last dregs of 2020

It is a lovely day. Sunny and a bit chilly. I walked north and into Crane Cove Park for the first time. It's a nice mix of concrete, sand, and industrial objects. I like Hunters Point Shoreline better but that's partly because I hardly ever see very many other people when I walk there. I passed the live/work loft where I lived with D for the first few months of 2012. I get a little nervous when I see it, even now. 

Mom went to the hospital this afternoon because her leg is just not getting better and she has been having a very hard time lately. She told me yesterday that her leg hurt so much during the night that she thought maybe she was going to die. She rang for help, and someone came to prop up her leg on pillows and maybe they convinced her to take some kind of pain reliever. I don't know, I did not ask for a lot of details. I just let her say what she wanted to say. 

The sun is going down, a pale yellow fireball. I love the winter shadows on the living room wall. 

creative process

 

Fiona Apple in the Guardian today: 

This time, because it was me by myself a lot, or me and the band by ourselves, there was so little self-consciousness that I wasn’t judging myself or trying to improve certain things. So when it was all done, it seemed as impressive as if I had just belched. But how could that have been if it had all these stops and starts? It’s funny how you forget about the times when you were like, this sucks and I have to stop this and I can’t ever put anything out again and I hate everything I’ve said and I hate how I sound.

face(s) of America

Wallace Shawn, "Developments Since My Birth," NYRB:

Over the decades of my life, America’s morale has declined, I’d say. There was a dignity to feeling kind and good. It was enjoyable. On the other hand, the lack of connection between what we felt we were and what we actually were was dangerous and led to the death of a lot of people. Personally, I have nothing to complain about in regard to my country. America has always been good to me, and so it’s really hard for me to believe that Donald Trump’s face is the true face of America. If I look back at my own life, I’d have to say that the sunny faces of the soldiers in postwar Europe, the friendly faces of the boys who lifted me up to sit in their jeeps, seem like better representations of the way I’ve been treated, and so for me those faces really do seem like the face of my country. But for those countless others, in the cities and towns of the USA and in countries far away, to whom America has not been good, the face of America has always and forever been the face of Donald Trump.

Matthew Yglesias, "America Needs a Democratic Revolution": 

All of these outcomes—in which Republicans hold power despite winning fewer votes—are baked into the American system. They won’t go away if Trump is removed from office. It’s become commonplace for Democrats’ rhetoric to cast Trump’s presidency as a threat to American democracy. But it would be more accurate to say his presidency is a consequence of our constitutional system’s democratic shortcomings. If Democrats manage to win in November, they owe it to their voters to make a serious effort to lead a democratic revolution in the United States that would truly bury Trumpism once and for all.

Dean Baker says it one more time:

A common problem in policy circles is that government protections that redistribute income upward are defined as part of the market, and getting rid of them or weakening them is described as government intervention. This issue comes up most frequently with government-granted patent monopolies with prescription drugs. Any measure to lower prices by weakening patent monopoly protections is treated as government intervention, while the patent monopoly itself is treated as the free market. And, just to remind people, patent monopolies on prescription drugs cost us more than $400 billion annually, more than twice the amount at stake with the Trump tax cut.

untethered and weighed down

I'm struggling. Not sleeping much -- that's both a symptom and a cause. I've socialized more in the past week than I had in quite a while and I'm sure it has helped. But still I feel alone, alone, alone. Untethered. My head is aching and my eyes are heavy and dry, except when I am crying. Woe. Is. Me. 

Perfectly normal. The human condition. And yet. 

I was walking through Silver Terrace on my way to the farmers market last Saturday, thinking -- and maybe even talking -- to myself about Constance stringing me along like a needy girlfriend she doesn't want to deal with but isn't quite ready to dump. Resolving to find a new designer. Then I tripped over the raised edge of a sidewalk square. I had been walking down a fairly steep hill, so I couldn't right myself. I landed on my palms, and also on my right forearm; my left knee bore the brunt of the lower body impact. A man came out of his garage and asked me, worriedly, if I was alright and did I want a bottle of water. I waved him off -- I hope I did it politely. I kept walking, flexing and worrying about my knee and my right wrist and forearm. 

