yeah yeah chloe

traveling

2010-02-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

At 12:30 I boarded the bus to my grandparents' house with an overnight bag and a small snack. I was the only passenger. The driver put on a country radio station at maximum volume, and then we set off. The music made me think of the phrase "easy listening" and for those two hours I was completely content, as I often am during long car rides but rarely am otherwise. We passed snow banks and lone houses and so many geese, and also Giggles Why Not, a cryptically-windowed store on Route 9 (lingerie, gag gifts), which is either a joke shop or a sex shop, I can never decide which. Around 3:00 the driver pulled to the side of the highway and opened the door.

"Miss," he said, in a flat voice, until I heard him over the music. "Miss. Your stop. Miss."

In my grandparents' house I ate guacamole on crackers and tried to decompress from the events of the past few weeks. Usually talking is a good way to do this, and so is being with my grandmother, but it was hard to shake that feeling of unease. At night I got into bed and began to watch men's curling, but the game was slow-moving and obscure, so I walked down to the office. Along the walls are hundreds of old photographs and sometimes looking at them is a kind of balm. There is a lot of stuff that came before this, you realize, and a lot that's coming after it.

Almost twenty years ago: me and Dad.

break

2010-01-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

At nine o'clock I woke up and finished the story. The sky was gloomy and unmorninglike--my favorite kind of sky--and I looked at it through the downstairs windows while printing the story, which took ten minutes, because the computer has a virus. I put a paperclip around the stack of paper, turned it over and sandwiched it between the coffee table books in the living room so I would not be tempted to edit it. Then I went for a brisk walk outside while listening to Bonnie Raitt. Later, in the bath, I read an article about Lorrie Moore in which she joked that writers should ideally have month-long stretches when they can sit around in their bathrobes and write, which made me laugh until I realized that this is exactly what I have been doing.

traditions

2009-12-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, probably because I am age-inappropriately attached to my family and prone to nostalgia. And, isn't it incredible and so strange, when you think about it, to have a tree in your house, an enormous just-cut one, the breadth and the smell of it? The other night I babysat Ty (who, at twelve, let's be honest, doesn't really need babysitting--it was more an excuse to make holiday crafts and watch Elf. The main character is Christmas-obsessed and Ty teases that it is really a documentary about me.)

Every year we set up the creche and arrange all of the little creche figures so that there is some sort of narrative, which over the years has become entirely unbiblical. We do, however, get pretty competitive when unwrapping the figures: everyone wants to get the baby jesus, though any of the other main players (Mary, Joseph, Gabriel, the three Kings) are secondarily desirable. This tradition did not strike me as odd until I told Ali about it, who immediately thought we were Christian fundamendalists.

Ty got the baby! He's been on a four-year streak. Mom unwrapped the bandit, a one-armed lone wolf with a dagger and a red cape, who is all of our next-favorite. I got a few miscellaneous barn animals, the single mother and two-thirds of the Kings.

Ty with the Jesus figure (and me, jealous but trying to be supportive):

Hm, what else? Tonight I am going to a belated birthday dinner. I chose the restaurant because they've got nice lighting and really good mac and cheese.

belated

2009-12-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

winter

2009-12-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

Doesn't everything feel more effortful at this time of year? Reading, writing, walking long distances, now that the weather here has dipped low into the forties. Even the challah we baked didn't turn out right--something about the yeast--and, instead of expanding, remained dense pretzel-like miniatures.

But a week from today I go home to so many good things! Today I am compiling a mix for my yoga class which is 90% Christmas songs. I will apologize beforehand to students who are not holiday people.

farming

2009-11-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with a very bad headache, so I took a walk to the Vassar farm with the hope that fresh air would banish it. (It did.) I had never been to the farm before; it was vast and grayish and spindly, as November usually tends to be.

At first I listened to music, but that began to feel like sensory overload. There was something calm and simple about the sight of so many bare trees,

and the crunch of gravel under clogs.

At one point I heard a rustling behind me and thought someone else was there, but it was only a leaf, following along.

Mostly the walk affirmed to me how much I like to be alone; it is never really a lonely feeling. This might change as I get older, but probably not.

cake

2009-11-11T17:53:00.001-08:00

Last week Ali and I had friends over to celebrate our twenty-first birthdays. We asked everyone to bring a dish of food and dress like their favorite literary character. Hester Prynne came with eggplant moussaka, Hamlet brought plantains, and Kira, as the momma from The Namesake, arrived with a big pot of pea soup. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway went in on a roast chicken; the boys next door baked muffins and claimed to be assorted characters from 1984. Ali went as Oliver Twist, and I was Lolita. I was not sure whether this was appropriate but it gave me an excuse to wear an old pair of heart-shaped glasses and attempt a complicated braided hairstyle.

gray* november dayz

2009-11-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

* Gray or grey? I googled and was directed to this helpful website. If Samuel Johnson is down with gray, it works for me.

mission impossible

2009-10-26T16:49:00.001-07:00

What my brother wrote when I asked him to give me a long division problem so I could practice for the GREs:

our house

2009-10-21T14:54:00.001-07:00

break

2009-10-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

I am home for October break! This morning I went downstairs and found my stepmom meditating, with her eyes closed and her headphones on, in the lotus position. It is 68 degrees and there is strong Peet's coffee brewing in the kitchen. When I left Poughkeepsie it was SNOWING! I asked a scientifically-inclined friend whether he thought this was a good or bad sign in terms of global warming. He was not sure.

Last week, Ali went apple-picking with the guys next door. I had to stay home to grouchily finish a ten-page paper, but lived vicariously through their photos.

Then, we made apple pie. I was not convinced that picked apples were very different from store-bought ones, but I was wrong. Also, they're huge.

day trippin'

2009-10-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

In the morning we left for Rhinebeck, a town lined by chalky, thin-boned Victorian houses and trees with mustard-colored leaves. It was a pretty drive--through Hyde Park and past the intimidating site of the Vanderbilt mansion (from the highway, only its tall gates are visible--tantalizing!) We spent the morning poking around in shops and ogling the oldest inn in America; then we got a soupy lunch at Gigi's and chatted with the owner of the town sweet shop. The store is nearing its sixteenth birthday, and we celebrated by buying champagne truffles and chocolates shaped like racecars. Ali also got an edible mustache whose primary ingredient was wax (?). Before we left for Poughkeepsie I picked up a pair of cozy socks in which to nestle, like the burrowing owl, all winter. It was the best escape.

Owl in burrow,

me in sox.

i think this is turning into a food blog. oops.

2009-10-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight there is a potluck for my writing class. I am going to make a round loaf of Irish bread and hope someone else picks up the slack when it comes to main courses. My cooking is improving this year, but I am still a little nervous about raw meat and fish, the way some people get skittish near big dogs. I like that flour has not ever been alive; also, there is no risk of salmonella.

A few days ago Ali and I made these monster scones (!!):

In one week I go home for October break. I am pining big-time for dinners with Momma, long walks to Green Apple, visiting Nora at Iris and all-over fog. That's the trouble with San Francisco--it's difficult to live quite as happily anywhere else. (Though today Elana directed me to this illustrated Haruki Murakami story, which helped!)

likeness

2009-09-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

While in class a few days ago, listening to a discussion about doppelgangers and Nabokovian double gangrels (oy), I tried to draw my professor--a difficult task, as I tend to draw both men and women exactly the same way, with round owly eyes and heart-shaped mouths. (The nose is always done as though in profile--a small, anatomically impossible L.) The result was pleasing because it did not come out quite so androgynous as usual, and also because it looks the way I always imagined an English professor would.*

*But Nora says it just looks like my dad--so perhaps I have only moved from my original gender-neutral formula to a general male template.

nutrition

2009-09-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

Why is it that baking always seems to cure a glum mood? Was feeling blue this afternoon due to a lot of built-up homework and a botched bike ride (ouch, ankle), and instead of tackling my reading for Deviant Subcultures, I made muffin squares*. There isn't a grocery store within walking distance, so I had to get creative--bought four raw eggs from the kitchen in the Retreat and gluten-free baking mix at House of Nutrition (which, it turns out, sells more than protein powder and homeopathic remedies with long, inscrutable names). We don't have vanilla at the house, so I subbed soy for regular milk, then added almonds and apricots and walnuts. The verdict? A little dry, as gluten-free things tend to be--but overall, satisfying.

* The recipe was for muffins, but muffin tins are another thing we don't have, so I spread the mixture out thickly in a baking pan. Chomp.

wounds

2009-09-06T15:06:00.000-07:00

One week into school and I've already sprained my ankle. Also got a bloody knee. Now I walk with a tiny limp and must put off bike riding--yow. More time to read Nabokov?

ride

2009-08-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

The walls are almost bare, some light fixtures don't work and my dresser has no knobs, so that each drawer can only be opened by scraping at its underside after pulling out the one beneath it--but it is lovely to be here, still. It's been one and a half years now since I have been in Vassar, and I appreciate it all more now, even the small things: the stream that runs by the path to the senior housing, the roundabout near Raymond avenue whose island has yellow flowers and a tall clock, my tiny rectangular mailbox. Each day is filled with so many different components and I like this, how busy it is. Yesterday it was only at four in the afternoon, when I sat down to eat a large sandwich at Babycakes, that I realized I hadn't stopped moving all day. This morning I tried to get into the Nabokov class (fail) and bought a bike (success!). It is blue and was ninety-nine dollars from Target. I never had a bike as a kid, so Evan had to teach me how to ride it. The thing is you can't stop--it is all about forward momentum, and hesitance usually results in a fall. I can only hop on, push down hard on one pedal and go!

corner store

2009-08-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

I thought moving out of my apartment would be painful, and I think it was because of this--because I had been sort of premourning that moment--that it was okay. It was not so bad to part with the overgrown backyard, my room with its shelves of books and view of the garden, all of our strange refrigerator poems and Nora's potholders shaped like goldfish. They were, it turned out, just things.

