before I left San Francisco. We found the slides. Along yet another neighborhood staircase, two adjoining half-tubes have been poured out of concrete 100-feet long. We gazed from afar sheepishly as a sign at the bottom of the slides warned, “No Adults Unaccompanied by Children.”

Still, the slides looked too much fun to let a sign ruin the day. Cardboard at the top provided a slicker seat for sliding. I zoomed down the right channel and found the descent scarily wondrous. A seemingly stern woman at the bottom chided, “You can go faster than that.” It was going to be a good day. After several trips down – the left channel even steeper than the right – we departed with smiles, bruised knuckles and elbows, all vain attempts at braking on concrete. I add that it was good to be a kid again, but I’ve never left that stage of life.

Promotion

Hark, a career!

I got promoted at work. This promotion is a title change, not an increase in responsibilities. I’ve left behind the humdrum work of Senior Scientist for the magnificent exploits of Staff Scientist. I’m not sure whether “Staff” sounds more important than “Senior” to the world outside of the company walls, but apparently this scientific progression, like military ranks, is well known throughout the industry. I’m excited to pick new spells and get a few more hit points.

Although I’ve worked for two companies, until now I’ve never been promoted at the same job. I enjoy the recognition, although I was last of my group to level-up. I have been working away with this employer for three years.

Perhaps I should not have, but I internally gave myself an ultimatum during this June’s annual evaluation cycle: either get a promotion, or move on somewhere else. Some counseled that I should lay out my cards and tell management before the annual evaluation, “Promotion or else.” Others said not to force the hand. I kept quiet and fortunately got the advancement. Overall, it was less that I needed the title change for intrinsic personal satisfaction, but more that everyone else in the competitive group was advancing, and for a sense of fairness, I wanted to still be in the game.

Oddly, though, I have now hit a glass ceiling. Another title change to Senior Staff Scientist will not happen for 3-5 years. I won’t be taking my boss’s job. I can’t see the company expanding anytime soon for me to manage anyone. With a lack of mobility, I might be working less rather than more.

Nonetheless, many have congratulated me, and I’m glad for the recognition. My boss relayed the advancement while I was home with my parents so they could share in my success. A Staff Scientist is a fine thing to be.

America

The Lost

Sometimes it is the spaces in between that hold unexpected truths. At the end of April, I flew with some friends to Tennessee for four days of camping at a wooded gathering to celebrate the Pagan holiday of Beltane. Hippie? Yes. But to get to hippie Beltane, I had to fly through three airports – San Francisco, Las Vegas, Nashville – and drive into one Tennessee mall for provisions.

I live in the bubble of San Francisco. I’ve been sheltered by it long enough that I’m unaware of its bubble walls and similarly unaware that life could be otherwise. People here are energetic, creative, athletic, weird, dishelved, and au courant. We make daily, obsessive, painstaking, probably unimportant choices over which lettuce to buy, whether American Apparel is too mainstream, why good espresso no longer is as hip as it once was but remains still a necessity, whether the graffiti on Valencia is too predictable.

I get on an airplane. I poke that bubble. I enter the airlock. Who are these people? It’s an America I have forgotten. The polyglot seems so uniform, so unaware, so large, so drone-like, so, so lost. CNN’s bogus news spews over an brightly light Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop. I speculate that the bulk of the country has for so long gotten all their basic needs met – food, housing, transportation – that we’ve entered a new era in which outside forces dictate our needs: here, buy this, you will feel fulfilled. Within the airport, it’s a repeating strip of chain stores that replicate on the highway outside to link towns together. I’d say it were sad, but I’m so removed from its experience, that it feels more like the tragedy and curiousity of zoo animals.

We’re hypersensitized in San Francisco. I obsess over my trash. I haven’t sat to watch a television for years. We still debate the rights of dogs in parks.

The rest of America, though, seems lost to me, a dazed drone collection of cash-rich households that look to each other and media to suggest what to spend their money on. Tropical fish! Steakhouses! Jeggings!

Like an astronaut, I’ll have to start bringing a helmet with me when I fly. The air otherwise out there is rather cinnamon and fake-sugar stale.

After Easter

Not Sober

My forty-seven day fast over, Easter Saturday midnight hit. Where to? Although I preferred my beloved Noc Noc bar, the rains fell unexpectedly and we were holed up at Tom’s mansion in the Mission. If we were to go out, Tom and Marilyn suggested local and venerable Shotwells Bar just a block away.

Shotwells was pleasantly full. We found a small table free near the pool players. To return to drinking, I opted for a Flemish sour ale called “Monk’s Café.” It was stunningly tart. I contrasted that selection with my next choice, Young’s Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, a meal of a pint. The two beers left me quite tipsy but also the bar was quite closing. It was good to be back. Ah, beer, I missed you.

And yet, the return to alcohol hasn’t been that profound. My tolerance did not crash. I have yet to get wrenchingly trashed, or even hungover. I did drink a case of beer while camping in Tennesse, but it was Miller High Life and over the course of four days. I do enjoy the familiar social aspects of a good drink, the light convivial euphoria that causes the room to glow.

Still, I’d like to think I learned how to be sober and be myself again, and I’m no longer afraid of grim, nervous reality. Booze is a nice to have with friends, but not a need to have. I can find other ways to occupy my time, like typing. What next?

Easter

Sober

Weeks ago, my boss joked with me that Lent is actually more than 40 days long. Sundays don’t count. I laughed along until I checked my calendar. He’s right! It is 47 calendar days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, and not the purported forty. According to Wikipedia, different sects of Christianity follow Lenten absentions differently. Some fast completely untill 3pm each day, others give up meat. Some abstain from a choosen vice until Saturday night, others finish their absentions on Good Friday.

I’ve been sober since Mardi Gras, 46 days ago. I also gave up junk food, although for me that was a far easier habit to break. Although many point out and pick on the vagaries of Lenten rules – “you can tanked on Sundays, it says here” – this quest is self-directed so I set the rules.

I imagine that a lack of something would loom so large as it has as a substaniated thing. Drink is everywhere: on the train, at work during social events, Happy Hour in San Francisco, with dinner, in the bars, at the clubs, nightcaps before bed, and mimosas for breakfast. The lack of drink is palpable. This choice to do without is not a casual “no,” but an emphatic NO to separate from the crowd.

The first few days of sober Lent I was mysteriously thirsty all the time despite drinking lots of water. I had two separate dreams of drinking beer and tasting whiskey. Trigger points stimulated cravings, especially the heady Friday after work,. Those cravings have abatted. Desires are less physical now and more abstractly nostalgic. I miss the hops in beer, the tannins of red wine, and the harsh sweetness of bourbon. Instead of drinking, I would smell other people’s beverages. Ah, that gin has a wonderful bouquet. Such a fine smell of wine.

I miss an altered state – I’ve been completely sober, well, except for jitters from coffee. I miss the confusion of the mind, the majesty the psyche can summon from a simple arrangement of lights and words. Bleak reality accretes clinically dull, frank, simple, colorless, what’s the word I’m looking for? The world is sober.

I started this search of not-searching because I had lost sense of sobriety. I couldn’t recall the baseline of not being altered. Going out meant drinks. Meeting new people meant drinks. Even movies meant drinks. Alteration was a crutch to navigate social difficulties. Drinks may be fine, but what’s not drinking like? I don’t remember. What happens during the awkward unease of boredom at a party? How do you push through it? I don’t remember.

At some level, crowds are complex and challenging. However, too much alteration made everything difficult: wait, did he really say that? Did she wink at him? What’s going on? A couple drinks lubricated social graces; too many and I just wanted to go home and sit with myself.

I surprisingly learned that not-drinking is rather like drinking. I thought sobriety would bring clarity, energy, focus, and kindness. No, I’m even more tired – alcohol is a great source of calories. I sleep more. Before, when I was bored, I’d pour myself a beer. Now, when I’m bored, I take a nap. I’m baseline grumpy all the time, perhaps because getting wasted provided an escape valve for the ill humours.

That social anxiety that I thought would disappear is still present. People are still confusing and complex and hard to read. At the same too-early time of night, I still return home alone like a roosting pigeon to sit with myself. Puportedly-magical events have come and gone when the crowd stared enraptured and flabbergasted. Meanwhile, I felt as if at a gym during a high-school dance. Everything rang so crass, so sterile.

I have been productive. My house is in order. I put together a dinosaur costume: “while you were getting smashed, I made this.” I planned my spring. I gathered up emptiness and stared at it. I gathered up me and looked me over: parts are pretty, others parts are not, but all is fascinating.