Later, when I went to bed, I realized that I had a sharp pain just below my right breast -- I had smashed my clip-on case when I landed and I guess it must have jabbed me in that spot. I haven't seen any discoloration or swelling. I think I bruised a rib (or two?). For several days it was painful to breathe deeply or do sit-ups. It still hurts, a week later. But it's healing. 

I thought about mom, of course. She keeps saying that they are providing us with a dry run for old age. I am on my way to old age, that's for sure. 

left behind

I was up late thinking about the patterns of recent history -- the way people with money pick up and leave, taking their money and privileges with them. (I am old enough to have been "left behind" by white flight.) Because when I was on the phone with nb last night she started talking about leaving California. She inadvertently triggered my resentment of (other) white people by saying "California has left me" -- which took me back to 1980, when so-called Democrats voted for Reagan because, they said, the party had left them. 

I know she's gotta do what she's gotta do, and so do we all. But the conversation left me feeling bereft in yet another way. And alone. I doubt very much that I'm going to find another partner -- it's been 20 years since I got divorced and not much has happened on the romantic front in all that time. To some extent this has been a choice I made. So I guess I should try to think about how to live whatever is left of my life.

a good maxim

Margaret Atwood, Guardian, Sep 12, 2020:

If you have a situation where you feel your rights are being removed, it’s important to talk about it clearly.

It is also true that in situations where people have not had any power, and suddenly they get power, some people are going to abuse that power. Finding out you’ve got power, and can get somebody fired, when you haven’t had any – that can be a pretty heady feeling. I mean, let’s all dance around the guillotine as we chop off the heads of the aristocrats. Here’s my short version: if you’re going to speak truth to power, make sure it’s the truth. That’s a good maxim.

back in SF

Three weeks in Asheville with Dad. An interesting time. Sometimes distressing, occasionally maddening, often . . . what, rewarding? It was good to be helping out, I guess. And I learned some things about Dad that I hadn't known before, or hadn't fully realized. It was wearying, too. Some hours and days were better than others. I did not think I could have done it indefinitely. I felt that I would have needed to have someone there with me, a partner to help shoulder the burden of concern and apprehension. 

how do you work?

How do you work? Do you make a lot of corrections, and of what type? Ann Goldstein, translator, US

The decisive point for me is to arrive, starting from nothing, at a dense, chaotic draft. The work on the draft is gruelling. It takes a lot of energy to get a text with a beginning, an end, and its own crowded vitality. It’s a slow approach, like tailing a life form that has no defined physiognomy. Occasionally I can keep rolling along, even without rereading, but that’s rare. More often I advance by a few lines every day, writing and rewriting. Frequently I fall out of love and put it all aside. 

But that painful condition I will ignore for now. I want to tell you instead, cara Ann, that only when this preliminary labour has had good results does the true pleasure of writing begin for me. I start again from the beginning. I remove entire sections, I rewrite a lot, I change the direction and even the nature of the characters, I add parts that, only now that there’s a text, come to mind and seem necessary, I develop episodes that were barely alluded to, I change the chronology of certain events, I very often retrieve pages that were discarded – early, longer, perhaps uglier, but more immediate versions. It’s a job that I do alone, I wouldn’t share it with anyone. 

At a certain point, however, I need attentive readers, but readers who will focus only on my carelessness: mistakes in chronology, repetitions, incomprehensible formulations. I fear suggestions that tend to normalise the text, such as: don’t say it like that, the punctuation is insufficient, this word doesn’t exist, it’s an incorrect formulation, that’s an ugly solution, this way it’s more beautiful. More beautiful? Editing that’s alert to respect for the current aesthetic canon is dangerous. So is editing that encourages anomalies that are compatible with popular taste. If an editor says: in your text there are good things but we have to work on it, you’re better off withdrawing the manuscript. That first person plural is alarming.

-Elena Ferrante, Guardian, Aug 29

the usual bad time

 “I don’t despair,” he says. “About politics or the disease or whatever. Things have been really, really shitty for ever, actually, in different ways. If you have any sense of history, you know people have frequently been saying: ‘This is the worst time that’s ever been. It’s all going to end in tears. The world’s probably about to explode.’ It’s always been like that. Therefore it always will be like that. Therefore, it isn’t like that actually.

“There’s a sort of narcissism about thinking we’re in some especially bad time. This is the usual bad time.”