Now, for just over one week, I am back here:

Before driving to my Dad's house with the movers, I went to the corner store on Church to say goodbye to its owners, a father and two of his sons. Oddly, when I think of this year, it is the three of them I feel most nostalgic about. I came in a few times each week for avocados or coffee or granola, for which they often gave me discounts. Each time we talked in a pleasant, compartmentalized way, so that it almost seemed we knew each other. Only one of the sons was working the day I moved, and when he came out from behind the register to hug me, I realized that I didn't know his name. I knew only observable details: that they are Middle Eastern, that they work all seven days of the week, and in January--because of the cards lining the counter--that their mother died. He asked me to come back, to write. He said I was a good person. Those words came out of nowhere--we had been talking about candy bars--and I felt undeserving of their kindness, their gentleness. Interactions with strangers so often feel transactional, and sometimes, I think, we have to be startled out of that, to be made aware of the potential for things to be otherwise.

Now I am back in the Richmond, with its quiet and fog and home-cooked meals. I discovered a small bikram yoga studio on 25th avenue. A banner hung from the roof advertised $10 for 10 classes, and the impressiveness of this deal overrode how much I dislike to exert myself in hot temperatures. Work has finished for the summer, and this lull accommodates the undertaking of small things: walks with friends in Sutro Park, lunches at Q with my little brother, afternoons reading Austen. (It turned out that Northanger was a good pick after all! Now am starting on Emma and can't remember why I hated Pride and Prejudice so much in high school.)

one's books, oneself?

2009-08-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

This morning, a selection of books had been left on the trash can by the 38 bus stop. The stack began with an emphasis on DIY practicality--Single in a Married World and Dr. Phil's Love Smart: Find the One You Love, Fix the One You've Got--but rose optimistically. The One was followed by Living Serendipitously; on top was Expect a Miracle. The collection was pleasing to come upon because of its cohesiveness, however cliche--only Dialogue ("How to get your characters talking to each other in a way that vividly reveals who they are, what they're doing, and what's coming next in your story") and Grey's Anatomy (the book, not the TV show) were outliers. Still! I enjoyed taking photos of them until the 38 came, though the suited man waiting in the bus shelter gave me strange looks.

clement

2009-08-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

It was trivia night at the bar, but we got there an hour late, so we nabbed a corner booth and tried to catch up. The questions were tough and I got most of them wrong, except for, Who wrote The Satanic Verses? (Rushdie) and, almost, the ones about the Giants. The bar itself had dark wood and many filled tables and a string of old Niners jerseys along one wall; the gender ratio leaned heavily toward men but still the place felt inexplicably cozy. The simplicity of having a source of action at which to direct my attention both excused and enabled conversation; I liked feeling equally free to talk or quietly observe. Later in the night we were told that Padma Lakshmi would be attending trivia night next week. We all have crushes on Padma and this, above all else, provided an incentive to return.

cravings

2009-08-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

At 2:30 I left to go to the library. The walk was about 30 blocks and I enjoyed it because I was talking on the phone to a friend. I wanted to read Villette or Shirley but the only Bronte they had was Jane Eyre, so I borrowed Northanger Abbey instead, which may or may not turn out to be a good substitution. After the library I had a food craving I could not pinpoint. Bought candy, but that wasn't right. In the candy store I asked to sample the red bean ice cream, thinking this might do it--nope, but closer. I thought of moon cakes, which we used to make in elementary school, and that sounded good, but not substantial enough, and that was when I realized: sesame balls!

I had not had one in years and suddenly there was nothing else I wanted more. Most of the dim sum restaurants on Clement street were closing and their offerings were picked over--banana cake, almond cookies--but in a bakery across from Green Apple two sesame balls were left. I bought one and it felt decadent--glutenous, just chewy enough, and the size of a baseball--decadent too because it is something I rarely eat. On the bus to Elana's I read Northanger Abbey and felt sated.

out

2009-07-21T16:36:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I fly to BROOKLYN for a week of thunderstorms, Kiku, roaming with friends and one wedding. I have packed a book of short stories from Kate and a trusty umbrella, among other things. Been listening to lots of Biggie. Yuh!

brothers

2009-07-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Ty has decided that Pele is the greatest soccer player on earth, that the plural of 'kitten' should be kitteroni. He no longer wants to be a novelist, but perhaps an athlete or a chef--on a recent camping trip he made dinner, hamburger meat and fish mixed together in a mustard sauce, which Molly ate, heroically. At the brown desk in his bedroom he studies genealogy, looking over spread-out ancestral charts and family trees with his reading glasses on, collecting especially good names to be passed down to descendants (Leon, Harry). He refuses to watch bad TV with us--says The Bachelor is disrespectful to women, and while the truth of this observation does not stop Mom and me from taping the show on Monday nights, we feel proud of my brother's goodness, his noble opinions, and we hope he will always be this way.

That's impossible, of course. Ty is twelve, the same age I was when I went to my first middle school dance. I wore brown lip gloss and a floor-length velvet skirt, held onto Eddie's shoulders with my arms completely outstretched. Ty says his dances aren't really like that, the boys and the girls don't talk, they stand on opposite sides of the room and eat snacks--but soon, I know, things will change. I was almost nine when Ty was born, old enough to hold him the way adults do, with his head propped up the right way. It's a biggish age gap, one that has made it impossible for me to give up calling him by his baby nickname. Jordan and I are two years apart, close enough to scheme and fight together in equal measure, but toward Ty I've always felt protective--more than a sister but less than a mother. In the fall, for the first time, both Jordan and I will be away at college and Ty will be at home. This is the hardest part about leaving: that there will be years of career changes and fresh haircuts and dubious made-up meals before Ty leaves too, that I will experience them only over the phone. He's been once to Vassar, where he ate snow and took photos on the front steps of dorms, but I am not sure how much he remembers it. I wonder if it is as unsettling for him as it is for me to have a sibling across the country, living a life almost unimaginably different--unimaginable not because of what it is, exactly, but because I am not there to see it.

nadia

2009-07-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I flew for the weekend to Phoenix. I had never been there before, but I had three preconceived notions about it:

1. That it was hot. Really hot. (True.)

2. That most people there are old (false) and Republican (pending).

3. That the city contains palatial, almost unthinkably large malls. (This Nora told me, and it was true too; on the way to the apartment we passed the Scottsdale Fashion Center, which spans ten square blocks, includes a movie theater and is anticipating the fall 2009 addition of 30 more stores.)

But I had not been prepared for the unfamiliar beauty of the place--the green spread of bristling foreign plants and the tall reddish mountains, which press against Phoenix on all sides, as if holding it in. I had never felt mountains so close; the sensation is one of both horizontal openness and parapeted protection.

Also, the heat is not even so bad! It isn't humid, and most indoor spaces are so air conditioned that stepping outside feels a bit like sliding into a lukewarm bath. And there are pools. Lots of them. In San Francisco, I tried to explain, people don't really go to pools, because it isn't hot enough. Plus, most of them are indoors, like Rossi Pool, where the water is a yellowish green and where, in the eighth grade, Nora and I hosted a middle school pool party. My only memory from this event is that my swimsuit top came off while I was diving in the deep end; then I treaded water in the seven-foot section, away from all the boys, until Helen retrieved it from the floor of the pool.

Today I went to the library at 24th and Mission. The building is nondescript from the outside--I had trouble finding the door--but inside, space seems to balloon. I liked the feeling of being in a book-filled cave, and went about gluttonously gathering hardcovers. I found a Mary Gaitskill novel I've been looking for, but I was especially excited to borrow Nice Big American Baby, Judy Budnitz's short story collection. I've been a Budnitz enthusiast since we read one of her stories, Nadia, in my sophomore year writing course at Vassar. After that, I tried to bring her up in class as much as possible. ("I was just thinking it might be interesting to compare the protagonist here with the collective voice in Nadia... Hey guys, is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of that one part in Nadia where...")

daily forecast

2009-06-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is the hottest day in what feels like months, and I am not used to it. Today, this kind of weather does not make me want to go to the beach, but instead to find some sort of activity which might offset the effects of so much heat (mopiness, lethargy). Ideas include:

1. Figure skating, in a small outfit (no tights), with much body-to-floor contact--easy for me, as I tend to fall most of the time anyway.

2. A complex and distracting indoor activity, to be completed while eating ice chips.

3. The origami-ing of personal cooling devices, while plans are made for the milder night hours.

in disguise

2009-06-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

Most animal species in the world have developed some kind of natural camouflage, which enables them to find food and avoid attack. Here, the female mimics the background color of her surroundings, thus blending in with the habitat.

routines

2009-06-14T11:08:00.001-07:00

My brother's graduation was yesterday. He went to a "progressive" high school in the Haight, so there were no caps or gowns, and the ceremony took place in Stern Grove. It was lovely. Afterward, we ate lunch at a Brazilian restaurant where the waiters bring fourteen different kinds of meat around to your table on skewers. No good for vegetarians, but I think Kira would have liked it. The restaurant was selected, of course, by Jordan, who is a herpetologist and was also the president of his high school's meat club. He got a shout-out from one of the graduation speakers for being paradoxical. In a week he is flying again to Kenya to work with poisonous snakes.

Jordan, two summers ago:

Here, things are not quite as exciting. But I'm liking nights on 23rd and being with friends and even, a little bit, my job as a receptionist, which requires me to answer calls and arrange food for lunch meetings. Working downtown is more enjoyable now that I can take the J train straight there. In the building's lobby there is a shop that sells candy for ten cents, and Adam works nearby. On the way there, in the mornings, I sip coffee from the donut shop on 24th street. It is hazelnut-flavored and it only costs $1.15.

pets

2009-06-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

In the Muni lot at California and Sutter, buses lie like hibernating bears or sleeping rollie-pollies. The lot can be seen best from above, along the hill of Masonic. I like to take this route to the 38 after going to Trader Joe's, even though it is out of the way and the buses can only be seen by peering through a fence and pulling aside the thicket. There is something benign and endearing about them in this dormant state; they seem incapable of any kind of motion until one is roused to consciousness, then rumbles off sleepily toward Fulton or Geary.

bur-rito

2009-06-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

Rabbit: June! It is fifty-seven degrees out, and despite the foggy weather, it feels finally like summer. At Vassar the change in seasons could be charted visually--in the growth of new leaves on elm and beech and Russian olive trees, or the yellow opening of the tulip bulbs circled in front of Main Building. But here the landscape stays the same, and the signifiers are different. Friends come home from school, street fairs begin, spring internships are traded for summer jobs.

