If there's a more fabulous release out this month than The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema, I have no idea what it might be.
Mass Romantic and Electric Version were both hard acts to follow, but TC undoubtedly fits the bill, at least as my first 10 listens suggest. I'm especially enamored of Neko Case's ever-beautiful, rich vocals in the second half of "The Bleeding Heart Show," and, more than any other track so far, the insanely infectious "Broken Beads," in which Dan Bejar sounds better than ever.
But don't just take my word for it; go to the Matador site and download one of the MP3s (or, better yet, drop $12 on the cd). I defy you to remain unmoved.
(On a related note, the band is coming to SF in late September, playing two shows at Bimbo's with Destroyer in tow, which means that there's a better than average chance that Bejar will stick around for the NP performances. This thrills me to an inordinate degree, especially as he's my latest Nonsensical Musician Crush. Plus, Bimbo's is a great space.)
8.18.2005
The heart a-flutter
When I was relatively new to San Francisco--and, really, for several years thereafter--returning to the city after being away would always send through my body a little frisson of excitement, followed by a sense of exhaling, of being home, of feeling that all was right again.
So here's the sad thing: all of that is kind of missing now. When my plane touched down at SFO on my return trip from Boston a few weeks back, all I really felt was Oh. We're here.
In contrast, though I haven't actually been there for a few years now (is that really possible? must check my math), any glimpse or mention of Vancouver in a magazine, in a book, on Flickr, in conversation just sends my heart fluttering away in my chest. This is a very weird feeling indeed--it almost seems like the small thrill of doing something vaguely inappropriate, forbidden, or unseemly--and it's one I haven't yet quite made peace with.
But for better or worse, I think I know what it means.
I haven't fallen out of love with San Francisco--not exactly. It's still very much my home, and by this point it's so familiar, so much a part of me, that there's no way I can really define myself without it. I guess it's just that since I moved here, lo those many years ago, I've watched San Francisco change, and it's watched me change, to such an extent that we sometimes feel like we don't know each other anymore, and sometimes long too strongly, too impossibly, for what's gone.
So my sights (and my fluttering heart) are set north, to that other city of water, mountains, forests, liberals, immigrants looking to create something new for themselves. And I try to start making peace with the fact that sometime in the near-ish future, I'll have to let go, finally, of what I've loved for so long, and will get the chance to start again.
So here's the sad thing: all of that is kind of missing now. When my plane touched down at SFO on my return trip from Boston a few weeks back, all I really felt was Oh. We're here.
In contrast, though I haven't actually been there for a few years now (is that really possible? must check my math), any glimpse or mention of Vancouver in a magazine, in a book, on Flickr, in conversation just sends my heart fluttering away in my chest. This is a very weird feeling indeed--it almost seems like the small thrill of doing something vaguely inappropriate, forbidden, or unseemly--and it's one I haven't yet quite made peace with.
But for better or worse, I think I know what it means.
I haven't fallen out of love with San Francisco--not exactly. It's still very much my home, and by this point it's so familiar, so much a part of me, that there's no way I can really define myself without it. I guess it's just that since I moved here, lo those many years ago, I've watched San Francisco change, and it's watched me change, to such an extent that we sometimes feel like we don't know each other anymore, and sometimes long too strongly, too impossibly, for what's gone.
So my sights (and my fluttering heart) are set north, to that other city of water, mountains, forests, liberals, immigrants looking to create something new for themselves. And I try to start making peace with the fact that sometime in the near-ish future, I'll have to let go, finally, of what I've loved for so long, and will get the chance to start again.
8.10.2005
Grumpy
Perhaps it's the standard post-vacation letdown, or the fact that my stomach has been in a serious state of disarray for the past week (reasons unknown), or the low-level stress that's run like an invisible but annoying thread through the past several days. It might also be the truly sucktastic "summer" weather San Francisco's been mired in lately, complete with more fog and wind and brutally chilly temperatures that anyone in the northern hemisphere should have to bear in August, or the fact that I woke from a pleasant dream this morning to the realization that it had in fact been only a dream, and thus all of the pleasantness was more or less blown to bits.
Whatever the reason, I've been exceedingly grumpy lately, which makes all of the above even more difficult to put up with than they'd normally be, which in turn makes me even grumpier, and so on and so freakin' on. Here's hoping the tide soon turns, that my whinging interior monologue stops, that I stop cringing every time I get hit in the face with a gust of wind, that I remember that crappy summers are the price we pay here for the ability to hike in shorts come January.
Off now to enjoy our daily half-hour allotment of sun. Dammit.
Whatever the reason, I've been exceedingly grumpy lately, which makes all of the above even more difficult to put up with than they'd normally be, which in turn makes me even grumpier, and so on and so freakin' on. Here's hoping the tide soon turns, that my whinging interior monologue stops, that I stop cringing every time I get hit in the face with a gust of wind, that I remember that crappy summers are the price we pay here for the ability to hike in shorts come January.
Off now to enjoy our daily half-hour allotment of sun. Dammit.
8.07.2005
In Season
Val and I went to the Center City farmers' market this morning, where I was somewhat surprised to find a new crop of apples already out on several vendors' tables. Though I'm sure I should've learned otherwise by now, I was fairly well convinced that any apples one might see during the summer were sure to have come from cold storage, while the new ones wouldn't pop up until next month at least.
But there they were: beautifully variegated new apples, their skins taut and matte, their flesh firm under a thumb press, their scent vague but sweet. I picked up a few, considered buying them, thought about how nice it would be to once again be able to toss a piece of fruit in my purse without having to worry about the mangled pulp it would be when I pulled it out again. (One does not, if one is smart, heave a ripe piece of stone fruit into a bag with any other contents.)
There were the peaches, though.
Across from the stand with the loveliest new apples was a table with fat yellow cling peaches, which, as a sign above them noted, were "Almost like mango!" And it's true: they were dense and juicy and a crazy shade of yellow-orange not often seen in the peach world. They had the feel and taste of summer on the tongue. They carried the suggestion that although San Francisco may be dipped in fog, although our moments of daylight may be slowly ticking away, although there's been a slight downward pull to things since I got back from vacation--that despite all of these things, summer is still very much with us, fall still somewhere uncertainly down the line.
The apples were beautiful, and tempting in their new ripeness. But I know they'll be around for months to come, while the peaches, one of these Sundays, will quietly fail to appear, and all of the berries will be gone, all of the plums done for the year.
While there's still time, then, I opt to fill my bag with those hefty yellow globes, to gingerly carry them home so they won't bruise, to lean over the sink as I bite into one, feel the juice run down my hand and splash onto the white porcelain below. While there's still time, then, I hold what will soon--all too soon--be little more than a memory.
But there they were: beautifully variegated new apples, their skins taut and matte, their flesh firm under a thumb press, their scent vague but sweet. I picked up a few, considered buying them, thought about how nice it would be to once again be able to toss a piece of fruit in my purse without having to worry about the mangled pulp it would be when I pulled it out again. (One does not, if one is smart, heave a ripe piece of stone fruit into a bag with any other contents.)
There were the peaches, though.
Across from the stand with the loveliest new apples was a table with fat yellow cling peaches, which, as a sign above them noted, were "Almost like mango!" And it's true: they were dense and juicy and a crazy shade of yellow-orange not often seen in the peach world. They had the feel and taste of summer on the tongue. They carried the suggestion that although San Francisco may be dipped in fog, although our moments of daylight may be slowly ticking away, although there's been a slight downward pull to things since I got back from vacation--that despite all of these things, summer is still very much with us, fall still somewhere uncertainly down the line.
The apples were beautiful, and tempting in their new ripeness. But I know they'll be around for months to come, while the peaches, one of these Sundays, will quietly fail to appear, and all of the berries will be gone, all of the plums done for the year.
While there's still time, then, I opt to fill my bag with those hefty yellow globes, to gingerly carry them home so they won't bruise, to lean over the sink as I bite into one, feel the juice run down my hand and splash onto the white porcelain below. While there's still time, then, I hold what will soon--all too soon--be little more than a memory.
8.06.2005
Up the Creek
Going Upriver, the documentary about John Kerry's experiences both in and after Vietnam, is intriguing and engrossing for a number of reasons: it presents an interesting picture of the time (which I know little about, though I'd like to learn more), draws some parallels (perhaps somewhat unintentionally) between Vietnam and Iraq, and offers a fascinating portrait of both Kerry himself and the Vietnam Veterans against the War movement.
What struck me the hardest, though, was the sense of being thrown back to last summer and early last fall, when it still seemed like the voting populace of the U.S. might do the right thing and oust Bush, when the vibe from the Kerry campaign (and MoveOn, and the DNC) was full of promise and possibility, when I was still able to summon something akin to hope about the state of political affairs in this country.
Granted, the film presents Kerry in an unabashedly positive and unblemished light, and doesn't touch on his life and career after the 70s; it was intended as (and is) a somewhat heroic portrait of a somewhat heroic (though also somewhat flawed) man. But still.
Though it's refreshing to remember what I felt last year at this time--a fairly even blend of hope and doom, perhaps tilted slightly in favor of the former--there's no overlooking the fact that these days, much of the hope is gone. I need to stick more religiously than ever to my media diet: no more than headlines when reading anything about Bush, Iraq, the Republican-led Congress, and a bevy of other blood-boiling topics, and no radio or TV news that might feature any sort of sound clip involving Dubya's voice. Because not only do these stories remind me daily, endlessly, of how misguided the country seems these days, they also serve as unwelcome reminders of what might have been. If only.
What struck me the hardest, though, was the sense of being thrown back to last summer and early last fall, when it still seemed like the voting populace of the U.S. might do the right thing and oust Bush, when the vibe from the Kerry campaign (and MoveOn, and the DNC) was full of promise and possibility, when I was still able to summon something akin to hope about the state of political affairs in this country.
Granted, the film presents Kerry in an unabashedly positive and unblemished light, and doesn't touch on his life and career after the 70s; it was intended as (and is) a somewhat heroic portrait of a somewhat heroic (though also somewhat flawed) man. But still.
Though it's refreshing to remember what I felt last year at this time--a fairly even blend of hope and doom, perhaps tilted slightly in favor of the former--there's no overlooking the fact that these days, much of the hope is gone. I need to stick more religiously than ever to my media diet: no more than headlines when reading anything about Bush, Iraq, the Republican-led Congress, and a bevy of other blood-boiling topics, and no radio or TV news that might feature any sort of sound clip involving Dubya's voice. Because not only do these stories remind me daily, endlessly, of how misguided the country seems these days, they also serve as unwelcome reminders of what might have been. If only.
8.02.2005
Her Hardest Hue to Hold
After exceedingly foofy and delicious cocktails and nibbles at No. 9 Park, Otis and I tripped happily out into the evening (still--to my tastes, at least--wonderfully warm) as my phone rang. It was DaveG, calling from my flat in San Francisco, where he was staying for the weekend while here for a wedding.
So the three of us strolled through the Common and into the Gardens, past the swan boats and the impossibly lush flowers and the grass an otherworldly shade of green, all of it bathed in a Golden Hour light so perfect it almost seemed fake.
Later in the evening, after picking up dinner and wine and consuming both on the roof of the boys' apartment, Otes and I watched the city sink into night (the moon full, the air humid) and had an extended, Pinot-fuelled discussion about memory and forgetting, about Buddhism's dictum that life is suffering and Emism's dictum that it can't possibly be (at least not always), about the way I stack my favorite memories and moments from the past so they're a solid force beneath and behind me when everything else seems to crumble. About how something as simple as the recollection of sitting at the hotel bar in Vancouver with Dave and Otes, drinking Cosmos with floating cranberries and eating far too many spiced almonds and talking about politics--about how this simple moment can be so many things at once: gone, ever-present, treasured, impossible to return to.
At length, when our livers cried uncle and my legs started to sport a lattice of mosquito bites and we couldn't reach any of the west coast friends we'd tried placing tipsy phone calls to, we went downstairs and to bed, another moment--a day full of moments--gone.
But then there was the next day, spent traipsing around the city in search of NPS Passport stamps. There was the sweetness of picking blueberries with Isabella at Twin Chimneys, of laughingly watch her eat two ripe berries for every half-green one she put in the basket. There was dinner on the river in Westerly with Mom, Dad, and Greg, and meeting baby Joseph for the first time, and sitting on the patio at Crispo with Ry and Amy while the city sky went dark and the lights came on around us. There was--as there always is--moment after moment after moment.
Robert Frost, in "Nothing Gold Can Stay," gets it half right:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
But long after the golds and flowers and dawns are gone, there's something about them that sticks around. On my summer vacation, I let dozens of moments come and go. I can't ever have them back just as they were, but that isn't (never is) the point. I know where to find them when I need them.
So the three of us strolled through the Common and into the Gardens, past the swan boats and the impossibly lush flowers and the grass an otherworldly shade of green, all of it bathed in a Golden Hour light so perfect it almost seemed fake.
Later in the evening, after picking up dinner and wine and consuming both on the roof of the boys' apartment, Otes and I watched the city sink into night (the moon full, the air humid) and had an extended, Pinot-fuelled discussion about memory and forgetting, about Buddhism's dictum that life is suffering and Emism's dictum that it can't possibly be (at least not always), about the way I stack my favorite memories and moments from the past so they're a solid force beneath and behind me when everything else seems to crumble. About how something as simple as the recollection of sitting at the hotel bar in Vancouver with Dave and Otes, drinking Cosmos with floating cranberries and eating far too many spiced almonds and talking about politics--about how this simple moment can be so many things at once: gone, ever-present, treasured, impossible to return to.
At length, when our livers cried uncle and my legs started to sport a lattice of mosquito bites and we couldn't reach any of the west coast friends we'd tried placing tipsy phone calls to, we went downstairs and to bed, another moment--a day full of moments--gone.
But then there was the next day, spent traipsing around the city in search of NPS Passport stamps. There was the sweetness of picking blueberries with Isabella at Twin Chimneys, of laughingly watch her eat two ripe berries for every half-green one she put in the basket. There was dinner on the river in Westerly with Mom, Dad, and Greg, and meeting baby Joseph for the first time, and sitting on the patio at Crispo with Ry and Amy while the city sky went dark and the lights came on around us. There was--as there always is--moment after moment after moment.
Robert Frost, in "Nothing Gold Can Stay," gets it half right:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
But long after the golds and flowers and dawns are gone, there's something about them that sticks around. On my summer vacation, I let dozens of moments come and go. I can't ever have them back just as they were, but that isn't (never is) the point. I know where to find them when I need them.
7.11.2005
Vacating
Though I still haven't quite figured out how I'll get from Philadelphia to New York on a Friday evening while avoiding Amtrak (because I refuse to pay $54 for a one-hour trip, and I doubly refuse to pay $81 for the same trip during peak hours), and though I haven't yet tried to butter up my Auntie Paula to ferry me to Logan at 5 a.m. for my return trip to SF (A.P., if you're reading this, you're the best great aunt ever!), my itinerary for my upcoming vacation is set. It goes something like this:
- Fly into Boston next Wednesday, where Otes will fetch me from the airport and I will (of my own volition, though the promise of wine helps) spend the next two days helping him and Sean pack for their impending move.
- Head to the Cape on the weekend, either via Greyhound with Jonny D. on Friday night or with Paula (and the rest of New England) on Saturday morning.
- Drive home with Mom, Dad, and Greg on Sunday night, and stay in CT until Wednesday morning, at which point I will...
- ...fly to Pittsburgh to see Rachel, David, and adorable little Joseph for a few days.
- Fly to Philly (alas, Southwest goes no closer to NYC) on Friday afternoon, and somehow (SEPTA? New Jersey Transit? Greyhound again?) deposit myself in downtown Manhattan.
- Ingest as much of New York as I can before Amtrak-ing back to Boston on Sunday night for one last hurrah before the aforementioned crack-of-dawn departure on Tuesday.
It's funny: I keep describing this trip to friends and colleagues as a chance to relax, do no work, and generally lounge around. Of course, it's clearly insane: not even counting my cross-country flights, I must be spending the equivalent of a full day on various forms of mass transit, and I haven't scheduled more than three days in one place.
But I couldn't be happier. This is a vacation I feel like I need more than ever, both because I still feel like I need to keep slathering myself in some sort of balm that will help dull the effects of the various stressful events of the past half-year and because, with the exception of Amtrak's bathrooms and Logan before dawn, I love everything that awaits me: some of my best friends, some of my favorite cities, time with the family that loves me without question and without fail, the chance to pick blueberries from Twin Chimney's bushes and run the Rail Trail in Orleans in the cool of the morning and swim in the Atlantic.
