trivial pursuit

A+B had a dinner party the other night. They invited me, Dez and Paris, David A., and M, a graphic designer with whom A often collaborates and who is "between girlfriends." She has mentioned M to me once or twice, the second time in the context of setting the two of us up. I suppose you could say that I've become one of her projects. But I give her all the credit in the world for the way she went about it -- she invited him to a party that was already in the works (it was organized around a game of Trivial Pursuit, which Paris loves to play) and didn't mention it to me ahead of time. I asked her this morning if she'd said anything to Mat about me and she said no. So it was just another gathering with nice people, which was good because I don't think M and I are a match. I had been thinking that he was much more interested in B and Paris, and I liked that he had questions for each of them. But this morning A said that he is very shy with women but that she thought he was pitching all his jokes to me. 

I don't know anything except that I enjoyed meeting M and playing Trivial Pursuit -- or Paris's barebone version, which involved each of our two teams reading the questions, in order, on one card and then deciding whether to start on a second one.

learning how to think

Sometimes I feel insulted that D seems to have so little respect for my well-trained mind. But why? He's excited about what he's reading and wants to talk to me about it. Can't I just enjoy his engagement with whomever or whatever, even if I'm not in sync with his way of thinking? I am trying to become a person who doesn't take things personally. It's a difficult long-term project for a hypersensitive person like me, but I think it's worth the effort.

Dinner

I was supposed to go to a fundraiser for our SF supervisor but instead I made myself a great meal. I had pizza dough in the fridge (I made it several days ago -- it is wonderful when I let it rise slowly, and it's especially good when I use a little rye flour). I also had new potatoes and ricotta cheese and rosemary. I had roasted the potatoes the day before; I sliced the wedges very thinly and laid them on top of the ricotta I had spread on the dough. Then I sprinkled some rosemary and cheese (a mild cheddar, which was what I had on hand) over the potatoes.

When I took the pizza out of the oven I drizzled it with a little fancy olive oil and scattered a little salt over it. I made a salad from the greens that were in the CSA box I picked up yesterday (very fresh) and added mandolined carrot and tokyo turnips (they taste like very mild radishes). My oven is great for pizza -- it supposedly goes up to 550 but it runs at least 50 degrees above the set temperature, and with the pizza stone the oven gets even warmer. I hardly ever get a soggy crust.

Mandela moment

I suppose it's because he lived so long, so his death did not shock anyone. And there is no doubt that he was a great man. I was on the T this morning, flipping through my New Yorker. I paused over a full-page photo of Mandela taken in 1990, and a man standing next to me asked, "Do you know who that is?" I looked up and he was smiling, which was a relief -- for a second or two I thought maybe he didn't know. He looked to be in his 60s or maybe his 70s -- a cross between Louis Gossett Jr. and Marvin Gaye. A few of his teeth were missing, but he looked healthy. He said Mandela had been in jail for a long time, and so had he. It wasn't so bad, he said; he spent a lot of time doing kitchen work and he got an education. Then he realized that we were at his stop, so I said see you later. As he walked out the door I noticed he was wearing some odd pants -- jeans above the knee and some kind of black material (nylon?) from the knee down. I hope I do see him later.

holiday pain

What is it about this time of year? I am in a lot of pain because I'm alone. It will pass, I tell myself.

Inspiration Point

Took a post-thanksgiving walk on the nimitz trail with KW and JSV and enjoyed the slanted late-afternoon light. Sadly, KW's cat died the next day. Farewell, Maggie!

strange happiness

Strange to feel happy; it has no purpose. I was walking along Mission St in the late afternoon, with the sun at a low winter angle. It was calm on the street, people seemed relatively content. I got on the bus and as it moved up Mission St I looked at the fancy facades of the defunct movie palaces, and the people on the bus, and I was happy.

I think I was lightheaded because I had forgotten to eat lunch. 

neighbors + garden

[On the day before I began writing this post] I went to a BRITE meeting in the morning, which featured a big discussion about how to oppose a new 100-bed shelter at Mother Brown's. The tone of the campaign is too hyperbolic for me. I much preferred the tone of Robert's presentation to the Police Commission. I really appreciate the time and effort, and the fact that all this has to be done quickly, to keep up with the mayor and the city. And I know that it's difficult to take responsibility for most of the work and also make other people feel engaged -- like we're all in it together.
  

After the meeting I rushed home to get my hat and workgloves -- I was late for a workday in the garden. On the way I ran into Valerie and her dog Penelope. I complained a bit about the meeting and gave her a flyer about the homeless shelter. I stopped to talk to Mr. D. (a 70+ sweetheart of a man who sits in a folding chair outside a corner grocery and waves at everyone) and his slightly younger pal, who was trying to put the moves on me. I spent a couple of hours helping Diego and Alen and Cheryl harvest tomatoes and greens, rip out old plants, turn and amend soil, and eat lunch. It was a joyful experience -- partly because it was so warm and sunny, and partly because Cheryl has the gift of making everyone feel equally important, of organizing our time without setting herself up as the leader.
 
On the way home I stopped to chat with Bob, whose family lives in the house on the corner of Palou and Keith -- he's often out front washing some vehicle or other, usually wearing a porkpie hat that matches his shirt. He showed me his two pinky rings (both feature bejeweled horse heads) and asked me to dinner. Oy, these middle-aged black men! 