Mostly, I think, knowing I won't be here for much longer makes everything feel sweeter, more potent. It's as though the sensory aspects of summer native to most places (heat, for instance) have been replaced by an increased mental sensitivity. I've started thinking things like, In a few months I won't walk up the Castro hills/ride the 24/pass the strange houses on Elizabeth on the way to my apartment every day. I've even started to feel nostalgic about the living room furnace, a slotted brown box the size of a microwave. Must turn off brain.

Anyway! Ali, my Vassar baby, came to visit from the East Coast this weekend. We rode the 24 from the Mission to Union, visited Nora's lingerie store on Haight, inspected purple potatoes at the Noe Valley Farmers Market, and watched a fight at Adam's (I covered my eyes). Also had sangria at Esperpento with G, wound through Golden Gate Park, ate the city's biggest burritos, and read about eye yoga in Green Apple. And made pancakes! Nom.

Then we made a film to document the trip.

how i long for a wand and a crop top

2009-05-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Nora and I watched Practical Magic, a 1998 movie about a family of female witches. There are many things about the film which require the suspension of disbelief (the villian's Transylvanian accent; Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as sisters), but it is still enjoyable to watch for several reasons.

1. The scenery is enviable. So are the 90s outfits. Against the impossibly picturesque background of Washington's Whidbey Island Sandra and Nicole whip up homeopathic remedies or curse ex-boyfriends in belly tops and ankle-length skirts. I wanted to imaginatively superimpose myself into both elements.

2. Also, the house! Turreted, overrun with vegetation, thin-boned as a skeleton--and with a chameleonic ability to turn from pastoral-looking to possessed, depending on the time of day.

3. As with most movies about sisters, there are plenty of opportunities to play the game of guessing at which one you would be. "We stayed up all night," says Nicole in one scene, "worshipping each other." She is referring to the demon ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Sandra lies in shorts and wool socks on a four-poster bed, pining after her vegetable-grower husband.

"I'd be Nicole," declared Nora. "You're the one in the cozy socks."

recipe for a sick day

2009-05-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

1. Reheat Udon until it is as hot as it can get without burning your tongue.

2. Transfer to a big bowl.

3. Put on bed along with a project that is not easily finished. Forbid yourself from going online to Google the symptoms of Swine Flu.

4. Begin! *

* If these suggestions don't work, call Mom.

dream yard

2009-05-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

On the way to dinner last night I did a double take while passing this overgrown hill. Three quarters of the way down a residential street on Fulton, it is sandwiched between two homes like a sort of jungly intermission. It's just the kind of place I would have loved to live next to as a kid--seems to contain an infinite amount of imaginative possibilities, feels a bit like the vegetational equivalent of a woolly mammoth, houses a wide variety of junk to be scavenged, etc. Below is a clip, along with my rambling narration:

final cut pro is my hamster wheel

2009-04-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

My film is almost done! On free days I've been hibernating in the college's editing rooms, which have harsh fluorescent lighting but no windows and tend to get very hot. This doesn't sound like fun, but it is. I turn off the lights and curl up in a comfy chair that spins and try to make a movie, and I feel the way I imagine industrious animals do: caged, but contented.

The movie is about Missed Connections, a phenomenon I just recently became aware of, in which people post messages to those they feel they've had a connective moment with. As with most branches of Craigslist, the validity and effectiveness of Missed Connections is debatable. The odes are strange, and they range from sweet ("We were looking through free stuff on the corner", "You helped me pick an avocado ~ Safeway ~ 8 pm") to unsettling ("Saw u on the fifth floor of the county jail"). Still, most are fascinating, in part for the questions they raise. If the site's success rate is as low as it seems, what does it mean to reach out to someone who probably is not there? Has the internet made it easier or more difficult to meet people?

In the documentary I'm profiling three people trying to find their missed connections. There is a 41-year-old cardiologist and a student majoring in Anthropology, as well as a woman who works in social justice. They've all been wonderfully helpful and engaging and smart, and one person's post does reach its intended recipient. Everyone also had very thoughtful things to say about the extent to which Missed Connections as a concept is related to (or was born out of) modern culture. And the filming experience has been filled with other fun things: searching for murals in the Mission, composing a score made up of whistles, trying to find the best way to tell the man who offered to sneak out of rehab for an interview that an escape just wasn't necessary. Anyhow, I will try to post a link to it when it's all finished. The first and very rough project I did is here. Youtube-suggested related videos include, for no apparent reason, "My Hampster Mocha Eating Broccoli", "A Younger Barack Obama on the War on Drugs and Marijuana", "Miss Aloha Hula 2008" and "Amy Winehouse Photos". Anyhow, spending the day with dogs made me long for a french bulldog like him:

recession seating

2009-04-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

When there is no money to buy couches or chairs or even throw pillows, one must get creative.

sunday best

2009-04-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

If Easter is a day of renewal, it seems fitting to have spent it at the flea market. We hopped the 24 Divisadero to Industrial and Bayshore, then cut beneath an overpass to Alemany. Paper bags had tangled in the limbs of trees, and the sky was a chlorine blue. It felt like spring: mucky and promising.

Usually, when I go to flea markets, I fall in love with strange paintings and splay-legged furniture, dying plants and yellowed pictures. Then I spend forty dollars and have trouble maneuvering all of my purchases home. This time, I forbade myself from bringing money. There: problem solved! Otherwise, I might have been tempted to buy this.

Other desirable options: Star Trek Barbie,

and plants within snails.

Here were 2009 calendars. In box one: Outhouses. In box two: Bible Verses?

These men sell ladies' lingerie and Yankees uniforms. They've got all bases covered.

In the designer purses section, at least one person was financially prudent.

The bird was not for sale.

This little guy had to be removed from the top of the ice cream cart, which he climbed up and clung to as the cart moved from the 2009 calendars to the clothing area.

I sometimes wonder what is most appealing about flea markets, the collecting of things or the collecting of stories. Perhaps the two are interchangeable. I'm always drawn to old photographs and postcards; the ones with writing on the back are the best. Years ago I found a tiny, scallop-edged snapshot stuck to the bottom of a bin. In the picture a small boy in striped pajamas and house slippers holds a flowerpot. Written on the other side, in neat handwriting: "May, 1940: Frank, with the sweet potato plant he planted, re-planted, and then re-re-planted." Frank looks quite pleased with himself. Flea markets offer an odd kind of voyeurism, one that is nameless and faceless--a perusal of personal histories in which there is no person.

On the way home we went to Flowercraft in search of new plants for the garden. Beneath the grid of the highway we waited for the 24 bus, reading care tags in a square of sun.

It was a different kind of Easter egg hunt.

unexpectedly charming:

2009-04-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

1. Tumbleweeds, in both name and appearance. Their puffiness is misleading--makes me want to prod and cuddle them, as one would a persian cat.

2. The letters sent from prison to my internship office. All are painstakingly handwritten and more polite than any queries received from the non-incarcerated.

3. Bjork, when the mood is right.

bad behavior

2009-04-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

While I was waiting for the J train at Powell today, five cops hurdled down the escalator and made a run for the Ellis street exit. A pigtailed child asked her mother who was in trouble, speaking for the rest of us.

I have been inside a cop car only once, when I was sixteen. About six of us had packed into the only licensed driver's Volvo in an attempt to get to a party in the Presidio. As the smallest of the group, I was sitting on somebody's lap in the middle seat. We were busted between a string of military houses and the old Bowling Alley. The cop had gelled-back hair and the smooth complexion of a skincare model; he looked less like an actual police officer than an actor playing one.

"Well, this is quite the clown car," he said, tapping on the passenger window. He pointed at me, the only one without a seat belt.

"You," said the cop. "Where do you live?"

I remember feeling surprised that the back of the police car was so unlike a regular car. The seats were not leather or even cloth-covered--they were plastic and felt hollow, like chairs from a children's playhouse.

"I feel like a criminal back here," I said, trying to flirt my way out of trouble.

The cop said we shouldn't have been driving with so many people in the car to begin with. I expressed remorse, and soon he warmed up, asking about my favorite school subjects and what I liked to do for hobbies. When I told him my age, he asked if I'd had a Sweet Sixteen birthday party. I said no, that Sweet Sixteens weren't big in San Francisco. There was the hassle of cleaning up afterwards, and nobody wanted to pay for a location to begin with.

"Really?" he asked. "Everyone does it on the East Coast."

We spent the rest of the ride discussing Sweet Sixteens and their East/West cultural significance. He spoke fondly of his own party, and I agreed that it sounded pretty fun. When we reached my front door, I thanked him and quickly hopped out. My parents must have gone to sleep--nothing was ever said about my arrival in a cop car. At breakfast the next morning, I ate pancakes and thought: safe.

rounds

2009-04-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

My stepmom, Ellen, is cleaning out the old Kids' Computer Nook at my Dad's house. Once the relatively tidy location of a titanic Dell computer and select CD-ROM games, the nook has since swallowed up an assortment of childhood debris: slinkies, bead kits, yoyos, a faded rainbow of bouncy balls, tenacious Happy Meal toys. Every few days, Ellen reports back from the trenches. Yesterday she found Creative Writer, my favorite computer game from the age of seven to maybe twelve, with which I created newsletters and stationary and generously-asterisked business cards (Chloe *~* Novelist *~* Age 11 *~* ).

Last night, I took the 5 Fulton down to my internship for a Reader Roundtable. This is the last step in what seems to be a pretty democratic submission-review process: every month, all of the readers set aside stories they like, and before each issue comes out a Roundtable is held to decide which ones should be sent up to the editors. We drank wine and ate food from the restaurant downstairs and discussed stories, and I was reminded of how happy this kind of thing makes me.