And the chance, best of all, to fall asleep on thirteen cricket-soaked, open-windowed evenings with the smart of heartache, the gut-punch of financial worry, and the tug of uncertainty thousands and thousands of miles away.
7.06.2005
Birthday Wish
Though I'd dig a Bose iPod dock, and would love the security of knowing that business will be as steady going forward as it has been for the past few weeks, and also wouldn't mind a relaxing weekend at Canyon Ranch, what I wish more than anything today is that 31 will be easier than 30.
6.28.2005
How the August Night
The town I grew up in sits on the shore of Long Island Sound in southern Connecticut. It's sleepy and fairly quiet for a good part of the year (or at least it was), but when summer comes, everything in it and about it comes to life.
It's perhaps because of that, and because I'm a July baby (the 6th, just like Dubya, Nancy Reagan, and Sly Stallone), that summer has always been my favorite season, and the one that seems to me the most mythic and full of possibility. I never learned to love the snow or the nostril-freezing temperatures of winter, and spring and fall always felt to me little more than the lead-in and end to summer, respectively. In June, July, and August, I was happiest and most at home in my life.
So when I first read Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet X, from Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, it made me feel giddy and lachrymose and punched in the gut and hopeful, all at the same time.
Many of Millay's other poems got me, too--my Auntie Paula gave me a book of them, which I still have, spine broken at the pages I read the most, full of notes and stars next to the pieces I liked best, even a few pencil marks on sonnets whose meter I tried to annotate with that odd series of swoops and dashes. But Ungrafted Tree X was (and remains) the only poem I could recite by heart.
What grabbed me was not only the fact that the poem is fairly exploding with ripe summer imagery--which, in itself, was (and is) often enough to win me over--but also its sly, quiet promise that sometimes, when the moon is right and the crickets loud enough and the circumstances sufficiently mysterious to invite no questioning, sometimes you find what you're looking for.
That appealed to me in an immense and unshakeable way when I spent my summers in Niantic (as my journals from that time can attest). And even now, when my summers are windy and chilly and fog-bound and my skepticism is sometimes sharp enough to poke holes in most notions of romantic promise, Millay's poem holds out a sense of hope like an outstretched hand and a swim-perfect moonlit lake.
Plus, the last line is a kicker.
X
She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets' choir...
So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late...
And if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree's shadow was deep, and black, and secret as a well.
It's perhaps because of that, and because I'm a July baby (the 6th, just like Dubya, Nancy Reagan, and Sly Stallone), that summer has always been my favorite season, and the one that seems to me the most mythic and full of possibility. I never learned to love the snow or the nostril-freezing temperatures of winter, and spring and fall always felt to me little more than the lead-in and end to summer, respectively. In June, July, and August, I was happiest and most at home in my life.
So when I first read Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet X, from Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, it made me feel giddy and lachrymose and punched in the gut and hopeful, all at the same time.
Many of Millay's other poems got me, too--my Auntie Paula gave me a book of them, which I still have, spine broken at the pages I read the most, full of notes and stars next to the pieces I liked best, even a few pencil marks on sonnets whose meter I tried to annotate with that odd series of swoops and dashes. But Ungrafted Tree X was (and remains) the only poem I could recite by heart.
What grabbed me was not only the fact that the poem is fairly exploding with ripe summer imagery--which, in itself, was (and is) often enough to win me over--but also its sly, quiet promise that sometimes, when the moon is right and the crickets loud enough and the circumstances sufficiently mysterious to invite no questioning, sometimes you find what you're looking for.
That appealed to me in an immense and unshakeable way when I spent my summers in Niantic (as my journals from that time can attest). And even now, when my summers are windy and chilly and fog-bound and my skepticism is sometimes sharp enough to poke holes in most notions of romantic promise, Millay's poem holds out a sense of hope like an outstretched hand and a swim-perfect moonlit lake.
Plus, the last line is a kicker.
X
She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets' choir...
So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late...
And if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree's shadow was deep, and black, and secret as a well.
6.19.2005
Digitalia
Thanks to JDS, I am now the proud owner of a free Flickr Pro account. This is somewhat amusing, as I don't actually own a digital camera yet (though my intentions to purchase one post haste are absolutely good--would that I had done so while I still had the guidance of my technical advisor at my disposal) and thus have to rely on scanning and uploading old-school photos. (As a side note, what do we call these? Analog photos? Offline photos? Normal photos?)
Anyway, despite the laughable amount of labor involved in getting my stuff prepped to be posted, I've been doing plenty of precisely that over the past few days, and now have a decent photostream in place, which you can (and should) visit at http://www.flickr.com/photos/emwilska/.
With Flickr, as with my iPod, I have no excuse for coming to the party so late (and not fashionably so, I'm afraid), and I can't claim to be on the cutting edge of anything. I guess that by nature I'm inclined to go the low-tech route, and it takes a while before I can really see the appeal of the digital alternative in many realms.
But once I do, damn if I don't go whole hog on the thing.
Anyway, despite the laughable amount of labor involved in getting my stuff prepped to be posted, I've been doing plenty of precisely that over the past few days, and now have a decent photostream in place, which you can (and should) visit at http://www.flickr.com/photos/emwilska/.
With Flickr, as with my iPod, I have no excuse for coming to the party so late (and not fashionably so, I'm afraid), and I can't claim to be on the cutting edge of anything. I guess that by nature I'm inclined to go the low-tech route, and it takes a while before I can really see the appeal of the digital alternative in many realms.
But once I do, damn if I don't go whole hog on the thing.
6.16.2005
From the "Yes, You Read That Correctly" Department
Leonard Nimoy Hosts the Arab-Jewish Ensemble of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Monday, June 27, Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco
6.09.2005
What I was trying to say
William Least Heat-Moon's River-Horse: Across America by Boat is a much longer and much sloggier read than his Blue Highways, which I inhaled over the course of a few days when I first read it. River-Horse has taken me, oh, three months of before-bed reading.
Though I find it too long, way, way, way too detailed, and lacking in the tight and fascinating storytelling that makes Blue Highways so brilliant, it does have some seriously impressive moments.
The gist of the book is that Heat-Moon undertakes a cross-country voyage by boat, often following in Lewis and Clark's footsteps (or, well, boat wakes, I suppose) but also making some out-of-the-way turns that will allow him and his small crew to stay on the water for as much of the journey as possible, save for a few unavoidable portages.
On a stretch of the Missouri River in South Dakota, Heat-Moon lies on the ground in the sunshine:
He goes on:
And finally:
All of which is essentially a much more lyrical and thought-provoking (and, in some ways, heart-rending) way of saying what I was trying to get at in my post on my eighth San Francisco anniversary. Heat-Moon has put the words down better than I ever could; to one such as me, for whom finding written proof that someone understood what's in my head before it actually got there is like striking gold, that alone is worth the effort of soldiering through 502 dense pages.
Though I find it too long, way, way, way too detailed, and lacking in the tight and fascinating storytelling that makes Blue Highways so brilliant, it does have some seriously impressive moments.
The gist of the book is that Heat-Moon undertakes a cross-country voyage by boat, often following in Lewis and Clark's footsteps (or, well, boat wakes, I suppose) but also making some out-of-the-way turns that will allow him and his small crew to stay on the water for as much of the journey as possible, save for a few unavoidable portages.
On a stretch of the Missouri River in South Dakota, Heat-Moon lies on the ground in the sunshine:
"I thought how far I was from where and when this journey began, how I was so distant from that fellow passing for me twenty months ago, the one so eager to learn the secrets of river passage. Could he--the me of that moment--and I sit down together, he would want to know what I knew and absorb what I had experienced, and he would regard me enviously, just as I do those men who have returned from the moon."
"But there would be forever a difference between him and me: I went and he did not. He set the voyage in motion, but he could not take it. Just as I, who lay on the Dakota hill, could not know whether Nikawa would ever reach the Pacific, he could never see the outcome of his preparations, unless somewhere, on some far other side, time permits us to meet our past selves, all those we have been. Our physical components change every seven years, so our brains are continuously passing along memories to a stranger; who we have been is only a ghostly fellow traveler."
And finally:
"As for me, what might I learn from him who laid out the voyage or from all those others I once was? ... What a report I might deliver to them about where they have sent me! ...They could redraw the faded lines on the long map of my journey here, point out clearly where it was I took a road other than the one they intended, and they could tell me whether they found it a good one or rankly stupid. Were human memory total and perfect, perhaps I'd be only one person from start to finish, but forgetfulness cuts me off from who I've been so that hourly I am reborn."
All of which is essentially a much more lyrical and thought-provoking (and, in some ways, heart-rending) way of saying what I was trying to get at in my post on my eighth San Francisco anniversary. Heat-Moon has put the words down better than I ever could; to one such as me, for whom finding written proof that someone understood what's in my head before it actually got there is like striking gold, that alone is worth the effort of soldiering through 502 dense pages.
6.01.2005
To Dana on Her 30th Birthday
As your elder, I'd like to share with you a few things 30 has taught me:
- Sometimes life throws up on your shoes, sort of like George Bush Sr. once did to the Prime Minister of Japan.
- Ruined shoes (figuratively speaking), emotional potholes, and other curveballs are much easier to deal with when you have good friends and good (or, hell, any) booze at your side.
- Now and well into your 30s, you're still allowed to do things that are silly, immature, and sometimes outright dumb.
- The Burton snowboards ad from 1989 was right: the more you live, the less you die.
5.30.2005
5.18.2005
Improving Web forms
In his Techno Files column in last Sunday's Times Business Section ("Finally, Sisyphus, There's Help for Those Internet Forms"), James Fallows notes that technological advances as evidenced in Google Maps, for one, are helping to lessen the pain of dealing with interactive Web forms. Rich Internet Applications/Rich Web Applications/Ajax/call the developments what you may have made Web sites much smarter and much better able to anticipate (and act on) what the user will do next.
Improving the bone structure and the central nervous system of Web technologies is indeed an awesome development, and can go a long way toward mitigating the frustration that's still such a large part of so many online interactions. But what Fallows doesn't touch on, and what seems to me equally crucial, is the need to keep improving the "skin" of Web sites: the layouts, the look-and-feel, and, of course, the text. Because even the most brilliant backend can be nullified if the user can't understand what's happening up front, or runs into an error that's too frustrating or too complex to overcome.
I admittedly know little to nothing about the whole "rich" phenomenon, so it's entirely possible that attention to front end details is part and parcel of it. In any case, it's worth remembering--as countless tests on sites from the simplest to the most complex have shown--that brilliance behind the scenes can't, on its own, make up for weak text and bad design. The three need to work together if Web forms (including error messages and shopping carts) are ever to be as good as they can be.
Improving the bone structure and the central nervous system of Web technologies is indeed an awesome development, and can go a long way toward mitigating the frustration that's still such a large part of so many online interactions. But what Fallows doesn't touch on, and what seems to me equally crucial, is the need to keep improving the "skin" of Web sites: the layouts, the look-and-feel, and, of course, the text. Because even the most brilliant backend can be nullified if the user can't understand what's happening up front, or runs into an error that's too frustrating or too complex to overcome.
I admittedly know little to nothing about the whole "rich" phenomenon, so it's entirely possible that attention to front end details is part and parcel of it. In any case, it's worth remembering--as countless tests on sites from the simplest to the most complex have shown--that brilliance behind the scenes can't, on its own, make up for weak text and bad design. The three need to work together if Web forms (including error messages and shopping carts) are ever to be as good as they can be.
5.10.2005
Can't we all just get along?
As one who, for years, did not use any Apple products (indoctrinated in the ways of Windows as I was, and too addicted to right-clicking to do without it on a Mac), I was spared the full ridiculousness of the Apple/Microsoft bickering for a long while.
And then I got my iPod, installed iTunes on my (Windows-based) laptop, and started to twig to the full scope of the incompatibility between the two camps. The iTunes installation was messy and clunky, and though it eventually succeeded, it was a marked pain in the ass, which I'm told it's markedly not on Apple machines.
This afternoon, I made the mistake of falling for the Buy 1 Song/Get 5 Free offer MSN Music is currently running. (I'll save my comments on the perplexing and convoluted design of the site for another post, but will only say for now that clearly last year's exodus has had some repercussions.) I downloaded a Neko Case song--which involved an inordinate number of steps and a needless dearth of feedback (but again, that's another post)--confirmed that it was saved to My Music folder, closed WMP (which opened automatically, to my annoyance), and then tried to import it to iTunes, as one is wont to do.
But I should've known better. I should've known that files from MSN Music come not in any format that anyone else on the face of the planet would ever use, but rather in some crazy proprietary format that is, of course, incompatible with iTunes. MSN's answer to "How do I transfer my downloads to my iPod?" is basically "You can't, at least not until Apple agrees to support our file format."
I mean, come on now. Even if every other MP3 player on the market supports your wacky WM format, how far are you going to get if iPods don't? And why be stubborn to the point of almost inviting failure just to stick it to Apple? (I suppose the reverse also holds, but history seems to suggest that MS is the bigger bully by far.)
There has got to be a point at which cross-platform compatibility becomes more important than this incessant and ridiculous proprietary sparring. In the realm of online media services and serious innovation, MS has been playing catch-up for years now, and I can't imagine that releasing a music download service that doesn't allow for any compatibility with a device that is so clearly miles ahead in the market will do anything to help the cause.
I'm not quite ready to jettison my Windows-based machine (both because I just shelled out for it last year and because I'm still hooked on right-clicking as one fluid motion), but my disillusionment with the stuff coming out of MS is growing. Who knows? By the time this laptop bites it, I may well be ready to return to my days as a Mac girl. In the meantime, I've learned that even $0.99 was too big a gamble to take on MSN Music. It's back to iTunes and Amazon (and every other online music store that offers iPod-compatible downloads--which is to say, ALL of them).
And then I got my iPod, installed iTunes on my (Windows-based) laptop, and started to twig to the full scope of the incompatibility between the two camps. The iTunes installation was messy and clunky, and though it eventually succeeded, it was a marked pain in the ass, which I'm told it's markedly not on Apple machines.
This afternoon, I made the mistake of falling for the Buy 1 Song/Get 5 Free offer MSN Music is currently running. (I'll save my comments on the perplexing and convoluted design of the site for another post, but will only say for now that clearly last year's exodus has had some repercussions.) I downloaded a Neko Case song--which involved an inordinate number of steps and a needless dearth of feedback (but again, that's another post)--confirmed that it was saved to My Music folder, closed WMP (which opened automatically, to my annoyance), and then tried to import it to iTunes, as one is wont to do.
But I should've known better. I should've known that files from MSN Music come not in any format that anyone else on the face of the planet would ever use, but rather in some crazy proprietary format that is, of course, incompatible with iTunes. MSN's answer to "How do I transfer my downloads to my iPod?" is basically "You can't, at least not until Apple agrees to support our file format."
I mean, come on now. Even if every other MP3 player on the market supports your wacky WM format, how far are you going to get if iPods don't? And why be stubborn to the point of almost inviting failure just to stick it to Apple? (I suppose the reverse also holds, but history seems to suggest that MS is the bigger bully by far.)
There has got to be a point at which cross-platform compatibility becomes more important than this incessant and ridiculous proprietary sparring. In the realm of online media services and serious innovation, MS has been playing catch-up for years now, and I can't imagine that releasing a music download service that doesn't allow for any compatibility with a device that is so clearly miles ahead in the market will do anything to help the cause.
I'm not quite ready to jettison my Windows-based machine (both because I just shelled out for it last year and because I'm still hooked on right-clicking as one fluid motion), but my disillusionment with the stuff coming out of MS is growing. Who knows? By the time this laptop bites it, I may well be ready to return to my days as a Mac girl. In the meantime, I've learned that even $0.99 was too big a gamble to take on MSN Music. It's back to iTunes and Amazon (and every other online music store that offers iPod-compatible downloads--which is to say, ALL of them).
5.08.2005
The People's Temple
One of the greatest theaters in the Bay Area, hands down, is the Berkeley Rep, where I've seen Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul, the premier of the Tectonic Theatre Company's The Laramie Project, and, most recently, the same company's brilliant, balanced, and heartbreaking The People's Temple.
Though it's nearly impossible to be an American with any knowledge of late 20th century tragedies and not know anything about Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple (or, for that matter, of what happened in Laramie), most of us probably have a fairly one-dimensional view of the subject: horror, revulsion, and disbelief at how more than 900 people could be duped into going along with such a crackpot.