-"In Real Life, People Aren't Heroic," The Guardian, Aug 28

book talk

The book group was larger last week, thanks to COVID-19 and Zoom. From my point of view, KW's sister E had especially interesting things to say. I did not agree very often with the two most effusive readers in the group. They do a lot of projecting, psychologically and emotionally. But that's not really the issue, since I'm sure I do a fair amount of projecting. The issue is that their sensibilities are different from mine. They tend to focus exclusively on the characters -- as opposed to genre, plot, narratorial devices, or narrative tone. And they talk about the characters as if they were patients in (need of) therapy.  

However, the conversation helped me figure out what I thought, as conversations so often do. Even though I often miss details until others point them out, I like to think of myself as the Hercule Poirot of book talk--picking away at clues that others have ignored. That's probably because I've been listening to Phoebe Reads a Mystery, and lately Phoebe has been reading an Agatha Christie mystery featuring Hercule Poirot. I usually have to listen to each chapter (or pair of chapters) more than once, because I fall asleep or get distracted by whatever I'm cooking or baking. This repetitive listening has a strangely calming effect. 

realism vs. nominalism

“Where are conscious ideas prior to their becoming conscious?” Rather than closing down the question, the answer—in the unconscious—opens a series of definitions of the unconscious and culminates in the unexpected assertion that “not all that is Ucs. is repressed.” That is, by posing his initial question, Freud is led to a momentous conclusion: there must be something more elementary than external perceptions, and more elementary, too, than the ego that emerges or differentiates itself from that prior instance. Undifferentiated and pre-individual, there must exist a reservoir of libido—of excitation or tension—that is never drained up by the differentiations of the ego that start out from it. Prior to the ego, this elemental instance cannot be repressed and thus can never “return” or express itself, as repressed unconscious material is wont to do.

. . . 

Nominalists hold that there is no unity other than numerical unity, that whatever makes a subject this particular subject makes her so per se; they rigorously deny the existence of universals, which they regard as mere fabrications of mind, and insist that all there is is individual, concrete existence. Freud argues, contrarily, that there is “something” not concrete, differentiated, individual, or actual from which individual existence comes. He names this prior instance “id”—borrowing from Groddeck not only the German term (which is impersonal and general, as in “it rains” or “one assumes”) but also the conviction that the “ego behaves essentially passively” toward it, implying that the ego is able to undergo infinite modulation as long as it remains open to it/id.

-Joan Copjec, "Sexual Difference," Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon (2012)

hope is a discipline

So on the one hand, I’m not hopeful. Historically, . . . a big dislocation doesn’t usually resolve to the benefit of people without power. It’s not like we got more wealth equality after the ’08 financial crisis.

But on the other hand, I also realize that all the great changes in our society probably seemed impossible on the other side of the change. I think hope is a discipline. Because hope is a fuel that keeps you working. So I think I am hopeful. But I think you wake up every morning and you force yourself to be hopeful.

-Richard Buery, "How White Progressives Undermine School Integration," NYT, Aug 21, 2020

Things have taken a turn for the worse with m+d -- m fell and fractured pelvis and shoulder a week ago Friday. Was it only last weekend? Yes I think that's right. Spent two or three nights in the ER before they got her a room. Had some internal bleeding from the fractures that caused her blood pressure to plunge. Surgery ensued, eventually -- two screws were inserted in her lower back. She was moved to a rehab facility on Wednesday. May be there for six weeks (!). No visitors allowed, because of COVID. 

Meanwhile, d not doing well. Losing his grip on getting dressed, hygiene, and time itself. David is there with him until the end of the month, and then I will be there for a few weeks (maybe?). The idea is to move them to assisted living somewhere outside Chicago. I'm not sure we're going to get that far. It is getting to be the end. But it is better to have a plan. 

Went to see Patricia M today with nb. She is looking really good, and moving quite well. Only a few months younger than m+d. 

focus

I need to struggle more against lassitude. Develop some new good habits that might help me focus. On what? My inner thoughts? The people I know and love? The world around me? All of the above. 

The anxiety can be crushing. I ask myself what it is that I'm anxious about and of course there's no firm answer. But it is helpful to ask the question. 

I want more time but the prospect of having more time makes me anxious. I can't resist it, or stand up to it, so I guess I need to stand *with* anxiety. And doubt. Oftentimes, I interpret my anxiety as self-doubt. 