Now that it's April (rabbit!) , I'm starting to get ready to go back to Vassar. It will be hard to leave a lot of things here (the apartment, Nora, SF avocados, my dresser with the weird knobs), but I think spending senior year at Vassar is the right choice, and I'm beginning to feel excited. Am also researching internships in Brooklyn--perhaps something in documentary film? I've realized that I need at least a little bit of city time to feel fueled, and a once-a-week dose of Brooklyn could be a nice thing.

For now, though, I am still here, and the city is at its loveliest. Although I am big on rain and fog, there's something about 70-degree days in the Mission that puts me in the best mood. Beach with friends this weekend is kinda all I wanna do.

one true thing

2009-04-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

Sends Nora: "This is what you are like in the morning before coffee--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofrSio_jZO0."

puzzles

2009-03-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Reading before bed is something I'd like to do but in reality don't really, mostly because it turns on the (over)thinking part of me that makes getting to sleep impossible. But for the past few nights I've been absorbed by Lorrie Moore's "Anagrams", a book admirable for both the inventiveness of its prose (" 'Are we healthy yet?' yelled Pat over the music, her face like sepia sunsets, her face the split apple face of an owl") and the poignancy of its observations:

"It was important to dizzy yourself with stars, he thought. Too often you forgot they were even there. He could stare at once star, one brilliant and fidgety star, so long that his whole insides seemed suddenly to rush out into the sky to meet it. As an adult he rarely had those moments of connection, though what ones he'd had recently seemed mostly to be with the children he taught. More and more he was becoming convinced that it was only through children that one could connect with anything anymore , that in this life it was only through children that one came home, became a home, that one was no longer a visitor. Gerard thought about the little deaf boy in his class, a boy named Barney, how just today Barney had said loudly in his garbled and unconsonated speech, 'Please, Mr. Maines, when you stand behind, can you stomp your feet louder?' The only way Barney could hear the music and the beat was through the vibrations in the floor."

After reading, when I am lying in bed, unable to sleep, this is what I think about: whether certain actions (reading, writing, imagining) unite more than they separate; what a split apple face looks like; how it is possible for something (art) to be at once so connective and so isolating.

lean back

2009-03-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

It wasn't until I turned fifteen that deciding what to do on weekend nights became a source of concern. I was both a late bloomer and a creature of comfort, a combination that usually led me to obliviously dweeby nights at home (scrabble, cookie-baking with Mom, old movies from the Blockbuster at Geary and 16th). During my sophomore year of high school, the gap between my experience (one beer, which I hated) and everyone else's had become unavoidable.

It might have made more sense to take baby steps toward weekend socializing (a friend's house party, a Smirnoff ice in the park), but instead I went to Blue Cube. The club was grimy on the inside and situated in the worst part of town, but it was owned by the father of a few boys from Saint Ignatious, who rented it out every month for overpriced Teen Nights. After ponying up our ten dollars and submitting to a full-body pat-down, my friends and I entered the bottom level through a blue velvet curtain. This area was best compared to a 50 cent video, circa 2003 (i.e., In Da Club, around the 3:10 mark.) The upper level showed more of the same, but it was sweatier and had an attached smoking area (fire escape). Downstairs was the Ladies' Room, in which ten to fifteen ladies could be found fanning themselves in various stages of undress. The Men's Room was a tiny stall next to the fire escape, which I knew only because I once accidentally walked into it while searching for Nora.

Blue Cube was not without its perks. A fry station by the door served quesadillas and $4 water bottles to tired dancers (me). The clubowner's middle son, who called himself Big Daddy Rocco Bovo, wove through the crowd making sure entrants were hydrated and aware of future Teen Nights. Occasionally an under-the-radar rapper would come to perform, and compliments, however insincere, were not in short supply.

By the time junior year rolled around, Blue Cube had been replaced by Dolores Park, and the $10 admission charge we'd all been paying was refunnelled into the few corner stores that would sell forties to high school kids. Blue Cube faded in memory to become a peculiar, unaccountable part of my coming-of-age, along with water bras and brown lip gloss and my sixth-grade desire to become a cheerleader. Judging by its Yelp page, Blue Cube is still up and running, but I have returned to nerdy pursuits. Nora is bringing me around to good beer, but it still can't top scrabble.

Blackmail material: en route to Blue Cube, 2003.

construction

2009-03-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm workin' on a new movie. This one will be the final film for my documentary class. It took ages for me to pick a topic, mostly because I am overly ambitious. I was eager to work with 1) Delancey Street, 2. the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, or 3. the Brown twins. As it turned out, they did not feel the same way. Instead, I am doing a project that focuses on failed connections and unusual methods of communication. Tomorrow I begin to shoot (!). I only hope that I sound more professional during interviews than I will probably feel.

Saw six landscapers hanging in harnesses from the UCSF medical center on Sutter and Divisadero today. Those who, like me, would choose to fly if granted a superpower might find this to be the perfect vocation.

Next Wednesday I start training to become a yoga teacher. This economy is not conducive to very many things, but it is the perfect time to take advantage of one's contortionist skills and generous spring break. If necessity is the mother of invention, it will be interesting to see what kinds of ideas and coping mechanisms the recession (depression?) yields. I am imagining crooked brainchildren and harebrained schemes, things before seen only in elaborate con movies and the novels of Mary Shelley.

Finally, in unimportant news, I cut my hair.

trekking

2009-03-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

One neat thing about eyesight is that it is trainable. While in Europe, I developed an obsession with clotheslines. I'd never noticed any here in San Francisco, but on the way to my internship on Friday, I started to look for them. Then: they were everywhere!

San Francisco is not spread-out--it is tiny and walkable and one neighborhood often changes into another within a few blocks, even a half block. An upside to this is that seemingly disparate elements can be found side-by-side. By Washington and Montgomery:

Spring break starts on Friday, which means that all sorts of school and work commitments have been crunched into the next four days. A bright spot will be Wednesday night, when Tobias Wolff is reading at California and Presidio. Must try not to stare moony-eyed from my folding chair.

on goodness

2009-03-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

March has come on the way most head colds do: expected, but still faintly surprising (and requiring more indoor time than initially predicted). Connotatively, in my mind march = spring, but this month has only brought stormy weather. Although it is a pain to carry a soggy umbrella on the 24 Divisadero, the weather still makes me feel delighted. The city looks just-bathed, and there are now many puddles of ideal splashing proportions (several inches deep, 4-by-6 foot diameter). My bed is pushed up against a window, and outside the window there is a pipe that makes the rain sound strangely metallic. As far as sleep-inducing white noise goes, it is pretty tough to beat.

After a few months of unemployment, I finally got a job as an Audio-Visual Technician (cue laughter?) This requires me to go around to different classrooms and stand in the back of the room while videotaping things like speech classes and presentations. I am completely ignored. Sometimes the teacher says hello, but sometimes not. I've never felt like more of a fly on the wall. This is the ideal job for me!

On my bus ride home from work the other day, I was surrounded by highschoolers--one girl and three boys. (Girl: "Everyone thinks I'm a good girl because I'm nice to people's parents. But like, I do E!") This got me thinking. Everyone thinks I'm a good girl, too, but probably because:

a) I have light hair

b) I often wear cardigans that have buttons, or

c) I did ballet.

This is okay; there are worse things to be. Yesterday, on the J Church, a large man wearing orange-tinted sunglasses and a tiny workout top came on with a boom box. (If you live in the city, you've probably seen him--he rides the 33, the 24, the 71 and the J while singing popular hip-hop songs with the tone and inflection of a foghorn.) First he sang Flo Rida to a girl in a long leather coat, but when she moved he sat next to me and started in on "Too Late to Apologise." After finishing, he asked if he could give me a name. I said that would be okay. He said, "BABY SUE!" The funny part is that his choice is kind of fitting.

ambition

2009-02-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

I will soon amass a card deck's worth of rejection letters! Right now I could have the hand of a Blackjack, Guts, or Four-Card Poker player. Am working up to Go Fish.

smoosh

2009-02-22T20:01:00.000-08:00

5:30 PM: Had the anticipatory feeling that comes with hunger. I took inventory of present cravings (carbohydrates, a novel salad dressing) and came up with a game plan. Trader Joe's was busy, but not oppressively so. At the sample station I ate one sixteenth of grilled cheese sandwich from a small paper cup. (Gouda cheese on potato bread--recommended!) Then found cilantro salad dressing and four firm avocados in the produce aisle. On the way to the cash register I picked up sauce and pizza dough with herbs. The dough comes as a blob in a plastic bag. During moments of leisure, such as the 24 bus ride home, it is extremely enjoyable to squish it--sort of like the grown-up equivalent of a water toy.

Water Wiggle

Pizza dough

7:30 PM: Pleased.

comfort food

2009-02-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

There are three elements common to road trips with my family:

a) the invention of new car games, e.g. the Question Game. (Mom: "If you could get a tattoo, what would it be?" Ty, without hesitation: "A chinese dragon.")

b) the telling of favorites stories, e.g. the days when Ty pronounced all y's as l's--lellow, lou, les-and the time, at age six, that I made Jordan eat an ant (still a source of guilt).

c) One hike, to which I reluctantly submit, then end up enjoying.

Saturday was Mom's birthday, so we all piled into the blue Prius and drove to Point Reyes, a cape north of San Francisco. The town was sleepy and the weather moody, just the way I like it. We stopped at a restaurant in search of hike advice, then headed toward a recommended trail. After parking, we realized that it was not so much a hike as a mosey, since the path was actually a cow pasture.

I chased the cows...

while Jordan chased frogs,

and Ty chased Molly.

He also climbed rocks,

and played soccer,

with mixed results.

Meanwhile, Mom and I found the meadow's weirdest plant.

When it started to rain, we drove into town. I had a strong feeling of nostalgia--not for something I had once known, as I'd never been there, but for a different kind of life. In that life, I would feel contented by simple things, such as drawn-out meals and the salt smell of sea water.

Mami!