Which is why The People's Temple is so amazing: told from the perspective of Jonestown survivors, Peoples Temple defectors, family members, and reporters who covered the story at the time, the play makes clear both the madness of what happened on November 18, 1978, and the utopian dream gone awry that led up to it.
In its early days, Jones' church was a model of integration (at a time when the US was anything but), providing social services, acceptance, political activism, and a seemingly infallible model of socialist idealism come to life. People joined the church for any number of reasons, but one of the foremost among them was that it offered a vision of a society they could find nowhere else. What comes through in the play, just as strongly as that tragedy that was to follow, is the joy that members of the Peoples Temple found first in Indianapolis, then in Northern California, and then, at least for a short while, in Guyana.
The People's Temple makes no apologies for Jones or anyone else; instead, it uses source material, interviews, and the memories of those who were there to create an intensely moving, understandable, and well rounded version of a story that's been told so often it long ago descended into myth. In doing so, it not only brings a troubled and ultimately tragic piece of history to life, but also goes a long way toward answering what must be the most commonly asked question: Why?
Though it's nearly impossible to be an American with any knowledge of late 20th century tragedies and not know anything about Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple (or, for that matter, of what happened in Laramie), most of us probably have a fairly one-dimensional view of the subject: horror, revulsion, and disbelief at how more than 900 people could be duped into going along with such a crackpot.
Which is why The People's Temple is so amazing: told from the perspective of Jonestown survivors, Peoples Temple defectors, family members, and reporters who covered the story at the time, the play makes clear both the madness of what happened on November 18, 1978, and the utopian dream gone awry that led up to it.
In its early days, Jones' church was a model of integration (at a time when the US was anything but), providing social services, acceptance, political activism, and a seemingly infallible model of socialist idealism come to life. People joined the church for any number of reasons, but one of the foremost among them was that it offered a vision of a society they could find nowhere else. What comes through in the play, just as strongly as that tragedy that was to follow, is the joy that members of the Peoples Temple found first in Indianapolis, then in Northern California, and then, at least for a short while, in Guyana.
The People's Temple makes no apologies for Jones or anyone else; instead, it uses source material, interviews, and the memories of those who were there to create an intensely moving, understandable, and well rounded version of a story that's been told so often it long ago descended into myth. In doing so, it not only brings a troubled and ultimately tragic piece of history to life, but also goes a long way toward answering what must be the most commonly asked question: Why?
5.03.2005
Attack of the iPod People
Since getting my sweet green iPod Mini last month, I've started taking it with me everywhere. (Sorry, Josh!) And I've also started noticing something: I'm very much not alone in this.
Now, I realize I'm miles from being an early adapter on the MP3 player front, and I'm sure there were dozens and dozens of people walking around with the tell-tale white earbuds sprouting from the sides of their heads long before I ever put mine in for the first time. But I swear, I never before noticed them. And now they're everywhere.
I take the 49 ten blocks up Van Ness, and during that trip, there are no fewer than five of us on the bus listening to iPods. I step out of my new garage yesterday with Mini in hand and have gone literally twenty steps when an iPodded boy walks out of the building I'm passing. On the streets, on BART, in the post office, in the library--everywhere. Everywhere I've been with my iPod, I've seen others like me.
Were I not so attached to this thing (and how did that happen, technologically retarded as I am?), I might decry the iPodization of the city, might be inclined to think it a shame that we're all so involved in shuffling songs and blocking the rest of the world out of our ears.
As it is, though, I feel like I finally get the appeal of the whole thing. And so I, too, propel myself through the streets of San Francisco with my ears full of music and a tiny slip of metal in my hand.
I'm one of them now.
Now, I realize I'm miles from being an early adapter on the MP3 player front, and I'm sure there were dozens and dozens of people walking around with the tell-tale white earbuds sprouting from the sides of their heads long before I ever put mine in for the first time. But I swear, I never before noticed them. And now they're everywhere.
I take the 49 ten blocks up Van Ness, and during that trip, there are no fewer than five of us on the bus listening to iPods. I step out of my new garage yesterday with Mini in hand and have gone literally twenty steps when an iPodded boy walks out of the building I'm passing. On the streets, on BART, in the post office, in the library--everywhere. Everywhere I've been with my iPod, I've seen others like me.
Were I not so attached to this thing (and how did that happen, technologically retarded as I am?), I might decry the iPodization of the city, might be inclined to think it a shame that we're all so involved in shuffling songs and blocking the rest of the world out of our ears.
As it is, though, I feel like I finally get the appeal of the whole thing. And so I, too, propel myself through the streets of San Francisco with my ears full of music and a tiny slip of metal in my hand.
I'm one of them now.
4.12.2005
How Keen Was My Valley
Due to the seemingly interminable Octavia Boulevard project, Hayes Valley has been what can only be described as a gigantic, confusing, ever-changing mess for months now.
It was amazing and wonderful to see the Central Freeway off-ramp come down, and though the same can't be said for watching work crews tear up Octavia Street and denude it of all greenery whatsoever, the excitement of what was to come made the mess somewhat more bearable.
But that was many moons (and bulldozers, jackhammers, dump trucks, traffic cones, mud pits, chain-link fences, and ripped-out curbs) ago. The war zone that is the center of our neighborhood has grown seriously tiring, especially after copious winter rains that turned the street into five blocks of brown puddles, litter, and dirt.
It's just possible, however, that things are finally starting to move. Workers have casted (or whatever one does in concrete) the fixtures that will be the center of what (hypothetically) will be Hayes Green. It seems like everything that needs to go either under or in the street--pipes, drains, cables, and so forth--has been put in place, which means (hypothetically) that final grading and paving can't be too far off. And it's been claimed that at least part of the project is scheduled to be completed by the time the UN conference comes to town in June, so there's at least a touch of flame under at least an ass or two.
So though I've more or less grown used to living among some degree of constant chaos, neighborhood-wise, I'm seriously thrilled that there's an end in sight. Soon enough, we'll have some actual green space, the traffic on Hayes Street will abate somewhat (I hope), the Linden terminus will cease to be an open garbage pit, and I'll have somewhere to sit while I sip the artful and extraordinarily good lattes I plan to get from the new Blue Bottle Coffee Company kiosk on a far-too-regular basis.
Things are looking up.
It was amazing and wonderful to see the Central Freeway off-ramp come down, and though the same can't be said for watching work crews tear up Octavia Street and denude it of all greenery whatsoever, the excitement of what was to come made the mess somewhat more bearable.
But that was many moons (and bulldozers, jackhammers, dump trucks, traffic cones, mud pits, chain-link fences, and ripped-out curbs) ago. The war zone that is the center of our neighborhood has grown seriously tiring, especially after copious winter rains that turned the street into five blocks of brown puddles, litter, and dirt.
It's just possible, however, that things are finally starting to move. Workers have casted (or whatever one does in concrete) the fixtures that will be the center of what (hypothetically) will be Hayes Green. It seems like everything that needs to go either under or in the street--pipes, drains, cables, and so forth--has been put in place, which means (hypothetically) that final grading and paving can't be too far off. And it's been claimed that at least part of the project is scheduled to be completed by the time the UN conference comes to town in June, so there's at least a touch of flame under at least an ass or two.
So though I've more or less grown used to living among some degree of constant chaos, neighborhood-wise, I'm seriously thrilled that there's an end in sight. Soon enough, we'll have some actual green space, the traffic on Hayes Street will abate somewhat (I hope), the Linden terminus will cease to be an open garbage pit, and I'll have somewhere to sit while I sip the artful and extraordinarily good lattes I plan to get from the new Blue Bottle Coffee Company kiosk on a far-too-regular basis.
Things are looking up.
4.05.2005
Eight
On April 5, 1997--eight years ago today--I finished the last jag of my drive up Highway 1, which itself was the final leg of my cross-country journey, and drove into San Francisco.
My first day here seems both sharply clear and lost to the blur of memories: I came to the house on Cesar Chavez, where I'd live for a few months (thanks to Kristin) before fleeing for the Castro (thanks to the unbearable polyamorous, high colonic-giving, New Age drivel-spouting, selfish and mean-tempered housemate who drove me out). K helped me unpack my car and set up my tiny little room as best as possible, given its lack of furniture. That evening, we went out to Barney's with the Vassar crowd, and I left soon after dinner, tired and achy from the drive, to make my way through the quiet Noe Valley night and back to my new home. Beyond that, details are gone.
I've heard it said that your body essentially regenerates itself every 7 or 8 years, given the way cells grow and die. If that's true, the me that arrived in San Francisco in 1997 is literally a different person from the me sitting here and typing this post.
I'm not sure how much stock I put in that, but I do know that the figurative differences between Then Me and Now Me certainly hold. Amazing, isn't it, what 2,922 days' worth of watching friends come and go; feeling like you couldn't possibly be happier, then sadder, then happier again (before deciding that something more in the middle is a bit more sustainable); falling into and pulling yourself out of pits of heartbreak; finding and leaving jobs (then finding and leaving them again); seeing your city change around you; developing a set of street smarts with a distinctly California tinge to them; and all the while exploring, tasting, questioning, wanting to know and feel and think and do and see as much as possible--amazing how all of this can change you.
And though I sometimes long for life as I lived it in my early days here--back when work often seemed like silly fun, when the Odwalla was free, when it didn't occur to me that I'd eventually watch so many of my friends leave, when the heaviest parts of the adult world hadn't yet hit me--I know that, given the choice, I'd opt to stay here, with eight years of San Francisco behind me and thousands and thousands of days unfolding somewhere just ahead.
My first day here seems both sharply clear and lost to the blur of memories: I came to the house on Cesar Chavez, where I'd live for a few months (thanks to Kristin) before fleeing for the Castro (thanks to the unbearable polyamorous, high colonic-giving, New Age drivel-spouting, selfish and mean-tempered housemate who drove me out). K helped me unpack my car and set up my tiny little room as best as possible, given its lack of furniture. That evening, we went out to Barney's with the Vassar crowd, and I left soon after dinner, tired and achy from the drive, to make my way through the quiet Noe Valley night and back to my new home. Beyond that, details are gone.
I've heard it said that your body essentially regenerates itself every 7 or 8 years, given the way cells grow and die. If that's true, the me that arrived in San Francisco in 1997 is literally a different person from the me sitting here and typing this post.
I'm not sure how much stock I put in that, but I do know that the figurative differences between Then Me and Now Me certainly hold. Amazing, isn't it, what 2,922 days' worth of watching friends come and go; feeling like you couldn't possibly be happier, then sadder, then happier again (before deciding that something more in the middle is a bit more sustainable); falling into and pulling yourself out of pits of heartbreak; finding and leaving jobs (then finding and leaving them again); seeing your city change around you; developing a set of street smarts with a distinctly California tinge to them; and all the while exploring, tasting, questioning, wanting to know and feel and think and do and see as much as possible--amazing how all of this can change you.
And though I sometimes long for life as I lived it in my early days here--back when work often seemed like silly fun, when the Odwalla was free, when it didn't occur to me that I'd eventually watch so many of my friends leave, when the heaviest parts of the adult world hadn't yet hit me--I know that, given the choice, I'd opt to stay here, with eight years of San Francisco behind me and thousands and thousands of days unfolding somewhere just ahead.
4.02.2005
Upshot
For some reason or other, dinner and iPod sharing and plenty of wine with Eric this evening leaves me thinking a number of things, foremost among them this: I miss the Boy more than I can say.
That statement goes against every bone, muscle, and cell in my body that tries to be strong, reasonable, and logical. No doubt I'll want to delete this post tomorrow when the muscat has worn off and the rational part of my brain has once again taken the reins. But for now, when my defenses are utterly down (to the point of being almost nonexistent), I can admit to being human, can say that I battle with these feelings of sighing emptiness, can admit that listening to "If Everything Fell Quiet" on the aforementioned iPod while standing in the middle of my kitchen last night made me sink into tears, so much did the song remind me of him (since it came from him in the first place), of us, of things at a better point.
But when will I learn? When will I understand the upshot of loss, what it's like to have your heart pulled out of your chest, julienned, and unceremoniously stuffed back in, so that it doesn't fit quite right, so that it strains against its boundaries, so that it aches for the parameters it once knew? When will my slow mind--and even slower heart--twig to the fact that us/we/nous is no more, however strong my flare-ups of longing and wishing might be?
For now, sadly, it's still often beyond me. I open my hands for things I can't grab, open my heart for things I can't truthfully feel, reach for a full comprehension I'm (evidently) not yet meant to have.
And all the while, I make the most heart-rending calculations: what I wouldn't give for some contact, though I don't know that it would do me any good. What I wouldn't give to cast back six months, back to when my worlds (both internal and external) seemed like different places altogether.
That statement goes against every bone, muscle, and cell in my body that tries to be strong, reasonable, and logical. No doubt I'll want to delete this post tomorrow when the muscat has worn off and the rational part of my brain has once again taken the reins. But for now, when my defenses are utterly down (to the point of being almost nonexistent), I can admit to being human, can say that I battle with these feelings of sighing emptiness, can admit that listening to "If Everything Fell Quiet" on the aforementioned iPod while standing in the middle of my kitchen last night made me sink into tears, so much did the song remind me of him (since it came from him in the first place), of us, of things at a better point.
But when will I learn? When will I understand the upshot of loss, what it's like to have your heart pulled out of your chest, julienned, and unceremoniously stuffed back in, so that it doesn't fit quite right, so that it strains against its boundaries, so that it aches for the parameters it once knew? When will my slow mind--and even slower heart--twig to the fact that us/we/nous is no more, however strong my flare-ups of longing and wishing might be?
For now, sadly, it's still often beyond me. I open my hands for things I can't grab, open my heart for things I can't truthfully feel, reach for a full comprehension I'm (evidently) not yet meant to have.
And all the while, I make the most heart-rending calculations: what I wouldn't give for some contact, though I don't know that it would do me any good. What I wouldn't give to cast back six months, back to when my worlds (both internal and external) seemed like different places altogether.
3.30.2005
GWB Two Ways
Alexandra Pelosi's Journeys with George is a smart, funny, interesting look at the 2000 Bush campaign as seen from within GWB's traveling press pool, of which Pelosi was a part (as a correspondent for NBC). I know this has been said before, but one of the most brilliant and unnerving things about Pelosi's film, which she bills as a home movie of sorts, is that it makes Bush look charming, reasonable, and entirely human.
So it's jarring to consider Journeys with George side by side with Eyes Wide Open, the American Friends Service Committee's traveling exhibit of 1500 pairs of combat boots, a field of civilian shoes, and a wall of rememberance, all devoted to memorializing and raising awareness of the deaths resulting from the Iraq war.
The exhibit was in San Francisco last weekend, on the grounds between City Hall and the library (with the boots representing servicepeople from California who have been killed in Iraq lining the steps of City Hall itself), and it was both breathtaking and heartbreaking to behold. Granted, staging the exhibit in SF is pretty much preaching to the choir, but even here in Liberalville, USA, it managed to (sorry to poach the expression, but...) open some eyes.
It's one thing to read the death toll every day in the paper, or to hear NPR's endless dispatches from Iraq, but it's something else entirely to see 1500 pairs of empty boots (each with a name attached, and many stuffed with flowers, flags, photos, and letters from the deceased) and row after row of civilian shoes. The numbers become real, and the utter waste of this quagmire becomes even starker.
Asking how it is that the charming, joking, sometimes (though by no means always) even sympathetic man in front of Pelosi's lens could morph into the man who bears responsibility for the depressing parade of shoes making their way across the country isn't a rhetorical question. It's a question with a blatant and sad answer: whatever spark of humanism might have existed in the 2000 GWB was long extinguished by the time that man became 2001 GWB. Any hope the movie might've given us that the man who would become our next president was capable of compassion was long ago blown to bits.
Pelosi's film, then, becomes more than just a portrait of a man, a year, the experiences of a gaggle of reporters and photographers confined to small spaces together for months on end; it becomes a piece of history, a look at what Bush was like before power, greed, hard-heartedness, and a horrific group of advisors made him the war-mongering disaster he is today.
So it's jarring to consider Journeys with George side by side with Eyes Wide Open, the American Friends Service Committee's traveling exhibit of 1500 pairs of combat boots, a field of civilian shoes, and a wall of rememberance, all devoted to memorializing and raising awareness of the deaths resulting from the Iraq war.
