end of year

we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind.
-ted kooser

This got to me. The one red feather on the wind -- I haven't found it. It's not a tragedy. It makes me sad sometimes. That's all.

women together

I went to dinner with six women. One I know fairly well, another is a book group acquaintance, and I had met two others once before. All of us are white and highly educated. Most of us (I would guess) are thirty-something, and two have young children. I was reminded once again that there is a big difference between 35 and 52. Especially for women. For one thing, I've stopped thinking about the possibility that I might someday have a baby. I am divorced and my chances of getting involved with anyone are not good. My parents were born in 1930 and grew up on a small farm and a small town. I grew up during the second wave of feminism, at the tail end of the 20c. civil rights era, on the lower-income side of Kalamazoo. All of these shifts made a big impact. I am not sure what sort of world the other, younger women grew up in. I know that KW had a complicated childhood but, looking at her across the table, I suddenly realized that I don't have much of a grasp on the link between her experiences back then and the way she is now.

The odd thing was that we were making intimate conversation but presenting ourselves cautiously to one another -- well, it's odd and also perfectly normal among women. One woman in particular kept referring to the fact that she has two young children, and that it is a challenge to work full-time and raise them. But her bearing and tone seemed to indicate that she felt the need to protect herself from scrutiny -- and of course I can understand that. You can't trust a group of strangers to understand. The other woman with children (or just one child?) joined in with a refrain of  "I don't have the time to read or watch serious movies." I imagine there is some truth to all of that, but I don't know what I'm supposed to say. At some point I found myself complaining about the women in the celebrity magazines who tell carefully crafted stories about being working moms just like the rest of us, and the celebrity interviewers who ask childless women about whether they plan to have children or how they feel about not having children. Men who are also fathers usually talk only about their work but sometimes they congratulate themselves because having kids has allowed them to focus on something other than themselves. Not realizing, I guess, that this is a pretty selfish kind of selflessness. In our culture, having a baby means you can feel virtuous about turning away from all the other people and things in the world.

Bon Tempe hike, after rain

So much water! And so many mushrooms (plus three newts).

sunday sunset

Thanksgiving and Tilden

Did not remember to take photos until more than halfway through the hike. I could have gotten some shots of goats and sheep and pigs and chickens. Not to mention more shots of the humans who were there with me. But that's the way it goes, sometimes.

Now I am in a hazy state, unable to focus but not unhappy about it. I might be able to convince myself to drive over the bridge so I can see Linda and Isabel and anyone else who shows up. I might not be able to do it, though. It hasn't been raining since this morning. Alka and I went for a walk at midday with the sun fully out. We met Brad at Flora Grubb, where he selected new succulents for his small white windowboxes, with the help of Flora herself. After that, I came home. And I haven't done much of anything since. I only just washed the breakfast dishes, and there weren't many of those. Maybe tomorrow I will be motivated to roast and bake and write a message on a card that I can send to Elizabeth.

Maybe it will be raining all day tomorrow, so I won't feel like I might want to go outside. If at least one set of possibilities is ruled out I might be better able to choose from among the rest.

There were two ducks on Jewel Lake. A random woman who happened to be standing near us said that it was a male and a female. Both ducks made frequent dives and remained under water for what seemed like a long time.

Someone tell me, please: Should I go? 

random

He stopped next to me at the light, and when he took his hands off the handlebars and shook them, they seemed boneless. But they couldn't have been, because when the light went green he regained his grip and rode off ahead of me.

Tonight I yelled at a guy I saw outside my house and then he said "Discreet?" and I realized he was from the critter control company. I still feel terrible about it. 

late fall already

Mid-November and the days getting shorter. The end of year always surprises me. I am not ready for thanksgiving or xmas (though I did decide to spend it with the family). But time does not care whether I'm ready or not.

Christi will start working on the kitchen/laundryroom remodel in February. I'm excited and anxious. There will be a lot of costs to cover and decisions to make, and what if we have a huge earthquake? And so on. But the money won't matter once it's been spent. And with a little bit of Bach and sunsets like this recent one, I can usually calm myself.

pinnacles

 Last Saturday Nola and Hillary picked me up and we drove down 101 to hike at Pinnacles. It was a great day, relatively cool, unlike the last time I was there. We followed the ranger's advice and were not disappointed. The hike took about four and a half hours, including snack and lunch breaks. I hoped we would see a tarantula but we didn't.

After we finished our loop we drove to Pacific Grove and stayed at the Bide-a-Wee, which -- despite the name -- was fine. We ate Mexican/California at Peppers and after that we went back to the hotel and tried to stay awake to the end of Superbad (I failed).