After I came home I rested for a bit. I took a lovely nap on the living room floor, in the warm sun. Eventually I got up to bake cookies, some of which I plan to take over to Marlon and his wife -- Marlon complained about construction noise at 7:30 in the morning this past week -- it was perfectly legal (I even had a permit), and later in the day Desiree went over and worked out a compromise. I still haven't gone over myself, but in a few minutes I will get up and take a shower and then I'll go next door with cookies in hand.

garden reboot

Yesterday the front garden got a buzzcut:

sunday sunset

 Looking toward the bay:

Incredible. My iphone can't do it justice.

neighbors, new to me

I saw a couple of UPS boxes next to the tree in front of my house one morning last week. When I went down to leave for work I saw that they were addressed to Marcos Santos at 1350 Palou. I was just starting to figure out what to do -- ring the bell at 1350 and then if no one answered, leave a note? -- when a guy I'd seen in passing a few times (but hadn't met) walked up and said, oh, how strange, those are for me. I looked at him and decided that he could very easily have been Marcos Santos. I said, Oh, that's odd, and we introduced ourselves. I didn't feel right asking him for ID so I just sort of watched him walk up to 1350 and go inside.

On Tuesday morning I met Inez, who lives two doors away, toward Keith, in the house with a formidable flagstone facade, set back from the street. She was wearing an oversized black T-shirt adorned with the words "California swing dancing" (in orange) and cropped black leggings, and she was carrying two leopard-patterned canvas gym bags to her car (a taupe-colored sedan). She told me she has lived in that house for 40 years, and that her grandmother bought it 50 years ago, after it was relocated from Daly City to make room for the BART station. She said her grandmother moved to Palou Ave. in 1948 from New Orleans and was not welcomed with open arms.

doing some good; could be doing better

I am procrastinating, or dithering, or just relaxing. Hard to tell. I feel the kind of generalized anxiety underneath it all -- I could be doing something! But I can't decide what that might be. I could go down and fix the low fence around my lavender that people keep damaging, cut back the incredibly thorny rose bushes, and water. Yes, I could do all this, but I don't seem to want to expose myself to the neighborhood.

Yesterday I did my bit for the District 10 "clean sweep," coordinated by the Department of Public Works. I biked down to the meet-up spot -- Warm Water Cove, at the end of 24th St. When I got there I saw brooms being waved in the air -- a self-described flash mob of dancers. Then there were  speeches by city VIPs, and finally some photo ops. I met -- or at least shook hands and posed for pictures with -- our District 10 supervisor, Malia Cohen. She was personable, perfectly coiffed, and carefully made up).

After all that, a really nice DPW guy named Mike drove our BRITE group (me, Ann, David, Jonathan, and Robert) back to Palou Ave. We helped plant 5 or 6 trees in front of the shamefully dilapidated public housing complex two blocks east of where I live. Well, I say "helped," but I don't know how helpful we really were. I guess it doesn't matter, really; we had a good time. It turns out that one of the DPW workers who was "supervising" us -- Eddie -- hangs out sometimes across the street at the Smith house -- he has a 5-year-old daughter with Jessica (Doug's niece). One of the other DPW guys, Bernard, raised 4 kids in that public housing complex, one of whom is in her freshman year at Columbia. Bernard also knows the Smiths. He told us the sad tale of his 2010 arrest for a late-night home invasion robbery that he had nothing to do with. He said that he and Jamie were both picked up a little while after the robbery and driven to the victim's house. The victim looked into the backseat of the police car and said yeah, those are the guys. Jamie worked out some kind of a plea bargain and spent some time in prison, but Bernard didn't want to plead guilty, so he sat in jail for 6 months before he was finally released (I said, "No bail?" and he said "No bail"). He seemed more incredulous than bitter.

Later, in the afternoon, Linda came by to take me, along with her friend Denise, to Pacifica for her reading. A happened to be out doing something in her yard when I came out and so I introduced her to Linda and also to Denise, whom I had just met. 

Non sequitur: I took these photos a couple of Sundays ago at Mountain View:

rain and shine

It rained for a few hours this morning. I went to the BRITE meeting, helped A bring her monitor home, and then sat in A+B's kitchen eating toast and eggs and chatting and falling in love with their puppy, Coco. Now the sun is out and enormous clouds are floating past my front windows. I feel sluggish but wired because while I was eating those eggs I drank a fair amount of coffee.

Earlier this week when I came home from work I saw this:

Not possible to capture the enormity of the view, or the quality of the light, with an iphone. But it is a reminder that the sky makes up for some of the more annoying aspects of living here.

I have been sleeping poorly most nights. I am feeling pretty good, though. Tomorrow the piano tuner is supposed to come, and I am looking forward to having a better time playing Bach.

labor weekend

It usually takes me the better part of a day off to feel like I have anything to write here -- and that's only if I spend enough of the day alone. So here I am, in the late afternoon, alone in my little house. It is very warm in the living room, even though I have the window open and the curtains are mostly closed. I leave an opening on the right because I can't not allow myself at least a slice of the view. The sun is very strong and there's nothing shading the front windows. It's glorious, of course.

I walked to Heron's Head with A this morning. She has such intelligence and quickness of mind. On the way home we took the walkway through Coleman-Youngblood and encountered a man walking his dog. We exchanged pleasantries with both man and dog, and just as we were about to part ways A introduced herself by name, which led to a discussion of who lives where and for how long. By the time we finally did part ways A had obtained his full name and his email address, and he (his name is Ed) had invited us to his 80s theme party next Saturday. It was classic A, all the way.