The exhibit was in San Francisco last weekend, on the grounds between City Hall and the library (with the boots representing servicepeople from California who have been killed in Iraq lining the steps of City Hall itself), and it was both breathtaking and heartbreaking to behold. Granted, staging the exhibit in SF is pretty much preaching to the choir, but even here in Liberalville, USA, it managed to (sorry to poach the expression, but...) open some eyes.
It's one thing to read the death toll every day in the paper, or to hear NPR's endless dispatches from Iraq, but it's something else entirely to see 1500 pairs of empty boots (each with a name attached, and many stuffed with flowers, flags, photos, and letters from the deceased) and row after row of civilian shoes. The numbers become real, and the utter waste of this quagmire becomes even starker.
Asking how it is that the charming, joking, sometimes (though by no means always) even sympathetic man in front of Pelosi's lens could morph into the man who bears responsibility for the depressing parade of shoes making their way across the country isn't a rhetorical question. It's a question with a blatant and sad answer: whatever spark of humanism might have existed in the 2000 GWB was long extinguished by the time that man became 2001 GWB. Any hope the movie might've given us that the man who would become our next president was capable of compassion was long ago blown to bits.
Pelosi's film, then, becomes more than just a portrait of a man, a year, the experiences of a gaggle of reporters and photographers confined to small spaces together for months on end; it becomes a piece of history, a look at what Bush was like before power, greed, hard-heartedness, and a horrific group of advisors made him the war-mongering disaster he is today.
3.27.2005
Vegas, baby
I went to Las Vegas last week to present my session on creating effective error messages at the WritersUA conference. Though I really did intend to check out some of the other sessions, I wound up going only to my own, the networking lunch, and the networking mixer thingy that took place the first evening.
This left me plenty of time to explore the city, which I did, both on my own and with my friend Marcus (a Vegas native) as my guide. LV can be described in any number of ways, including "totally overwhelming," "oddly compelling," and "human civilization in microcosm."
What can you say about a city where legions of Latino immigrants line the streets to hand out colored business cards offering STRIPPERS DIRECT TO YOUR HOTEL ROOM 24 HOURS A DAY, where every other person you pass on the sidewalk is openly carrying an alcoholic drink of some kind (more often than not in a gargantuan, whimsically-shaped container, such as an Eiffel Tower full of daiquiri), where both cigarette and cigar smoking are allowed pretty much everywhere?
What can you say about the fake rainforest, the fake Manhattan, the fake Paris, the fake Venice, the fake Caribbean, the fake ancient Rome, the fake New Orleans? They're utterly disturbing and utterly quaint at the same time. (I admit that strolling through "Paris" made me really want to go back to Paris--the real one, that is.)
And what can you say about the fact that, when you go out for drinks, as we did, first to a few local bars, then to the Westin, then to whatever run-down $5-ante casino on the strip we wound up at, you can stumble back to your hotel at 2 a.m. and swear for all the world that it's not a minute past midnight, as everyone still seems to be awake and everything still seems to be going full-swing? Only, I suppose, that it's like real life suspended.
But like anything suspended, it eventually comes back down. So when I left the city on Tuesday evening feeling like I'd been drinking fiberglass juice (so raw was my throat from inhaling endless smoke) and aching for a week of recovery, I was slightly bummed to be going but, truthfully, fairly happy to return to my quiet world in which other people's cigars don't figure and the only thing I generally see at 2 a.m. is the inside of my eyelids.
I'll go back, to be sure, but not until I've had the chance to detox my liver, clean out my lungs, and remind myself of what's real.
This left me plenty of time to explore the city, which I did, both on my own and with my friend Marcus (a Vegas native) as my guide. LV can be described in any number of ways, including "totally overwhelming," "oddly compelling," and "human civilization in microcosm."
What can you say about a city where legions of Latino immigrants line the streets to hand out colored business cards offering STRIPPERS DIRECT TO YOUR HOTEL ROOM 24 HOURS A DAY, where every other person you pass on the sidewalk is openly carrying an alcoholic drink of some kind (more often than not in a gargantuan, whimsically-shaped container, such as an Eiffel Tower full of daiquiri), where both cigarette and cigar smoking are allowed pretty much everywhere?
What can you say about the fake rainforest, the fake Manhattan, the fake Paris, the fake Venice, the fake Caribbean, the fake ancient Rome, the fake New Orleans? They're utterly disturbing and utterly quaint at the same time. (I admit that strolling through "Paris" made me really want to go back to Paris--the real one, that is.)
And what can you say about the fact that, when you go out for drinks, as we did, first to a few local bars, then to the Westin, then to whatever run-down $5-ante casino on the strip we wound up at, you can stumble back to your hotel at 2 a.m. and swear for all the world that it's not a minute past midnight, as everyone still seems to be awake and everything still seems to be going full-swing? Only, I suppose, that it's like real life suspended.
But like anything suspended, it eventually comes back down. So when I left the city on Tuesday evening feeling like I'd been drinking fiberglass juice (so raw was my throat from inhaling endless smoke) and aching for a week of recovery, I was slightly bummed to be going but, truthfully, fairly happy to return to my quiet world in which other people's cigars don't figure and the only thing I generally see at 2 a.m. is the inside of my eyelids.
I'll go back, to be sure, but not until I've had the chance to detox my liver, clean out my lungs, and remind myself of what's real.
3.12.2005
3.06.2005
Trip, stumble, fall
On Thursday afternoon, while walking to the Mission to meet Dana, I took Octavia, figuring that the newly paved sidewalk on the east side of the street would offer me a quick way to scoot down to Market. What I failed to take into account were the perplexing cement lips they've added to each sidewalk as it dips down to meet the road.
For some reason, though the contractors reworking the whole Octavia thing have added non-slip wheelchair ramps to the street edge of each sidewalk--ostensibly to make it easier to cross streets and access sidewalks safely--they've also added some kind of cement apron around each of these ramps, which means that if you *are* in a wheelchair, you must first surmount these ridges of pavement if you intend to make it onto the sidewalk. It all makes no sense to me, though perhaps there's some master plan at work here that will bring all of these weirdly disparate elements together as the boulevard project progresses.
At any rate, it was while approaching one of these yellow ramps and markedly not paying attention to the ground that I found myself taking a ridiculous tumble onto said ground at Haight and Octavia. It was truly a spectacular fall, landing me face-down on the sidewalk with everything splayed that could possibly be splayed.
I pushed myself up and, after a few moments of writhing in pain and assuring the young man who rushed up and offered to call me an ambulance that I was ok, managed to get back on my feet and limp down toward Market.
The fall left my knee wildly swollen, seriously and disgustingly bruised, and nastily scraped. It also gave me a decent raspberry on the palm of my right hand, which I'd used, evidently, to try to stop myself from meeting the pavement horizontally. So when I finally made it to Dana's office, I washed my cuts and iced my knee, and figured I'd be hobbling around for a day or two.
What I didn't expect, when I woke up on Friday, was that my right shoulder would be achy and tender. I guess I must've fallen on it somehow, or pulled a muscle in my failed attempt to maintain my balance--I really can't remember. But for a while, it hurt more than my knee.
Because I'm still (in fact, am always) on the quest to soothe the emotional bruises of Novemeber (which, even now, months gone, have resisted fading from purple to blue to yellow to nothing) through metaphor, I can't help thinking this: when you get injured, you can sort of prepare for the hurt that stems from the center of the wound, whether it's a wrecked knee or a cut finger or a broken arm.
But sometimes it's the stealth pain--the pain you don't anticipate, can't quite identify the cause of, aren't really ready for--that's much worse. It seems to take advantage of the fact that your attention and healing efforts are focused elsewhere, sneaking up to knock you backwards again just when you think the end of your malady is in sight.
So I woke up with a plan for my slightly mangled knee--ice, elevation, no runs for a few days--but had really no idea of what to do with my weirdly painful shoulder, and spent the day trying to work around it.
All of which frustratingly mirrors what it's like to wake up each morning prepared to stave off the thoughts and memories and disappointments I know are waiting for me throughout the day but fully unprepared to do battle with the new ones, the buried ones, the ones that seem to have come from nowhere. And it's these that keep me achy and stiff and too often fragile, despite my best and most wishful efforts at full rehabilitation.
For some reason, though the contractors reworking the whole Octavia thing have added non-slip wheelchair ramps to the street edge of each sidewalk--ostensibly to make it easier to cross streets and access sidewalks safely--they've also added some kind of cement apron around each of these ramps, which means that if you *are* in a wheelchair, you must first surmount these ridges of pavement if you intend to make it onto the sidewalk. It all makes no sense to me, though perhaps there's some master plan at work here that will bring all of these weirdly disparate elements together as the boulevard project progresses.
At any rate, it was while approaching one of these yellow ramps and markedly not paying attention to the ground that I found myself taking a ridiculous tumble onto said ground at Haight and Octavia. It was truly a spectacular fall, landing me face-down on the sidewalk with everything splayed that could possibly be splayed.
I pushed myself up and, after a few moments of writhing in pain and assuring the young man who rushed up and offered to call me an ambulance that I was ok, managed to get back on my feet and limp down toward Market.
The fall left my knee wildly swollen, seriously and disgustingly bruised, and nastily scraped. It also gave me a decent raspberry on the palm of my right hand, which I'd used, evidently, to try to stop myself from meeting the pavement horizontally. So when I finally made it to Dana's office, I washed my cuts and iced my knee, and figured I'd be hobbling around for a day or two.
What I didn't expect, when I woke up on Friday, was that my right shoulder would be achy and tender. I guess I must've fallen on it somehow, or pulled a muscle in my failed attempt to maintain my balance--I really can't remember. But for a while, it hurt more than my knee.
Because I'm still (in fact, am always) on the quest to soothe the emotional bruises of Novemeber (which, even now, months gone, have resisted fading from purple to blue to yellow to nothing) through metaphor, I can't help thinking this: when you get injured, you can sort of prepare for the hurt that stems from the center of the wound, whether it's a wrecked knee or a cut finger or a broken arm.
But sometimes it's the stealth pain--the pain you don't anticipate, can't quite identify the cause of, aren't really ready for--that's much worse. It seems to take advantage of the fact that your attention and healing efforts are focused elsewhere, sneaking up to knock you backwards again just when you think the end of your malady is in sight.
So I woke up with a plan for my slightly mangled knee--ice, elevation, no runs for a few days--but had really no idea of what to do with my weirdly painful shoulder, and spent the day trying to work around it.
All of which frustratingly mirrors what it's like to wake up each morning prepared to stave off the thoughts and memories and disappointments I know are waiting for me throughout the day but fully unprepared to do battle with the new ones, the buried ones, the ones that seem to have come from nowhere. And it's these that keep me achy and stiff and too often fragile, despite my best and most wishful efforts at full rehabilitation.
2.14.2005
In praise of open doors
I love this exchange from Deborah Solomon's interview with Dan Glickman, the new president of the MPAA, in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine:
Solomon: Have you ever experienced a setback?
Glickman: I was voted out of Congress in 1994. It is not great to be fired from your job, particularly so publicly. But a month later I was picked to be secretary of agriculture. When one door closes, another opens. But you have to be standing right by the door.
Solomon: What if the door opens too quickly and breaks your nose?
Glickman: Well, it could. But you still have to be right by the door. It can just as easily open for you as it can against you.
Solomon: Have you ever experienced a setback?
Glickman: I was voted out of Congress in 1994. It is not great to be fired from your job, particularly so publicly. But a month later I was picked to be secretary of agriculture. When one door closes, another opens. But you have to be standing right by the door.
Solomon: What if the door opens too quickly and breaks your nose?
Glickman: Well, it could. But you still have to be right by the door. It can just as easily open for you as it can against you.
2.05.2005
Perhaps the best description of Bush II yet
From Steven Hart's review in Salon of Christine Todd Whitman's It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America:
"Bush's narrow victory in November completed the Republican Party's transformation from a vehicle for principled conservatives into a debt-fueled pimpmobile for crony capitalists and religious hucksters."
"Bush's narrow victory in November completed the Republican Party's transformation from a vehicle for principled conservatives into a debt-fueled pimpmobile for crony capitalists and religious hucksters."
1.26.2005
Back, back, back
Josh sends me a message today with simply, blissfully a photo--labeled "We used to get free lunches every Friday"--of me, Lily, Monica, Geoff, Shayne, and Josh in the courtyard of the original WebTV building.
It sends me reeling.
There's no real reason to be nostalgic for the summer of 1997 (when the photo was taken, and when the Friday lunches were indeed free): we were making $10 an hour dealing with endless reams of ridiculous customer e-mail, commuting down to Palo Alto at all hours, kept afloat by Odwalla and cheap microwaveable burritos. But there's such a sweet patina to those days nonetheless; they were free of worries of long-term career success, of complex relationships--of anything, really, but who would win the Borders gift certificate for answering the most e-mails per week, or what outlandish surprise the next company party would hold.
It's funny what my mind is able to elide when it wants to: the frustrations of past jobs, the shortcomings and imperfections of past relationships, moments (and hours and days) I'd never want to relive. All of those get pushed down, and what comes rushing to the fore, bidden or not, are the glossy, happy, sun-dappled moments like those in the photo.
Incomplete and sharply edited though they may be, they keep me afloat when I need them most, when I need to remember that sometimes existence is nothing more than a catered meal in a Palo Alto afternoon, a third round of drinks with the friends I was convinced would never leave me, a nap on a beach in PEI with the man who filled my heart to bursting.
It sends me reeling.
There's no real reason to be nostalgic for the summer of 1997 (when the photo was taken, and when the Friday lunches were indeed free): we were making $10 an hour dealing with endless reams of ridiculous customer e-mail, commuting down to Palo Alto at all hours, kept afloat by Odwalla and cheap microwaveable burritos. But there's such a sweet patina to those days nonetheless; they were free of worries of long-term career success, of complex relationships--of anything, really, but who would win the Borders gift certificate for answering the most e-mails per week, or what outlandish surprise the next company party would hold.
It's funny what my mind is able to elide when it wants to: the frustrations of past jobs, the shortcomings and imperfections of past relationships, moments (and hours and days) I'd never want to relive. All of those get pushed down, and what comes rushing to the fore, bidden or not, are the glossy, happy, sun-dappled moments like those in the photo.
Incomplete and sharply edited though they may be, they keep me afloat when I need them most, when I need to remember that sometimes existence is nothing more than a catered meal in a Palo Alto afternoon, a third round of drinks with the friends I was convinced would never leave me, a nap on a beach in PEI with the man who filled my heart to bursting.
1.24.2005
That old scattered feeling
Evidence of my million-thoughts-at-once existence over the past week is easy to find in a quick look at the piles of books and DVDs throughout my house.
There's the emigration theme: "So You Want to Be a Canadian," "Living and Working in Canada," "How to Be a Canadian," Lonely Planet's "Vancouver."
There's the brush-up-on-French-for-TEF theme: "French Plus--Just Listen and Learn," "Le Petit Prince," "Les Jeux Sont Fait," Larousse de Poche 2005.
There's the must-continue-crawling-out-of-emotional-hole theme, evidenced both by the return of "The Wisdom of No Escape" (for those "wish I had the fortitude of a Buddhist" moments) and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, by the wisdom of pure escape ("Queer as Folk" season 2 volume 4 and "Da Ali G Movie: Ali G Indahouse"--which, by the way, is utterly f'ing hilarious in ways both similar to and totally different from the show).
And, of course, as a constant undercurrent there's the develop-business-or-perish theme, with alternating piles of organizing theory books, business plan workbooks, and guides to things like marketing and branding.
All of which, not surprisingly, leaves me flitting about from one thing to another, unable to focus exclusively on one topic for more than, say, an hour at a stretch. Am I keeping things interesting or am I driving myself crazy? How long can my brain handle this constant and radical shifting of gears before it gives up and latches permanently on to the closest topic?
There's the emigration theme: "So You Want to Be a Canadian," "Living and Working in Canada," "How to Be a Canadian," Lonely Planet's "Vancouver."
There's the brush-up-on-French-for-TEF theme: "French Plus--Just Listen and Learn," "Le Petit Prince," "Les Jeux Sont Fait," Larousse de Poche 2005.
There's the must-continue-crawling-out-of-emotional-hole theme, evidenced both by the return of "The Wisdom of No Escape" (for those "wish I had the fortitude of a Buddhist" moments) and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, by the wisdom of pure escape ("Queer as Folk" season 2 volume 4 and "Da Ali G Movie: Ali G Indahouse"--which, by the way, is utterly f'ing hilarious in ways both similar to and totally different from the show).