It is Saturday. My last day. I return to alcohol at 12:00:01 this Sunday morning. Halleluiah, it is Easter. He has risen and so shall I. Many wanted to know how I plan to break this ethanolic fast. Surprisingly, this Holy Saturday night bodes quiet for San Francisco. I want a beer. Maybe even two. Advisors warn me about my diminished tolerance. There’s an Easter party tomorrow afternoon in Dolores Park featuring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and even a Hunky Jesus contest. I want to drink white wine and laze on the lawn.

Mostly, though, the ritual of alcohol promotes comraderil. Done correctly, you imbibe with friends over measured pours. As you quaff, you commune and dive together into the same vat of intoxication. The bar takes on its own collective energy.

I’ll return to alcohol but hope to temper it with wisdom. Drink with others, drink in moderation, drink with merriment. It is not a tool for escapism. It does not cure boredom. It does not make you more beautiful. It does go great with coke.

John Major tells me of a Ted Talk in which the speaker tries something new every 30 days as a means for varying life and to facilitate challenges for abbreviate timeframes. I’ve had my 47 days. Sobriety was both a loadstone and a conversation starter. Many reacted for or against.

What’s next? As I have reconnected with myself in April, I’d like to spend May reconnecting with others. Goal: call a new person each and every day of May. Easy? Difficult. Let the adventure begin.

Giving Up

Lenten Sobriety

With the passing of Mardi Gras into Ash Wednesday, the season of Lent is upon us. Even the non-religious Dutch call spring Lente. For the forty sobering days til Easter, Catholics are exhorted to give up vices and practice virtues.

I’m not Catholic, but I marvel at abstentions, especially when so many others are doing without. A week ago, at a boozy afternoon work party, a colleague mentioned that I could give up alcohol for Lent. Alcohol? That’s sacred.

I like having a drink. I drink almost as soon as I return home from work – just to relax, you see. A breakfast mimosa or bloody mary kicks off the weekend. Sunday afternoons, I read my quiet book over beer at Noc Noc bar on the Lower Haight. I couldn’t get through all the weekend’s wild social engagements without the familiarity of a drink in my hand and a friendly smile plastered on my face. I’m not an alcoholic (yet), but I certainly use alcohol for a lot of contexts.

When I was still studying at a university, a friend in the working world told me she had a glass of wine when she got home from teaching elementary school. Drinking at home alone? I enquired, suggesting she was an alcoholic. Just wait until you join the workforce. She countered, wisely.

It’s now Thursday and I’ve been without a drink for one whole day. Over the past weekend before Mardi Gras, I emptied the refrigerator of beer, into myself, of course. I worked through the liquor cabinet, draining it until what remains is a little tequila and a lot of gin. I overlook the untouched half-case of expensive wine, purchased in Napa, but saved for special occasions.

I’m surviving sober, but familiar twinges remain, a forceful habituation to blissful rituals of pouring, quaffing and feeling altered. Ug, the teatolling weekend has yet to start with its re-enforcements of bars, cocktail hours, and dancey-dance parties when alcohol is supposed to get you to shake your money maker. I’m still going out, even more so – as this abstention is an exercise to show how wild, crazy, and wonderful I can be (or not!) without the booze.

Think of the money I’ll save. In San Francisco, a cheap drink costs five dollars with tip. At a nightclub, that price changes ratchets up to at least nine dollars with tip. A few drinks or more wipes out at least thirty dollars each night. John suggested I order sodas instead, but I’d rather do without the pretense of having anything in my hands.

There are other contexts in which I’m expected to drink. At the end of March, I will go on a weekend ski trip. It’s typical for our group to empty bottles of wine at night, drink beer right after skiing, and sneak liquor from a flask on the slopes. There’s a reason alcohol is called the social lubricant. I just want to stand on my own again without it even with the grinding squeaks.

I have to take strong measures. For the new year, I resolved to have at least three sober days each week and eat only one junk food item at work each day. I couldn’t keep track of the sober days and the junk food restriction flew quickly out the window.

The only way to do without is to do without completely. Along with giving up alcohol, I’m also giving up junk food. All food must either be a meal or a legitimate snack. I’ll covet your m&m’s, but eat them after Easter.

Think of the time I’ll save. Many Sunday’s I’d lumber over to Noc Noc bar for an afternoon drink and a sit with a book. Two happy-hour beers later, I’d stagger home, careen about the apartment, and then sleep for an hour or two. Nights are even worse. Last weekend, I went out, drank enough, got all excited, and stayed up after 4am Friday and Saturday. It’d be nice to have events end and me sleep when the music stops. The price of admission shouldn’t bundle a hangover with the ticket.

Mostly, though, I want to regain a clarity and certainty to life. That sight I see, that smell I smell, that taste I taste should not be clouded by anything else outside of me, whether it’s booze or sugar. This may backfire. I may revert to the frightened animal many of us feel like in public.

With no booze and no sugar, I’m hitching up my buggy and joining the Amish. If I look at you sternly while you pour evil down your throat and abuse yourself with oreo’s, it shall be for just 40 days and 40 nights. While you are passed out, I’ll be building my ark.

Presents

A Christmas Squid and Batteries

You can say a lot about someone by the gifts he receives. When I lived in Austin, the lab traditionally bestowed a small gift to leaving graduate students and post-docs. Parting gifts ranged from novelty t-shirts to textbooks. On my departure, I was delighted to receive from my colleague Wyeth a handle of Tito’s vodka. I don’t know how the word got out to that lab that I drank a fair amount when I lived in Texas, and that I liked that particular brand of vodka, but I certainly enjoyed that gift.

Recently, I missed the Christmas party at the house of my dear friends’ Aj and Fiona. A month later, we reconnected so that they could pass along the Christmas stocking they filled for me. So thoughtful! So at the end of January, I unwrapped a collection of wonderful gifts: chocolate coins, glow sticks, a brick of AA batteries, and a great T-shirt of a sumo wrestler barbequing a squid. Yup, appropriate: I still go to Burning Man, and the batteries are mighty useful for all my light-up coats, antlers, and crowns. Although my diet restricts evil invertebrates, squid makes good wearing. I laugh that my dear friends are thoughtful enough to supply me with power and light. Beats socks and a DVD of Shrek 3.

But I’m saddened that their bounty keenly makes me aware what a selfish bastard I’ve become. Gifts don’t come easy for me. My life is so programmed and scheduled that I rarely go out of my way to pick up anything for someone else. Can’t be bothered, don’t know what they would want, rather not spend the money, I am an island. I can hope that the gifts from AJ and FIona gift will encourage me to think more of others, even if not genuinely. The forced practice may habituate me finally to giving freely. What would you like?

Resident Skeptic

Saved from a Speeding Chiropractor

I may not be a President, but I do have my cabinet. I may not be a Czar, but I do employ ministers. When I have an electronics question, I call my Minister of Electricity. I summon my Officer of Etiquette for social quandaries. My Resident Skeptic just saved this President thousands of dollars.

My back has been aching for years, not in any particular spot, just all over. I’ve tried yoga, better posture, physical therapy, and a workbook on general motion called the Gokhale Method. Last December, a sympathetic coworker and fellow back sufferer kindly bestowed on me a Christmas gift certificate for a consultation at her esteemed chiropractor.

Chiropractice? I know nothing about it. Still, chiropractors are about as everywhere as back sufferers. I gamely made an appointment for an initial consultation with the chiropractor followed by a return visit for her evaluation.

Let’s just say the experience was interesting, and not go into whether that means interesting good or interesting bad. In the zen-like studio space, I filled out a form listing my aches, food issues, sleep schedule, emotional states, hospital visits, and goals for chiropractice. I read a brochure about subluxation, the scientific connection between spinal nerves and the muscles/organs they activate. I changed my shirt into an embarrassing backless gown so the chiropractor could assess my range of motion as well as take temperature readings down my verterbrae.

Tsking, tsking, the chiropractor pronounced me weak and malformed. Decades of poor postures could only be rectified by thrice weekly visits for months, tapering to twice weekly for more months. I was forewarned that even if I felt better, I must come back regularly to avoid regression to my malformed posture. The chiropractic lifestyle seemed affordable at a mere sixty dollars per visit, but I tallied the possible year-long regimen to over five thousand dollars. Her computer tutorials were as slick and dogmatic as her manicured patient areas, but her bedside manner was frank and mean and not terribly insightful. Despite my repeated enquiries, she couldn’t illustrate what I would expect at a regular visit.

I needed a second opinion. After I pestered my work massage dude, he recommended a chiropractor in San Mateo for his hard-luck cases. I enrolled for an informational visit at this hard-luck chiropractor and drove out one Wednesday afternoon. This chiropractor was older, funkier and perhaps wiser. I filled out more forms probing my alcohol intake, food allergies, gastric issues, stress levels, and aura.