I feel better today because I slept well. I often wonder if I am addicted to the relief that comes with sleep. The heaviness that I feel when I go to bed on a night after a night of poor sleep, the certainty that I will sink into it. 

I've got Thelonious Monk turned up to drown out some music from outside. I can hear him humming more clearly when the volume is higher. 

more about walking and talking

This morning KW and I met up at Holly Park and walked to Mt Davidson (and back). A good walk, at least five miles. I had forgotten that the cross is a monument to the Armenian genocide. Being reminded of that make it seem less ominous and oppressive. 

I hiked in Redwood with NG and JH (and J's son) on Friday afternoon. Really good to see them, in person, for the first time since March. It was a lovely day over in Oakland and we hiked about five miles. 

I feel pretty good about the amount of outdoor exercise I've been getting lately -- last Sunday SN and I hiked seven or eight miles in Marin. However, I started doing sit-ups again and was surprised by how hard it was to get up to a decent number. Let's face it: I am out of shape. I was asking myself how many more times I can let things go and then get at least some of my mojo back before I'm just too old. 

Am lazing on the couch in the sunny later afternoon. Oh, California. 

it's important that people learn that

Orlando Patterson: 

I don’t [think] slavery was strictly abolished in 1865. What was abolished in 1865 was the personal individual enslavement of one person by another, but what persisted was the culture of slavery, and central to this culture was the sense that the white population felt it was their duty to control and suppress black freedom. They did this in various ways, through the lynch mob, but also by the use of incarceration, during the neo-slavery system of Jim Crow.

During Jim Crow, what persisted was the attitude to see blacks as outsiders, as people to be punished, to be held in control, to be denied basic privileges of citizenship or ownership of land and to be recklessly imprisoned. In that sense, slavery was not really abolished in America until the 1960s, when the Jim Crow system was finally, fundamentally dismantled. So of course we need a lot of education in our schools about that and what the consequences were for blacks, as well as for whites. It’s important that people learn that.

July 4

My July 4 plans are nonexistent, but that's not unusual. I will probably do my Heron's Head/India Basin walk this afternoon. I'm making myself a peach galette -- mostly because I bought too many peaches at the farmers market. And tonight I'll cower at home until the fireworks end.

In past years, there have been scattered fireworks every night throughout June, leading up to a multi-hour extravaganza (aka war zone) on the 4th and then tapering off over the first half of July. It could be my imagination but it seems like there were more fireworks on Juneteenth this year, and not so many going off each night since then as there were last year. So maybe that means fewer tonight? I can only hope.

Yesterday I spent hours in the bathroom. I decided it was way past time to unclog the sink, so I removed the stopper (a multi-step process) and a whole lot of hair (mostly) came out with it. Gross but satisfying. Then I decided to do a little scrubbing inside the drain, thinking to myself that I would be careful not to drop the toothbrush. But of course I dropped it! So I spent a lot of time getting it out. Finally, shortly after I had texted two neighbors to ask if they had any tools and/or advice, I managed to pull out the toothbrush using a long garden stake with an angled loop at the end that I had fashioned with my pliers.

By then I had forgotten exactly how to fit together the rod et al. that control the movement of the stopper. In the end, I decided to put the stopper back in a slightly open position -- when was the last time I wanted to plug the sink, anyway?

So much for my DIY efforts! (I'm still pleased about clearing out the drain.) I also sat down at the piano yesterday for the first time in ages. The piano really needs a tuning and I'm very rusty. But it was good to play some Bach. 

independence weekend

My feet are cold but I haven't felt like getting up to put on socks. The fog is receding, as usual. I'm happy to have the day off. I promised myself I would unclog the bathroom sink this weekend. Apparently, I can't do that sort of thing unless I have at least three days off.

Yesterday, KR did a training session on ai figure formatting. It was very difficult to hit the "leave meeting" button. Not sure how I thought I would feel but I'm a little surprised that her retirement is hitting me so hard. On the brighter side, she and LM and I took a walk on Tuesday evening, and I hope we'll get together regularly. But it is hard to imagine PPIC without her -- she and I worked together happily for a dozen years.