On Sunday morning, after we had breakfast at a slightly twee restaurant on the main drag, we walked along the coast until it was time to get in the car and go home. I thought we made a good threesome. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so effortless. Probably it has to do with everyone getting older and less socially anxious.

Now I am listening to the Giants leading the Nationals but it's only a one-run margin, in the top of the eighth inning, with Romo on the mound. Tense!


Now two outs . . . I should stop with the lame play by play and focus instead on the hilarious conversation I overheard while I was planting my arugula seeds on Sunday afternoon. Gene and Barbara had visitors (family, I think) who came out back to smoke some pot. They got into a debate about whether it is true that the sex of a baby is determined by the sexual position that produced it -- does doggy style produce a boy? I don't know how serious they were but I could not imagine my family having that conversation. I had come out back, feeling grumpy, because some people hanging out across the street had a car radio going and I was tired of it. And I was unhappy because the Tigers were swept by the Orioles. (The Giants are still ahead three to two, in the bottom of the eighth.)

Anyway, there is nothing quite like the playoffs. Or the Pinnacles. Or the sky at sunset in the fall. Or having a nice dinner with a glass of red wine.

polite distance

Is this true?

This is not a world where you can simply express love for other people, where you can praise them. Perhaps it should be. But it’s not. I’ve found that people will fear your enthusiasm and warmth, and wait to hear the price. Which is fair. We’ve all been drawn into someone’s love only to find out that we couldn’t afford it. A little distance buys everyone time.  -Paul Ford

Yes, I think so. And maybe also no -- because you can express love for some people. It's true that politeness creates a bit of distance and that distance can save both parties from making mistakes. It's also true that the last two sentences struck me as a perfect encapsulation of my most recent (disastrous) relationship. And who knows, maybe there is some overlap. If I'd been more polite and less eager I might have bought myself enough time to figure out that I couldn't afford it. When I think about it now I'm astounded that I didn't allow myself to see those tantrums for what they were. How did I not remember to use my eyes and ears, not to mention my brain? Well, I didn't do it because I was starved for love. My self-discipline could not keep up with my appetite, is all.

time passing

The smarter the woman is, the more difficult it is for her to find the right man.   -Oprah Winfrey  

I knew I was smart but now I feel like a frickin genius.

Last night a little before 10 I heard lots and lots of sirens in the middle distance -- turns out that someone was shot to death and another was wounded at Alice Griffith, and then there was a crowd to "control." In the middle of the night I heard a critter scratching/gnawing on something outside my bedroom window -- at least, I hope it was outside! Once I was awake I couldn't stop thinking about earthquakes. So I am taking it easy today, listening to the Giants game (they are playing the Tigers).

I'm thinking about doing absolutely nothing.

beach day

Nola and Thomas and Charlito took me to the beach yesterday. We went just a little past Valley Ford to Salmon Creek (or something like that). We were joined by Megan and Jim and Rob from Texas. I did pretty well with the sunscreen, but the inside of my left knee is sunburned. Mostly I just lay on the beach but I did get up and walk first in one direction and then in the other. Nola and Thomas brought tiny tacos and heated them on a propane stove/burner, after which we topped them with pork that Thomas had smoked for many hours on Saturday, tomato, lettuce, and tomatillo/avocado salsa. I brought grapes and blueberries. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store in Valley Ford and bought cold drinks. Nola and I shared an It's It (Thomas had his own). We sat on the porch to eat our ice cream, watching the cars come and go.

It is very warm today. I have been sitting here looking at things online for about an hour. The clothes I hung out on the line are probably dry by now. I think it's time to get up and maybe consider planting the protea neriifolia I bought at the Flora Grubb sale on Saturday. Maybe in the top terrace out front? Or in the back, somewhere.

Oh, and Thomas came over on Wednesday to install my bookcase. All of my books are shelved now, and there is a bit of room to spare. Yay.

quake

The Napa quake woke me up (ca. 3:20) but I thought maybe it was a rolling 4.0 sort of thing. Nanci texted me about 5 minutes later and the phone lighting up was enough to rouse me fully. I thought I should get up and go around smelling for gas. Nanci said she felt it and I would guess that's because she's right above the garage. Anyway once I had gotten out of bed it wasn't easy to go back to sleep.

I took my time getting over to the community garden but worked steadily for three hours, helping put in some new plants. I enjoyed working with Claire -- it felt companionable. Carrying the buckets of water knotted my shoulders and my neck. I'm on the couch now getting ready to get up so I can make dinner. But it is so very pleasant in here, watching the wind and the light on the curtains and listening to the Hable con Ella soundtrack.

what are artists?