Once within her office, we discussed my degenerating condition. She wasn’t selling her recuperative care as hard as the first chiropractor. This wizened bird wafted a brochure on craniosacral massage, while asserting that she believes in supplements. Sure, she was hippy, but she also was holistic. She might offer restorative exercises. Her focus was jaws and necks, but she would treat the whole me. I could almost smell the incense in the fading winter light.

Days passed. My back wasn’t getting better, but I was still choosing between the mean but forthright young chiropractor and the ethereal but nebulous older chiropractor. Trouble is, both sell a sham.

I talk too much to my friends. My Resident Skeptic, A.J., sent me some internet background on chiropractice. http://www.skepdic.com/chiro.html As I paged through the skeptic content, I grew more concerned. Subluxation, the term I was told to repeat, had no scientific basis? Craniosacral massage is as useful as dowsing? Both chiropractors offered me price breaks if I booked more than 10 sessions at once. I read that such bundling schemes are illegal; you are permitted to stop medical care at any point and get your money refunded. That temperature-reading device is as old as the 50s and just as useless then as now.

I just wanted my back adjusted. I had inavertedly stumbled on a shadowy pseudo-cult that knew well how to lure the unwary into the chiropractic lifestyle. Now, I do think a fraction of practioners probably do ameliorate back aches and pains, but some chiropractors actually cause irreparable harm through misguided neck manipulations. Furthermore, it is strictly wrong science to think that vertebrae adjustment will benefit your organs.

The industry prospers because so many of us still want quick fixes to common problem of back aches. Ten minutes per visits, three times a week to cure my back? Sure, sign me up! I’ll let the expert cure me.

I’ve had poor posture for decades. The solution – if there is one – will take decades of diligence and not-so-fun work: exercise to strengthen my core of back, shoulders, chest, and abdominals; more attention to posture; better sleeping positioning; reduced stress; regular massage; and flexibility conditioning like yoga.

I owe my Resident Skeptic a good dinner. Still, if only back rescue were that easy! I saw on-line this expensive snake oil that may remedy my very condition.

Edwardian Ball 2011

Decadent Frivolity

I still go to a lot of parties. The insanity isn’t as intense as the Redtail years in Boston. Nonetheless, as long as San Francisco keeps a full calendar, I muster the energy to leave the apartment and explore every weekend. Last year at this time, I discovered the Edwardian Ball on my lonesome. This year, I rolled out the Edwardian Ball for the good company of Eleanor and Ruben. Eleanor is a professional draper so she could check out the costumes; Ruben just collects the surreal.

The couple arrived Friday night after many trains and trams. Ever since a drunk driver hit Eleanor’s parked car late one night, Ruben and Eleanor travel from Sacramento on public transport. To welcome them, I boiled some ravioli for dinner. While Eleanor fixed her dress, Ruben and I took a drink at Noc Noc.

All day Saturday, we did mostly free events in San Francisco: a tour of the artists-in-residence program at the city dump, a drive to Bernal Heights with lunch of sausages at Locavore, and a hike up to Corona Heights Park where my street of 14th ends. The early-bird prix-fixe at Home Restaurant was exceptionally good due to the bacon wrapped around a wedge of meatloaf.

We struggled to hail a cab that evening to good to the ball as Saturday night is one of the busiest times of the week. We entered the Regency Ballroom into one of the grandest events any of us have seen in San Francisco. The Edwardian Ball this year was an homage to two Edwards: King Edward VII (1901-1910) of England and illustrator Edward Gorey.

We wafted through the highest percentage of costumed people I’ve seen at an event: top hats, birds on hats, bustles, corsets, monocles, multiple spectacles, watch fobs. A woman dressed as the Queen nibbled snacks. The bar off the main room served only absinthe. The grand staircase got clogged by a parade of gents carrying teacups. A stoked boiler parked outside by the smoking area generated steam to turn fans and amusement rides inside.

Some of the night was quite the blur, as I was appropriately a bit too drunk and stoned. We perused the clothing vendors downstairs, watched a performance of plate spinners, enjoyed the music from a large orchestra, and danced in the ballroom as the party thinned out. The Ball had it all: fainting couches, lion’s heads, a day-glow dragon theater prop; but the real event was the finery of the attendees.

I wore an odd green vest with tails. In case of darkness, I carried a Lightbrella, a contraption I built from a black umbrella frame and eight spoke-strands of Christmas lights. As I twirled the umbrella handle, lights arced above our heads. Eleanor wore the green and purple dress she had made for her MFA thesis project. Ruben wore the gray 3-piece suit that Eleanor had tailored as part of her coursework. Ruben had grown accustomed to his fancy mustache that he had cut earlier in the day by shaving his beard.

A group of woman introduced themselves by asking, “Max!?” Despite my Edwardian haberdashery, I had been recognized from my Halloween costume of Max from Where the Wilds Things Are. These admirers had connected the lights of my umbrella at the Edwardian Ball to the lights of Max’s crown. Trouble was, I have no idea where I originally met them, and I was getting a bit shy and sloppy. Another girl passed though to tell me, “We’ve named you ‘Best Male Costume’ for tonight.”

A bell struck two. Towards three, we left the Regency Ballroom and into the night. The walk home was arduous, but we stopped for donuts. Ruben counseled against so visibly and stonedly eating our donuts as we onward, but I was too hungry and unselfconscious and happy to be with two dear friends on quite the adventure.

Shushing 2011

Looking and Leaping

Reading through these posts, I notice that many entries either glorify my feats or voice trepidation for the future. I either boast or cower - both reactions are narcissistic nods to indicate that I’m a self-absorbed bastard. Yet, I’m not the only one. We all spend much of our lives in this internal monologue to prop ourselves up with courage (I’m the best!) or denigrate ourselves in shame (what the hell was I thinking?). With this caveat said, I continue…

December dumped an avalanche of snow in the Sierra Mountains. With the advent of the new year, our Bay Area group itched to ski. We rented for a weekend a van and a house in the mountains. Friday evening, we collected after work the five bodies, stopped in Davis for dinner, and drove on to Lake Tahoe. This ski trip was an expedition that we had done much before; everyone knew the drill.

Still, I’m a dick about time on these ski trips. Everyone is always too slow. Hurry, hurry, hurry, so I can sleep, sleep, sleep, so I can get up early to ski, ski, ski. You pay for the day and not the number of times up the chairlift. Understandably, the rest of our crew rather sleep in during this holiday away from home. I try to stammer more quietly, but still I shuffle loud enough in the morning to wake everyone else up early. Years ago, I literally banged pots and pans in the living room of the rental house as the daybreak had advanced far past 6am. I’m more patient now, but not by much.

Saturday morning, AJ cooked breakfast in our rented alpine house, after which piled the van with skis and drove off to Kirkwood ski resort. A decade ago, on my third day ever of skiing, I joined the Terra co-operative ski group at Kirkwood. I inadvertently followed a group up a chair lift to land on top of the steepest mountain imaginable with no easy way down. Cursing Kirkwood and all it stood for, I unstrapped my skis and marched slowly down the mountain. I still resent the resort.

Times have changed for us at Kirkwood. Usually, Saturday of a winter holiday weekend means a cattle-herd of skiers on the mountain. Happily, the crowd did not show this Saturday. Fiona, AJ, and I spent the morning together in the quiet. We crossed a pass, descended into a bowl, and discovered a cave. We shared a flask of whiskey with a group of snowboarders. Down and up, we explored one trail after another and shushed our way through a gully between trees.

In the afternoon, we met up with snowboarders Matt and Avinash on a different side of the mountain. We jumped off the wee edge of a cornice. We skied down the lift lines. To close the day, AJ and I skied between a pair of 10-foot boulders.

Cornice jumping? Boulders? Trees? Although this isn’t a Warren Miller ski-porn film, our little crew of scientists has graduated into advanced skiers. We pretty much stay on the black-diamond trails with an odd double-black diamond thrown in to keep up the fun.

Sunday, we switched to Sierra ski resort, an old favorite on the way home to San Francisco. As at Kirkwood, we spent the day on the black-diamond trails. I tackled arrays of hillocks called moguls. With the crests and valleys, I call the descent “puzzle skiing,” as each turn requires planning for the following turn. We ventured into areas that few dare to tread for difficult terrain and steepness. From the bottom of the mountain, I looked back to wonder what I was thinking to come down so far. A fall could be, um, treacherous.

I wasn’t an athlete growing up, and I still carry that floundering impression that I can’t do anything kinetic well. Among the last picked for school sports, a guy that had trouble hitting a baseball, I’ve turned a skillful corner in my thirties, perhaps just from a combination of shear perseverance, regular exercise, and outlasting my more sedentary colleagues who may be shackled with progeny. Almost anyone can be an expert skier from a decade of hacking away as I did at the long boards. Nonetheless, these days, I look at the “Caution: Obstacles” signs and ski past them. Bring on the obstacles!