Jordan and Mom bought cheese in a converted barn. I selected an olive oil dark chocolate.

In the afternoon we drove back to concrete and familiar pathways and domesticated animals, all the marks of this city. Sentimentality can be a corny thing, but that is what I felt.

snacks

2009-02-20T09:42:00.000-08:00

Nora works in a lingerie shop. To pass the time when things are slow, she orders free samples off a slightly sketchy website. A new item comes in the mail every few days, hermetically sealed and addressed to doppelganger Nora Bah. So far, a bag of Quaker Oats Chocolate Rice Cakes and a miniature floral perfume have arrived; she is still waiting on Simply Asia's Lemongrass Soup. (How exactly a soup sample can be packaged has us in great suspense.) Every day feels like Christmas! Maybe I will follow suit.

Right now, I am the messiest I've ever been. It's getting bad; even my little brother has noticed. (Ty, upon entering my room: "Saints preserve us!") Still, I've cleaned the top of my desk. The unblemished cream color of its underbelly is a powerful motivator for other forms of cleanliness. I am now thinking of vacuuming the rugs, cleaning the stovetop, deweeding the garden. This industrious mood lasts only so long as I am looking at the desktop.

Hmm, other things. Ali sent me a postcard from the Vassar Observatory. It makes me think of alienz.

I've also made headway in my search for SF's best granola. In ring one: Udi's Natural Artisan Granola (this is the cranberry kind; superior 'original' flavor not shown, as Shufat Market was out of it). In ring two: Nature's Path Organic Pomegranate Plus Granola (with Cherries). Final decision pending.

i hope to attain rubber band-like imaginative elasticity

2009-02-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

When I was little, I made up a game. The game was called "Somewhere in the world...", and its objective was to finish the sentence with the oddest or sweetest or most terrible thing I could imagine. The logic went that no matter how bizarre the activity, somewhere in the world, someone had to be doing it. Somewhere in the world, a curious person is doing a Google search about why flamingoes only stand on one leg. Somewhere in the world, an elderly man has just found and brought home what he thinks is his lost cat--except it is not his, only an impostor. Somewhere in the world, a mother is cooking the world's most awful chicken soup (literally, the world's most awful), but her sick son will eat it, because he does not want to hurt her feelings.

On buses and while walking and at bedtime, when one cannot sleep, this game provides hours of entertainment.

when things aren't going your way,

2009-02-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

find a new way of getting there. A secret passage is one example.

shoot

2009-02-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

For better or worse, one thing about me: I am prone to obsessions. This happens even, or perhaps especially, when an obsession is not warranted. In my third grade gymnastics phase, it was Olympics or bust, despite the fact that I couldn't get up on the balance beam without assistance and had recently dropped back down to Beginner after a trial week in the Intermediate class. Ditto my fixations on painting, soccer, pop music, snow globe construction, horseback riding, acting, etc. Some have lasted longer than others: ballet was a biggie, spanning my middle school through college years, and writing has always been there.

Last week I sat in on a film class. I'd thought I was going to documentary film (watching), but nope--this was (advanced) documentary film (making), and I had never turned on a camera. We watched clips from The Bridge, and an Austrian movie about food, and a great short film my teacher did about the world's largest shopping mall, and even then I could feel it coming on, the obsession. So I'm sticking with it--but sticking with it has meant three camera how-to sessions, four days of self-teaching on Final Cut Pro, one day of shooting along Clement and Balboa, a second day of shooting by my apartment after I botched the timecode on the first tape, many pounds of rented equipment, a handful of Sony DV tapes, the most finicky tripod in the world, and two very sore biceps.

But it's also meant that I'm able, for the first time, to do something I've always wanted to do: to step through whatever separates us from the people we don't know. I heard delivery horror stories from the guys at Pizza City and what Marrakech is like from a Moroccan cab driver. I got a list of good old movies and longer list of editing tips from the people at Poppa Opp's Videos. Antoine, who runs a liquor store by my Dad's house, showed me a sick Obama print his cousin made and his hand-drawn picture of the 49ers. And I was amazed to receive these stories, to be a part of a conversation mostly because of my camera. It seemed to me to be a bit like writing, except I didn't have to make anything up. I can't decide whether that feels like a weight lifted or a weight gained.

I just finished the first assignment, which was to compile ten 10-second clips. It took me five days. I feel as though I've just emerged from a severe fever (102 degrees +).

once again

2009-01-25T15:09:00.000-08:00

The beginning of a semester always feels a bit like:

Verbs like whirl, churn and woosh (made-up?) come to mind. Also, note disproportionately miniature hand.

outer space

2009-01-23T00:12:00.000-08:00

Here is one New Years Resolution: to adventure more outside of San Francisco. Berkeley, Oakland, etc. are all close by. And even though I'm a little obsessed with the 415, it's also nice to explore other parts of the bay. Plus, I have no good excuse not to--BART makes getting around incredibly easy.

Last weekend Nora and I took the 11:15 train to Berkeley to grab French food in the Gourmet Ghetto. (A short story I just read* describes Berkeley as being "full of nerds and dirty teenagers with their noses pierced like cow noses and also, the disabled." Still, let's give it the benefit of the doubt. Not that there's anything wrong with nerds, dirty teenagers or nose piercings. Or, the disabled. But anyway.)

We started to walk along Shattuck.

There we saw some neat things, like space catz.

The restaurant we went to prints their menu on disposable tablecloths. Creative! For dessert, Nora got the sorbet duo. I made her share some of the chocolate scoop.

When it got dusky out, we rode the Richmond train back to Mission. Came home to eat a bowl of Spaghetti-O's in record time, then headed out to barbecue in Zack's backyard.

* Aforementioned story is "If You Can Hear Me Thinking" by Kiara Brinkman, which I found in the free books shelf at my internship. It was published by One Story, a literary journal that features, as the title suggests, only one story per issue. Each installment is about the size of a slice of store-bought bread. While this format can feel a bit anemic in comparison with fatter, glossier journals, there's also something tender about it. You just have to learn to be satisfied with slightly smaller portions.

work daze

2009-01-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

The beginning of my internship has coincided with a miniature heat wave--70 degrees in (a San Francisco) January! In a nineteenth century novel or a Shakespeare play, this would have some sort of metaphorical significance, but here it only means that my daily walks to the North Beach post office are a bit more laborious. Made six sticky trips to various mailboxes in the area while shipping a few hundred international subscriptions yesterday. (Man in hard hat walking past me: "Girl, you need a truck!")

Still, I'm loving it. Working for a literary magazine is just what I'd hoped to be doing this year, and right now, being able to pour myself into this work is a good distraction. I'm fascinated by all parts of the process, from the littler tasks (addressing the new issue to fans in Azerbaijan) to the big ones (reading through some of the 1,000 submissions the journal receives monthly.) The editors have been wonderful to me; so far, it seems to be a good fit.

On the third floor, I have an office of sorts, an octagonal room with two desks and a spinning chair and many crates full of submitted stories. Usually I'm spread out on the floor, digging through a box or two of manila envelopes. The internship is unpaid, but there are lots of perks: focaccia and brownies in reception, a room of free books, and the occasional celeb sighting, as the magazine is connected to a film company.

The first few weeks of this year have been very surreal. I've fallen behind on many domestic duties, such as general straightening-up and grocery shopping. In fridge:

1) condiments

2) Nora's Tecates

3) one half burrito

At least its exterior looks presentable...

pounding the pavement

2009-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

I'm going through some tough stuff right now, so I decided to take a long walk to clear my head. A very long walk. A sixty block long walk, to be exact. I started at Haight and Divisadero.

Then I continued down Divis toward California.

There I saw houses like an ice cream trio: blueberry, lemon, orange sherbet.

As I turned onto Geary, a plane flew by overhead. Its trail divided the sky in two.

When I reached Masonic, I took a detour. Trader Joe's is my favorite place to spend money. They may have rejected my (job-hungry) advances, but I am still a loyal customer.

Clement street always feels like home...

... even if I do not always understand its storefronts.

When I was little, ASIA-STAR FANTASY INC. (their caps, not mine) was a source of endless intrigue. The store contained a bounty of brightly-packaged Chinese items. Due to the language barrier, I had no idea what they were, which only increased my fascination.

Many of the shops in this area seem to specialize in inexpensive but relatively useless items. Need a miniature plastic watering can or a large fake shrub? They've got you covered.

The glass walls of the second-floor House of Banquet restaurant create an interesting fishbowl effect.

One reason Clement street rox: 99-cent avocados! Bell Market could learn a thing or two from Lien Hing Supermarket Number Three.

Here is Green Apple, my favorite San Francisco bookstore. This is the music and movie portion of the store; I tried to get a shot of the book part but was intercepted by a homeless man, who began to accompany me down the street while muttering compliments under his breath. While flattered, I thought it best to move on.

My brother's favorite stop along Clement, which features a large variety of inexpensive amphibians and the repellant smell of fish food. Only die-hards can stick it out inside for more than a few minutes.

I've always found the greenery that runs along Park Presidio a little eerie. It looks to be a place where dangerous, medieval-sounding things might happen, such as ransacking and pillaging.

By the time I reached 20th avenue, the sky had become dark and my camera was being ornery. Even the flash wasn't working, so I put it back in my bag and walked home in the quiet.

going places

2009-01-09T11:48:00.001-08:00

One thing I hate is taking a plane ride. But one thing I love is traveling by car. I've always been this way--Mom says that when I was a baby, starting up the old Honda and driving somewhere was the only way to get me to sleep. This is basically still the case. I feel most calm and inward when I'm observing things unnoticed, and a moving car provides the perfect habitat for this kind of predilection.

Around you are all the things you really need. (For me: good company, music, something to write with, and crappy coffee sweetened with those flavored creamers they sell at gas stations.) Outside you is a catalogue of everything else. Roadside oddities, disagreeable weather, small-town businesses, fast food conglomerates, farm animals--it's all there to be perused and imaginatively expounded upon, while you are safely sandwiched between upright seat and glass window. The ideal car ride length falls in between two and four hours. Any less and your thought process is brought to a halt right after it kicks up; any more and your legs begin to cramp.