Is this true?

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.  
-Donald Winnicott 


Maybe.

Sometimes I love myself very much, but (or and?) often I find myself disappointing. Better, I suppose, than being disappointed in the world.

I could not sleep last night, and the night was terribly long. Sometimes I am terrified by the world. It doesn't seem likely that I will be able to go through my life without coming into contact with something truly awful. I lay awake wondering, like a five-year-old, what it is that is coming to get me. Sometimes a raccoon is not just a raccoon.

Other times, usually during the day, I am sanguine. I am delighted and moved by all the beauty and good intentions. It is miraculous that processes, machinery, and systems are functioning.

cookies

My first free Sunday in a while. What have I done with it, so far? I got up when I felt like it, made quinoa for breakfast. I walked over to the community garden around 11 but no one was there, so I took myself for a stroll along Quint, Maddox, Bridgeview, and the planet streets. After about an hour I was home again. I did a load of laundry and hung it out back, played the piano.

Eventually I turned on the game and baked double chocolate cookies.

It has been a very good day. Now the curtains are tangled up in the late afternoon wind. I am sitting on the couch listening to Rosalyn Tureck play Bach partitas.

I cleaned up most of the cookie-making dishes but not all. The duvet cover and the featherbed cover are flapping on the line, mostly dry. The peaches are almost all off the tree. I can't easily reach the ones high up and/or at the back of the tree, but I can probably go a few more days without having to buy fruit. I ate or gave away more this year than last, but ended up composting too many -- the ones that fell and did not get picked up until they were too bruised and mushy.

Security

“Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.”
-Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

Or so I try to tell myself when I'm lying in bed listening for raccoons.  

musing on housing and inequality

Read the SF Examiner article about the city making radical changes to the Community Response Network. It seems like somebody is tiptoeing around some issue or set of issues -- I don't know if it's the city, the reporter, the program's fiscal overseers past and present, or all of the above. It makes for a frustrating read. Hard to tell what is going on in this case, but generally speaking I think the city needs to monitor the programs it is funding. I moved to the Bayview in 2012, and in my brief time here I have come to wonder if the city knows (or wants to know) much about this neighborhood.

I don't fully understand  commenter sfparkripoff's chronology (is it supposed to be sequential? because "separate but equal" was the phrase used to justify Jim Crow/segregation, and housing policies have been racist for a long time -- during Jim Crow, the 20c. civil rights era, and the recent housing boom/bust). But the point you can draw from it is that racist government policies (federal, state, and local) over many, many years have led to economic isolation and deprivation. I don't mean to give short shrift to the destructiveness of the "war on drugs," but I think that housing policies -- which really kicked in during the Great Migration from the south to cities the north and west -- have been particularly damaging. Homeownership, of course, is THE main asset/source of wealth for most families in the US, so housing discrimination is very significant. Even if we were willing to acknowledge all this in our public discussions (and we aren't), it would be a big challenge to turn it around.

I would also say that many of my neighbors who have owned homes here for decades have been waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for their home values to rise, and for "gentrification" to occur, so that this neighborhood can have some amenities. And/or so that they can sell their homes and move outside the city. Is it possible to have economic diversity AND amenities? I don't know -- but I certainly haven't seen it happen (I grew up in a mid-size midwestern city, in a neighborhood that was experiencing "white flight" during the 1960s and 70s -- we felt helpless then, but nowadays inequality is much worse).

To sum up: it's a complicated world -- impossible to fathom all the greed and good intentions and fear and frustration.

Advice from James Baldwin

"You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all."

feminism

I have always thought it amazing that middle-class women routinely alter, or enhance, or cover their faces and bodies (with makeup and clothes and dietary/workout regimens and surgery and what have you). Without giving it a second thought, these women carry on as if they are not aging and have no blemishes, no body hair, and no body fat. It takes a lot of effort to pull all that off, and it is an effort that I have never made. I would say it's because I'm lazy (in fact, I do say it often, mostly to comfort other people), or because I prefer to spend time and effort (not to mention money) on other things. But really, in the end, it's because I'm convinced that people of all genders and ethnicities are more interesting when they look like themselves.

It's not that I think no woman should wear makeup or shave her legs. I don't really care what people do with themselves. I do care that so many of us have so little self-confidence. We seem to have swapped the oppressive old rules --corsets, heavy full-length dresses, etc. -- for equally oppressive new rules that require a lot more work.