Facebook, the Movie

Coming to a city near me

I shudder to admit that I am a member of Facebook. I have a profile with a few pictures and some casual details of my life. Don’t “friend” me! I log in monthly to pick up event invitations and peruse for a few minutes what my Facebook friends are doing. For some, Facebook is an addiction. For me, I loathe the cheap communication. Facebook works because, like tweets, the content is short, disposable. I’ve written in this paragraph already a week’s worth of Facebook observations. I like strawberries. I don’t like squid.

Facebook, the movie? Phlease. Still, an independent cinema near me was screening the movie, and I had yet to investigate the Roxie. On a quiet Wednesday night, I hustled over on my bicycle into the Mission to sit in the Roxie’s almost empty theater.

Facebook, the movie? I luved it. Like, like, like. The acting was decent, the plot had an arc, and I have lived a mile away from almost every exterior shot in the film. I recognized the opening wander through Harvard Yard, the bend in the square, and the crappy winters. I haven’t lived (yet) in Henley, England, but is London close enough?

“Mark, you need to move to California.” Palo Alto? Sure. I work off of University Ave. Stanford frat parties usually don’t have coke and police, just shitty kegs and crowds. There are very few Sand Hill venture capital firms with high-rise skyscraper views. That San Francisco nightclub vaguely resembles DNA lounge, but never as glamorous.

I’m aware more and more, despite my San Francisco myopia, that the Bay Area is the center of so much. Apple, Google, Facebook, Stanford, Genentech - Technology explodes here. Cupertino may be a forgotten outpost and Palo Alto a dead suburb, but the movers continue to move here.

Facebook, the movie called me to action. Do! Create! Change the world! Make a deal! I rode off afterwards in the hazy night wondering why I waste so much time. Need to quit my job, get rid of this apartment. I should be percolating at a dramatic start-up. I should roar in an innovative office.

Oh, wait I already do. I work for a start-up that went public last year, that aims to change medicine under a “New Biology.” One of the founders reminds me of the Mark Zuckenberg character. I do live in San Francisco and attempt to change the world. I have explored Harvard and found it boring!

It’s a movie. Hollywood can paste a glittering veneer on anything. Still, like, like, like. What a world we live in.

Looking to 2011

New Year's Resolutions

I resolve to like New Year's Resolutions. Although the start of a year is an arbitrary moment to enact change, nonetheless I enjoy the annual taking of stock. Problem is, for 2011 I don't have much to resolve. Last year I wanted to move apartments, get healthier through running, and right the floundering ship that was my work attitude. All sorta done. Hurrah! 2011 begins as a happy, empty time. I don't forecast big changes. This may be the year of contentment.

    Health

Serbicize in the gym at least once a week.
Run another marathon in 2011 and qualify for the Boston marathon. The San Francisco marathon in July would be the ideal race, albeit hilly.
Learn how to swim. Do a triathlon.
Try yoga at least twice a month.
Eat better (less junk at work).
Surf!

    Spirit

Go on an overnight meditation retreat. Harbin?
Be more empathetic.
Be more honest and direct.
Be less sarcastic.
Call or write one old friend every Sunday.

    Home

Have someone over for dinner at least once a month.
Store something in the garage. Skis? Scooter? Big spinning wheel of death?
More lights.

    Entertainment

Date!
Throw at least one party, not necessarily at the apartment.
Drink less. Not less quantity but less often. Try to have at least 3 alcohol-free days each week.
Bake a birthday cake.
Host a bonfire on Ocean Beach.

    Art

Build a sculpture bigger than sea chest.
Make something with fire.
Learn how motors work.
Put together a box truck.
Go to the Maker Fair.
Build a quonset.

    Travel

Go back to Burning Man
Go on a trip with your brothers
Kentucky Derby?
SXSW
Go to a new festival
Visit 2 national parks
Ski at least 5 days
Dine at the French Laundry
Tour Napa with Ruben and Eleanor
Ride the Sacramento bike trail with Ruben and Eleanor.

Winter Solstice 2010

Lighting Candles

The darkest night has descended on San Francisco. An exceptionally wet autumn gives way to winter. Hunkered down in my living room for the evening, I turn off the electric lights and light ten candles for the year. Ever-present rain drums outside on tin awnings and cars.

Saturday night, I attended a Winter Solstice Party. The invitation prompted black lights and luminescence, so I dug out my Halloween costume of Max from “Where the Wild Things Are.” I got to be eleven again to brighten up the night. My crown glowed; so did my tail.

Still, I suffer from darkness. Each autumn season, the days grow shorter, with an unruly jolt when the clocks change. I don’t like leaving work in the dark, driving home in the dark, exiting my house in the dark. I may acclimate to the long nights, but it is uneasy resignation.

Nonetheless, Winter Solstice is a happy time for me. At my first solstice in San Francisco, 3 years ago, I shook my fist at the sky to yell, “Is this the worst you can do? Is this it? You call this darkness? You call this cold? This is nothing! I can handle this! This is nothing!” The worst blankets us tonight. I have survived once again. Tomorrow will be brighter.

I reach out to our pre-electric past, millennia in which these long nights were indeed long and seemingly interminable. The Solstice was a reckoning point for the winter larder. Communities and families would have known at this way point whether there would be plenty or scarcity at the end of winter.

This dark night is a time to nestle in with those around you to stay warm. Nothing to do on long nights except to tell stories, plan for warmer days, and dream.

San Francisco’s winter lacks the bite of Boston’s. The bleakest sun sets here at five o’clock. In Boston, darkness arrived hastily at four. Because my sole transportation in Boston was the bicycle, I knew at every winter solstice that I had many more months of battling dreary snow and navigating ice.

My ten candles glow. I am warm and thankful that my accumulated stores will last till the frost breaks in spring.

In the darkness, I reflect on the year.

2010

Picking Fruit

JAs 2010 closes, I find myself in the same city, at the same job, and samely single as when the year started. Although history may cloud 2010 as a gap year in which not much happened, I feel it to be joyous as I have picked fruit from trees I planted years ago.

I often chart a year by the places I visited. I color a US map with the states I walked. For the cross-country years of 2007 and 2008, I colored swaths of the nation as I drove from one coast to another, from north to south. This year’s travel in contrast was limited.

    January: California
    February: Nevada (to ski)
    March: Texas (Austin for SXSW)
    March?: Alabama (for work – I don’t know if this trip even happened)
    September: Massachusetts (to visit my parents and dear friends)

One year, five measly states.

However, I like my apartment. I like my city of San Francisco. I travel less because I have fewer reasons to depart. Way back in 2006, faltering in Boston, I hopped planes twice a month to get away. Now, further south than 24th street in the Mission requires a passport and a good reason.

Nonetheless, it had been too long since I had seen my parents. Christmases have proven daunting with cold New England, a harried family, and a burdened holiday. I choose fortuitously to return to Wellesley in early September when the heat still beat down and the streets were beguiling. Mom and Dad are happy and well.

Iceland

I did not want another year to escape without leaving the country, so I made tracks to Iceland for a short, four-day trip to trek lava, pick up new music, and check out Reykjavik. I met some wonderful locals and tourist. I guiltily ate whale and guillemot, and drank moonshine with an aged volcano-hunter. I studied Viking sagas and discerned what makes an island country of three-hundred thousand people work so well.

I skied five days at Lake Tahoe and even managed to try snowboarding for a day. I’m no expert, but aspects of snowboarding came readily to me. I like learning new skills, especially ones I’m bad at. Fiona and AJ, along with Matt and Avinash, as always, are great skip-tri organizers. One of these years, I’ll buy skis. I probably should take a ski lesson or two. After a decade of skiing, I can handle most slopes now, but with little grace.

SXSW 2010

I raved at a slew of festivals. Ruben and I returned to the South-by-Southwest Music Festival in Austin. This year, I quite enjoyed the sluggish indolence of mornings (noons, actually) at Spiderhouse Coffee listening to bands and pouring through Ruben’s notes. Afterwards, we wandered 6th Street in the afternoon or headed down South Congress. A cold front moved in at the close of the festival putting a damper on a Sunday outdoor show at Gingerman and in East Austin. Thank you, Andrea and Christ Duarte, for letting us stay.

On the July 4th weekend, a sick John Major, Tom, and I drove four hours northeast into the Sierra foothills for the Priceless Festival. Although we didn’t fit the scene, the music was fantastico. We quite enjoyed hiking a small snatch of the Pacific Coast Trail and floating in tire tubes on the river.