I am feeling ridiculously bereft now that the Andy Griffith show disappeared from Netflix. I had only a few episodes to go and if I'd known it was leaving I would have watched them all. I'm not sure why I got so attached to a 60-year-old sitcom with repetitive plotting, cringe-worthy sexism, and virtually no non-white characters. I think I saw half a dozen black faces in the crowd scenes and heard one black character speak -- a football coach who also played the piano who appeared in one episode. But even though the stories always ended with an affirmation of small town life, there was something interesting about Andy Taylor's moments of irritation -- his mix of impatience and affection is less melodramatic than George Bailey's ambivalence about Bedford Falls.

true

The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.

~Malcolm X

intersectionality, of a sort

I am watching the fog recede and thinking about getting myself together to walk over to the Alemany farmers market, which now features a pedestrian-only expanse between the two rows of booths, instead of two narrow strips of sidewalk separated by a parking lot. I never understood why they didn't ban cars from the booth area and I hope they keep doing it permanently. 

Anyway, that's one silver lining (or thread?) to this plague we're having. 

I've been thinking about a conversation I had yesterday with a 50-something black (or Black, or African American) man who walked past as I was pruning out front. I said hello as he passed by -- I always say hi to anyone who isn't actively avoiding eye contact or busy talking to someone else -- and he responded with a "good afternoon, ma'am" and then, after passing me by, he turned around and said, "Ma'am . . . ." I braced myself, thinking he was either going to hit on me or ask me for money, or both. (I am approached in these ways with some regularity.) I was wondering if I had easily accessible cash I could give him. But he started asking me if I knew that a famous welter-weight boxer had lived in my house a few years ago. I said, "Oh, you mean Paris? Yes, he sometimes stays a few doors down." The man nodded enthusiastically, and started telling me that he too is a professional boxer, that he competed in the Olympics, that he is thinking about coming out of retirement, that his manager is pitching him a fight that would make him a lot of money. 

I felt relieved that he probably wasn't going to hit on me or ask for money -- and guilty about thinking that he might do either. Then I started thinking, Oh, he has to be delusional, he's at least 50 years old. And he clearly doesn't know about Paris's bike accident, because he's telling me that Paris has also thought about coming out of retirement. Should I tell him? No, he's in an alternate universe -- and he doesn't even know Paris. Also: He isn't wearing a mask, and neither am I (my mask was hanging around my neck, and I hadn't thought to pull it up). 

I didn't want to put the mask in place -- truth be told, I was worried that he'd take it as racist (this is white-person silliness, I know! but I think about this sort of thing on the regular, especially when I'm walking around the neighborhood). He wasn't standing super close and we weren't standing in a crowded bar or anything like that. But he was talking loudly. So I climbed a couple of my front steps and started cutting away at a rosemary bush. He kept on about the rigors of training and the emotional pay-off of fighting in front of a cheering crowd, and I occasionally said something about getting hit too often in the head or about how it must be hard to give up that life. Eventually, he kinda ran out of things to say and bid me a good evening. 

not in a personal way

I think about the death of the human race. The long strange trip of the naked ape. Not to be light on it, but everybody’s life is so transient. Every human being, no matter how strong or mighty, is frail when it comes to death. I think about it in general terms, not in a personal way.

-Bob Dylan

mad world

I'm holed up in my living room, as usual. The sky is blanketed with light gray clouds. I work up sweaty and disoriented. I feel like I could be doing something . . . SOMETHING! But instead I donated. And I spent a long time writing a letter to the editor. It has been pretty quiet here. There have been protests in other neighborhoods and, of course, in Oakland. When I'm out walking I sometimes hear people (men, mostly) talking about going to Oakland for a protest.

And I run into nice neighbors. Yesterday I saw Cody, who said he's been gardening at George Davis, City of Dreams, and HuliHuli. As we were talking, he gestured with a handful of thyme. His very old dog leaned against my knee and I patted her, even though we're not supposed to do that in Coronaworld. On Friday I chatted briefly with J and her dog over in Silver Terrace. It's not much contact, but it's something.

I start to wonder if I had much of a life before. Well, no, not really. Wait, what does that even mean?

I watched A's book interview the other night. A as charismatic as ever, the interview just fine. I'm about halfway through her book and it's a fun read. I would have tweaked phrasing here and there, and I don't always think the timeline makes sense. But who cares what I would do? The book is selling quite well.