And, of course, as a constant undercurrent there's the develop-business-or-perish theme, with alternating piles of organizing theory books, business plan workbooks, and guides to things like marketing and branding.
All of which, not surprisingly, leaves me flitting about from one thing to another, unable to focus exclusively on one topic for more than, say, an hour at a stretch. Am I keeping things interesting or am I driving myself crazy? How long can my brain handle this constant and radical shifting of gears before it gives up and latches permanently on to the closest topic?
1.12.2005
Songs that were written all about you
What were the chances that the bartender at the Dutch Cabin--the tiny beer-only, ages-old, Eugene O'Neill-haunted place in downtown New London, Connecticut--would play Broken Social Scene's "Anthem for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" when Phil and Monique and I were there on that random late December night? We had chatted with the bartender about the 17 Relics, about Lotus, about his current band, and he had none of those on cd, but for some reason he had "Anthem...," which made me stop and think, "Why do I know this song?" before realizing: ah. Because it was on a cd G made for me.
And what were the chances that Frijtz would set aside its normal fare of 80s vinyl while I was there tonight to play "There Goes the Fear" instead? I tried to focus on chatting with Jeff about client consultation questionnaires rather than listening to the song, but it crept in anyway. I once (clearly erroneously) read into those lyrics--the soaring "there goes the fear/let it go," especially--a kind of loving encouragement to once and finally set aside my fretting. Now they just seem taunting and sad.
Though I've taken all of G's mixes and dubs from my cd changer and have seriously limited my doses of emo and Canadian pop, even just going out in the world (which is supposed to be a balm) risks hearing something that will send me reeling, if only temporarily and only internally.
So maybe I just say fuck it, just put the summer '03 disc in my Discman tomorrow and turn it up loud and take it running like I used to, when "American English" and "Sharp Hint of New Tears" and "Throw Your Arms Around Me" meant something else entirely. Maybe I run with it fast enough and long enough and hard enough that, for a while at least, only my legs ache, and everything else goes numb.
And what were the chances that Frijtz would set aside its normal fare of 80s vinyl while I was there tonight to play "There Goes the Fear" instead? I tried to focus on chatting with Jeff about client consultation questionnaires rather than listening to the song, but it crept in anyway. I once (clearly erroneously) read into those lyrics--the soaring "there goes the fear/let it go," especially--a kind of loving encouragement to once and finally set aside my fretting. Now they just seem taunting and sad.
Though I've taken all of G's mixes and dubs from my cd changer and have seriously limited my doses of emo and Canadian pop, even just going out in the world (which is supposed to be a balm) risks hearing something that will send me reeling, if only temporarily and only internally.
So maybe I just say fuck it, just put the summer '03 disc in my Discman tomorrow and turn it up loud and take it running like I used to, when "American English" and "Sharp Hint of New Tears" and "Throw Your Arms Around Me" meant something else entirely. Maybe I run with it fast enough and long enough and hard enough that, for a while at least, only my legs ache, and everything else goes numb.
1.09.2005
Resolved
Last year I made several resoultions, all of them aimed at improving my health and generally making myself a better person (which, I suppose, is just what resolutions are for). Somewhat unsurprisingly, I eventually broke them all--except the one about drinking more red wine, for which my cardiovascular system thanks me, I'm sure.
So this year I'm steering clear of specific resolutions (of the "floss every night" and "drink 64 ounces of water a day" ilk) in favor of one general one shared with me by my colleague Connie: Make new mistakes.
Connie explained the resolution thus: you know you're going to make mistakes somehow or other, so it's not realistic to try to avoid them altogether, but at least you can aim to make (and learn from) new ones so you're not repeating the same ones you made in the past. This, to me, is both simple and brilliant. It requires, first off, that you look at and acknowledge your past mistakes, and then that you let them go so you can start fresh, all with (hopefully) a modicum of guilt.
That much I can do, even though identifying last year's mistakes will involve looking into some caves and under some rocks I'd much rather leave as the dim and unexplored areas they are right now. But once that's done, I can let all of last year's trip-ups fall into darkness again, and can start messing up in all sorts of new and valuable ways. I'm looking forward to that.
So this year I'm steering clear of specific resolutions (of the "floss every night" and "drink 64 ounces of water a day" ilk) in favor of one general one shared with me by my colleague Connie: Make new mistakes.
Connie explained the resolution thus: you know you're going to make mistakes somehow or other, so it's not realistic to try to avoid them altogether, but at least you can aim to make (and learn from) new ones so you're not repeating the same ones you made in the past. This, to me, is both simple and brilliant. It requires, first off, that you look at and acknowledge your past mistakes, and then that you let them go so you can start fresh, all with (hopefully) a modicum of guilt.
That much I can do, even though identifying last year's mistakes will involve looking into some caves and under some rocks I'd much rather leave as the dim and unexplored areas they are right now. But once that's done, I can let all of last year's trip-ups fall into darkness again, and can start messing up in all sorts of new and valuable ways. I'm looking forward to that.
12.21.2004
Miscellany
Arrested
How is it that Fox can offer up both crackpot, right-wing, pseudo-professional news programs and comedies like The Simpsons and Arrested Development in the same breath? I haven't a clue, but I do know that Arrested is one of the cleverest, funniest, most original shows I've seen in a while. (Granted, I don't watch much TV, and don't have cable, so that's a relative measure to be sure. But still.)
Arrested Development is smart, hilarious, and just inappropriate enough to be amusing without being crude or abrasive. (The most recent episode, for example, had the lead character, Michael, and his niece singing a karaoke duet to "Afternoon Delight" and realizing partway through the error they'd made; to top things off, Michael's twin sister and his son repeated the gaffe later in the program.)
It turns cultural references on their ear: when the matriarch of the Bluth clan is asked by a Michael Moore-esque documentarian whether she'd be willing to send her son Buster to the Army to fight in Iraq, she looks at Buster and, without missing a beat, answers a hearty "Yes!" It pokes subtle fun at the Blue Man Group, expensive facial creams, and professional magicians. It leaves almost no character unscathed.
Best of all, it's pulled me through some Sunday nights that would have otherwise been unbearably crappy and depressing, and has frequently made me laugh in spite of myself. For that alone, I am a huge fan.
Guided by Wire
I've known Neko Case as part of The New Pornographers for a while now, and knew she recorded several albums on her own, but it wasn't until this past week that I took a listen.
There's no way to describe my reaction without sounding trite, so I won't try. She blew me away. The first song I heard, on the Noise Pop compilation cd, was "Set Out Running," which made me sit still in front of my cd player, stopped dead: she was singing my life ("If I knew heartbreak was coming/I would've set out running/'Cause I just can't shake this feeling/That I'm nothing in your eyes").
On that song alone, I went out and bought one of her albums, Furnace Room Lullaby, and immediately fell further in love. As I'm not usually one for alt-country (or any sort of country, with the possible exception of Patsy Cline and some Willie Nelson ballads), that's saying something. Not that I should've been surprised, though; Neko Case's voice and lyrical smarts could do wonders for any genre.
The second track on the album is called "Guided by Wire," and as best I can tell, it's about the power of certain songs to pull you through when you need it most--sort of High Fidelity in demi-reverse. Part of the refrain is "Someone singing my life back to me," which I hear two ways: first, as in a song mirroring your experiences (see above); and second, as in a song being like an IV drip that, little by little, dulls what ails you and brings you back from the edge.
So Furnace Room Lullaby is coming with me back east, and will come with me on my runs, and will be in my ears when I need a dose of that curative.
Amici
Finally, while washing wine glasses and wiping down my kitchen counter late Saturday night, I felt a pang of loneliness, remembering that the last time I'd hosted a party like this, G. had been here, and had walked up behind me to say, "Babe, leave the dishes for tomorrow and come to bed."
But I let that pass, and thought instead (with more than a twinge of awe) how lucky I am that I'd just spent several hours with friends ranging from those I've known since my earliest days in San Francisco to those I met just this year, and how amazing it was to see them all interact and blend and laugh. What made me almost well up, though, was the realization that if I could somehow get all of my friends--those here in SF, those back east, those in Europe and Japan--in my house at the same time, and if I could add my family to the mix, there would be absolutely no room to move. Every room would be full.
That image--my house overflowing with people--was (and is) a sweet and precious reminder that though I may be lonely, I am not alone.
How is it that Fox can offer up both crackpot, right-wing, pseudo-professional news programs and comedies like The Simpsons and Arrested Development in the same breath? I haven't a clue, but I do know that Arrested is one of the cleverest, funniest, most original shows I've seen in a while. (Granted, I don't watch much TV, and don't have cable, so that's a relative measure to be sure. But still.)
Arrested Development is smart, hilarious, and just inappropriate enough to be amusing without being crude or abrasive. (The most recent episode, for example, had the lead character, Michael, and his niece singing a karaoke duet to "Afternoon Delight" and realizing partway through the error they'd made; to top things off, Michael's twin sister and his son repeated the gaffe later in the program.)
It turns cultural references on their ear: when the matriarch of the Bluth clan is asked by a Michael Moore-esque documentarian whether she'd be willing to send her son Buster to the Army to fight in Iraq, she looks at Buster and, without missing a beat, answers a hearty "Yes!" It pokes subtle fun at the Blue Man Group, expensive facial creams, and professional magicians. It leaves almost no character unscathed.
Best of all, it's pulled me through some Sunday nights that would have otherwise been unbearably crappy and depressing, and has frequently made me laugh in spite of myself. For that alone, I am a huge fan.
Guided by Wire
I've known Neko Case as part of The New Pornographers for a while now, and knew she recorded several albums on her own, but it wasn't until this past week that I took a listen.
There's no way to describe my reaction without sounding trite, so I won't try. She blew me away. The first song I heard, on the Noise Pop compilation cd, was "Set Out Running," which made me sit still in front of my cd player, stopped dead: she was singing my life ("If I knew heartbreak was coming/I would've set out running/'Cause I just can't shake this feeling/That I'm nothing in your eyes").
On that song alone, I went out and bought one of her albums, Furnace Room Lullaby, and immediately fell further in love. As I'm not usually one for alt-country (or any sort of country, with the possible exception of Patsy Cline and some Willie Nelson ballads), that's saying something. Not that I should've been surprised, though; Neko Case's voice and lyrical smarts could do wonders for any genre.
The second track on the album is called "Guided by Wire," and as best I can tell, it's about the power of certain songs to pull you through when you need it most--sort of High Fidelity in demi-reverse. Part of the refrain is "Someone singing my life back to me," which I hear two ways: first, as in a song mirroring your experiences (see above); and second, as in a song being like an IV drip that, little by little, dulls what ails you and brings you back from the edge.
So Furnace Room Lullaby is coming with me back east, and will come with me on my runs, and will be in my ears when I need a dose of that curative.
Amici
Finally, while washing wine glasses and wiping down my kitchen counter late Saturday night, I felt a pang of loneliness, remembering that the last time I'd hosted a party like this, G. had been here, and had walked up behind me to say, "Babe, leave the dishes for tomorrow and come to bed."
But I let that pass, and thought instead (with more than a twinge of awe) how lucky I am that I'd just spent several hours with friends ranging from those I've known since my earliest days in San Francisco to those I met just this year, and how amazing it was to see them all interact and blend and laugh. What made me almost well up, though, was the realization that if I could somehow get all of my friends--those here in SF, those back east, those in Europe and Japan--in my house at the same time, and if I could add my family to the mix, there would be absolutely no room to move. Every room would be full.
That image--my house overflowing with people--was (and is) a sweet and precious reminder that though I may be lonely, I am not alone.
12.14.2004
O Canadapharmacy.com
When I applied for health insurance earlier this year, after losing the plum deal I had at the job I quit, I opted not to disclose the fact that I have asthma. Because even though it's sort of Asthma, Jr.--more an occasional lung tightness than a wheezy, all-out attack kind of thing--it's still enough to make insurance companies slam their doors in my face.
This was all well and good until I looked at my Pulmicort inhaler (which I use every day) last night and saw the approach of the red line that demarcates Full and Empty. So I went to Walgreens this afternoon to order a refill, told the pharmacist I'd be paying in cash rather than using my insurance, and asked what the damage would be. I was ready for some vaguely ridiculous sum, but I wasn't ready for $180.
Now, I fully admit that I was far luckier than most with the insurance I had under Microsoft. It covered everything--absolutely, positively everything--with not a deductible or a co-pay in sight, so I never had to know that the little inhaler that keeps my lungs calm costs a small fortune. And I'm still relatively lucky, in that this is the only medication I take and, if needed, I can pay for it and not have to go without food or shelter or heat.
But I'm too stubborn to fork over nearly 200 bucks for medication I need because of a condition I can't control (I don't smoke, I exercise regularly, I'm not overweight, I eat well, and it's not like I'm huffing glue or anything). And I'm doubly stubborn because a quick Google search reveals that I can get the self-same Pulmicort Turbuhaler for $70 if I order it from a Canadian pharmacy.
$70 versus $180. Am I crazy enough to pay two-and-a-half times the price to get my medicine down the street than to have it imported? I am not. So I called Canadapharmacy.com and signed myself up.
Come and get me, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales: I'm joining the growing hordes of Americans who are breaking the law by having prescriptions that are mind-bendingly expensive here at home shipped in. I can put my $110 to much better use than lining the already excessively lined pockets of Astra Zenica.
This was all well and good until I looked at my Pulmicort inhaler (which I use every day) last night and saw the approach of the red line that demarcates Full and Empty. So I went to Walgreens this afternoon to order a refill, told the pharmacist I'd be paying in cash rather than using my insurance, and asked what the damage would be. I was ready for some vaguely ridiculous sum, but I wasn't ready for $180.
Now, I fully admit that I was far luckier than most with the insurance I had under Microsoft. It covered everything--absolutely, positively everything--with not a deductible or a co-pay in sight, so I never had to know that the little inhaler that keeps my lungs calm costs a small fortune. And I'm still relatively lucky, in that this is the only medication I take and, if needed, I can pay for it and not have to go without food or shelter or heat.
But I'm too stubborn to fork over nearly 200 bucks for medication I need because of a condition I can't control (I don't smoke, I exercise regularly, I'm not overweight, I eat well, and it's not like I'm huffing glue or anything). And I'm doubly stubborn because a quick Google search reveals that I can get the self-same Pulmicort Turbuhaler for $70 if I order it from a Canadian pharmacy.
$70 versus $180. Am I crazy enough to pay two-and-a-half times the price to get my medicine down the street than to have it imported? I am not. So I called Canadapharmacy.com and signed myself up.
Come and get me, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales: I'm joining the growing hordes of Americans who are breaking the law by having prescriptions that are mind-bendingly expensive here at home shipped in. I can put my $110 to much better use than lining the already excessively lined pockets of Astra Zenica.
12.11.2004
Plath
A month gone, my days have more or less returned to normal: busy, full of work and errands and chores and friends. But at night, still, when things get slow and quiet, I find myself searching for proof that someone else was in this same emotional morass before I got here, has felt this same insane mix of emotions, has made it out the other side. So I read like mad: poems, books, articles, old e-mail, past journal entries, whatever I can get my hands on.
Nothing fits perfectly. I find lines, phrases, lengths of text that brush the surface, though the perfect and relieving words I want remain elusive. The closest I've come so far is a passage from Sylvia Plath's journals, written in 1952; I found it appended to an e-mail I wrote in February 2001, during The Resistance. Plath is no relationship role model, to be sure, but there's something in her words that made sense to me then and gives some sort of odd solace now. Maybe that's good enough.
August 22, 1952
So I kiss him, and there is the great dark sea ahead, and above the sheaves of yellow stars, shoals of cold bright pieces of light, and the great wind, blowing always cold gulps and gusts of air, big and soft in the tree leaves, hushing, miracles are happening, and I, strange and elated with a new wonder, child-like in my sudden power, look with eyes large in love and amazement at this intent lovely face so earnest, so close to mine.
I cannot bear to leave you, because you will forget, I will forget, except for perhaps once or twice a brief sharp sear of pain as a word, a laugh, a thought of truth, will cut like a knife at all that will have happened after now, bringing clear and wistful to mind the remembering of these few hours, night and day--and us so young....