I missed Burning Man this year in lieu of my freezing man in Iceland. I withdrew this time from the hot Playa to regain perspective and try to focus on the positives of the festival. In previous years, I would sulk about the heat, deprivation, camp conflicts, and bleary mornings – before I went! Certainly, distance made the heart grow fonder. I plan to return in 2011, but do not know yet under which circumstances.

Depression hit like a slow-rolling hurricane in March. Work-related triggers compounded neurological devastation. I couldn’t talk for days. I ate little. I couldn’t articulate my difficulties. I no longer felt valued. Fortunately, time and time alone brought sunshine. My work situation changed. I excised those that caused me grief.

The work year ends much better than it started. I’m rolling marvelously through my third year with the company. I feel integrated, valued, and supported. I got a new boss over the summer and she’s great! The company went public one bleary morning in October to much fanfare and uncertainty.

600 Oak St

Too much stability – no travel, not much new at work – meant I needed to tip over the apple cart. In April, I made motions to change apartments. My old place has a wonderful view and efficient layout, but sundry deficiencies were wearing me out. My neighbors were crack heads, traffic was constant, the floor was thin and loud, the heat did not work, guests had to cut through my bedroom to get to the bathroom, and management was a bunch of moldy cocks. I had taken that apartment two years prior in a hasty search on my arrival to San Francisco. Since then, the economy had cooled and I knew the city better.

I spent a month methodically inspecting and rejecting potential apartments. I gloated over a jewel-in-the-sky, a 3-floor apartment on Van Ness, but it was taken away before I saw the interior. Despondent and tired, I looked at my current place, unprepared for how suitable it was. Fortunately, the landlord allowed me respite. Yes, I would move.

Jim and Jay ate the frog; they carted my enormous, transformable couch. Tom and John came to the rescue with bicycles and packing skills. Around mid-June, over the course of one weekend, I had moved house merely six blocks south, but to a different world of the Mission district. My new neighbors are inviting. The space is grand. I don’t know how I bothered with street parking for two years.

Since taking over the keys, I’ve spent six months moving in. Tom taught me how to paint walls, so the living room sprung circus-peanut orange and the bedroom darkened to pale-aubergine purple. I installed shelving, made curtains from cut-up fabric, obsessed over furniture placement, got the heat to work (hurray!), framed my father’s prints, and hung my strange art. I will be here at 14th street for quite a while. Do visit.

Above all, 2010 was the year of the run. I attempted my first half-marathon in 2009 and finished. Half a marathon, though, is an incomplete half. The prize race, the full twenty-six miles, the marathon hung over me ever since I ran my first competition. Still, twenty-six miles? It’s at least three hours of running with an uncertain end. I timidly registered for a race, trained all spring on my own, and ran in July the San Francisco marathon at a good time of 3 hours, 26 minutes. Tom brought me chicken broth at the end and hauled me home on the MUNI.

More races were to come. I ran two half-marathons this year, one 200-mile relay with a crew of 12 from work, and two marathons. I also ended up twice in medical tents. In Sacramento, two nurses tried to hold me down while another failed to stick me with a needle. I’m proud of my lightning time of 3 hours 16 minutes, but I was forty-three seconds too slow to qualify for the Boston marathon. Another marathon may come in 2011, but I have not yet registered.

With the space afforded by my new apartment and the tools to create, this was a year for art and costumes. Like my father, I breathe from project to project, one piece hopefully generating the idea for the next. I made a chandelier with 48 lights, a dinosaur hat, a scale shirt, a Max costume for Halloween, eyeball pants, a light clock, a tiny galaxy, a third and forth set of antlers, and a peacock fan. Most of these pieces are meant to be worn, and so I wear them to all sorts of parties. My tinkering with light may have reached is apotheosis. I’m ready to move on to colors and kinetics.

Regrets for 2010? Besides the eleven seconds too slow for the San Francisco half-marathon and the forty-three seconds too slow for the Sacramento marathon? Give me a minute! Another year has passed – my thirty-eights – and I still sleep by myself in my large bed. I’m growing older without the intention of brining another into my life. I don’t date. Although I meet many when I go out – “wow, that’s so coool” – I’m not good with follow-through. When I meet her, I will know, and I have yet to do so. It is a fundamentally lonely life, but productive in its quiet solitude.

38 brought an end to youth. I’m no longer a college kid, not even close. I don’t feel old, but I know that feeling is coming soon. Yet, I’ve gained wisdom and discernment. I don’t want free food; I want good food. I don’t want to go to any party; I want to go to a good party.

All is all, ‘twas a good year. I may not have traveled widely or accomplished much for my resume, but I cashed in chips, lived well, and felt satisfied.

Box Truck

The Secret Garden

Just when I lamented that everything is played out, along come new concepts to entertain. Imagine if you will, a barren city street abandoned in an industrial part of town. It is Saturday night and even joy has fled. Hark, though, what do we see here? Quiet box trucks parked on either side of the lonely street. Each truck contains within a delightful tableau: one truck serves noodles, another is a dance studio, a third has a penguin that answers life’s difficult questions, each truck an adventurous Faberge egg.

Secret Garden

Mark and Kevin started the Lost Horizon’s Night Market in New York City. A recent article in Wired magazine describes the event better than I can: http://www.wired.com/underwire/tag/lost-horizon-night-market/. Each time Mark and Kevin organize the market, the number of trucks grows. It was time from them to see whether Box Truck would play well somewhere else. San Francisco was ready for the unexpected.

I attended an introductory meeting in October for the San Francisco Night Market at an artist’s loft owned by Chicken John. The creatives banded together to throw forth truck ideas. Some present were concerned that the Truck event too much resembled Burning Man, the avuncular, omnipresent shadow that reached deep into San Francisco. This is not the desert; these are trucks. Nonetheless, some similarities remained: the Night Market would be free, constrained to just three hours on a particular Saturday night, and would require moxie and gumption to pull off.

After the meeting, my favor floated between a bunch of trucks. A fabulous project called FnOrest had already been built in Boston that could fit nicely within a truck. Trouble was, it had already been built. I could help out instead with a French restaurant or even throw my back into the Mad Hatter Tea Party.

Weeks went by. Co-organizer and shining talent, Ms. Deb, signed me and friend Griffin up for a truck called “The Secret Garden.” Griffin was sitting on hundreds of succulent plants in his yard in Oakland. I could provide lights. Ms. Deb could help with lanterns, sound, and motivation for us quieter souls.

It was a dynamic collaboration of three, one that worked well. We did not meet until market day. Ideas were bandied through e-mail. By compartmentalizing the jobs, there was trust and burden on each to get his or her part done. We didn’t know in advance how the assembled project would look, but that may be good for an organic garden.

I had some light sculptures already to go. I needed more lights for the walls and material to cover the lights. I picked up ten strands of battery-operated Christmas lights from Cliff’s Hardware and got 32 yards of a flimsy black fabric from Discount Fabrics. I spent Friday night soldering lights together into a microcontroller.

Bowling Alley

Saturday morning, I drove out to Griffin’s apartment in the Rockridge section of Oakland. Quiet streets, ample parking, friendly neighbors (one of whom said “that’s where you take the little children?”), good pizza on the corner, I could live here in Rockridge when San Francisco tires me out. Griffin and I drove to a U-Haul distributor on Telegraph to pick up a seventeen-foot box truck. So happy that Griffin offered to drive the monster. I was surprised to hear that a truck would cost us only $100.

Once parked back on his street, I hung up the Christmas lights inside the truck, installed the microcontroller, draped the fabric, and planted four large IKEA green fabric leaves. Problems hit. The Christmas lights were dim and crappy. The fabric was so shear that the wiring was visible underneath. Duct tape is a horrible construction material on the inside of a greasy box truck. The fabric would not stick to the tape and the tape would not stick to the walls. With some zip-ties, I made do. Ms.Deb was brilliant with suggestions, but also with acceptance that what would be, would be amazing.

We hauled the stars of the show into the truck: the plants. Griffin’s succulents had wild personalities ranging from massive jade plants to ornate colonies of red and green knobby fantasies. We worried that the plants would shift and crush during transport. We wedged a carpet and half a wine barrel to create a levee. From a visitor named Steve, I learned about marine batteries and invertors. I want now to buy my own portable power system.

At sunset on Saturday, I drove through horrible traffic back across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. I had enough time to eat dinner and get a costume together for the Night Market. Opening time was a fixed nine o’clock. The market would close at midnight to let truck owners pack up and return by two in the morning. We knew a few days in advance the location of the market at a spot nick-named Toxic Tire Beach. Others were just now figuring out to where to travel.

Slot Car Racing

I biked through the Mission and into Potrero. The city streets were quiet, more so at this industrial end of town. Griffin and Deb got stuck with the truck in the same Bay Bridge traffic. Once parked at Toxic Tire Beach, we had only about forty-five minutes to unpack all the succulents, rearrange them, getting the lights working, and turn on the music.