On the way up to Tahoe, I saw more cows than I could count, a mini golf course snowed over, and lots of creatively-situated houses (tucked into a nook on a mountain, extending off the side of a barn). I also made everyone play the license plate game, in which you have to think of a word that has the same letters, in order, as a specific plate. PZE: Puzzle. CNQ: Conquer!

Job hunt update: had an interview with Trader Joe's. Did not get hired. Things are not going well.

predictions

2009-01-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

The other night, at two in the morning:

Me: Did you hear that there's supposed to be an apocalypse in 2012?

Nora: Yeah. That's some Y2K bullshit. Here's what's really gonna happen. In six hundred years, the world will be over. Then everyone will file off to a space station on the moon the size of California.

Me: Oh, really?

Nora: Good night.

new things

2009-01-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

A new year! Cray-zee. I don't really make New Year's Resolutions--feels somehow like setting yourself up to be let down. Instead, here are some things that are new. That sounds much less intimidating.

Above the dish rack:

On Elana's stove:

In Nora's room: Helen, back from school!

In front of (slash inside) the coffee maker: a mug and grounds from my favorite coffee shop in Brooklyn, by way of Beth.

Wedged awkwardly in trash cans: last year's (!) Christmas trees. I think the days after Christmas are the most depressing ones in the whole year. Ghazy says I'm overreacting.

Not new, but newly discovered: that the 43 Masonic dips into the forest of the Presidio on the way to Haight. Neat! Also...

...noticed the view from 20th and Church. Glittery.

Finally, in tummy: one homemade pizza.

To Tahoe this weekend with G. Let's go: SNOW!

learning languages

2008-12-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

A friend's recent post on libraries got me thinking about my own early book-borrowing trips. Our neighborhood branch was not the most glossy or glamorous; in fact, it was probably the least of them, with its unwashed, yellowish facade and cavernous interior. Surrounding the library on all sides was a jungle of a garden, full of tangled weeds and unkempt trees. Usually, a homeless man or two could be seen adrift in the dry grass. But we were there for the books. My brother and I trailed Mom through the peeling doorway before dispersing to our aisles of interest, armed with the cloth tote bags she'd passed out in the car. We filled them all the way up, three or four bags each--you didn't want to have the two of us ahead of you in the checkout line. I remember the feeling of opportunity, of overwhelming bounty, that hit when we returned to the car. Deciding what to open first was never easy, and sometimes I had to read the first page of each of the top contenders to make up my mind. Our enthusiasm for the library was fervent, but unsurprising: for kids who'd grown up without television, books were as good as it got when it came to entertainment.

Plus, the library had other perks. In the northeast corner of the front yard sat a rickety, tumbledown play set my brother and I were crazy about. Its offerings included a splintering balance beam and a tremulous little slide, but to us the most extravagant of them all was a two-person tire swing, held up by long rusting chains. From June until August, the library had a Summer Reading program, in which prizes were awarded for the number of books one read. These were modest things--library pencil sets, multicolored erasers--but the pursuit of them was thrilling. I was never a sporty kid, and I avoided trips to the local park, mostly for fear of embarrassment. I'd tried and failed twice at sleepaway camp, unaccustomed to the peculiar traditions and flash friendships. During these summers I felt most comfortable spread out on the floor, paperbacks all around, taking breaks to get lost in the neighborhood's alleyways or work on something of my own.

Later, I graduated to library's second floor. Gone were the miniature tables and fraying area rugs of the children's section; on the top level there were computers and adults and shelves that reached higher than my head. One year I became obsessed with the language section and took out teach-yourself books on Ukrainian, Japanese and Yiddish. None of it stuck, but I enjoyed the experiment. Somewhere between Yiddish and Nabokov, I started to buy books, as I'd begun to annotate in the margins. Now I write so many notes that getting my own copy is an unfortunate necessity. It's also nice to curate my own little library, although it is growing very slowly, as said annotation habit makes me go through books at a snail's pace. Still, a big part of me misses the days when nestling into a corner of the Richmond branch was so satisfying.

The other night, I went home to my Mom's house for dinner. A bunch of family friends were over, fellow bookish people, and the conversation turned to Tobias Wolff. I'd read his much-anthologized short story "Bullet in the Brain" for a writing class and was floored; now I'm about halfway through the spectacular Old School. To me, the novel is just about linguistically flawless, but what he's writing about is equally captivating. Here the narrator describes the allure of the English professor (I hope my reprinting of it isn't illegal...):

"The other English masters carried themselves as if they too were intimates of Hemingway, and also of Shakespeare and Hawthorne and Donne. These men seemed to us a kind of chivalric order. Even boys without bookish hopes aped their careless style of dress and the ritual swordplay of their speech. And at the headmaster's monthly teas I was struck by the way other masters floated at the fringe of their circle, as if warming themselves at a fire.

How did they command such deference--English teachers? Compared to the men who taught physics or biology, what did they really know of the world? It seemed to me, and not only to me, that they knew exactly what was most worth knowing. Unlike our math and science teachers, who modestly stuck to their subjects, they tended to be polymaths. Adept as they were at dissection, they would never leave a poem or a novel strewn about in pieces like some butchered frog reeking of formaldehyde. They'd stitch it back together with history and psychology, philosophy, religion, and even, on occasion, science. Without pandering to your presumed desire to identify with the hero of a story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequence for you, too."

all i want for christmas is

2008-12-21T22:30:00.000-08:00

you:

The good news: I got the internship! The bad news: I'm outta a (paying) job. The store where I worked just closed. Two steps forward in the direction of North Beach, many paychecks back. Need an assistant? A fast typist? A hand-knit scarf, for a reasonable price? I'm your girl.

Busing through the city, I've seen a lot of decorated houses, but nothing quite compares to the one I came across last year in Poughkeepsie. It seems as though it would be difficult to make it to the doorway.

Made dinner with Mart and Elana on Tuesday. Yum! We battled our way to Safeway in the cold to buy ingredients. The thermometer in my house says it is 40 degrees out, but I think it's lying. First we had salad. Martina brought peppermint bark for dessert. In-between pasta course not pictured:

Shaun had a Christmas party last night. Lotsa people, lotsa strobe lights. The combination of sugar cookies and a keg felt somehow appropriate.

paint

2008-12-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

Now that it is WINTER BREAK (hallelujah, mazel tov, etc.), I have started to make a mental list of productive things to accomplish so that my time off isn't just spent watching Jon and Kate and eating gingerbread cookies. So far, I have 1) a stack of book recommendations, 2) seeing friends who will be returning to SF from all parts of the world, and 3) spending time with my little brothers, perhaps during tailor-made field trips: the Academy of Sciences for Jordan, a Sinatra movie viewing for Ty. Also competing for a spot on this list are Things I Wish I Enjoyed But Just Don't, which include tidying up the apartment and getting through Dickens novels.

All I wanna do, though, is read. I am hun-gry for raw sentences, dialogue that reads like sound. Chomp. Got time? This is wonderful. You have to get the full issue to finish it, but I promise it's worth it. (And if you are broke like me, reading it curled up in the back aisle of a bookstore is both satisfying and financially prudent.)

Today I had an internship interview in North Beach, which is the San Francisco neighborhood I am least familiar with. I got there an hour early, so I explored the area to pass the time (and calm my nerves). North Beach opens up out of Chinatown without warning, and suddenly the streets are all paint and wide boulevards and art deco shapes. And more Italian restaurants than you can count. And strip clubs. It is an odd mixture of elements, but I was really into it.

Potential place of employment:

Got Mayan food for dinner with Dad at Mi Lindo Yucatan. When I came back to the apartment, it was freezing. On cold nights in December, there is nothing more enjoyable than

1) planting your body right in front of a heater,

2) slowly rotating, and

3) getting warm.

this morning

2008-12-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

I had my headphones in as the 24 Divisadero wheeled from Castro and 16th to Duboce, so what I noticed first was not the sound coming from the back of the bus but the way that every head had turned toward it. I put away my iPod; the bus slowed to a halt.
   "She won't wake," yelled a voice, gravelly and uneven. "She won't wake up."
   In one of the rear-facing seats a woman had slumped toward the window. She wore a brown sweater and house slippers. I couldn't see her face--only her dark hair, which had been wound into a bun, and the small rectangle of cinnamon-colored skin underneath.
   "I said she won't wake up," repeated the speaker, a middle-aged black woman in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. She placed her hands on either side of the unconscious woman's head, rolling it back and forth. She let go; the head bounced and hung heavy, unsupported as a stuffed animal's.
   "Stop the bus!" someone shouted.
   "Don't touch her!" cried another.
   "Is she breathing?" asked a white woman with blonde hair and braces, standing.
     "There's a pulse," said the first woman, "but she won't wake."

   "I volunteer at a halfway house," the blonde woman said, clattering down the aisle in a pair of high heels. "I see this type of thing all the time. I'm calling an ambulance."
   The woman in the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt pressed her hands to the unconscious woman's cheeks.
   "Wake up," she ordered. "Come on, now. Wake up."
   The blonde woman wedged a cell phone between her ear and shoulder, squinting down at the two seated figures.
   "Yeah, I'd like an ambulance to Castro and Sixteenth. It's an emergency. A woman is unconscious--black, mid 40s--"
   "Fifty-two," said the first woman.
   "Fifty-two, heavy-set, unresponsive--"
   "Has anybody got water?"
   A scruffy-bearded man in a Patagonia sweatshirt offered an aluminum bottle. It read, in block capitals, GO GREEN!
   The first woman shook water out onto her palms, then slapped lightly at the motionless woman's cheeks.
   "Don't do that," said the lady with braces.
   "Shut up," said the other.
   "I'm on the phone with the ambulance. They said not to do that. You should really stop it."