Of course, we don't have to follow the rules, and many women don't. But we have to choose not to do it, and we sometimes encounter people who don't approve of our decisions. Then again, it's highly unrealistic to expect that you'll never experience any discomfort or insecurity in this world of ours.

american dream

How did I get this far, I often ask myself. I didn't deserve any of it. It seems like it all happened to me, though I know I made some decisions and took some small risks. Mostly, I was lucky -- lucky to be born in a wealthy country at a time when women were gaining public agency; to grow up in a functioning family, to have intelligent parents, to be white and able-bodied. To find some use for my attentiveness and introspection. To develop a belief system. 

pier 70

Went to the developer shindig, took a few photos.

sky and water

I don't have much to write about today. I am feeling bruised and chafed and sore and arthritic. For some reason I have been agonizing over my windows -- curtains or shades? What kind of rods, and how high should they go? Why haven't I painted the inside of the front windows, after all this time? And what about the kitchen windows?

So here's a recent shot of the evening sky to the east, taken from my front steps.

And here are two shots I took on the Tennessee Valley hike with Julie and Karl and their friends Les and Barb.

spring

I had a miraculously minor bike accident last Monday -- a pickup truck carrying four Mexican men and towing a generator ran a red light and almost flattened me. Fortunately, I almost got out of the way -- it hit my rear tire and I fell and slid. I have a bad scrape on my left elbow, a not-too-bad scrape on my hip, and assorted bruises and soreness. I haven't ridden the bike since, or looked at it very carefully. At a glance it seems OK. But I will take it to the bike shop and have them make sure it's OK before I ride it again.

I have been weeding. Pulling out lots and lots of oxalis, trying to pull out fennel, cutting back the geranium bushes and the rose bushes in the front. Not sure what I am doing but it's worth trying various things and seeing what happens. The lime tree looks slightly better but still unhealthy -- many blackened leaves and branches. I reconfigured the succulents in the planter and tried to tear out the vine (ivy?) in the corner of the back yard.

The critter control guy, Mike, came on Tuesday morning. He blocked the little mouse hole along the side of the house, near the back. He also climbed up onto the laundryroom roof, lay down on his belly, and shot a bunch of sticky stuff onto the pipe(s) on the back corner of the house next door. He was hoping that maybe this would deter the raccoons and other critters from climbing up onto the roof and squeezing back into the light well. I had been hearing and seeing critters pretty much every night. I don't want to be overly optimistic, but I have not heard much these past few nights.

marianne moore by way of james baldwin

I try to avoid defending or condemning other people (except for the people who set themselves up as leaders, elected or otherwise -- they have a special responsibility). I figure people are limited and flawed and they make bad decisions. I know that's true of me. 

Anyway, I was reading James Baldwin the other day and he quoted Marianne Moore: The weak overcomes its menace, the strong overcomes itself.

And that is true no matter how rich or poor people are. But everybody makes choices in a context -- emotional, familial, social, ethical, economic. And the older I get the more I see how rigged the game has been for so long. And I can see how hard most of us have tried to avoid seeing that this country got wealthy through slavery, followed by Jim Crow (in the south and north), followed by white flight and the war on drugs. Also, I begin to understand the cost of that denial, for everyone involved.

Of course, the game is always rigged -- unless there's a revolution going on, rich people can always protect their interests. But for a long time it was rigged, explicitly, by color. Even if we had been willing to face up that (and we haven't been!) it would not have been easy to change it.


And now? It's hard to say what is happening now. I guess I have to keep hoping that we will become better human beings. 


End of lecture, with apologies. I am feeling sad this morning because my aunt Marion died -- not that I knew her well, but I know she was my mom's favorite sister. She is the third of my mom's siblings to die at 90, in the past five years.

Nevertheless

Marianne Moore

you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!

raining

A soft light gray sky, gusty wind, and a little bit of rain. A good morning for sitting inside looking out. I am pleased to see the roses getting wet. I watered them about ten days ago, because they were very thirsty -- the bushes on the other side of the entryway were sun- and heat-blasted.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is singing. I am still tasting the pomelo I had for breakfast. Yesterday I went to the India Basin meeting and met Sean K sans bike gear. Also met Jill from India Basin, and Janet from the Dogpatch -- needless to say, their neighborhood issues are very different from ours. In the evening I crossed the street to have dinner with A+B. After B went to bed, A ended up telling me about her dysfunctional brother. She has some painful memories. I feel for her, and I am fascinated by the (incomplete) picture I now have of her. And, more selfishly, I felt lucky to have the family problems I have. Then I came home and made squash/coconut milk soup. I threw in some celery root, just for kicks.