After set-up, we got to explore the twenty trucks. The other installations were amazing feats of ingenuity and engineering. Helium balloons filled an upside-down ball pit. Next to us, the Mad Hatter Tea Party crashed china. With Tom, I raced cars on a four-lane slot-car track. A misfortune teller swabbed the air with red peacock feathers to tell me “Do not shop on Tuesday. The fish will poison you.” Visitors chucked bowling balls down an impressive bowling alley. From one truck, I could spy the tableau of other trucks. The Mac ‘n’ Attitude dinner shone with its red walls and twinkling lights.

The final Garden didn’t look exactly as I had wanted, but it was wonderful nonetheless. The crowd turned out thicker than expected so that many trucks faced long lines. I never did get into the upside-down ball pit nor saw the Champagne room. We could barely glance into the jammed bowling alley. Because our garden truck was an installation, throughput was good and inhabitants had a place to sit. Everybody could see it. Many that came through the Secret Garden found familiar plants that brought back memories. I checked occasionally on the status of the batteries.

Thirty minutes after midnight, we shooed away the last visitor as the chill fog rolled in from the Bay. The police had come but left finding no disturbances. Few got hurt. Trash was minimal. I was tired, but the three of us had much work to do. We carted all the succulents back outside the truck. I pulled down the infernal fabric and the lame Christmas lights. We packed the plants and wedged the carpet back as the levee. Griffin was so kind to take the truck with Ms.Deb back to Oakland. I pedaled home on the bicycle.

I don’t often enjoy events while they are happening as much as I should. The Night Market grows fonder in my imagination with time. I’m glad to have gotten roped in, as I doubt I would have volunteered on my own.

Crash and Burn

Running to Far II

At the end of July, I ran my first marathon through San Francisco while the sun rose. I commenced slowly at dark, followed the throng up the Golden Gate Bridge, and wheeled through the park. At mile 18, I anticipated the foretold “wall” of fatigue. The wall did not come. I churned through the Mission and down industrial Potrero. My first mile was my slowest; my last mile was my fastest. Friend Tom found me exhausted and fed me chicken broth. I managed to stumble back home on the MUNI with his help. I finished with a quite respectable time of 3:25 (three hours and twenty-five minutes).

Trouble is, there’s the king of races in Boston, so popular that entrants must qualify by first running a marathon faster than certain times. Still, Boston may be the most celebrated foot race in the world open to the public. I required a 3:15 time, but in two years, that mark lessens to 3:20. Furthermore, the Boston Athletic Association lets you hold on to a race time for a couple years and mark your age on the day you run Boston’s race and not your age when you ran the qualifying race. Ah, wiggle room.

As I perused the marathon schedule, I spotted the California International Marathon, a footrace in December from suburban Folsom to the state capital of Sacramento. With a 350-foot drop in overall elevation, the sponsors touted this race as “Fastest in the West,” and the one to run to qualify for the Boston marathon. Even better, Eleanor and Ruben, dear residents of Sacramento, could take care of my withered shell when I finished the race. I registered for the race on the last day before the enrollment fees skyrocketed.

In this journal, I haven’t mentioned running lately, but all of October and November, I’ve been coursing again through San Francisco. I started with 12 miles on one Sunday, ran 14 miles the next weekend, and ratcheted up two miles each successive week. I knew the route already: depart my house, go to the Ferry Building, around the Embarcedero, up to touch the Golden Gate Bridge, through the Presidio, into the park, around a lake, to the Pacific Ocean, back into the park – I’m exhausted – through the Haight, into the Mission, and back home.

Trouble was, the sun sets sooner in the fall than it did when I first did long runs in summer. This time around, I frequently raced the sky home. Boredom set in with all this running. I stopped practicing mid-week half marathons and perhaps did not run as fast as I had in June.

The Sunday race day for the December marathon approached. The previous Friday night, I went to a party and drank too much. Saturday, I saw a show of “A Christmas Carol” in Sacramento with Ruben and Eleanor. My sleep over the weekend was paltry and illness loomed.

All night long, I could hear rain. Sunday morning, I rose at 4:50am to tie on my running shoes. I packed snacks and drinks. I put on everything warm. Ruben kindly roused himself to drive me a short way from his apartment to the Sheraton Hotel in Sacramento’s center. There, I joined a line outside to catch a race-provided shuttle bus to the town of Folsom, best known for its prison. I tried to sleep in the dark of the bus.

The crowd of twelve thousand runners was larger than I anticipated. Waiting for the start of the race, runners bounced around a quarter-mile of port-a-potties while the sun struggle to rise. Rain might have threatened earlier, but most felt the day would bring only fair weather. I kept asking the guy sitting on the curb next to me what time it was. It’s such a drag going to these races all by yourself when many travel as teams.

Near the gun time of seven am, I filtered through the crowd. I wanted to start well, but not so fast as with my San Jose debacle just two months prior. In the lined-up pack, pace men held little placards with anticipated finish times. I lined up near the 3:40 entrant.

The National Anthem is sung before the start of most races. During the song, I contemplate patriotism and the upcoming agony as I shuffle in the dark. Song done, the gun went off. I crossed the start line 45 seconds later.

Odd, perhaps, to diagram so thoroughly running from one place to another. Yet, for most, a race lasts over three hours, one hundred eight minutes of thinking, staring, and road-pounding. There’s a lot to consider along the way. Am I going too fast? Too slow? Is the sun too hot? Why am I doing this? How can I get away from all these people? Why is that guy wheezing? Will I run another race (of course not)? Why did she line up so far to the front if she is now running like an invalid?

During the race, I make a lot of bets with myself. Run this race and you will never have to run another. I then count down the last twenty miles, nineteen, eighteen miles that I will ever run in my life. Should I arrange vacation with my brothers in Flagstaff.

Contrary to my expectations of suburban boringness, the topography of the course was perfect: wide, rural roads that gently rolled to obscure the horizon. I concentrated on cresting the next hill. Early on, the pack ran by a pastured horse grazing outside a barn. The horse probably freaked at the herd of people galloping by. In the sleepy town of Folsom, I spotted wild chickens. At least two high-school marching bands played peppy tunes.

I caught up quickly to the 3:20 stick holder. My gait propelled me further alongside the 3:15 runner. I stayed with him and his small pack for 24 miles. The crowd didn’t cheer for me; it cheered for 3:15 - “Keep going, 3:15! Going to Boston, 3:15!”

By mile 16, we passed the fallen – despondent runners, heads bowed, who walked along the edges of the course. Each walker gave me pause to do the same. I kept running. A coach on a bicycle yelled at the woman running next to me. The coach wanted her to make up 5 minutes to catch a runner ahead of her.

Runners lament cramps, ankle collapses, fallen arches, back spasms, and hip injuries. I’m lucky that my legs don’t fall apart. It’s my cardiovascular system that fails. As I run, I pace myself just under my cardiovascular ceiling. If I go faster than this speed, my breath hastens, I wheeze asthmatically, and eventually go into audible bronchial failure. I can delay the wheezing by slowing, but with distance, that maximum failure speed also decreases.

24 miles and no problems. I felt tired, but with energy to finish. I entered Sacramento and looked for Ruben’s apartment as I cruised through intersections. Crowds thickened to the point where I wanted them gone.

Unfortunately, something started, or rather stopped. My body collapsed. Perhaps I had gulped too much water down the wrong pipe at a water startion. I started to wheeze. I tried slowing. Still wheezing.

Shit, I’m finishing this race and I’m not walking even if it kills me. Just two more miles. Just fifteen more minutes. I looked again and again at my watch. Distances were not getting shorter and times were not getting faster. My vision contracted. I couldn’t run in a straight line. I barely made it to the 26-mile marker for the last corner. The masses cheered. In a faint fog, I cheered for the approaching finish line.

I crossed the end line and finished the same way as in my previous race: I grabbed the nearest medical person.

Life gets a little blurry from here. Running often isn’t the problem for me; it’s the stopping running. I had run over the limit. I depleted my store of electrolytes. Everything was far too hot. I couldn’t cool down. I was going to faint.

The inside of the medical tent looked like a hospital or a morgue. Cots were filled with the suffering in various states of distress. I collapsed on a stretchter in the middle. Nurses asked me the same questions over an over, mostly to gauge my lucidity. They took my blood pressure, removed most of my clothes, tried to get me to chew on salted pretzels. My legs and feet twitched spasmodically from too little electrolytes.