   Water droplets rolled slowly down to the unconscious woman's chin, where they grouped and clung like icicles before puddling on her pants.
   "I told you don't do that," repeated the blonde woman. She covered her mouth and whispered into the phone. "Listen, I can't stop her. Maybe you should send the police over here, too."
   "You sure can't. And you can tell them that, too. Wake up, sister."
   Outside a knot of clouds had bruised purple. The rest of us sat hushed and reverent, staring at the trio in back like people in prayer.
   An ambulance, a fire engine and a cop car careened around the corner, shrieking violently. They skidded to a stop in an open trapezoid.
   "Everybody off the bus!" shouted the driver.
   We all filed out onto the street. The blonde woman hung up her cell phone and left the bus next, picking her way carefully down the ridged stairs. The paramedics jumped out of assorted front and back doors, then ran up the steps with duffel bags full of resuscitation equipment. Only the two black women remained, their turned backs silhouetted against the window.
   We stood on the sidewalk, scattered like stars. I tried, unsuccessfully, not to watch the paramedics fit an oxygen mask's elastic band around the soft skin of the woman's neck.
   Beside me an elderly lady snorted. She wore a fur coat and held a small clasped purse.
   "When I was a girl," she said, "we were taught to ignore the homeless. If you saw someone passed out on the street, you were told to kick them in the boot. Just kick them to see if they'd stir."
   Her voice carried loud through the silence. A white man with a briefcase and large, rabbity teeth walked up to the bus and pressed his nose against the window. Inside the slumped woman's head bobbed unsteadily to and fro, then fluttered, bird-like, to an upright position.
   "She's awake," someone called.
   From the sidewalk the scene was a pantomine. A swarm of paramedic hands grabbed hold of her shoulders, her arms. The woman in the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt was pushed out of the aisle as they pulled the patient to her feet, then walked her to the door.
   We all watched as she came out, controlled like a marionette by the arms of others. I don't remember the faces of the paramedics, or the sounds made by the passengers outside, or the way the woman moved. Only this: her eyes, stunned open, the whites round as twin moons. She didn't blink once. The lids seemed peeled back and pinned, like staked butterfly wings.
   She stared at us all with those eyes, even as they carried her up into the back of the ambulance. The driver reopened the doors of the bus. We filed back in, tentatively at first, and sat down in the same seats we had before. Everyone carefully avoided the back seat by the window. The blonde woman with braces sat down next to the old lady in the fur coat, chatting easily. The woman in the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt had not left the bus. She walked back and forth through the aisle, then sat down next to the driver, as we all continued on to Duboce.

when blue...

2008-12-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

Recipe for self-comfort:

1. Cut fruit into bits; put in small bowl. (Types of fruit you have to peel, like mangoes or persimmons, are particularly therapeutic--but any kind will do.)

2. Sprinkle with cinnamon. (Or sugar. Or not.)

3. Climb into bed with something to read.

4. Eat slowly.

lights

2008-12-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to see my Mom in a play. It was an Albee production, put on by an experimental theater in a converted apartment building. Leah Garchik mentioned the show in her Chronicle column a few days ago, and the building was almost too small for the crowd that showed up. It was so surreal to be inhabiting the same space as the actors; I once caught myself holding my breath. One wrong move or too-loud laugh, I thought, and I'll throw Mom off! I didn't have to worry, of course. Afterward, I walked down Broderick and then took Geary to Divisadero, listening to Frank Sinatra and counting constellations of Christmas lights. This is the very best time to live in the city, I think; but then again, as a holiday person, I'm biased. Tomorrow we'll go to the Three Bees to get a tree. I will be on the hunt for a tiny one to bring back to the apartment. The challenge: to find something under two feet and ten dollars! Mission impossible?

A package from Ali came in the mail yesterday. I tore into it: a Florentine pouch, petite notes, a card with Pantalone! See if you can spot it in the storm of junk that is my desktop.

Of concern: I am becoming disturbingly clumsy. It all started with the oatmeal incident, when I overturned Nora's Quaker's bin onto the floor. Since then, I've spilled a jug of olive oil, broken two teacups, and fallen in the middle of the street while J-walking. More than once. This morning I knocked my coffee pot onto the floor; it shattered. Something must be done. Maybe this is a sign that I should ballet again.

The past few days have been crazy--I always seem to forget how overwhelming finals week is until I'm in the thick of it. Papers and tests I can handle, but applying to internships is a whole new animal. There is a feeling of total, unavoidable responsibility. It is impossible to say: Well, I didn't really care. I met this morning with the editor of a literary journal, which helped to ease my anxiety. I left with stacks of books, mounds of advice and the warm, full feeling that comes with genuine conversation. And I felt amazed at the kindness in people, the way that can feel from a stranger. We should all give books away. And meet to talk about things--no emailing required. They're free, these words, in all of their forms. We forget sometimes: gratis! What better reason to write?

hello, goodbye

2008-12-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

I have found the perfect winter coat. It is turtlish* in both form and function, providing optimum insulation and the potential for facial privacy.

* Turtlish is probably not an actual word. However, it is listed on urbandictionary.com as meaning "Like a turtle; having to do with a turtle." (Accompanying sample sentences: "That turtle is so turtlish. You are so turtlish.")

oranges

2008-11-27T22:50:00.000-08:00

I went to my Dad's house for Thanksgiving. Slept over Wednesday night on the fold-out futon under a tiger blanket, then woke up the next morning to coffee and clouds and the smell of things cooking. Dad is big into Thanksgiving: we have about twenty people over and spend the day dicing, basting, peeling, mashing, chopping, boiling, and rest-taking in accordance with his typed schedule.

Ellen made pumpkin and cranberry bread. Dad made mimosas. I made "orange cups", a strange mixture of sweet potatoes, juice and unscientifically measured spices in empty orange rinds.

Gramps with mimosa.

The cooking continued until about five in the afternoon. There was an overall smell of citrus. Every few hours, I snuck down to the den to read Robert Bolano in a big chair.

Oh--I also arranged the (water) bar. This required the skillful cutting of orange and lemon slices, the arrangement of wine glasses, etc., etc.

Ellen did the table.

Around four-thirty, guests arrived!

I returned to my apartment with two slices of pecan pie and a desire for a long nap.

how small i am

2008-11-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

I want to go to an observatory, to the Planetarium. I want to see the face of the moon and Neptune up close and all of Saturn's rings. And the dark bellies of black holes. And stars. There are a lot of things I can imagine, but I want to see the things I can't.

Outer space is a good antidote for excessive introspection. Sometimes, it is nice to stare up into a thing infinitely older and vaster and deeper than you. When I was little I made my Dad quiz me on space facts: the order of the planets, which moons belonged where, that sort of thing. I have forgotten most of it now, but looking at photos of these places still gives me a feeling of vertigo.

wonderland

2008-11-18T23:56:00.000-08:00

Here are some things I wish I was good at:

- Sudoku

- Running

- Not getting ahead of myself

- Editing my own work

(The first two are hopeless and the third is the most difficult, so I am going to start by tackling the last one.)

This winter weather makes me want to write lists. Also to:

- Knit scarves

- Read stories

- Walk, bundled up in sweaters and mittens and tall socks and two layers of jackets and a hat, as far as I can.

It also makes me think of my winters at Vassar. I remember feeling surprised when I realized that the snow lasted for over four months. And running from my dorm to the dining hall to the library in leggings and a sweater because I didn't like to lug a puffy winter coat around with me after I got indoors. Once Ali carried me across a melted snow puddle because I'd refused to wear boots and had already soaked my sneakers straight through.

And then, of course, comes the domino effect: memories triggered by memories triggered by memories. I've been thinking a lot about Vassar this week. These photos are from the Alice in Wonderland shoot. We were so cold--it must have been about twenty degrees out. In the first picture, on the right: here comes Brian with a blanket. The wine jug is as big as I am!

This one reads like an I Spy of my freshman year. Town House crackers. Ty's belt. Sophie's printer. Ballet posters. Embarrassing use of Photo Booth to kill time...

Today, on the bus, I saw this. A good thing to remember:

i dream of:

2008-11-13T12:45:00.000-08:00

Now that I've been cooking my own meals for a little while (read: making 5-minute ravioli with Prego sauce and calling in for Ebisu takeout), I've become obsessed with the idea of finding the perfect X. In the past, this X variable has been supermarket pesto, lettuce leaf, and pasta brand. (My conclusions, respectively: Classico, butter, Eduardo's Egg Noodles.)

Anyway--right now I am on the hunt for both the ideal avocado and San Francisco's best granola. Bell Market is winning on the avocado front. This is a big upset. I had expected Trader Joe's to have the best everything, but it seems they only have the best of everything except avocados. On the other hand, Bell, the ridiculously overpriced and disproportionately shitty grocery store around the corner from my house, has surprisingly excellent avocados: creamy, unbruised and the same pale color as the inside of a lime. Things are not so clear, however, when it comes to the granola. Cascadian Farms: too sweet. Bear Naked: too stale. Kashi: disqualified due to lack of oat clusters. ("Fiber twigs" are not the same thing.)

I see: my C mug! Do you c it?

Last night I had a dream in which all of my professors were taking part in a debate. They were sitting in a room that looked like something out of one of the Oxford University scenes in "The Golden Compass" (the movie, not the book). I'm talking mahogany furniture, flames crackling in a gilded fireplace and outfits too decadent to be truly collegiate. So: there we were, though I was in more of a fly-on-the-wall position. I remember feeling as though I was doing something very wrong, listening to the way all of their voices changed when they were talking to each other instead of their students.

That might have been a waste of a paragraph. Isn't it funny how nobody cares about anyone else's dreams? We talked about this in my Narrative class last year, and I think it's true. Don't you ever just want to skip over a dream passage when it comes up in a novel? Or when a friend is telling you about a dream they had the night before--do you really pay attention? I used to be obsessed with my dreams. I had this big glossy book that talked about all of the Dream Symbols and what they meant. Now, usually, I am either amused or weirded out by the things I dream. I am too sleepy to figure out what that says about me.