When we got back to Palou Ave I got out the hose to do a little watering, and as we were standing in front of my house an old woman walking her little poodle paused to ask if my tree is a magnolia. I said yes, and she asked how long it had been there and that was A's cue to give her a history of tree planting on our block. That led to another round of introductions and at some point Doug came out of the Smith house for a smoke and Valerie, who lives on Oakdale near Keith, recognized him. Valerie has lived on Oakdale for about 20 years -- one of the first white people to live on that block since the Italians left.

Eventually Valerie and Penelope (her little dog) moved along, and as A was heading home Doug crossed the street and we began a long conversation about . . . well, the thing we always talk about. He asked me if I would go to Santa Cruz with him next Saturday. I said no. He wondered if I had ever considered taking a walk on the wild side. He told me about his very first girlfriend, a white girl who lived down the street when his dad was posted in Virginia. I'm sure he was telling me about how dicey it was for a black boy to be with a white girl at that time and in that place because he thought maybe my reservations have something to do with race. But I didn't mind because the story was interesting. More interesting than his direct sales pitch, which usually involves speculating that there must be something wrong with me. When I said I really didn't like to feel pressured, he said I shouldn't feel that way, that he wasn't trying to cajole me into anything. So it went, round and round. At some point he did tell me that both parents are in the hospital and it looks pretty bad-- and I couldn't help but wonder if he was telling me the sad news to gain a bit of leverage.

forgetting and remembering

Today I forgot about almost everything. I forgot about my failure to go to Linda and Isabel's last night, and about going to the open-air market on Pier 70. I forgot about going to Lowe's to get a cooler and a rug pad and a few other things (until just now, and now I am too tired). I forgot to worry about the fact that I'm not sleeping these days.

I remembered to get the green olive bread that Earl left outside my door, and I remembered to bake oatcakes and chocolate chip cookies, and put together the cream that will be iced before I leave tomorrow. I remembered to do a load of laundry and hang it in the backyard. I remembered to water the front terraces. I could not manage to lock the door to the back yard -- I used to be able to keep it high enough to get the bolt through the cylinder but this afternoon it kept slipping. So I piled the large flowerpots and some bricks against the inside. I don't know, maybe I can manage to do it in the morning.

I am going to lie down for a little while, and then I will try to make white peach and maple syrup, to use up at least a few of the peaches from the tree.

I did remember the graffiti on my front wall, but I tried not to dwell. I looked at it while I was watering -- nothing had been added to what was already there. I realized that my distress has to do with the idea of being singled out, marked in a very obvious way. I begin to wonder if the graffiti is some kind of code that makes me a target. When I start thinking in this way, the fact that none of my neighbors seem particularly concerned only adds to my paranoia.

Clearly, I need to stop thinking about it. I will think instead about packing food and clothing and linens for sea ranch. I am taking the bottle of wine I bought at the last Bayview mercantile pop-up. I need to remember coffee paraphernalia, and rice, and fish sauce, and garlic. I'm not sure the basil I bought yesterday will survive very long but I might as well bring it, along with the thai chiles. Also: grapes and green peppers and avocados.

bumpy weekend

Why is it so hard to sleep? I need to see a doctor, but first I need to find one. I need to sleep. I don't seem to have the energy to deal with minor setbacks. I came home from the BRITE meeting and saw this:

And it sent me into a tailspin. I hate it. I can't stop worrying about proliferation -- I imagine that the next time I look at the front of the house there will be more graffiti on more surfaces. I can hardly stand the thought that it won't be removed until Tuesday, after I leave for Sea Ranch. I've found myself wondering if the idea of owning a house in the Bayview is a bad one. I need to get some perspective. I need to sleep.

how things are

Things are good. I saw Meg and David last night and enjoyed them. I think it had been six or seven years since the last time I saw David. They look good together. None of the annoying little things I used to find annoying seem to matter these days.

After we said good bye I got on the T at Folsom and when it was about to turn into the Caltrain stop the driver announced that it would be going only to 23 St. I felt weirdly grateful, because I really had to pee. I ran into the nearest restaurant and encountered an employee in the bathroom who had just encountered a full cup worth of coffee and milk on the floor. She was getting ready to mop it up. A few minutes after I returned to the platform, a Sunnyvale-bound train pulled up. Imagine that -- my T ride home was almost convenient. 

I don't know why it was important to write about the coffee-soaked bathroom. Maybe because it's unusual -- pleasant, even -- to smell coffee and milk in a bathroom, especially after you've had a couple of drinks.

My peach tree is doing pretty well. Most of the peaches are still a bit green. Then again, the peaches I got from the CSA this week have green on them, and I thought you weren't supposed to pick them until the flesh was creamy or orange-ish.

D the Russian contractor came over this afternoon, after I got home from the Youngblood Coleman cleanup. I decided not to ask him to assess the foundation -- Greg can do that next week. He told me he could replace the faulty section of fence and the facing on the front of the workshed for about $300. At least, I think that's what he was saying -- communication with contractors can be difficult even when we share a native language. But anyway, a few hundred dollars seems like nothing after the thousands I've shelled out so far.

color

I tried two colors -- a honey yellow and a mid-gray -- and both are too dark, too heavy, for the lower part of the kitchen wall. When I look at swatches I'm drawn to the richer, heavier colors. But they don't work on the wall! I'll have to go back and get some paler, lighter tints.