The nurses wanted to draw blood. I freaked. Things got bad. I fought back. Two nurses tried to sit on my shoulder while the other maneuvered around. I told them what a bad idea this could be. I’d likely pass out from their test, further compounding their problem. We talked each other down from the ledge. If I calmed down, they wouldn’t do the blood test. I tried to breathe deeply. These were the naughty nurses unlike the nice ones in San Jose.

One nurse brought me some broth with a straw. Stern ambulance drivers loomed, waiting to haul away the dire. One runner was laughing or screaming – it was hard to tell. The new guy next to me was asleep with tubes coming out of him.

I eventually stabilized to the point where they asked if I could sit up. I reflected, perched on the side of the cot. I found my cast-off shirt and shoes. A boy brought me my race bag. Forty-five minutes had passed.

Outside was mayhem as runners still poured across the finish line. I couldn’t find Ruben at the exit corral. I searched and realized sadly that I never got a medal. I petitioned the security guard at the gate who responded, “Bud, if you finished, you gotta get a medal. Go get one.”

I stupidly left at home both my phone and contact numbers. I milled tiredly some more, sorry to have Ruben likewise lost and looking for me. Problem got solved when Eleanor arrived with the better Dudek radar. A relieved Ruben and Eleanor walked me to the car. We took a short drive home so I could collapse and perchance to sleep.

Later than day, I checked my finish time, 3:16:42. I looked at some explanatory websites. I was 43 seconds too slow to qualify for the Boston marathon. I was six months too young.

43 seconds. So close, so far. I have to run this race again. The soul searching begins. What would I have done differently? What if I pushed harder at the end? What if I ran slower at the beginning to conserve my energy? What if I slept more the previous night? What if I ate more for dinner?

43 seconds may not seem like a lot, but it’s a tough amount to overcome. At every mile-marker during the race, two spokespeople called out the overall elapsed time and the mile split time. “Fourteen minutes fifty seconds, seven twenty-five a mile. Fourteen minutes fifty-five seconds, seven twenty-six a mile.” At one station, three dapper old men in top hats and red vests called out the same: seven twenty-five a mile. I ran a 7:25 pace for 22 miles. I may not be able to go faster than that at distances. Nonetheless, continuing at that 7:25 pace would have brought me across the line at 3:14:19 or 2:23 faster than I did. After that medical experience, I’m happy with my progress. I almost ran into trouble.

What next? Do I hang up my shoes as I promised myself? Too early to tell. If I position the next race properly, I’ll only have to run a 3:20:59 marathon. Easy? Ug, all that preparation. Still, I’ll invest in salt tablets, a readily digestible form of electrolytes that may prevent all the post-race suffering. Fortunately, the next race may not be for at least six months, if ever. I’d like to try swimming.

Two days have passed. I can’t walk well. Stairs are formidable; some staircases so daunting that I take detours to stairs with gentler slopes. My back and abdomen aches. I shuffle like the old man I will be.

Dec 5, 2010
California International Marathon
3:16:42
7:30/mile
#618 out of 5890

Cities

An Unexpected Anniversary

A little rain stops fretful Californian motorists as if the cars would melt. After a long day at the office last Thursday, I sat in my car on the highway and starred at a stopped parade of red taillights. Over an hour later, after backing the car up across two lanes of traffic into my bat cave of a garage, I was ready to slump in my living room chair. I was slogging up the rear staircase until a rap at the glass of the first floor kitchen apartment arrested my ascent.

It was the smiling couple downstairs holding champagne flutes.

“Come in, come in.”
“Hunh?”
“Have some champagne.”
“Uh?”
“It’s our thirty-second wedding anniversary.”
“Whoah.”
“Come celebrate.”

I pulled up a chair in their tropical living room. Thirty-two years ago, the couple got married in wild west Virginia City, Nevada by the city’s judge. The couple had known each other for only about six weeks. Another glass of champagne. I saw a photograph from their 1990 trip to Costa Rica to visit a friend way out in the jungle. We discussed the past tenants in the apartment complex. As they never had children, they want to look out for me. Now in their sixties, the couple downstairs probably think I’m so young, but I’m pushing forty. Last month, she would stomp the floor below when the Giants hit homeruns during the World Series, I wanted to yell, “Hey you kids, keep it down.”

This chance encounter is less likely to happen in most suburbs. Growing up in the same suburban house for seventeen years, I rarely remember a neighbor in our livingroom. We did play with the neighborhood kids, but parents stayed in their own castles. As everyone aged, we holed ourselves most securely behind our fortresses.

I saw recently a city plot of population density versus per capita income. Most cities in the United States were tacked on to this log-log plot. Like buck shot, most points – and most cities – clustered in the middle. There were two outliers of high density and high income: New York, obviously, and San Francisco. This burg of Victorians may lack skyscrapers, but San Francisco is tightly packed. We have few yards and even fewer alleys. Everywhere, there are people.

Ruben asserts, “What you think is true about small towns is actually true about big cities. When you think is true about big cities is actually true for small towns.”

I know my neighbors. The couple downstairs suggested restarting the neighborhood potluck dinner. The guys at the hardware store want to know what I’m up to. The amazing lady at Café International calls me “Bello,” and gives me snacks to take to the party.

I spent my suburban youth trapped in a car driving, what seemed like hours, to the mall, grocery store, post office…makes me nauseous to think of all those trips. Until recently, suburbanites generally shopped at big-box stores that prided themselves on their uniformity. The point of the suburb was to insulate your family from the world around.

I bike five blocks to my grocery store, a worker-owned co-operative named Rainbow Grocery. I voted in a garage down the alley opposite my house. Last week, I needed a medical test. Back home, this test would have necessitated a twenty-minute trip maybe out of town to a hospital. I walked up the hill passed my breakfast place to the local infirmary.

There’s a lot in even a one-block radius of my house: an Oyster shack, two Laundromats, a dive bar, douche-bag restaurant (highly regarded), cannabis dispensary, cannabis medical outfit, Safeway grocery store, subway station, petfood emporium, Mexican restaurant featuring foods from Mexico City, hardware store, gay bar, insurance broker, bike shop, sex club, two liquor stores, hairdresser, comfort food restaurant, used bookstore, and probably a few businesses tucked away.

When I trundle home tired on a Friday night, I resolve not to move the car until Monday morning. Why do I ever need to? Instead, I load up on smugness.

Halloween 2o1o

Max

Tom calls Halloween “San Francisco’s High Holy Days.” Often the Halloween season stretches for two weeks and three weekends. Many change costumes for all the parties. “What will you be for Halloween?” is a prime San Francisco topic of conversation at the beginning of October.

Within the Burning Man community, however, more people choose not to dress up as any particular person or thing. It is easier (and some may argue more creative) to put on a collection of interesting clothes and just be strange, different, and spectacular. Ages ago, one woman at a party astutely asked me, “Is this a costume, or dress?”

This year, I wanted to be a particular someone. Flash back two years. At my company’s low-key afternoon Halloween party, I spotted software engineer Max dressed as Max, the kid from Maurice Sendak’s children’s story “Where the Wild Things Are.” Max’s max was maximumly well done. I heard later that Max’s wife is a seamstress and quite competent at making costumes.

I wanted to be Max this year. Two weeks before Halloween, I bought three yards of a white fun-fur that shed all over the rugs and black furniture when cut. As the fur was in limited supply (and expensive), I decided I would make a pattern out of something cheaper. The folks at the fabric store directed me to a bolt of cheap muslin for patterns.

If it sounds like I know what I’m doing, then I’m good at exaggeration. Back at home, I unearthed an old jumpsuit and figured out where the seams lay. It’s a challenge to cut and pin muslin on yourself. Nonetheless, with the pattern transferred to the fur, Max was shaping up. I wired the two ears upright with 16-gauge stainless steel wire. I cut a tail out of black fun-fur and stuffed it with foam (crib bedding). I added buttoned pockets, claws, and white mittens. My Max lights up (of course). I strung battery-operated Christmas lights down the tail and pulled out a gold crown with ping-pong ball LED lights. The crown I constructed for last year’s New Year’s Eve party.

Kids often select their costumes based on what they want to be. A pirate! A fireman! An oozing slug! Adults these days want to be slutty. Kim in Boston lamented that she went to a costume shop to find that they just sold slutty nurse costumes, slutty witch costumes, slutty policewoman costumes, and slutty slut costumes. I went the direction opposite slutty this year. A white fur jumpsuit isn’t slutty. I was eleven year’s old. “Roooaaaar,” I think, is my line.

Opening night of the Halloween season was Dr. Rick’s fundraiser at his Italian Villa in Bernal Heights. Intermittent rain and a competing Giants baseball game threatened the party. I told Fiona and AJ to come anyway while I bounded over with Tall Tom. Cars honked at us. The rain stayed away, costumed revelers came later to the party in droves, and the mariachi band arrived, looked confused, and left. Two party people remembered me as the Pope from the previous year. Others flatteringly told me that I was their favorite costume of the night. After the fundraiser wound down, it was a bit odd to wander through the Mission at two in the morning in a white-fur jumpsuit with a lit-up tail.