But of all the nights, rushing backward along the rocket-track of your experience and receding into the dark of your past subconscious, remember, remember how he trusting looked long and sweetly at you out of the dark at the door with the wild wind in the dark grasses, and how love was there in his face--making you, miraculously, the dream girl and woman, sister and sweetheart, mother and spiritual mistress. You walked in, laughing, tears, welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
All the young growing and testing and being once burned and twice shy and not knowing what to do, or where, or when to be how. And then this, this sudden intuitive flash, the sudden knowing when it is right to render up a dream, to speak so, to love so. It comes ripe in you suddenly and there is the taste of wisdom, aged full and mellow-flavored. You have gotten drunk and elated on the young firm tart green of early apples, and never wanted other. But the first ripened apple breaks open its fruit on the palate, and the sweet, savory juice floods in vindication into the mouth, lyric lovely on the tongue.
Oh honey ancient gathered from the garden of rare weed and strange wild plant, years pass and you grow golden clear in the tree, shedding fragrance of wisdom upon the lovely summer air. (You have taken a drink from a wild fountain... 'and all the wells of the valley/will never seem fresh or clear/all for that drink of mountain water/in the feathery green of the year.' Not so, not so, for in parable the wells are sweet in their ripeness, and I will not cry forever, over the young wild spurting fountains--not forever.)
Nothing fits perfectly. I find lines, phrases, lengths of text that brush the surface, though the perfect and relieving words I want remain elusive. The closest I've come so far is a passage from Sylvia Plath's journals, written in 1952; I found it appended to an e-mail I wrote in February 2001, during The Resistance. Plath is no relationship role model, to be sure, but there's something in her words that made sense to me then and gives some sort of odd solace now. Maybe that's good enough.
August 22, 1952
So I kiss him, and there is the great dark sea ahead, and above the sheaves of yellow stars, shoals of cold bright pieces of light, and the great wind, blowing always cold gulps and gusts of air, big and soft in the tree leaves, hushing, miracles are happening, and I, strange and elated with a new wonder, child-like in my sudden power, look with eyes large in love and amazement at this intent lovely face so earnest, so close to mine.
I cannot bear to leave you, because you will forget, I will forget, except for perhaps once or twice a brief sharp sear of pain as a word, a laugh, a thought of truth, will cut like a knife at all that will have happened after now, bringing clear and wistful to mind the remembering of these few hours, night and day--and us so young....
But of all the nights, rushing backward along the rocket-track of your experience and receding into the dark of your past subconscious, remember, remember how he trusting looked long and sweetly at you out of the dark at the door with the wild wind in the dark grasses, and how love was there in his face--making you, miraculously, the dream girl and woman, sister and sweetheart, mother and spiritual mistress. You walked in, laughing, tears, welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
All the young growing and testing and being once burned and twice shy and not knowing what to do, or where, or when to be how. And then this, this sudden intuitive flash, the sudden knowing when it is right to render up a dream, to speak so, to love so. It comes ripe in you suddenly and there is the taste of wisdom, aged full and mellow-flavored. You have gotten drunk and elated on the young firm tart green of early apples, and never wanted other. But the first ripened apple breaks open its fruit on the palate, and the sweet, savory juice floods in vindication into the mouth, lyric lovely on the tongue.
Oh honey ancient gathered from the garden of rare weed and strange wild plant, years pass and you grow golden clear in the tree, shedding fragrance of wisdom upon the lovely summer air. (You have taken a drink from a wild fountain... 'and all the wells of the valley/will never seem fresh or clear/all for that drink of mountain water/in the feathery green of the year.' Not so, not so, for in parable the wells are sweet in their ripeness, and I will not cry forever, over the young wild spurting fountains--not forever.)
12.07.2004
Comprehension
Several years back, shortly after I first joined Sloo's team, I set about trying to teach myself Javascript so I could better understand what was happening behind the scenes on our Help pages and, perhaps more importantly, stop nagging poor Eric for every little code-esque change that needed to be made.
So I bought a few books, worked my way through a few online tutorials, and spent many, many hours asking Eric, Ceej, and John for help. I eventually got the basics down and actually managed to create a few pages, but I never really got into JS, and could never say I was anywhere near fluent in it.
Because here's the thing: with Javascript, you just have to accept that things are what they are, are called what they're called, and work like they work just because. Many, many, many of my conversations with my tutors ran along the lines of me asking, "But why is it called that? It makes no sense," them replying, "Well, it just is," and me coming back to "Why??"
That sounds like obstinance, I know, and I'm sure obstinance was part of it, but I'm inclined to attribute it more to the fact that to truly latch onto something, to be able to say "I get it" and move on with it, I need to be able to turn it inside out and understand how it works. Otherwise, it just gets relegated to the opaque part of my brain where vague or mysterious or incomprehensible things go--a sort of mental limbo.
And that's kind of how I've been feeling over the past few weeks: like I'm trying once again to teach myself Javascript--or, worse yet, an actual programming language--but this time without the benefit of books or tutorials or helpful colleagues. Like I'm staring at screen after screen of code, and if only I could find something familiar in it, or if only someone would come along and explain a few lines of it to me, I might have a spot to work from. But it all looks foreign, and there's no one around to walk me through it, so I just keep trying and searching and asking in vain.
When all I want--so badly--is to understand it, to understand all of it, so I can breathe out again and get up from the desk and walk away.
So I bought a few books, worked my way through a few online tutorials, and spent many, many hours asking Eric, Ceej, and John for help. I eventually got the basics down and actually managed to create a few pages, but I never really got into JS, and could never say I was anywhere near fluent in it.
Because here's the thing: with Javascript, you just have to accept that things are what they are, are called what they're called, and work like they work just because. Many, many, many of my conversations with my tutors ran along the lines of me asking, "But why is it called that? It makes no sense," them replying, "Well, it just is," and me coming back to "Why??"
That sounds like obstinance, I know, and I'm sure obstinance was part of it, but I'm inclined to attribute it more to the fact that to truly latch onto something, to be able to say "I get it" and move on with it, I need to be able to turn it inside out and understand how it works. Otherwise, it just gets relegated to the opaque part of my brain where vague or mysterious or incomprehensible things go--a sort of mental limbo.
And that's kind of how I've been feeling over the past few weeks: like I'm trying once again to teach myself Javascript--or, worse yet, an actual programming language--but this time without the benefit of books or tutorials or helpful colleagues. Like I'm staring at screen after screen of code, and if only I could find something familiar in it, or if only someone would come along and explain a few lines of it to me, I might have a spot to work from. But it all looks foreign, and there's no one around to walk me through it, so I just keep trying and searching and asking in vain.
When all I want--so badly--is to understand it, to understand all of it, so I can breathe out again and get up from the desk and walk away.
11.23.2004
Walks beside me/Walks on by
The New York Times' Sunday Styles section has recently started a column called Modern Love, in which writers of various stripes share their tales of relationships gone awry. (There have been a few hopeful-esque entries so far, but the scales definitely seem to be tipping more in the other direction; it is, perhaps, a counterweight to the shouting streams of joy waiting a few pages back among the wedding announcements.)
If the columns so far are any indication, modern love is something of a big old mess--not always a hopeless mess, to be sure, but a sticky, muddled, uncertain mess just the same. From the sound of it, we all have the potential anytime soon to fall into some giant pool of heartache, heartbreak, infidelity, ambiguity, truth stretching, fear, loss, sadness, guilt, and confusion. Like we were always told as children, it seems best not to run on the deck of this pool; you don't want to slip and go unintentionally splashing in.
But while the columns share a view of love as anything but glamorous and rosy and un-fraught, they also allow at least a few hints of something better, of the possibility that somewhere in that pool the water gets calm and easier to float in, that sooner or later someone throws you a life vest or you manage to pull yourself over to the side so that even if you do start to go under, you won't be down there for good.
And I guess I have to believe that, because I've known the good parts of love, and because it seems unfathomable that that entire Olympic-size pool could be such a treacherous mess, and because I know I'm still a strong swimmer when I need to be, even if my techniques are rusty.
So although I'm flailing a bit now, shivering and tired and feeling my throat burn from all the water I've swallowed, I'm trying to keep my eyes focused on the lip of the pool. And at some point, I'll be able to make my way toward it, and then pull myself onto it, where I can dry off and warm up and wait for the waters to calm.
If the columns so far are any indication, modern love is something of a big old mess--not always a hopeless mess, to be sure, but a sticky, muddled, uncertain mess just the same. From the sound of it, we all have the potential anytime soon to fall into some giant pool of heartache, heartbreak, infidelity, ambiguity, truth stretching, fear, loss, sadness, guilt, and confusion. Like we were always told as children, it seems best not to run on the deck of this pool; you don't want to slip and go unintentionally splashing in.
But while the columns share a view of love as anything but glamorous and rosy and un-fraught, they also allow at least a few hints of something better, of the possibility that somewhere in that pool the water gets calm and easier to float in, that sooner or later someone throws you a life vest or you manage to pull yourself over to the side so that even if you do start to go under, you won't be down there for good.
And I guess I have to believe that, because I've known the good parts of love, and because it seems unfathomable that that entire Olympic-size pool could be such a treacherous mess, and because I know I'm still a strong swimmer when I need to be, even if my techniques are rusty.
So although I'm flailing a bit now, shivering and tired and feeling my throat burn from all the water I've swallowed, I'm trying to keep my eyes focused on the lip of the pool. And at some point, I'll be able to make my way toward it, and then pull myself onto it, where I can dry off and warm up and wait for the waters to calm.
11.21.2004
Of Breakup Babe, Dire Straits, and the Undead
I'd be much happier if I could get my thoughts to line up and take a number, then come forward when that number is called, just like you do when getting ice cream at Mitchell's on a busy day. As it is, though, they're a gigantic jumble, random snippets of things popping up at inopportune times, too many disparate thoughts and ideas and words to let me get anything down straight. It's a pain in the ass.
I don't know what phase this is, but for the past few days, whenever the realization of the breakup creeps into my mind (which is to say, painfully often), I can only think, "Now, huh. Wait a minute. That can't be right." The overwhelming emotion of the week isn't sadness or shock or anger but utter perplexion. This analogy will surely make no sense, but these days it feels like G. and I were both walking down the same long hallway, and he stepped out of it before I knew what was happening. So I'm still walking, confused and half convinced I'm dreaming things or making them up, achingly searching for the door that will let me out, too.
And that's the sucky thing: you can't just will a door to appear, which is to say that well-established trajectories aren't easy to change. For better or worse, love and hope aren't killable; you need to wait for them to die on their own. I don't know what to do with the desire that they go quickly. It seems foreign and awful to me.
Battling for attention with the hundreds of thoughts in my head these days are snippets of countless songs, and I don't know what to do with them, either. (Maybe I should re-read High Fidelity, though I don't think I could stand the upbeat ending just yet.) The song that's been the most persistent (though I haven't actually listened to it) is Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet"--or, more precisely, the Indigo Girls' raw and aching cover of it. There are so many layers of meaning and memory to that damn song; why can't I get them--and it--out of my mind? Even a day of quiet would do wonders. (One day we're gonna realize/it was just that the time was wrong.)
Finally, because it's sadly true that I'm better at dealing with my own emotional messes when I can read about others', I was intrigued by the mention of Breakup Babe on the Blogger main page today, so I clicked over to her site.
Damn if her words aren't some of the smartest, funniest, most awfully and painfully honest on the subject of relationships (and their variously messy demises) I've ever read. (Of course, her book deal with Random House and the legion of fans linked to her blog mean I'm by no means the first or the only to think so.) There are any number of things she's written that I could post here to try to explain my own emotional furball, but I think it's more appropriate to let her words stand on their own in their original context and to simply say, Yes, that's it exactly.
It's back to BB for me, then, to escape my own tangle of thoughts in someone else's.
I don't know what phase this is, but for the past few days, whenever the realization of the breakup creeps into my mind (which is to say, painfully often), I can only think, "Now, huh. Wait a minute. That can't be right." The overwhelming emotion of the week isn't sadness or shock or anger but utter perplexion. This analogy will surely make no sense, but these days it feels like G. and I were both walking down the same long hallway, and he stepped out of it before I knew what was happening. So I'm still walking, confused and half convinced I'm dreaming things or making them up, achingly searching for the door that will let me out, too.
And that's the sucky thing: you can't just will a door to appear, which is to say that well-established trajectories aren't easy to change. For better or worse, love and hope aren't killable; you need to wait for them to die on their own. I don't know what to do with the desire that they go quickly. It seems foreign and awful to me.
Battling for attention with the hundreds of thoughts in my head these days are snippets of countless songs, and I don't know what to do with them, either. (Maybe I should re-read High Fidelity, though I don't think I could stand the upbeat ending just yet.) The song that's been the most persistent (though I haven't actually listened to it) is Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet"--or, more precisely, the Indigo Girls' raw and aching cover of it. There are so many layers of meaning and memory to that damn song; why can't I get them--and it--out of my mind? Even a day of quiet would do wonders. (One day we're gonna realize/it was just that the time was wrong.)
Finally, because it's sadly true that I'm better at dealing with my own emotional messes when I can read about others', I was intrigued by the mention of Breakup Babe on the Blogger main page today, so I clicked over to her site.
Damn if her words aren't some of the smartest, funniest, most awfully and painfully honest on the subject of relationships (and their variously messy demises) I've ever read. (Of course, her book deal with Random House and the legion of fans linked to her blog mean I'm by no means the first or the only to think so.) There are any number of things she's written that I could post here to try to explain my own emotional furball, but I think it's more appropriate to let her words stand on their own in their original context and to simply say, Yes, that's it exactly.
It's back to BB for me, then, to escape my own tangle of thoughts in someone else's.
11.18.2004
Words
There are two sets of words I'm trying to keep in mind these days.
First, supposedly from Winston Churchill: "When you're going through hell, keep going."
And second, from myself, circa December 7, 2001:
[Pause]
And the world does indeed start to shake beneath your feet. When it stops, you find things around you slightly changed, although you can't say that anything's either remarkably better or remarkably worse. But when things inside you start shaking, too, you need to stop, look around, remember this: the soft thrill of walking in the newly sunny streets of a San Francisco morning. Or this: how full you feel when you're surrounded by your friends and laughing. And this: how every one of the experiences you've had this year, however brilliant or awful or gut-wrenching, has made you stronger, and has had something precious to teach.
First, supposedly from Winston Churchill: "When you're going through hell, keep going."
And second, from myself, circa December 7, 2001:
[Pause]
And the world does indeed start to shake beneath your feet. When it stops, you find things around you slightly changed, although you can't say that anything's either remarkably better or remarkably worse. But when things inside you start shaking, too, you need to stop, look around, remember this: the soft thrill of walking in the newly sunny streets of a San Francisco morning. Or this: how full you feel when you're surrounded by your friends and laughing. And this: how every one of the experiences you've had this year, however brilliant or awful or gut-wrenching, has made you stronger, and has had something precious to teach.
11.09.2004
From the flames
Earlier this year, while casting about for a better employment situation, I applied for a position with another division of Microsoft, and went up to Redmond for a series of interviews with the product team.
My interview with the team manager took place over lunch at a Thai restaurant in a strip mall. After the meal, the manager mentioned that the restaurant we'd just visited used to be a few doors down, in the center of the strip rather than at the end; it had moved, she said, after a car had plowed through its front window and caused a great deal of destruction. The good news, she said, was that the restaurant's business was markedly better in the new location than it had been previously.
She then mentioned a study she'd read about that focused on the victims of a wildfire in the Los Angeles area. In one neighborhood, all of the homes had been destroyed, with the exception of one that was spared because the owner sprayed it with his hose while the fire blazed. A few years later, researchers checked in with the residents of the neighborhood to measure their levels of happiness and satisfaction with their lives; their findings suggested that almost to a person, the residents were happier and more content than they had been before the fire. The one exception was the man who'd saved his house; he exhibited more stress and less contentment.
It goes to show, the manager said, that sometimes you need to let the upheavals in life be not just annoyances and disappointments, but pathways to better things.
So I'll try. Because what else can I do? When what you've known and loved meets the front grill of a rapidly moving car or the flames of a wildfire, you can either stand around and rue the destruction or you can pick up the pieces and rebuild. For the sake of strength and sanity, I need to choose the latter and hope that from the broken glass, from the ashes, I'll pick myself up again.
My interview with the team manager took place over lunch at a Thai restaurant in a strip mall. After the meal, the manager mentioned that the restaurant we'd just visited used to be a few doors down, in the center of the strip rather than at the end; it had moved, she said, after a car had plowed through its front window and caused a great deal of destruction. The good news, she said, was that the restaurant's business was markedly better in the new location than it had been previously.
