Year

I don't really know whether to look forwards or backwards. Time is funny like that. Maybe I should just stay trapped in now. Like the woman I talked to the other day. About twenty years ago, she was in a coma for eleven days. She had been riding her bike in San Francisco (something I do with a certain irregularity but with great pleasure) when she was hit by a car. Her advice: live every day like it's your last, because you might not wake up to see the next. I bumped into her as I was running in my neighborhood and she was walking her dog. We started talking because she made some crack about running the Bay to Breakers. So I stopped and we chatted, and I learned about her daughter with a learning disability and how she likes running to the ocean and how I absolutely have to run the Bay to Breakers next year for its centennial. What a sweetheart.

But under different circumstances, I might not have so wholeheartedly approached her the way that I did. I'm not sure if the version of me from a year ago would have allowed myself to give a stranger a chance to open up a little. Well it was a nice chat, and it only reinforced the idea that the most valuable things I can ever hope to accumulate are the connections I make with other people.

What a nice thought.

Bicycles

I like bicycles. I like the feeling of going somewhere, the purposeful sense of forward motion towards a definite destination. I like the feeling of alertness, the amount of attention I pour into riding the streets, the level of complete absorption of navigating city streets. I like the feeling of my feet against the pedals against the cranks against the bike frame against the tires against the pavement. Especially on a smooth street. I can almost feel the traction of the street against the soles of my feet. I like ducking low on the big hill near my house, my profile as tiny as possible against the wind tearing through my ears. I like standing on my pedals to sprint up block-long hills and coast down the other side as a reward. I like to sit up straight and take my hands off the handlebars on big empty streets. Sometimes I also pump my arms and pretend that I'm running, far faster than I could ever run. I like passing cars stuck in traffic. I like banked turns. I like getting into my toeclips on the first try. I like going into the hardest gear at the start of a flat, and feel the resistance increase on the pedals. I like bicycles.

Birthday

He loved the park across the street. Sometimes, after school, his older sister would walk him across the green pedestrian bridge that spanned the cement river below, the occasional car speeding down.

But today was a special day. It was a warm day in late May, rare in San Francisco. Not only that, but he was turning six. All his friends he made in Kindergarten would be there, including some of the children who weren't.

He knew what a birthday was. It was a day when his parents smiled a lot and took a lot of pictures and looked tired and exhausted at the end. He had observed this very phenomenon before at other birthday parties, at swimming pools and bowling alleys and museums. The parents would smile a pained smile as the children ran circles around them. At play time and cake time and presents time, always smiling, or chatting with other grown ups, gesturing occasionally toward their specific child.

So on this particular morning, he was especially excited as he brushed his teeth and even more excited as he velcroed his Power Rangers shoes onto his feet.

I could go on, but I feel tired. I could describe his yellow t-shirt with a pocket over the left breast that felt too hot in the sun. I could tell you about the juice he spilled on himself and the way it felt sticky against his skin for the rest of the day, except that after a while he stopped noticing. I could go on about the guests, and how some of them were friends, and some of them he felt ambivalent towards. I could go into the complexities of the social life of a six year old, but right now, I don't have the energy.

Outside

I came home and my childhood playground was missing. No, I didn't misplace it, it was gone. Torn out of the ground. My slides, my fort, my tire swing, even my cypress tree. All gone. Now it's just a big dirt field across the street from my house.

I can remember playing with plastic green soldiers in the sand. I would dig in the sand until I hit clay, then dig a little more before giving up. I was part of an afterschool program called "Latchkey Kids" run by SF parks and rec. And everyday I'd come back home, but before I could come into the house, I'd have to shake the sand out of my shoes and pants and hair.

Inside the big cinder block building at the park there was a kitchen, an office, some bathrooms, and a common area with some old MacIntosh computers. There was this one vector game I was pretty good at, where you get to drive a tank. For a while, I had the high score, which made me pretty damn proud.

I remember the other kids who went there after school, though not too well. I was probably about 9-10 years old when I went, and there were some other kids who went who were probably in middle school, I don't know where. Well, I guess that they were just at the age when the opposite sex starts to become mysterious and fascinating and despicable, so they'd play these games that really made no sense to me.

I suppose that some of the older boys had seen Starship Troopers, and thought that it was pretty awesome, being a rated "R" action movie and all, complete with human brains sucked out through a translucent tube and the obligatory one second flash of female nipple. Well, the way that this plays in is that the boys would play the part of the Starship Troopers, and the girls the part of the alien bug species bent on destroying the human race.

There was this pile of scrap wood near the door in the cement blockhouse that Latchkey Kids was based out of, old pieces of wooden picture frame mostly. Well, when you're a boy in a certain age range, anything and everything that can resemble a gun is a gun. And so, in their post-modern version of cowboys and indians, the boys and girls played starship troopers and aliens.

Basically, the way it went, as in the movie, was that the alien girl species would charge the boy troopers, armed with their picture frame machine guns, sputtering off rounds as rapidly as their sounds effects could allow. Most of the bugs would get blasted away, their dead strewn by the swing set and the slides. But occasionally, one would make it through the hail of gunfire sounds, and leap onto a hapless trooper.

At this point, no one really knew what to do. The girls usually didn't make it this far, and when they did, there was a sense of "now what?" And so, in this moment of weakness, picture frames at the ready, his comrades would rescue him from certain ... I don't know what.

I didn't know what. I was in fourth grade then. My favorite color was red and the best show on TV was Arthur, the anthropomorphic aadrvark. But even then, I could sense that the game was more than just cowboys and indians the way that your dog senses your bad day. There was a tension in the air whenever they played the game. I did not play.

Meta-List

Shopping

• ox-tail (for stew)
• used pants
• return textbooks
• a donut
  

To do (today)

• go to bank (deposit birthday check)
• go to post office (mail thank you card to Auntie Norma)
• go running
  

To do (this week)

• pack things for moving out
• move into Berkeley apartment
  
• negotiate work hours with employers
• celebrate 19th birthday
• hang out with Kyle
  
• withdraw from summer school

To do (this month)

• take Karyn somewhere nice for dinner
• get dad a birthday gift
  

Reading

• The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
  
• Why We are Hungry, Dave Eggers
• Fresh Air Fiend, Paul Theroux
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
  

Ways that I am like my dad

We both:
1. like old war movies like Bridge on the River Kwai.
2. drink black coffee.
3. enjoy cracking our necks.
4. eat sardines with crackers.
5. read books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
6. are skeptical of anything that sounds too good.
7. like to backpack in the Sierra Nevada.
8. tan easily in the sun.
9. dislike driving.

Profile Picture

Had a little photoshoot in my room.

Pretentious Blog Photography

Behold the power of a $150 camera.

Ahoy there!

This is perhaps the third time I've christened a blog to set sail on the high seas. The first, the Satiric Party Headquarters, went down in the sea of apathy. She had 13 souls aboard her. Satiric Party II fared no better.

As of yet, there really is no destination for this blog. As the old adage goes (I believe it was Archimeides), "Without knowing what port you're headed to, no wind is favorable." I suppose that I shall steer my little blog to the far reaches of teh internets, meet its strange and exotic people, and trade off what trinkets I can for their hospitality.

I suppose that after thoroughly plundering what I can, I shall display the fruits of my ill-gotten gains in this, my digital trophy room.

About the name. I'm not really a doctor. I take no personal responsibility for shoddy medical advice posted on this blog. My usual prescriptions include drinking more water and sucking it up. Administer at personal discretion.