White fog rolling over San Bruno Mountain, like a wave, from the southwest. Blue sky above and in front of it (still sunny here, in other words). I'm getting ready to make a salad to take across the street -- another sunday dinner at A+B's house.

real beauty

“You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.” --Anouk Aimee

Not exactly the way I would have phrased it but I see what she means.

I planted lavender next to the magnolia tree.


Then I called J to see how things are. Her father died last Thursday and now that she has dealt with the logistics of his death she is getting ready to come back to the west coast and (perhaps) absorb it all in some way. It has been intense -- she was the only family member there with him, his wife having said before she left that she would not come back from Germany until the 16th, even if something happened. As she said on the phone just now, it is impossible to understand your parents' relationship. You are shut out. In the case of her parents this was especially true.

I don't know

I am swinging back and forth between anxiety and . . . what is the opposite of anxiety? Tranquility? Something like that. Unfortunately, I swing toward anxiety when I am lying awake at night. Last night I thought about the rat that made its way up to the attic -- it was killed (I think?) in one of the traps and Jim discovered it yesterday. I know the critter guys are working their system and this is part of the process, and I didn't think it was bothering me.

But when I went to bed I found myself worrying about it, wondering if the problem will ever be under control until the siamese-twin house crumbles or is rescued by some enterprising person. I wish someone would take care of it. I wish everyone had a decent place to live. I wish people would stop shooting at each other. I wish I had a pony. And so on.

on the bright side

I had a lovely dinner last night across the street at A+B's house, along with neighbor D (and her beautiful dog, Zeus) and Gary, an old friend of A+B's who was very nice. A+B have two little dogs -- Gemmy and Ubu -- who completely dominate poor Zeus (he's a sheepdog, mostly).

D was praising K to the skies; she thinks he'd make a great boyfriend -- and I agree. I've got a vendor crush on him. I had D down as gay -- a contractor with a booming voice who loves to watch boxing and favors super-long basketball shorts. But last night she mentioned both an ex-girlfriend and an ex-boyfriend. Anyway, as D put it while we were gossiping about the neighborhood, it's the relationships that matter -- neighborly, professional, whatever.

Speaking of vendors, Ivan called the other day to see I wanted to get together socially. I told him I'd be happy to, as long as we are getting together as friends, and he said he was fine with that.

The sky is bright white today so I am posting a photo of Limantour that I took last month, on that wonderful hike with J+K. I baked oatcakes while the Giants were losing to the As, and now I am thinking about calling JSV. Or reading -- I am finding the second volume of Knausgaard's My Struggle as addictive as the first volume.

raccoon stalker

Half and hour before I cross the street for dinner. A tremendous mix of feelings lately, many of them stirred by a raccoon. I had to keep reminding myself that it's just an animal, and I was not always convinced. It had started to nest in the attic, and after it was evicted it spent hours in the early morning working on a vent outside my bedroom window -- a vent that seemed quite solid. I kept shooing it away but it kept coming back -- and there were some very peculiar moments, the raccoon up on its hind legs, leaning toward me, then finally turning and walking along the top of my fence until it jumped down into the neighbors' back yard. It gave up around 5:30, but the next night while I was sitting on the couch, exhausted, it ripped off enough of it to gain access to the crawlspace. I heard it and got to my bedroom window in time to see the tail disappear.

Anyway, that strange feeling that I was being stalked was fueled, no doubt, by sleep deprivation. I felt better the next day, even before the critter control guy arrived to make sure no babies were involved and then seal off all the vents, leaving the one-way doors in place. In the early evening I heard the raccoon leave its spot underneath my bathtub and I assume it went out one of the doors, because I haven't heard anything since. I found myself watching episodes of Don't Trust the B, putting off going to bed because I hated the thought of waking up and hearing the raccoon. Anxiety, pure and simple.Also: Anger. And fear. Uncertainty: What am I doing here and why did I buy this house?

P and M+D

Had consecutive visits from p and m+d and it all went fairly well. I am currently hosting some kind of critter -- a racoon? -- and that is not going well. On Tuesday morning some rodent control guys are coming to clean out the attic and the crawlspace, seal the many openings, and then, after a period of trapping, replace the insulation. It will cost me a few thousand dollars but I am ready to pay anything to get rid of the problem.

Anyway, it was surprisingly easy to have m+d here. D fixed the toilet and the ceiling light in the entryway and put up a ceiling light in the bedroom. Oh, and he also hung my new bathroom mirror -- I can't believe how much better the bathroom looks. I was grateful and he was glad to have things to do.

P and I had a rockier time, at least at first. It was my fault, mostly. We got over it, I think. I took a day off work and we had a really nice drive around Marin, with the not so urgent goal of getting to Abbott's Lagoon.

I am sunned out -- went to West Portal with A for a long, slow walk with about 25 others, led by a man named Howard. It was a good day for such a thing -- uncharacteristically sunny, even over there. I can see the fog creeping over San Bruno Mountain now. Am surprised to see that it is 7:00. I should eat.

old friends

Re-encountering lots of people lately -- Joel, Meg, David C., HH. Walt via email. Klaas to come. JSV visited last weekend, but I wouldn't call her a long lost friend. We hiked the Estero trail on Sunday because the Tule Elk trail was very windy and JSV didn't have a shell. The young cows came up very close while we were sitting on a hillside eating lunch. They just wanted to get a look at us, I guess.

white sunday

I'm having a Sunday morning on the couch. The  sky is white, the fire is on. I've had coffee and and a tangerine, but nothing else because my stomach is in turmoil after I ate potato salad with LEN yesterday afternoon and then lasagna at KW's. I can't figure out how to change the temperature reading on the remote from centigrade to fahrenheit. So I might finally learn how to convert in my head. I can still remember the time when we were going to switch to the metric system and we were watching slide shows at school and I was very anxious that I wouldn't understand how to measure things. And then the metric system went poof. Oh, Jimmy Carter, how we've disappointed you!