Dr.Rick’s outdoor party coupled with rain previously that afternoon meant lots of mud. Max, especially his feet, got trashed. The king of the beasts, I guess, should be a bit dirty, but not after all this work to put the costume together. I’m no expert with laundry. I did get intimately familiar with wringing fur in my bathroom sink and drying out in the bathtub. I had a week for more modifications. The tail’s battery pack required the addition of a dedicated pocket. Some seams had come loose.

Halloween for 2010 fell on a Sunday. There would be three nights of events. Over the weekend, I trooped around to five parties including reverse trick-or-treat through the Mission and a warehouse event with MIT kids in SOMA.

Foreigners, lacking a similar background in children’s books, couldn’t figure out who I was. “What are you? The Statue of Liberty?” asked a Brazilian lady. “You look like a jellyfish,” said an Israeli guy. Nonetheless, I did get a lot of instant recognition with a name: Max!

I was also a conduit for those to complain about the recent Spike Jonze movie of “Where the Wild Things Are.” Yes, I saw it. Yes, I agree it was melancholy. No, I can’t help you with therapy to process the film.

1am outside a bar in SOMA, John and I bounded across a couple visiting from Montreal. There are dressed up but (as I remember) not in any particular costumes. We talk. She gives me advice on Maxing, as apparently I’m doing it all wrong. I’m not roaring enough. We roar. She counsels more 11-year old behavior. We run around. I almost knock her over.

Quite a successful Halloween! All the fun made worthy the several long nights to sew together a white fur jumpsuit. Regardless of the outcome, I enjoy projects. As much as I bitch at the machine or can’t get all the fabric to fit, I enjoy piecing puzzles together.

However, like Max in the film, I was the king of the beasts and yet separate from them. I did talk to an enthused many, but made no new friends. I still can’t figure out how to parlay a wonderful outfit into a date. Max is going home alone to play with his trucks and action figures.

IPO

The Three Greatest Letters in the English Language

Ages ago, as part of farce, Dr.Shaw, AJ, and I would clink glasses late at night in Palo Alto bars to toast “To the three greatest letters in the English language: I.P.O.” At the time of the go-go 90s, two-thirds of our crew were broke graduate students in an environment where fortunes could be made from stock issued by on-line pet-supply companies. Despite our mockery, an IPO did seem like the end of the rainbow to us fledgling scientists.

When I started work at my former employer, E-Ink, the company seemed poised as just two years away from “going public.” Problem was, two years later, E-Ink was still two years away from going public. The company did eventually metamorphose but perhaps not into a butterfly; a supplier company bought up E-Ink and its assets, paying out a lump sum of cash in exchange for stock. Last December, I received an unexpected check for my stock. The cash amount was enough to retire… for a few weeks.

My current company likewise has been forever close to going public. Over summer and fall, bankers were chosen, the road show commenced. Events accelerated. On Monday, all employees were urged to come to work early on Wednesday for a celebration. Hip-hip-hurray, they did it. The company went public.

That Wednesday, I was already scheduled to run a sequencer on the early 6am-2pm morning shift. I would be at work anyway. With dreams of champagne in the champagne room, I expected to be drunk and under the sequencer by seven in the morning. That day, I woke in the dark, found my toothbrush in the dark, and blearily drove down the highway in the dark. It would be one of three sunrises I watched at work that week.

We were asked to come to work so early because the stock exchange in New York commenced trading at 6:30am Pacific Standard Time. The large conference room filled up with similarly bleary employees. We poked at overcooked potatoes. I sneared at the scrambled eggs. The executives trickled in. Because of initial accounting transactions, the company stock would not go up on the ticker until later in the morning.

Nonetheless, where was the booze? Where was the hullabaloo? What I didn’t realize was that the road-show executives were on the road at late as very late the previous night. They had done remarkably well selling the company’s prospectus, but were understandably tired. As the employees like myself stood around in the morning dark expecting a party, the speakers wanted overdue sleep.

The stock posted. The company raised two-hundred fifty million dollars. That’s a quarter billion buck. We hurrahed. One member astutely noted, “Now that the IPO distraction is done, we can go back to building a great company.” We’re public. I guess now I have to justify my work not just to a board of directors but also to share holders. My Dad wants to know when to buy stock. I don’t have a clue. I do know that because of standard start-up practice, I must wait at least six months to sell my stock because of a black-out period.

We may be a public company, but work still feels like the same ol’ job. Nonetheless, I’m glad I lived through it, these the three greatest letters in the English language: I.P.O.

Running to Far

Getting my Money's Worth in Medical Care

In I have goals. For running, I like numbers. I want to run a marathon at a pace of less than 8 minutes per mile, a half marathon at less than 7 minutes per mile, a 10k at less than 6 minutes per mile, and a mile clocked at less than 5 minutes. I’ve conquered the marathon in San Francisco and the 10k in Cambridge. I have yet to run a timed mile.

It’s the half-marathon that has proven intractable. In February, I ran the San Francisco half-marathon in 91 minutes and change. Unfortunately, the change left me at a 7:01 pace per mile, twelve seconds too slow. Oh, if I could have just been 12 seconds quicke.

I tried again at the half marathon last Sunday, but in San Jose at a course that was billed as flatter and faster. The event was the much ballyhooed “Rock and Roll Half Marathon,” a money-spinner in which runners fork over cash to run past a band every mile. Several co-workers eagerly registered along with me.

Through September, I ran a casual half-marathon every weekend. None of my times approached the glorious 91 minutes, but my weekend running was casual, with hills and traffic lights. The actual race should be easy. For a runner number, I pulled an auspicious 1111.

Sunday morning, I rose awfully early to drag myself into a car and drive to godforsaken San Jose, the shiny forgotten metropolis to the south. I reached the starting line in plenty of time. I found co-worker Neil also in my corral. Due to an anticipated blazing time, I got to line up in the same heat with the former race winner and all the other speed demons. Thirteen thousand people at this race and I’m a few back from the start. Just ahead of me was a pace-guy holding a 1:30 pace sign. “I’ll keep up with him,” I thought.

The horn blew, the herd moved, we were off. Despite aversions to jack-rabbiting, I took off as well. I ran just behind the 1:30 pace-guy. As he accumulated runner detritus behind him like a comet, I ran in front of him. By mile 7, I was clocking overall in just under 49 minutes. I could do this.

Problem is, I couldn’t. The rest of me wasn’t keeping up. The bands and cheerleader squads, so wonderful at the start, were just loud and meddlesome in the middle of the race. I lost track of my surroundings. I tried counting steps. I grew sleepy. This faltering wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I’m a runner!

I broke the rest of the race into arduous miles, made deals with myself never to run again. Mile 12 came finally. It was torture. I made a turn, then another, then couldn’t go on. I walked, I wheezed, I grew faint.

The finish line, an oasis! I ran and ran for that arch only to find it a false finish. I wasn’t done. I still had half-a-mile to turn the block twice and run through a different arch. Despite ingesting jelly drops and drinking nasty electrolytes, I faded.

I vaguely remember crossing the finish line. I took a stumble into the crowd. Somebody got me to the medical tent…

…Doctors are sooo cute. I was their first customer. I had a cot to myself and all the overly-salted electrolyte water I could drink. Dizziness overtook me. I couldn’t cool down. I entered the tent with a pulse of 160 beats per minute and left an hour later at 70. My legs wildly cramped. They didn’t have enough salt.

At no point did I think I was in grave danger, yet I could not otherwise go anywhere on my own steam. One woman asked me my name and medical history. I was happy to lay there. Coldness eventually returned, a feeling I remembered. When an ambulance stretcher pulled in to haul away the burly comatose guy next to me, I knew it was time to vacate my cot for the next deserving patient. Two died during last year’s race.

It was quite the frustrating morning. All that preparation to shut down so close to the finish.

Yet, in suffering there is wisdom for running and for life. Don’t set goals that cast experiences as strictly failure or success. Enjoy, enjoy. During the race, when the possibility for failure grew into the event horizon, I shut down. Instead, run to your ability. If the day is fast, you will finish fast. If the day is slow, that works also well well. Let the task dictate the time.

The long drive home was miserably disorienting.

I looked on-line later that Sunday. Not as bad I had feared for 13,000 entrants.

#1111 SexPl 329 OvrPl 383 DivPl 56 01:36:03

I’m enrolled for a marathon in December from Folsom to Sacramento. Let me recall that wisdom before the race. I’d rather enjoy the run next time.