Dad called me by accident and I picked up, just to make sure. I kept talking until he realized I was on the line, and then we had a pretty good chat. He was cogent and in fairly good spirits. I asked about Brittany and he said she has been excellent. So they are getting help and they like their helper. That is a big relief.

MemDay

It is warm! But I'm sitting outside in the shade and there's a good breeze. Earlier today I was out here cutting back the jasmine when I heard a very loud crashing sound. A small pickup truck had collided head on with a small Honda. Nobody was seriously injured but both vehicles were pretty smashed up and had to be towed away -- eventually, after almost two hours. It took a little while for several police (or the 5-0, as my neighbor John likes to call them) to arrive, in four or five SUVs. One person was taken to the hospital in the paramedic van, but not on a stretcher, so I'm guessing it was precautionary. 

The car and the pickup collided right in front of my house, where the hill crests. By the time I got down there somebody had already called 911 and all of the people involved were out of their vehicles and standing on the other side of the street, looking stunned and drinking water that they either had on them or that one of my neighbors had given them. Marlon and I agreed that the pickup truck driver was probably trying to pass another vehicle on the uphill (maybe double parked, or maybe just going too slowly) and couldn't see the oncoming car until it was too late. 

I commented on Marlon's facial hair and he said since he can't go to his barber he decided to grow full sideburns like his brother used to do, but he can't get there. He showed me a photo of his brother, maybe from the 80s, wearing killer sunglasses and a knit sweater, with his fist raised in what I hope it's not flippant of me to call a black power salute. And thick sideburns, of course. 

After standing around uselessly for a bit, I went back up to my yard. I heard some arguing at one point, and some yelling from John and Tanya. (They are both very loud talkers, and they like to get involved in things that happen on the street.) I glanced out my window once or twice and saw a man -- the driver of the pickup, maybe -- sitting in the middle of the street, between the two vehicles. He may have gotten a little too worked up. Two police were looking down at him and making notations on their pads. But I didn't see much point in watching it all play out, especially since the police were there. 

I did occur to me that this was probably a life-altering experience for the people in those vehicles, and yet here I was just going about my business.

twilight sky

I stood outside for a good while last night, watching the sky. It was a monochrome wonder. Sometimes I think I would be much less happy if I didn't have this view. I've taken so many shots of clouds and sky and fog and moon and sun. And in these days of working at home, I spend many hours sitting in my green chair looking at the treetops, rooftops and streets running through the "valley" just south of my house, and also at Bayview Hill, turning golden yellow, and San Bruno Mountain, and the unending stream of cars moving along 101. And the sky, of course.

It rained some during the night. I slept a little later than usual, and for breakfast I had the last piece of toast bread with a fried egg, with a bowl of blueberries and slices of orange. It is almost noon. I'm going to take a shower and wash my hair. Eventually.

Will I get around to calling Mom? I hope so. I feel like I should do it but, as always, I find it difficult. Why? I don't know, really. I've never been a phone person, for one thing. My parents never call anyone, including me, and we have never talked on the phone regularly. And nowadays I report our conversations, at least briefly, to my siblings, and then I have to deal with the comments (if any) that they make. Family interactions make me feel scorched inside, sometimes. Why? Anxiety is a basic fact of life, of human existence. I know that's true and I have tried to allow space for it, at least in the abstract. But it is a struggle. I sometimes feel like I should be able to get beyond it.

Crosstown trail

Met up with KW at Forest Hill Station and walked north on the Crosstown Trail to Golden Gate Park. And then, after we stopped for a bit to watch the turtles sunning themselves on logs sticking up out of Stow Lake, we walked back. Maybe five miles, in all?

When we started out it was a bit cool and cloudy but by the time we got back to our cars, the sun was out and the sky was blue and dotted with wispy clouds. It was invigorating. Those neighborhoods -- Forest Hill, Golden Gate Heights, Inner Sunset -- are both deeply familiar and utterly foreign. I was struck by the solidity and scale of the houses and the trees -- everything looks established, orderly, and under control. Whose control? I don't know.

My drive home was punctuated by bad driving on the part of others -- one driver in front of me was clearly anxious about making turns. A woman made a left off of a side street and cut me off without noticing; I had to hit my brakes. A man decided to pass two cars while going uphill; I was going uphill from the opposite direction when he suddenly appeared, heading straight toward me; again, I had to hit the brakes. Are people losing their grip, or was this just a random cluster?