I am still deaf in my left ear. I don't like that. But I do like the clouds we've had this past week. I stopped at Pier 54 on my way in to work the other day and took a quick photo with my phone.

You can't believe how lovely it is sometimes. You don't feel you deserve it but you are grateful and you hope it continues for at least a little while. It's important -- to me -- to feel the edge, the end somewhere on the horizon. Not too close. Not yet. I'm not ready, and I will probably never be ready. I read that Hugo Chavez's last words were "I don't want to die" and it made sense to me. I am anxious about disappearing; sometimes I can barely get a grip on myself. And I have moments of lacerating guilt about this joyfulness in the world as it is. I suppose you can't help but feel guilty if you think for a minute. It doesn't do any good, of course. In fact it's very selfish to set other people's misfortune at a distance, on the horizon.

In my better moments, I agree with Roger Ebert:

We must try to contribute joy to the world. 

it never occurs to him

I was thinking about D and his dark feelings: anger, resentment, frustration. You can see them taking him over -- he enjoys it, in the Lacanian sense. He doesn't say "I am upset about X." He says "You have done X to me" or "You never do Y for me." He seizes on whatever you say in that moment and if you don't say anything he falls back on things you said weeks ago. Everything is converted into fuel, in an I'm-rubber-and-you're-glue kind of way. He tries to wound you because you've wounded him. You start out trying to defend yourself, then you feel petty about defending yourself, and finally you see that you have to stand back and wait until the wave of feeling runs aground. You start to lose empathy, you end up losing respect. You feel guilty (he makes sure of that) but you need to move away, out of range. And he can't understand why you are abandoning him. It must be painful and bewildering.

That's how I see it, anyway.

trees and clouds

I am keeping track of the peach tree. Now there are vibrant green leaves undergirding the intensely pink blossoms, and I'm hopeful that the tree will survive at least another season. A said not to worry too much about the curling I saw last fall -- that peach trees crave dry heat and we don't really have that here.

I can see enormous clouds and patches of blue sky to the east and an undifferentiated mass of gray to the southwest. I guess it will rain later. The neighbors' bassline is coming through my bedroom walls a bit, so I've close the door. I wish I never had to hear anything from anyone but I know that's unrealistic. I'll look into the soundproofing options as soon as I feel a little more flush. That might not be for a while, what with upcoming payments: property taxes, heater, front windows. And I have to deal with the back windows sometime this year.

At the moment I am waiting for the drill to recharge so that I can put up a new coat rack on the front door.

Yesterday I drove down the peninsula to meet S and hike the Russian Ridge trail. We were thinking it might rain so we decided to start relatively early. But of course the sky went blue while we were out there. You couldn't quite see the bay but the clouds were stupendous. I got home around 2:30 and spent the rest of the day puttering -- washed the featherbed cover and some other white-ish items, picked a few flowers from the back yard and put them in small vases, read some blogs, wrote a long email to J.

On Friday Ivan came over to set me up with a remote for the heater. He asked if he should remove his very white shoes and I said no. And then he told me that he bought his shoes at a garage sale -- a woman whose boyfriend had left abruptly was selling off his things. His conversation is a bit jumpy but I think that's because he gets nervous. He invited me to get in touch if I ever feel like it, because he'd enjoy hanging out with me. He might have a crush on me but then again he might be a kind person who likes to collect friends.

After Ivan left I called Doug, who came over and sat in my green chair, smelling strongly of cigarettes. He wears silver bands on the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand; his hands are large and chalky -- they have done a lot of work. He is not the least bit nervous and makes no secret of his fondness for women -- and for the woman who happens to be sitting across from him. He had no doubt that I should be interested in him. He said he's been single for seven months and he hates being alone. He doesn't understand what I do alone in my house, which makes him think I need to open myself up to excitement (which, apparently, means going to a casino and riding a horse and getting involved with him). I kept saying that I am fine as I am and I'm not interested in getting involved with anyone. I don't know if he believes me, because he doesn't want to believe me. He wants a girlfriend, and that's what matters. In some ways he reminds me of Dean -- he's got the same tendency to proclaim his undying interest in who you are and what you want and seize on whatever you say as evidence that you want, or should want, what he wants.

And now it is raining. 

morgan territory

Beautiful Saturday hike over those rolling hills. We encountered more cows than humans. Not much water flowing out there, unsurprisingly. We walked somewhere between six and seven miles, with a stop for lunch -- cheese, bread, tangerines, carrots and string beans, leftover segment of waffle, chocolate chip cookie.