She then mentioned a study she'd read about that focused on the victims of a wildfire in the Los Angeles area. In one neighborhood, all of the homes had been destroyed, with the exception of one that was spared because the owner sprayed it with his hose while the fire blazed. A few years later, researchers checked in with the residents of the neighborhood to measure their levels of happiness and satisfaction with their lives; their findings suggested that almost to a person, the residents were happier and more content than they had been before the fire. The one exception was the man who'd saved his house; he exhibited more stress and less contentment.
It goes to show, the manager said, that sometimes you need to let the upheavals in life be not just annoyances and disappointments, but pathways to better things.
So I'll try. Because what else can I do? When what you've known and loved meets the front grill of a rapidly moving car or the flames of a wildfire, you can either stand around and rue the destruction or you can pick up the pieces and rebuild. For the sake of strength and sanity, I need to choose the latter and hope that from the broken glass, from the ashes, I'll pick myself up again.
11.08.2004
11.03.2004
Goodbye to all that
It's hard to see your country attacked from without--what Pearl Harbor must've been like, or what 9/11 was--but it's harder by far, I think, and worlds more painful, to see it implode from within.
Were I a stronger person, or one who feels things less keenly, I might be able to stick around for the next four years and watch as the poor get poorer, watch as bigotry and intolerance get written ever more deeply into our laws, watch as FDR's New Deal gets dismantled piece by precious piece, watch as the decision to ignore the separation of church and state that is written into our Constitution becomes ever more willful and widespread. But I can't.
This election year, Dad, you must admit that I'm right: Richard Linklater nailed it when he said, "Withdrawl in disgust is not the same as apathy." In fact, they're worlds apart: if I were apathetic, it would make it so much easier to stay and watch as the US becomes a wasteland of fear, intolerance, and destruction. As it happens, I feel things much too strongly to believe I can stay without either losing my mind or watching some crucial part of myself shrivel and die.
So withdrawal in disgust it will be. O Canada, for all your imperfections, for your distinctly un-San Franciscan weather, for your own political uncertainties, here's hoping you have what my homeland no longer does: a place for people like me.
Were I a stronger person, or one who feels things less keenly, I might be able to stick around for the next four years and watch as the poor get poorer, watch as bigotry and intolerance get written ever more deeply into our laws, watch as FDR's New Deal gets dismantled piece by precious piece, watch as the decision to ignore the separation of church and state that is written into our Constitution becomes ever more willful and widespread. But I can't.
This election year, Dad, you must admit that I'm right: Richard Linklater nailed it when he said, "Withdrawl in disgust is not the same as apathy." In fact, they're worlds apart: if I were apathetic, it would make it so much easier to stay and watch as the US becomes a wasteland of fear, intolerance, and destruction. As it happens, I feel things much too strongly to believe I can stay without either losing my mind or watching some crucial part of myself shrivel and die.
So withdrawal in disgust it will be. O Canada, for all your imperfections, for your distinctly un-San Franciscan weather, for your own political uncertainties, here's hoping you have what my homeland no longer does: a place for people like me.
10.30.2004
An open letter to the rest of the world
Dear fellow residents of the world,
On behalf of all of us Americans who will vote for John Kerry--or the Libertarian party candidate, or Nader, or even the guy who's running on the Prohibition party ticket--please know that we are as chagrined at the possibility of four more years under the Bush regime as you are.
Know that if things go horribly awry this coming Tuesday and somehow a majority of the voting American populace gets suddenly struck dumb and votes for Dubya, we will be holding our heads in our hands and cursing repeatedly, just like you.
Know that, should Bush and Co. somehow find their way back into the White House, we have only the solace of knowing that we did what we could to fight against the fear-mongering and regulated intolerance and utter hatred of the poor that are the hallmarks of Bush's campaign. We tried. Boy did we try.
Finally, if we should find ourselves once again relegated to four years of hell, many of us may try to show up at your nations' doorsteps, desperate for the measures of civility your countries offer that ours no longer seems to. Should you hear us knocking, please consider, strongly consider, letting us in. You could be our salvation.
Here's hoping that our fellow countryfolks will come to see, if they haven't already, that whatever his flaws, Kerry is the far better candidate (unless you happen to be a billionaire, an oilman, or a defense contractor). Here's hoping our worrying comes to naught. Here's hoping next January will see a new and better man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But please remember that if all of these hopes are dashed, we're not all to blame, and we'll need your understanding, forgiveness, and open arms more than ever.
Yours truly,
All the Americans Hoping for Reprieve
On behalf of all of us Americans who will vote for John Kerry--or the Libertarian party candidate, or Nader, or even the guy who's running on the Prohibition party ticket--please know that we are as chagrined at the possibility of four more years under the Bush regime as you are.
Know that if things go horribly awry this coming Tuesday and somehow a majority of the voting American populace gets suddenly struck dumb and votes for Dubya, we will be holding our heads in our hands and cursing repeatedly, just like you.
Know that, should Bush and Co. somehow find their way back into the White House, we have only the solace of knowing that we did what we could to fight against the fear-mongering and regulated intolerance and utter hatred of the poor that are the hallmarks of Bush's campaign. We tried. Boy did we try.
Finally, if we should find ourselves once again relegated to four years of hell, many of us may try to show up at your nations' doorsteps, desperate for the measures of civility your countries offer that ours no longer seems to. Should you hear us knocking, please consider, strongly consider, letting us in. You could be our salvation.
Here's hoping that our fellow countryfolks will come to see, if they haven't already, that whatever his flaws, Kerry is the far better candidate (unless you happen to be a billionaire, an oilman, or a defense contractor). Here's hoping our worrying comes to naught. Here's hoping next January will see a new and better man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But please remember that if all of these hopes are dashed, we're not all to blame, and we'll need your understanding, forgiveness, and open arms more than ever.
Yours truly,
All the Americans Hoping for Reprieve
9.30.2004
Non-Fatal Errors
My article on error messages is one of the features on Writers UA (aka WinWriters) this month. It's gratifying that what began as an annoyance (i.e., bad error messages) has grown into an STC conference presentation, an article in the Proceedings, and an online feature. I got some really positive feedback on my conference session earlier this year, and I'm hoping to have the chance to give it again sometime.
9.26.2004
Boylan's Seltzer Mon Amour
After several months of serious frugality (all funds going either to rent or to the business), I've started to allow myself a few indulgences here and there--a burrito from Mariachi's, a two-pound bag of almonds, coffee that costs more than $4.50 a pound. My current favorite splurge is Boylan's seltzer, which I stumbled upon in Fog City News last week. (I resisted the urge to buy foreign chocolate while there; I'm not yet feeling quite that flush.)
The seltzer itself is great--the text on the bottle promising "pin-point carbonation" isn't lying--but I'm especially smitten with the bottles. They're embossed glass with painted-on labels: blue for plain, green for lime, orange for, well, orange. If you ignore the bar code, Nutrition Facts label, and little pink distribution stamp, you'd think the bottles came straight out of 1955. They're delectibly unlike anything else on the market, and for that reason alone are worthy of decorating my kitchen windowsill.
They're also more than $1 a pop, which means I'll need to reign in my consumption sooner or later, especially as rent will soon be due. But for now, I'll enjoy the bottle of orange I've just opened as I sit down to watch the DVD I borrowed--for free!--from the library. Priceless.
The seltzer itself is great--the text on the bottle promising "pin-point carbonation" isn't lying--but I'm especially smitten with the bottles. They're embossed glass with painted-on labels: blue for plain, green for lime, orange for, well, orange. If you ignore the bar code, Nutrition Facts label, and little pink distribution stamp, you'd think the bottles came straight out of 1955. They're delectibly unlike anything else on the market, and for that reason alone are worthy of decorating my kitchen windowsill.
They're also more than $1 a pop, which means I'll need to reign in my consumption sooner or later, especially as rent will soon be due. But for now, I'll enjoy the bottle of orange I've just opened as I sit down to watch the DVD I borrowed--for free!--from the library. Priceless.
9.21.2004
Through the Valley
Powell's Books, in honor of their Web site's 10th anniversary, ran a contest in which people were asked to submit an essay on the most memorable reading experience they've had in the past ten years. The winner (of 25 finalists) gets $1000 worth of books; ten runners-up get $100 worth of books. For each essay submitted to the contest, Powell's donated $1 to Reading Is Fundamental.
The finalists were announced today (in the form of essays posted to the Web site, which readers are invited to vote on), and though I felt a twang of disappointment that I'm not one of them (such hopes, I know, but they're kind of inevitable), that eventually melted into being thankful I took the time to write an essay in the first place. It's not often I write about reading, so doing just that was a nice departure from the norm.
My essay is below. It's called Through the Valley, and it's about reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs twice. (If you haven't read Microserfs, maybe it's time you went down to your local bookstore and picked it up. Or ordered a copy from Powell's.)
So here it is.
Before I knew what Sand Hill Road, Draeger’s, and CalTrain were, before I had seen the city that would soon become my home, and long before I imagined I’d ever work for the company the book portrayed, I stood in a suburban Boston kitchen in the winter of 1997, reading the final chapter of Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, struck momentarily dumb with tears.
I was teary at the blow delivered to Daniel, the main character, in the form of a stroke that leaves his mother speechless, immobile, and unresponsive. I cried, too, at the sweetness of the attempts Daniel and his friends make to bring Mrs. U back into the world. Karla massages her slack flesh, and teaches Dan and his father to do the same; Bug reads her the Sunday comics, complete with a running commentary on which ones he finds unfunny; Dusty and Todd demonstrate stretches and make plans for physical therapy.
But mostly I cried at Mrs. Underwood’s resurfacing by means of a computer, which Michael guides her to use as a way of speaking. The computer, which for much of the story helps keep the characters shuttered in their own small worlds, is what finally brings Dan’s mother back.
A few years later, partway into a stint with a Silicon Valley start-up, I picked up the book again to occupy the slivers of time I had at lunch, on weekends, and before bed. This time around, it read like a new story. I understood the Northern California references (well enough, even, to note a few factual “bugs”); I knew people with the same personalities and foibles as some of the book’s characters; and, like Daniel and his friends, I had felt the dulling effects of too many hours in front of a computer screen, too much time in traffic on the 101, too little daylight.
Reading the book a second time, I knew the last chapter—the one that made me sniffly in my wintry East coast kitchen—would hit me again, but I didn’t know that this time I’d be teary not just at the poignancy of the scene, but also with recognition, and with hope.
Because this time I understood that Coupland got it right: for those of us working or living in the Valley, although the Internet boom and bust had built up and wrecked so much, and though cars and office parks and cubicles had become the centers of our days, there was still plenty of life to be found in us.
To find it, we just had to believe that that life was there somewhere, and believe that, somehow, like the Microserfs characters trying to pull Mrs. Underwood to the surface, we could get at it. When we did—when, like Dan and his friends, we saw the signs of it, like Mrs. U’s words flashing into being onscreen—we’d understand that there’s something far stronger than markets or bubbles or code, something that even endless days of work can’t strangle, something that does not easily flicker out.
At the end of the story, as Daniel watches the laser pointer light show his friends put on for his mom in the Silicon Valley night, he thinks “about us…these children who fell down cartoon holes…dreamless children, alive but not living—we emerged on the other side of the cartoon holes fully awake and discovered we were whole.”
This time I cried because I knew I had fallen, too, and because I knew I would eventually fall out of that rabbit hole, out of the Valley’s living sleep.
I closed the book and for a long time I willed myself to keep falling. For months, I fell: through a job I liked less and less, through a commute I could no longer stand, through a mood grown overwhelmingly sour.
I fell until I, too, emerged from my hole; until I woke up the part of myself that had been buried by work and traffic and stress; until, like Mrs. U, I could truthfully say, in 36-point Helvetica, i am here.
The finalists were announced today (in the form of essays posted to the Web site, which readers are invited to vote on), and though I felt a twang of disappointment that I'm not one of them (such hopes, I know, but they're kind of inevitable), that eventually melted into being thankful I took the time to write an essay in the first place. It's not often I write about reading, so doing just that was a nice departure from the norm.
My essay is below. It's called Through the Valley, and it's about reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs twice. (If you haven't read Microserfs, maybe it's time you went down to your local bookstore and picked it up. Or ordered a copy from Powell's.)
So here it is.
Before I knew what Sand Hill Road, Draeger’s, and CalTrain were, before I had seen the city that would soon become my home, and long before I imagined I’d ever work for the company the book portrayed, I stood in a suburban Boston kitchen in the winter of 1997, reading the final chapter of Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, struck momentarily dumb with tears.
I was teary at the blow delivered to Daniel, the main character, in the form of a stroke that leaves his mother speechless, immobile, and unresponsive. I cried, too, at the sweetness of the attempts Daniel and his friends make to bring Mrs. U back into the world. Karla massages her slack flesh, and teaches Dan and his father to do the same; Bug reads her the Sunday comics, complete with a running commentary on which ones he finds unfunny; Dusty and Todd demonstrate stretches and make plans for physical therapy.
But mostly I cried at Mrs. Underwood’s resurfacing by means of a computer, which Michael guides her to use as a way of speaking. The computer, which for much of the story helps keep the characters shuttered in their own small worlds, is what finally brings Dan’s mother back.
A few years later, partway into a stint with a Silicon Valley start-up, I picked up the book again to occupy the slivers of time I had at lunch, on weekends, and before bed. This time around, it read like a new story. I understood the Northern California references (well enough, even, to note a few factual “bugs”); I knew people with the same personalities and foibles as some of the book’s characters; and, like Daniel and his friends, I had felt the dulling effects of too many hours in front of a computer screen, too much time in traffic on the 101, too little daylight.
Reading the book a second time, I knew the last chapter—the one that made me sniffly in my wintry East coast kitchen—would hit me again, but I didn’t know that this time I’d be teary not just at the poignancy of the scene, but also with recognition, and with hope.
Because this time I understood that Coupland got it right: for those of us working or living in the Valley, although the Internet boom and bust had built up and wrecked so much, and though cars and office parks and cubicles had become the centers of our days, there was still plenty of life to be found in us.
To find it, we just had to believe that that life was there somewhere, and believe that, somehow, like the Microserfs characters trying to pull Mrs. Underwood to the surface, we could get at it. When we did—when, like Dan and his friends, we saw the signs of it, like Mrs. U’s words flashing into being onscreen—we’d understand that there’s something far stronger than markets or bubbles or code, something that even endless days of work can’t strangle, something that does not easily flicker out.
At the end of the story, as Daniel watches the laser pointer light show his friends put on for his mom in the Silicon Valley night, he thinks “about us…these children who fell down cartoon holes…dreamless children, alive but not living—we emerged on the other side of the cartoon holes fully awake and discovered we were whole.”
This time I cried because I knew I had fallen, too, and because I knew I would eventually fall out of that rabbit hole, out of the Valley’s living sleep.
I closed the book and for a long time I willed myself to keep falling. For months, I fell: through a job I liked less and less, through a commute I could no longer stand, through a mood grown overwhelmingly sour.
I fell until I, too, emerged from my hole; until I woke up the part of myself that had been buried by work and traffic and stress; until, like Mrs. U, I could truthfully say, in 36-point Helvetica, i am here.
8.24.2004
8.19.2004
Eastward
Southern Nevada, after several hundred miles, was not fabulous. Nor were stretches of Colorado, most of Kansas, or the oddly long-seeming chunk of Illinois we travelled between St. Louis and Kentucky.
Monique's car was stuffed to the hilt, with just enough space in the backseat to afford a view out the rear windshield and side windows. The side mirror on the passenger side spent most of the journey doing its best to fall off completely (despite our ministrations with duct tape and pleading), and the back end of the car rode perilously close to the ground.
I won't even mention the food we had to endure for much of the trip, being unwelcome vegetarians in very non-vegetarian lands.
But overall, the trip was amazing. I'm still reeling at the splendor of southern Utah, with its otherworldy landscape racing along with I-70. I'm in love with little Paonia, Colorado, site of our first really good meal in hundreds of miles. I'm amazed that we actually stayed and ate in Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and I'm so happy that I was able to find my way back to the Mad Platter in Nashville for another awesome meal there.
It was somewhere just east of Asheville, coming down the mountains with a madly beautiful sunset behind us and Winston-Salem somewhere ahead, that I thought again of the maxim I'd seen once in a snowboarding ad: "The more you live, the less you die." And I thought, what could've been a straightforward drive from California to North Carolina became so much more because we were willing to go astray and take some chances with our itinerary.
Isn't that always the key, though--turning away from the path? That practice can be anything from mildly inconvenient to a wild pain in the ass sometimes, and it isn't worth it every single time, but in the end it leaves you with a balance sheet with much more in the black column than the red.