I devoured the remains of my faux-Vietnamese tofu and noodle dish. Worth making again, with more lime and fewer chiles. I am sitting on my little patio, half in the sun. Watching bees working on the poppies and a hummingbird poking its beak into the salvia. The wind is stirring and I think it's going to feel too cold to sit out here fairly soon. Supposedly there is a rainstorm coming later today.

Yesterday I was feeling low, partly from a lack of sleep and partly because I was feeling detached from everything. Luckily, Niu had set up a virtual happy hour in the afternoon. A chat with her and Joe and VH, followed by my daily walk, cheered me up considerably.

solitude

Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.
-Ingmar Bergman

I've been kinda out of it. Not in a bad way, really. But my days have been a little too drifty from the POV of my better angels. I've written a few blogposts, taken some walks, and am very slowly reading SN's manuscript. I have occasional Zoom get-togethers and talk on the phone sometimes. I've gotten in touch with some old friends (including my ex-husband) via email. I chat with neighbors outside, on the sidewalk. I've sewn on a few buttons. I do some weeding and pruning and watering. I'm cooking a bit more adventurously than I did before the shutdown but not baking much at all. I buy a weekly loaf/round of bread from Xan, the neighborhood baker.

Not sure where I was going with that -- just then I heard a thwack and when I went back to check, I saw a pigeon fly from the shed roof and bounce off my kitchen window, and heard a second thwack. Not a smart bird! It didn't hit the ground -- it fluttered and flapped up to the top of my fence and sat for a bit. Then Ellie texted to ask if I have garbanzo beans.

And . . . now several days later I remain adrift. Woolly-brained. Unmotivated. Basically fine. The sun is trying to penetrate a cloud blanket. I'm nudging myself to get outside for my end-of-day walk. 

Ariel

I heard from Ariel yesterday: 

How are you, thanks for contacting me I am doing well now but unfortunately I got sick with the Covid19 nothing serious thanks god but I went in quarantine for more than two weeks separate from everyone just this week I was clear to be able to be around my family not sure how I got it but I think was one of my subs workers who got sick he passed to me and another painter I have to shutdown everything after I got sick so we haven't work for 3-1/2 weeks now but I am glad that next week we can go back to work and I hope we can make up for the time that we miss, let me know when you are ready again to move with the project I have two other engineers that you can contact I mentioned your name before I got sick so when ever you ready I can send you their info.

Cheers,

I love this guy. He thinks, speaks, and writes in tightly organized run-on sentences. Easy for me to say, but maybe getting sick made it easier for him to suspend work for all that time. I know that this whole thing sometimes feels phantasmic to me, and I'm still working and getting paid.

I think it might be time to start thinking about the front of my house again.

sidewalk

Marlon called me yesterday while I was walking along Apollo Street, in Silver Terrace. I fumbled around for my phone and so had to call him back. I had some panicky thoughts -- maybe my house was on fire, or the front door was wide open, or the clothes that I had hung out back had blown over the fence into his back yard (it was pretty windy).

But no, he was calling to ask about the tiny fire that I put out last week. Apparently, his house guests didn't tell him about it right away. He wanted to know how it started (I couldn't help with that) and also to thank me. I told him he really should thank the woman who alerted me, even though I don't know who she is. I don't think he's ever called me before. He's almost always on the phone when I see him -- he usually ends his call so he can chat with his neighbor.

I have Schumann piano trios playing at a relatively high volume, as part of a morning-long effort to block out the drone of a generator or an engine of some sort. I think they must be doing work on the bulb-outs at the corner. It's probably a good thing -- the pavement has been all chewed up for a while now, and there are a lot of older people shuffling around the neighborhood.