On Sunday I walked up Bayview Hill with E and we encountered no one except one guy on a bike. When she dropped me off I saw that my garage had been tagged with purple paint. Agitating! (I called a Recology company I found online and they blasted it off yesterday.) A and B came over in the late afternoon for a drink and they brought delicious oozy cheese, pate, and bread from the fancy cheese shop in Dogpatch. It was a neighborly Sunday. 

neighborliness

I lazed around this morning, after being awakened around 3:00 by the sounds of the critter ripping off the wire screen. (Why don't I just fix the problem?) Eventually I got dressed and took the 23 to the farmers market, where I bought kumquats, garlic, sugar snap peas, Asian pears, and honey. On the way home I stopped by the library to return my Curbed DVD and see what else I could borrow. I ended up with season 1 of Game of Thrones (not exactly what I was looking for but I thought I'd give it a try) and a documentary about the rise and fall of Detroit. While I was checking those out I recognized Elizabeth and she recognized me. She educated me in the ways of the library -- showed me how to self-check-out, instructed me to go online and reserve DVDs, and so on. We walked homeward together and she ended up coming in to see my house. We discovered that we both know SN -- she has been in a poetry group with him for years. I am hoping she'll find time to take me on some neighborhood walks.

Last night MG came over for dinner. I thought I would get home by 5:30 but I didn't leave work until after that. It didn't matter, really -- I had some nibbly food out and our chicken with prunes and olives were ready eventually. When she arrived we noticed a dark SUV in my driveway. I saw a couple of guys putting bags in the back and I felt like I needed to say something, so I went down and said hey, guys. Before I could get any further they started saying they were loading their bags and getting ready to leave. I realized that they had been visiting Tiffany's house, so I had an awkward moment because I didn't remember if I had met them or what their names were, and they were behaving as if I was the one being rude. I noticed that they had parked about a foot from my garage -- why do people in this neighborhood make their neighbors walk in the street? Unfortunately, I couldn't put that into words, so I just said OK and went back up to the house. 

spring forward

Listening to the Takacs playing Bartok quartets, with the windows open, the breeze rippling through the curtains, and the sun coming in. I thought I was going to do nothing today except maybe go out for a walk. Then I realized that it was 4:00 and I had been weeding, doing laundry, vacuuming, and cleaning for most of the afternoon. I tried re-potting the orchid plant -- the roots were draping themselves over the edges of the original pot. I don't know if it will survive. The peach tree is blooming. There is a very small lemon on what I thought was a lime tree (unless limes are yellow before they ripen? I should look that up). I tried to hang a painting on the wall opposite the couch but I think it's too high. Darn it.

I'm happy that we sprang forward, even though we all lost an hour of sleep. Yesterday after the seminar finally ended I got a ride from UC Berkeley to downtown SF (slow going over the bridge--I probably should have taken BART). I bought a bottle of wine at the Safeway and then retrieved my bike from the PPIC garage. Rode it home, zigzagging to get around clueless pedestrians and narrowly avoiding being flattened by a taco truck and then a minivan turning left in front of me. I was home for about 3 minutes before J and D and N arrived. JB and K showed up about half an hour later. It was my first attempt at making dinner for two or more in this house and it worked out pretty well, thanks to a fairly simple meal plan (beef stirfry and lemon bars that I made on Friday night), JB's freshly made bread, and large doses of gin and wine (not together in the same glass!). J and K discovered that they'd been members of the same SF chorus around the same time, in the 90s. I enjoyed that, among other things.

chickweed

[From Sunday 2/24:] N and I did the foraging walk in Redwood this morning, and then we hiked on the other side of Skyline.We learned the names of many weeds, including chickweed, which usually grows alongside miner's lettuce and which has an amazing "string" inside the green stem. I think it is a pretty sure bet that we would not gain weight if we were forced to forage after the zombie apocalypse. But we'd probably be able to feed ourselves, marginally, and we might be able to avoid eating anything toxic. And it is unlikely that we would be cited for foraging on public land.

Now it's Sunday 3/3 and I am sitting here enjoying a late afternoon on the couch, watching the fog move east -- the sun is now a blindingly white section of sky. There is a thin line of pale blue to the southeast, but it won't last long. I can't believe how beautiful it is. Here is an iphone picture that may or may not do it justice.

Today N and Sandy and LEN and Isabel came over and we walked to Flora Grubb, eventually, where I bought a few small succulents. We had lunch at the pizza place on the corner. I thought it was very nice of them all to visit and admire the windows.

Yesterday I spent hours in the back pulling up oxalis and other weeds, including a lot of overgrown parsley. I cut back the large succulent that presses up against the laundryroom window. The compost bin is pretty much full. Doug came across the street while I was pausing to pull oxalis out of the lower two terraces. He wants to have dinner tomorrow, which makes me a little nervous but in the end I think it will be OK. I was feeling extra cautious when I saw him because I had just discovered a bag with a few items in it at the top of my steps -- Dean had dropped it off, who knows when, probably when I was out back. He may even have knocked.

Anyway, all is well. The windows look good, even though I need to paint the insides. The fireplace heater seems to work fine -- though the weather warmed up last week, so I haven't really tested it. More about all that in another post.

mclaren

N and I tried to follow the philosophers trail. The arrows were erratic but I didn't mind. It was a great long weekend.

And now, before I even finished that second sentence, another weekend is here. I have made great progress on my house issues. The gas insert heater (god willing) will be installed on Monday. On Wednesday Kevin and his crew will install five new windows. I was only expecting three but he made all five, and told me I could pay for the additional two when I'm ready. I sent a packet of tax information to Isabel the accountant and I hope she will figure it all out and get me a nice refund.