That, to me, is worth driving for.
Monique's car was stuffed to the hilt, with just enough space in the backseat to afford a view out the rear windshield and side windows. The side mirror on the passenger side spent most of the journey doing its best to fall off completely (despite our ministrations with duct tape and pleading), and the back end of the car rode perilously close to the ground.
I won't even mention the food we had to endure for much of the trip, being unwelcome vegetarians in very non-vegetarian lands.
But overall, the trip was amazing. I'm still reeling at the splendor of southern Utah, with its otherworldy landscape racing along with I-70. I'm in love with little Paonia, Colorado, site of our first really good meal in hundreds of miles. I'm amazed that we actually stayed and ate in Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and I'm so happy that I was able to find my way back to the Mad Platter in Nashville for another awesome meal there.
It was somewhere just east of Asheville, coming down the mountains with a madly beautiful sunset behind us and Winston-Salem somewhere ahead, that I thought again of the maxim I'd seen once in a snowboarding ad: "The more you live, the less you die." And I thought, what could've been a straightforward drive from California to North Carolina became so much more because we were willing to go astray and take some chances with our itinerary.
Isn't that always the key, though--turning away from the path? That practice can be anything from mildly inconvenient to a wild pain in the ass sometimes, and it isn't worth it every single time, but in the end it leaves you with a balance sheet with much more in the black column than the red.
That, to me, is worth driving for.
7.05.2004
Self-evident
When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence? Until this morning, I hadn't looked at the thing closely for years--perhaps since seventh-grade history. But there it was, on the back page of yesterday's Week in Review section of the Times, so I spent some time digging in to our history.
Here's the weird thing: I don't know whether the Declaration was placed there by the Times staff or whether it was an uncredited ad, but it read to me like a litany of the destruction wrought by the Bush Administration. Perhaps that sounds ridiculous--and I certainly don't mean to imply that things are as bad now as they were when the colonists were living under tyrannical rule 228 years ago. But consider the examples given as "Facts submitted to a candid world" of "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States":
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People; and eat out their substance";
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power";
"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation...."
There are not, of course, direct and absolute corollaries between then and now, but the similarities are striking. Can it actually be that we're moving backwards through history, and will, if we fail to act, find ourselves perilously closer to 1776 by 2008?
Though Bush and his allies would surely write me off as unpatriotic (and an America hater, and a terrorist lover, and what have you) for saying this, it needs to be said: the Founding Fathers and Mothers of the country did what they could to ensure we wouldn't wind up with another King George tyrannizing us without our consent, but their actions can only take us so far.
It's up to us now to be sure we don't wind up with another King George tyrannizing us with our consent, or with the consent of a minority or the ruling of a skewed Supreme Court. We have the chance for our own revolution, and in honor of everyone from Button Gwinnett to Matthew Thornton, we need to take it.
Here's the weird thing: I don't know whether the Declaration was placed there by the Times staff or whether it was an uncredited ad, but it read to me like a litany of the destruction wrought by the Bush Administration. Perhaps that sounds ridiculous--and I certainly don't mean to imply that things are as bad now as they were when the colonists were living under tyrannical rule 228 years ago. But consider the examples given as "Facts submitted to a candid world" of "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States":
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People; and eat out their substance";
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power";
"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation...."
There are not, of course, direct and absolute corollaries between then and now, but the similarities are striking. Can it actually be that we're moving backwards through history, and will, if we fail to act, find ourselves perilously closer to 1776 by 2008?
Though Bush and his allies would surely write me off as unpatriotic (and an America hater, and a terrorist lover, and what have you) for saying this, it needs to be said: the Founding Fathers and Mothers of the country did what they could to ensure we wouldn't wind up with another King George tyrannizing us without our consent, but their actions can only take us so far.
It's up to us now to be sure we don't wind up with another King George tyrannizing us with our consent, or with the consent of a minority or the ruling of a skewed Supreme Court. We have the chance for our own revolution, and in honor of everyone from Button Gwinnett to Matthew Thornton, we need to take it.
6.30.2004
The reason
Scene: SF MoMA atrium, 7.15 p.m., exhibit opening/reception
Woman (to bartender): Hey, I know why you don't serve red wine. It's because you're afraid people will spill it, isn't it?
Bartender: No, we just don't serve it until 8. [No further explanation.]
Em (internally): No! I know why! It's because Dana tried to steal that bottle of red wine after that IFFCON event, and it ended up smashed and running all over the atrium floor. Surely the MoMA event people haven't forgotten that one.
...And that makes me think of our Deadpan days, and how I used to be able to summon the energy to go out and drink at least three nights a week, then get up at 5.30 in the morning to go to work. How? I have no idea. It actually amazes me now, that youthful vigor and liver strength. How did it manage to dissipate so completely in 5 years?
Woman (to bartender): Hey, I know why you don't serve red wine. It's because you're afraid people will spill it, isn't it?
Bartender: No, we just don't serve it until 8. [No further explanation.]
Em (internally): No! I know why! It's because Dana tried to steal that bottle of red wine after that IFFCON event, and it ended up smashed and running all over the atrium floor. Surely the MoMA event people haven't forgotten that one.
...And that makes me think of our Deadpan days, and how I used to be able to summon the energy to go out and drink at least three nights a week, then get up at 5.30 in the morning to go to work. How? I have no idea. It actually amazes me now, that youthful vigor and liver strength. How did it manage to dissipate so completely in 5 years?
6.28.2004
Addiction
Curse you, Melissa, for sending me that invitation to join orkut. I accepted it, and now I have fallen into the rabbit hole of endlessly searching for new communities (Canada! Vassar! Simple Living! Road Trips! Bush is stupid!), trying to determine how many people I know are fellow orkut-ites (thus far: not many), and generally spending way, way too much time on one site.
True, orkut is somewhat like Friendster writ slightly older, slightly geekier, and slightly more exclusive, but it still seems like a fascinating and totally new world. It does have its mysteries (seriously, why so many Brazilians and so many Portuguese-language communities?) and its usability flaws (why can't I search for a community or topic like I can for a person? why can't I filter communities by something other than popularity and newness? what is with the whole crazy colored arrow/rate-your-friends thing?); regardless, it's a seriously cool invention, and is sure to become one of my very favorite time wasters. I have only Melissa to thank.
True, orkut is somewhat like Friendster writ slightly older, slightly geekier, and slightly more exclusive, but it still seems like a fascinating and totally new world. It does have its mysteries (seriously, why so many Brazilians and so many Portuguese-language communities?) and its usability flaws (why can't I search for a community or topic like I can for a person? why can't I filter communities by something other than popularity and newness? what is with the whole crazy colored arrow/rate-your-friends thing?); regardless, it's a seriously cool invention, and is sure to become one of my very favorite time wasters. I have only Melissa to thank.
6.06.2004
Revisionism
As much as I may think his politics were heart-stoppingly, woefully, pathetically simplistic and wrong, I can't claim to actually be happy that Ronald Reagan is dead. He was, in the end, a human, and one suffering a fate no one should have to suffer.
But I'm terrified that the American populace--media and citizens alike--will continue to fall prey to the strains of revisionist history we've seen a bit of over the past 36 hours. Yes, Reagan may have brought a renewed sense of optimism to a country reeling from inflation, unemployment, and general malaise in the early 80s. And yes, he may have had a spectacular and unfailing sense of humor.
But how can those things make up for the fact that he slashed government spending so deeply and severely that unemployment rose, the poor got much poorer, and those who had not previously been poor found themselves thus? How can they make up for the sickening scandal of Iran contra, full of lies? And how can they make up for Reagan's staunch refusal to acknowledge the scourge of AIDS until the epidemic had swelled and exploded?
In the film version of "And the Band Played On," titles appear sporadically with a running tally of the AIDS cases diagnosed, and the number of victims already dead, while the US government did almost nothing to intervene. In Randy Shilts' book, he devotes an entire chapter of the Epilogue to May 31, 1987, the day of the first speech Reagan gave on the AIDS epidemic.
Shilts writes, "By the time President Reagan had delivered his first speech on the epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease; 20,849 had died."
Reagan had refused to acknowledge AIDS because he (along with many others at the time) viewed it as a disease that affected only gay men. In the President's estimation, gay men's lives weren't worth the federal funding it would take to research AIDS and its treatment. Of course, well before 1987, the disease had spread to other populations (including thousands who contracted it through blood transfusions, rather than any sort of risky behavior), so it wasn't only gays who suffered from Reagan's intolerance and disregard.
In the rush to lionize Ronald Reagan as an American hero, we must not forget that he was complicit in the deaths of over 20,000 people in his own country while he was in office. His own suffering, and our sympathy towards it, should not blind us to the fact that his bigotry contributed to the continued suffering of tens of thousands of others. He had the chance again and again to show the American people that he could rise above the forces of homophobia, misinformation, and hatred masked as morality; again and again, he failed to take that chance.
We have the chance now to remember Reagan not only as he was in his final years--frail, quiet, lost in a disease no one deserves--or in his Hollywood years, but also as he truly was in his White House years. We also have the chance to remember the thousands of other lives--more prosaic, perhaps, but no less valuable--lost to complications from AIDS while, throughout the 1980s, and with Reagan wielding the baton, the band played on.
But I'm terrified that the American populace--media and citizens alike--will continue to fall prey to the strains of revisionist history we've seen a bit of over the past 36 hours. Yes, Reagan may have brought a renewed sense of optimism to a country reeling from inflation, unemployment, and general malaise in the early 80s. And yes, he may have had a spectacular and unfailing sense of humor.
But how can those things make up for the fact that he slashed government spending so deeply and severely that unemployment rose, the poor got much poorer, and those who had not previously been poor found themselves thus? How can they make up for the sickening scandal of Iran contra, full of lies? And how can they make up for Reagan's staunch refusal to acknowledge the scourge of AIDS until the epidemic had swelled and exploded?
In the film version of "And the Band Played On," titles appear sporadically with a running tally of the AIDS cases diagnosed, and the number of victims already dead, while the US government did almost nothing to intervene. In Randy Shilts' book, he devotes an entire chapter of the Epilogue to May 31, 1987, the day of the first speech Reagan gave on the AIDS epidemic.
Shilts writes, "By the time President Reagan had delivered his first speech on the epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease; 20,849 had died."
Reagan had refused to acknowledge AIDS because he (along with many others at the time) viewed it as a disease that affected only gay men. In the President's estimation, gay men's lives weren't worth the federal funding it would take to research AIDS and its treatment. Of course, well before 1987, the disease had spread to other populations (including thousands who contracted it through blood transfusions, rather than any sort of risky behavior), so it wasn't only gays who suffered from Reagan's intolerance and disregard.
In the rush to lionize Ronald Reagan as an American hero, we must not forget that he was complicit in the deaths of over 20,000 people in his own country while he was in office. His own suffering, and our sympathy towards it, should not blind us to the fact that his bigotry contributed to the continued suffering of tens of thousands of others. He had the chance again and again to show the American people that he could rise above the forces of homophobia, misinformation, and hatred masked as morality; again and again, he failed to take that chance.
We have the chance now to remember Reagan not only as he was in his final years--frail, quiet, lost in a disease no one deserves--or in his Hollywood years, but also as he truly was in his White House years. We also have the chance to remember the thousands of other lives--more prosaic, perhaps, but no less valuable--lost to complications from AIDS while, throughout the 1980s, and with Reagan wielding the baton, the band played on.
4.09.2004
The Organized Life
It's one of those cases in which not getting what you think you want makes you realize you didn't really want it all that much in the first place, and forces you to sit yourself down and figure out what the hell it is you do in fact want, which comes to you in a flash.
You know, like when you interview for a job with another workgroup within your company, based in a different state, and it seems on the surface like the perfect position, despite the implicit uprooting of your life and all that would entail; when the call announcing that you didn't in fact land the job fills you with what can only be described as sweet, lightening relief, as you realize that, quite probably, things wouldn't have been much--if any--better; when you lurk in the Employment section of the local bookstore until you find a sufficiently substantial tome that will help you decide What to Do with Your Life, which you then take home and read; and when something you pick up from the book, combined with an article in a newsletter you've just read and something rushing up from your subconscious makes you realize that you must quit your job, leave the field of technical writing, and strike out on your own as a professional organizer.
And what else can you do but take that realization and run with it, until you have ingested a dizzying array of business facts and requirements, until you've taken concrete steps to make this all real, until you've finally reached a point at which you can rest for a moment, and look around to see that you are in fact somewhere else, somewhere much closer to where you want to be and much farther from what you need to get away from.
That brings you to the Organized Life.
You know, like when you interview for a job with another workgroup within your company, based in a different state, and it seems on the surface like the perfect position, despite the implicit uprooting of your life and all that would entail; when the call announcing that you didn't in fact land the job fills you with what can only be described as sweet, lightening relief, as you realize that, quite probably, things wouldn't have been much--if any--better; when you lurk in the Employment section of the local bookstore until you find a sufficiently substantial tome that will help you decide What to Do with Your Life, which you then take home and read; and when something you pick up from the book, combined with an article in a newsletter you've just read and something rushing up from your subconscious makes you realize that you must quit your job, leave the field of technical writing, and strike out on your own as a professional organizer.
And what else can you do but take that realization and run with it, until you have ingested a dizzying array of business facts and requirements, until you've taken concrete steps to make this all real, until you've finally reached a point at which you can rest for a moment, and look around to see that you are in fact somewhere else, somewhere much closer to where you want to be and much farther from what you need to get away from.
That brings you to the Organized Life.
2.15.2004
On Capturing the Friedmans
Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans is a damning portrait, to varying degrees, of almost all of its characters. The film is both An American Family writ large (and much uglier) and a story of what may have been a horrific case of sexual abuse.
Did Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse in fact molest the boys who attended computer classes in the Friedmans' basement? Jarecki won't (and perhaps can't, because of his lack of certainty) say. But his exhaustive presentation of both sides of the story is both painful to watch and immensely compelling.
What to think of the judge who presided over Arnold and Jesse's case, and who declares in the film, "There was never a doubt in my mind about their guilt" (referring, disturbingly, to her thoughts before the case even began)? Or of the sex crimes unit detective with the Great Neck police department whose methods of questioning the possible victims in the case can be described as leading at best?
Jarecki leaves no room to question Arnold's guilt as a pedophile--he was indeed convicted of possession of child pornography, admitted in an affidavit to having molested the son of a friend (and perhaps another boy as well), and, according to Jesse's lawyer, may indeed have molested his youngest son for years. But Jarecki leaves room for the doubts that came up in the case--did Arnold and Jesse actually commit the acts for which they were both sent to prison?
As brilliant as the even-handed presentation of the two sides of the case is the director's decision to allow the Friedmans' home movies to serve as the centerpiece of the film. It's these glimpses into the family's lives that complicate the case even further.
Jarecki could easily have created a film that listed strongly to one side, with occasional glimpses of the opposite pole, but he chose instead to make something much richer and more interesting: a chronicle of one family's dysfunction, one community's scandal and outrage, and the one breed of crime that may be every parent's largest and most unwieldy fears.
Did Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse in fact molest the boys who attended computer classes in the Friedmans' basement? Jarecki won't (and perhaps can't, because of his lack of certainty) say. But his exhaustive presentation of both sides of the story is both painful to watch and immensely compelling.
What to think of the judge who presided over Arnold and Jesse's case, and who declares in the film, "There was never a doubt in my mind about their guilt" (referring, disturbingly, to her thoughts before the case even began)? Or of the sex crimes unit detective with the Great Neck police department whose methods of questioning the possible victims in the case can be described as leading at best?
Jarecki leaves no room to question Arnold's guilt as a pedophile--he was indeed convicted of possession of child pornography, admitted in an affidavit to having molested the son of a friend (and perhaps another boy as well), and, according to Jesse's lawyer, may indeed have molested his youngest son for years. But Jarecki leaves room for the doubts that came up in the case--did Arnold and Jesse actually commit the acts for which they were both sent to prison?
As brilliant as the even-handed presentation of the two sides of the case is the director's decision to allow the Friedmans' home movies to serve as the centerpiece of the film. It's these glimpses into the family's lives that complicate the case even further.
Jarecki could easily have created a film that listed strongly to one side, with occasional glimpses of the opposite pole, but he chose instead to make something much richer and more interesting: a chronicle of one family's dysfunction, one community's scandal and outrage, and the one breed of crime that may be every parent's largest and most unwieldy fears.
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