Speaking of uneven pavement, a DPW guy wearing a mask came by last week to spraypaint and photograph the damaged sidewalk in front of my house. He said he was documenting the work that needed to be done by the Dept. of Urban Forestry. I told him that the sidewalk had been marked up last fall and that I had called the DUF -- hoping to prevent them from repaving the areas that I want to convert to a sidewalk garden. And that someone at DUF told me that the sewer contractor, not DUF, was going to replace the pavement. Of course, nothing has happened, except that the marks that were applied last fall have faded. He shrugged in a friendly way. So who knows what will happen or when.

little fires/fuegos pequenos

I put out a fire yesterday! When I was getting my Recology bins out of my garage, I smelled what I thought was somebody's BBQ smoke. A woman passed by and then lingered in front of my neighbor Marlon's house for a moment, looking uncertain. She turned back and asked me, semi-verbally, to read a sentence she'd typed on her phone, in Spanish. I guess she was trying to do the Google translate thing?

Anyway, after a lot of fumbling around I was able to parse the sentence, but I couldn’t understand why she was trying to tell me that there was a game in the yard next door. Eventually, she gave up trying to communicate verbally and walked me over to Marlon’s, where a very small fire was blackening several bark chips on one edge of what passes for his front yard. As I was getting water to put it out, I realized that she had intended to type “fuego,” not “juego.”

The woman who had alerted me to the fire said something about a cigar, but I didn't see one anywhere near the charred patch. While we were still standing there, two women came out of Marlon's house -- relatives who have been staying there since Marlon's brother-in-law was killed. One of the women thought she recognized me, said something about working in the same building. I thought about joking that we all look alike but then thought better of it.

now what day is it?

It is Sunday, of course. I downloaded the latest OS and now I'm regretting it because I think it's not going to like my very old version of Word. I kept meaning to bring my MacBook into work and ask Steve for an update but I never got around to it. In other fascinating tech news, I took my new printer out of the box and plugged it in yesterday. I was able to set up the print function on my MacBook but I guess I need help from IT to set up the lenovo laptop. Especially now that I might not be able to use Word on the mac.

The sky looks anemic. Pale blue, mostly obscured by filmy white clouds. I feel unrested because I woke up around 2 and had a hard time getting back to sleep. Questions -- and self-reproach -- are hard to suppress at that time of night. What if I lose my job? What if we have an earthquake? What if my front entryway collapses? What is that noise? How am I going to get to sleep? Should I turn on the light and read a little? Should I stream something boring and soothing? Maybe I should get up and pee. Why haven't I called mom and dad?

And so on.

I did call mom but she didn't answer. I am hesitating about trying dad. I do not like calling. And unless I call them I don't feel like I should be calling anyone else. So yes, I should try dad.

You think things will go on for a while but you don't really know.

walking downtown

Yesterday I drove downtown and parked in the garage at work. I walked to Third and Market to pick up two bottles of red wine at Cask, and then I walked over to Union Square to meet up with KW for a good long walk. The square was deserted. Most of the store fronts on the surrounding streets were covered with plywood. The Victoria's Secret mannequins decked out in skimpy, itchy-looking lingerie looked especially absurd. 

KW appeared, wearing a blue bandanna that matched mine. We hugged virtually and then started walking along a strangely empty Powell St.; we kept walking until we got to the bay, and then we walked back to Market on Mason St. We walked past a few city worker types and several sketchy-looking men. No tourists!

KW and I parted ways on Market St., which has been overtaken by the Tenderloin. When I got back to the building I had to let myself in with my keycard and then I had a long chat with Tommy, the security guard/building manager. He is the nicest guy I've ever met, bar none. His wife is very pregnant with their first child, due next Friday. He said that there had been a spike in craziness and crime in the first few weeks of the shutdown -- people shooting up in the building's "breezeway," people breaking car and store windows, even some guy driving around in a rental car looking for pedestrians to mug. So now he sits in the lobby for 12 hours a day (not his normal shift) with the doors locked, which is safer for him. A couple of building tenants are still coming on some days -- an accountant and a lawyer. And I guess Tommy's presence is a deterrent. Oy. Sometimes it feels like civilization is a very thin veneer. Then again, people in the security realm tend to fixate on threats to security -- like the cop who once told me that I should never walk alone in my own neighborhood (whut?).  

Anyway, it was great to have two in-person conversations in one day. I also had a brief interaction with Faud, the building handyman/porter -- he also seems like a very nice man, but we don't get much beyond "hi, how are you?" because there's a language barrier. He was hanging out in the sixth floor lobby with a friend when I went upstairs to water some of my coworkers' plants. I heard them from the fifth floor, talking in Arabic, so I was prepared to see them, but they were surprised to see me. I felt bad about interrupting.