J finally cashed the second check I wrote for the car. We hired Jenny as our new production person, and I was given a new office downstairs, with windows. I met the people who live in the house where I pick up my CSA delivery -- I ran into them, almost literally, as I was leaving their garage/basement with my bike and my produce. They seem like a nice youngish couple.

Today I went to the new library and got a card; I admired the olive green heath tile on the walls and checked out the 8th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.The selection of DVDs was interesting -- the Twilight movies, a season or two of Sons of Anarchy, a smattering of Hitchcock, Down to the Bone, The Five-Year Engagement, Devil in a Blue Dress, and so on. I walked down to the Fresh and Easy to buy milk and wine and butter, and got the treatment from black men of all ages.

Everything is OK, in other words.

chronkite/rodeo

Hiked up and down Hill 88 with J and K today. Wonderful day for a strenuous climb -- sunny but not hot, and only a little wind. K a bit out of sorts but pleasant company, as always. Some kind of ultramarathon was finishing up when I arrived, a little ahead of them. I stood on the beach, took a few photos, and sent one to P out of nostalgia for the times Robert took us there in his death trap of a car.

Now that I've had such a lovely weekend I feel prepared to go back tomorrow morning and pay for my permit. 

saturday slough

This morning I met Xeres and Victor-Mario and John and Ingrid. Xeres is a nurse and she has five children and the worst luck, or the worst taste, in men -- her first husband was a surly, alcoholic bigamist, and her second husband developed a nonpaternal interest in her 17-year-old daughter. Victor-Mario is a cheerfully eccentric artist -- he designed the 16th St. BART station plaza. He said he might want an editor and gave me his card. I said I would email him. Ingrid is German (?) and very unsubtle. John drove up from Palo Alto to volunteer, on his way to the Giants event at the ballpark. Roddy the dj was back, but I didn't end up talking to him.

We saw geese and crows and at least one hawk. Also some tiny birds with piercing cries. It was a beautiful morning and we did our best to plant seedlings in the rocky soil.

I am pausing on the couch while the laundry is drying, getting ready for a movie with J+D.  I meant to take a nap but I got busy vacuuming and phone calls and other minutiae.

sunday, sunny

Sun sliding below the horizon, burning intensely. Full moon last night. I was hardly outside today, even though it has been a beauty. I went down to the garage in the afternoon to dump some garbage and branches I cut off the peach tree in the bins and to try to get my shoes to work with the new pedals on my bike. It seems to be impossible. I'll call the nice people at the bikeshop tomorrow and see if there's anything to be done about that.

Last night I went to David K's 50th birthday pig roast. I hadn't seen him in more than a year, and the last two times I saw him were by chance. One Saturday night Dean and I were on the Ashby BART platform, coming back to my place after a symphony concert, and David was carrying his bike up the stairs. I looked at him and thought, "That guy looks a lot like David." Then I found myself saying "David!" A month ot two later he responded to one of my craigslist postings and came over to buy my dresser. That was the night before I moved in with Dean. It seems like a long time ago.

I had to leave David's around 7 because Allan had invited Merrill and me for dinner at his house, and I had gotten the day mixed up (thought it was on Friday) and since David's party started so early it seemed easiest just to do both. I figured that it might be good to have to leave, since I don't know many of David's friends. But, of course, I ended up feeling like it was too bad I had to go. I spent a fair amount of time talking to a woman named Natalie, who knows David from back when she worked at Vicolo and now lives in LA. I also chatted briefly with Emily, Bill D, and David C, who came with Felix. And I went on and on about living in the Bayview to a nice couple with a small girl. I know the man is called Max but I can't remember his wife's name. 

So anyway, today I didn't feel like going anywhere. I baked some oatmeal biscuits for breakfast (I'm guessing), and now I am thinking about warming up the soup (and spicing it up -- it tasted bland yesterday when I tried a spoonful). I am supposed to sprinkle dill on it but I don't have any dill, and I don't feel like going out and finding it.

old photos

P bought a photo scanner. She sent this one of me from 198?. It was taken by Kevin one day when P and I were visiting from Brooklyn and Robert took us to Chronkite Beach. I found the Carleton sweatshirt under a tree in the arboretum -- I think I was walking at night with Tom but I could be making that up. I wore it for years and years, until the sleeves disintegrated.

Anyway, seeing myself so young is startling -- it makes me aware of my current age for a moment or two. I am not 23! I am sure that when this photo was taken I believed I would find someone and someone would find me, perhaps by the time I was in my late 20s, which seemed like a long way into the future. I did find someone in my mid-20s, of course. But I lost him in my mid-30s, and I haven't found anyone else.

But you know what? I don't think it matters, really. Alone, I feel a lot of things more keenly -- fear, satisfaction, anticipation. I know that I am responsible for making (or not making) decisions. For making my life.This involves strength, and acknowledgment of weakness. It requires me to rely on neighbors and friends, and strangers, even, in a way I would not otherwise do. I am OK with it, at least for today.

Watching Deep Blue Sea last night I thought about Terence Davies making movies about a woman who loves someone she can't count on, someone from whom she is expecting too much. It is something you don't see very often in the movies, not since the golden age of melodrama. And it is difficult for me to see it now but worth the effort.

I watched the president's speech. It wasn't bad. I don't feel euphoric but I am not giving up hope.

losing and finding

I have been reading about too many armed robberies in the Bayview police report, and so I started keeping my license and debit card separate from my other cards, so that if I had to give up my wallet I wouldn't need to replace so many pieces of credit and ID.