I find it strange to remember that I was in a very different situation two years ago. It comes to mind because D emailed a week ago to ask me if I would take Farnsworth. I have been asking around, and I hope someone offers to take him, and that D doesn't flake out on the offer. I'm half-convinced that he was only using the cat as an excuse to contact me. I asked him to send a photo, partly because it's helpful to show it to people, and partly to see if he would follow through. He sent two of Farnsworth and one of some other cat. One of the photos was taken at least two years ago. What is his problem, I thought -- can't he just stick out his phone and press the camera button?

So anyway, instead of thanking me for my help (ha!), he ran through his routine -- he wants to be friends and doesn't know why I won't talk to him; he got me this house; he misses having coffee with me. I know I shouldn't be derisive, if only because none of this reflects well on my judgment.

Quixote

Last Sunday I toured and tasted at the winery with N, T, and KW. It was another unseasonably warm day, and we enjoyed it. I didn't get any very good photos of the full Friedensreich Hundertwasser effect, probably because I had only my phone with me. In the end we bought a few bottles of rose and Marco, our guide, did not charge us for the tour. I hope he didn't mind that we were not expert wine tasters. I have never been able to distinguish a fifty-dollar bottle from a hundred-dollar bottle.

Goodbye, Pete Seeger

I don't have anything much to say about him. I always respected him. is all. He was born 11 years before my parents. My parents, who lived through much of the same history but in a different way. I love my parents, very much. I love the people from their generation who tried to think things through and behave according to their beliefs.

blast from past

I took a walk with Tom on Friday afternoon and he bought me coffee. As always it was strange to see him. It is the past and the present all in the same moment. Disorienting. I feel a pull, still. At the same time I don't know him. I think I can see how it would have worked, or not worked. I can see this with Carl, too. I guess I am well enough off by myself.

Last night's moon rising -- it was so lovely that I had to stop and take a phone picture on my way home.

birds at bon tempe

I'm sitting on the couch, as I often do on a weekend afternoon. Thinking about this and that, feeling a little anxious -- shouldn't I be doing something, on my last day off? It is warm in here, now that the sun has moved west. Maybe I will get up soon and start sanding the kitchen window frames, but maybe I won't.

That said, I've had a great holiday break. I had two days by myself, which were especially nice after all the time I spent with other people on the trip to Asheville. I painted the fence Ben built, and did some garden maintenance. On New Years Day I walked with A and then had coffee and bagels in A+B's kitchen. In the afternoon I drove to Berkeley to have dinner with N+T. N and I went to UCP to drop off some new years cards; it was uncanny to walk through the building with nobody there.

Today I had a good walk with KW -- we had been planning to do a walking tour of Potrero Hill but the tour leader canceled. So we walked on our own, up the hill and then back down among the derelict buildings on Pier 70. Eventually we got hungry enough for lunch, or rather an odd selection of savory and sweet food accompanied by brunchy alcoholic drinks. After we parted ways I walked home, carrying a plywood sheet I found leaning against a building on Illinois St.

The other day I went birding with J and K and Nick and Nel, J's former Richmond neighbors (who are experienced birders). Truth be told, for the most part, I watched them watch. We walked around Bon Tempe Lake; they identified 33 species. Me, I saw crows, mallards, mergansers, cormorants, woodpeckers, small birds zooming in and out of the trees (Nel told me they were juncos), and a heron.

Afterward we went back to J+K's and talked about a lot of things. Sometimes we argued, and sometimes we agreed. Nick showed us a book about Donald Olsen, who designed both Nick and Nel's house and J's former house. I hadn't realized the houses were designed in tandem, but when I saw the photos it all made sense. J made chicken and rice and a salad, Nick made mango salsa, and Nel had made an apple-cranberry crisp. I made nothing, though I did bring a bottle of wine.

Asheville

Went for a walk one day, up Old Toll Rd. For part of the way I chatted with a nice woman with a smallish dog who comes from Georgia, lives on Griffing, and has two adult daughters. After 17 years in California I find the humid green NC summers overwhelming; but the landscape is beautiful in the winter, when the trees are bare.

It was a good visit, except for the difficulty of sleep. I felt pretty desperate that last night -- eventually I dragged the mattress off the metal frame and across to the opposite side of the room, and that helped. The thing that helped the most was getting back into my own bed.

Went for a walk with A this morning and then had bagels and coffee with A+B and A's father. I am grateful that they are my neighbors; looking forward to seeing and knowing them in 2014.