Anyway, after I finished weeding and picking up trash at Candlestick, I took the bag N found in my bushes to the police station. I talked on a phone to an Irish officer of indeterminate age who was sitting at a desk on the other side of a pane of glass. I could not show the Irishman my license because I had forgotten to transfer it to the coat I had been wearing until I got too warm and took it off. Oops, I was driving sans license. I did not share this with the officer. I filled out a form and he gave me a case number, then came out into the lobby to take the bag and shake my hand.

After our handshake I drove home and put the license and my debit card in my back pocket, so that I could drive over to Blaze with a clear conscience. I saw the insert heater that might fit into my fireplace but I did not see Ivan, because he wasn't working yesterday. When I asked Earl, who was working, for pricing information, he said I should wait and talk to Ivan, because Ivan might be planning to give me a deal. I said I hoped he was planning on it.

Then I walked from Heron's Head to India Basin and back, and on the way back I realized that I had lost my license and debit card. I had been taking pictures with my phone, and pretty quickly had gotten tired of putting it in the pocket of my jacket and making sure it didn't fall out. I started putting it in my back pocket and pulling it out, and at first I was careful to make sure I didn't dislodge the cards but as I got more interested in taking pictures . . . well, anyway, I had to retrace my steps. I found the debit card first, and that was a relief. I found the license face up at the end of the paved trail. I thought about the really frightening part of being robbed and how I was trying to make it less frightening by moving things from place to place but not really succeeding. I also thought about the mugging in Bogota and wondered if the trauma wore off so quickly because I left Bogota a couple of days after it happened or if I would get over it here, too. I don't know.

jacqueline doesn't live here anymore

She lives in Seattle now. We drove up in two days -- the first day sunny and cold, the second day cold and overcast and snowblown. The cats were mostly quiet on the back seat, which was a relief. We worried occasionally about them, unnecessarily. She was sleepless, thanks partly to the cats (who yowled their way through the last night in Berkeley) and partly to her own anxiety about the changes she is making. I tried to be practical and reassuring.

kale and schumann

This morning the sky was dappled with bits of blue but now all I see are smudgy banks of cloud, piled high. I took the bus to Bernal and rode my newly tuned bike back home. In between I went to the Alemany farmers market -- for the first time since I moved here. I kept thinking I might go but it never seemed absolutely necessary, until this weekend. I have not gotten a CSA delivery in almost 4 weeks and I needed kale and carrots and fennel and scallions for the salad I'm taking to J's party tomorrow.

It is cold in the house. I have the space heater on and am wearing the fleece slippers Dean gave me last xmas. I don't know how many thousands of dollars I will end up spending on this place but it will eventually be warm(er) and water tight, and maybe I will redo the kitchen and get rid of the rodents. In the meantime, I have sweaters and blankets and tarps to keep warmth in and water out.

I am listening to Schumann piano trios on my geneva sound box, which was a splurge, considering all the money I'm pouring into the house. But I am very happy that I can play my CDs again, after almost a year.

critters

On New Years night I heard the mice (or the rats?) squeaking again, through the fan in the bathroom. Yesterday I got six old-fashioned spring traps, but I haven't set them up yet. I was coming home on the T, reading the health care paper, when someone touched my shoulder. I looked up and was very happy to see Alka. We chatted about raccoons and her father rolling down Mount Tam and my windows, and we exchanged phone numbers. We were parting ways in front of my house when I noticed a raccoon at the top of my brick stairs. It looked large and unfriendly. We tried moving out of its sight but it merely hunkered down (probably could hear our voices). So I went with her to her house and met her father, who is visiting from Canada, and he insisted that I eat. He'd made three dishes -- a dal, a cauliflower and pea curry, and something with lentils and potatoes. Brad came downstairs in a terrycloth robe. The two little dogs (Ubu and Jemmy) got used to my smell. We all had a nice chat about movies and politics. Alka walked me back across the street with a flashlight, just in case, but the raccoon was gone.

alone

Now that the holidays have passed and we are in a new year I am going to embrace being alone. I have started, finally, to give up the sadness and the disappointment. There is no one to love in the way I wanted to love someone. I can't help that. I have to face up to the fact that I tried to make it happen and my judgment was poor, because I wanted it so much.

I can't shake off all fear, of course! But I can try to embrace that, too. Nothing is perfectly safe, after all. I was thinking about safety after I saw Argo. I had gotten caught up in the suspense, which is easy to do when you are watching a movie alone. But I was thinking about that time, the late 1970s, and how unsafe the world seemed, even though I was barely in it, what with being introverted and frightened of change. Wanting to feel safe is a powerful motivating factor, not always in a good way. You can decide, to some extent, whether to extend yourself in order to feel safe and help others feel the same way.

Anyway, I was walking by myself on Mission St. I had gotten off BART at 24th St. even though I meant to go to Glen Park. I was going to walk in Glen Canyon for a bit before I went home. I didn't realize my mistake when I was halfway up the stairs -- there weren't enough steps for Glen Park. I didn't want to go back down to the platform, so I kept moving, through the gate, up the stairs to the street. I was still under the influence -- I looked at everyone with unwarranted suspicion and felt them looking at me and sizing me up. By the time I got to Chenery the movie was beginning to lose its grip. I relaxed, felt grateful for my coat in the late afternoon chill, admired the angle of the sun, walked briskly along the narrow sidewalk. I got on the 44 bus feeling very fond of the other passengers -- I often feel that way when I am alone among strangers.