Oh! Went to a reading the other night at the Bazaar Cafe. The cafe itself seemed too fitting for such an occasion to be real: mismatched wooden chairs, windy strung lights, found art, mugs the size of my head. As usual, I was all wound up beforehand, but really enjoyed it when I began to read. It made me want to look into other open mic/spoken word nights in the city, though I guess those kinds of things can be pretty hit or miss.

Last night I saw my first lavender sunset:

ack

2008-11-09T16:10:00.001-08:00

Wanted: a cure--or at least a bridle--for the helplessly overactive imagination.

rabbit's foot

2008-11-06T23:53:00.000-08:00

I am being very bad right now: doing everything but reading "The Plague" (looking through The Believer online, thinking about things I'd like to make, writing a blog) when I really should be reading "The Plague", as I have to write an essay on it tomorrow. But. Anyway.

This November has been alarmingly lucky so far. It's been so lucky that I am worrying about some kind of reverse effect, an allergic reaction, an unlucky byproduct of all this charm and serendipity and goodness. I don't really know how to describe the way that I feel about the Obama win without veering into cliches (euphoric, relieved, hopeful), so I can only say that I am all of those things. I was a nervous wreck all Tuesday, and at night I listened to the returns with my 6-to-9 P.M. poetry class from the top of Lone Mountain. There was no T.V., so instead, we streamed NPR from a laptop and refreshed CNN like crazy. I made my Dad send me constant updates with the electoral count and called them out between Ginsberg and Whitman and Langston Hughes's "I, Too, Sing America", which took on a new poignancy and squeezed something in my chest.

It felt secret, somehow, nestled up there on the mountaintop, surrounded by trees and the blue-black of the sky. When McCain conceded, we could hear shouts from the street below. There is something different in the air now--I know that sounds silly, but I really can feel it. On my way home, everybody on the bus began to talk together. I mean that every single person joined in. I'd never seen anything like it. Patriotism has always felt like a dirty word, and it is fresh and wonderful to think that it doesn't feel so bad to be an American now. It feels kind of good.

Another lucky bit of November: my birthday! I guess that is not lucky so much as it is unavoidable, but it made me feel lucky. It was as though I had everything I could ever need. I made everyone play Scrabble. I lost. This was okay.

To go backwards in time, Halloween was last weekend. Nora and I were Dead. Since we both own mostly black clothing, it was a very economical choice.

Nora was down with this:

The most recent lucky thing that has happened is that a great little San Francisco boutique has placed an order for the strange stationary I make. I was really surprised--I started doing it only because I can't sit still while watching TV and wanted something to do during "Jon and Kate Plus 8" episodes with Nora. Now I am kind of obsessed. The cards will be at Japonica on 19th and California. They have all sorts of good things, and they're currently expanding--after Thanksgiving the store will have an attached coffee shop.

Another good thing about November (see? they just keep on coming) is that it is finally beginning to rain. I love the way the city looks after a bath: so fresh and so clean. I went on a walk to appreciate it.

Oh, how I would like to live in this house.

just saying

2008-10-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

I don't get phone service in my apartment, so last night I bundled up in all the winter clothes I own and left to talk to a friend. I went down Church until it ended, past the tea room and the Thai restaurant and long rows of lit trees. When I came back I turned the heat on in my room and climbed into bed in warm socks. There are few things more comforting.

a question

2008-10-26T22:11:00.000-07:00

While I was waiting for the J this afternoon, a man came up to me on the platform, grinning widely. It was such a big smile--jaw hung open, all teeth showing--that at first I thought he must have mistaken me for someone else. This was not the case. As a side note, the man was wearing his hair in two braids and shoes that had individual toes.* I turned away; he came around to face me.

Him: Hi. Bet you're going to Dolores Park.

Me: No.

Him: That's a shame. Bet you're going to a barbecue.

Me: No.

Him: That's a shame too.

I said, "Ha," and took out my phone, then replayed a voicemail from a telemarketer until he started talking with the elderly woman standing next to me. (Her: "What a hoot you are! A real original. Look at those shoes." Him: "I think I'm one of the last originals there are. You like 'em?")

This got me thinking. We've been talking a lot about the city-vs.-country debate in one of my classes. (Are city dwellers alienated from each other and disconnected from the natural world? Is it possible to derive coherent meaning from a fragmentary urban landscape?) And while I've always felt most at home in urban areas, I couldn't help but recognize that my reaction to the grinner on the J fit in well with the detached-city-person archetype.

True: he could have been a creeper. I'm pretty sure he was at least overfriendly. But as I watched him chat easily with the older woman while the J trundled down to 18th street, I wondered if I had been wrong--if he was really only an "original". In cities, we are conditioned to be cautious, self-contained, even aloof--but is it possible to be too independent? Too estranged from the all-around strangeness? "Alienated" is a strong word, but it brings up an interesting question: have we become aliens to each other? I'm all for quirkiness, for odd things, for San Francisco's peculiar eccentricities. But at what point do the things outside us become invasive? And at what point are we too quick to shut them out?

* The toe shoes. So: friendly oddball or potential crazy? Maybe these are another piece of the puzzle.

oh monday

2008-10-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

Today is a NO-SCHOOL-UNTIL-SIX-P.M. day! My first class was cancelled. It was the best surprise--the West Coast equivalent of a Snow Day. Having an unexpectedly free afternoon makes me feel like:

On Saturday, the Red Bull Soapbox race came to Dolores Park. An estimated 60,000 people showed up--!! I feared for the next day's clean-up crew, but the park looked surprisingly clean when I passed it yesterday on the J. More grass than beer bottles visible--a good sign.

The soapbox contenders included a Rubik's cube, a pink donut, and a baseball that promptly tipped over when it hit the runway. Uh oh. This made me think about what kind of a soapbox car I would make if I was mechanically-minded. Ideas include:

- A hammerhead shark (the head is the wheel).
- An SF Victorian--a double decker? Is that possible?
- A marshmallow car: crash insulation, eat while you go.

Too bad I am not very good at both construction and driving.

That night Nora and I made risotto from scratch. Secret ingredients: olive tapenade and orange zest. I accidentally overturned an extra large box of raw oatmeal just as we were about to sit down and eat. Picture snowy mounds of oats on the floor, the chairs, the table. Nora said the kitchen looked like a barn. The whole thing was very surreal.

Later:

miam

2008-10-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Nora and I enjoy going out to a romantic meal from time to time. Our philosophies differ when it comes to restaurant selection: Nora prefers to Google, Yelp, Menupage and map potential spots while I am more into the let's-take-a-walk-and-see-what-we-find approach. When it is time to choose, though, we are almost always in agreement. Ideal locations usually have at least three of the following elements: good lighting, ethnic food, assorted object mishmash decor, an address that is within walking distance. Esperpento had all four, and we were really feeling it.

The restaurant itself is a tapas bar on Valencia and 22nd. It is the kind of place that looks unassuming from the outside but seems to unfold when you step through the door. Who knew it had two levels? Or walls studded with beautifully odd things (old clocks, painted plates, Japanese fans)? Or a bar with the best Sangria in town? Well, we knew all of this, but only because we'd Yelped beforehand. Still, it is always nice to find something that lives up to expectations.

We walked down 24th street to get there: Sanchez, Church, Guerrero, all the little alleyways in between. My poetry class last night focused on San Francisco. It made me fall in love all over again. We read an incredible article about the way that the gentrification of Victorian neighborhoods (areas of Pac Heights, the Castro) was brought about by the migration of gay men in the 60s and 70s. There is so much to learn about the history of this place.

Met up with Nick and Will on 18th and hopped the 22 to Geary and Divis. Will's friend's band was playing. It was something like funk. Mm-good. I made Nora dance.

By the time we got back, the city was all fog and night shapes. I took off my boots and climbed into bed, listening to the sound of the J train pass by. The hum of the MUNI: that is my favorite after-midnight noise. If I were to translate it, it would be saying, "Hey, you. I am still running, even when you're not." This is a comforting thought.

what is in the air? is it a white balloon?

2008-10-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

I am feeling this urge to create something. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't have to be very impressive--it could be a paper chain, or a pasta dish, or one line of a poem that will never be continued. I wrote letters to friends yesterday, and there is something therapeutic in physically writing--in forming the letters yourself on the page instead of pushing a computer key. It's as though there is a different kind of relationship to the thing you're making: it is more personal, more tactile, like painting the walls of a house yourself as opposed to having someone else do it. It feels more like a product of you than an alien thing. Is that horribly self-indulgent?

Nora was also in an artistic mood.

There were lots of San Francisco things going on this weekend: a Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park, the Castro street fair. I meant to go to one or both of them but wound up having a sleepy, low-key weekend instead. My dad, however, made it to the park to see Asleep at the Wheel and Jerry Jeff Walker. He is much cooler than I am.

Here are some things I can see from here:

Little Otsu's 2008 Endangered Species of California wall calendar; my birthday is next to the Sierra Nevada Red Fox. Can you find him?

And, if I turn around--

Had dinner with family last night--that is always a good feeling. Going home after a long time away is kind of like taking a warm bath: comforting, cozy, over too soon. Seemed so strange and so normal. I am always amazed by how quickly we adjust.

setting down roots

2008-09-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

I have good news: it has taken them nearly a month, but all of the plants are finally sprouting. No flowers yet, but our slowpokes are doing just fine--leafy and lime-green and loving this Indian summer. The little guy in the middle will be herbs; to his right is the Candy Stripe, which prefers neglect and does not like to be watered. Loner.

I am forgetting the name of this one right now--it is something complicated and wordy that begins with a B, though I do remember that it will come up blue and very tall.

The garden was deweeded a few weeks ago, so Nora planted the snap peas I bought a while ago in a patch in the back. She put bricks around the seeds so as to delineate the growing area.

The turn of a season always feels significant, more concentrated, but to me there is something particularly weighty about the transition to autumn. San Francisco doesn't have the painterly reddish-gold landscapes of the East Coast--that is one thing I miss about Vassar, the way you could chart the evolution of a season in the colors of its trees. Here, it sneaks up on you. The leaves on the ground become crunchier; afternoon buses are filled with twelve-year-olds with backpacks and Lisa Frank folders; the sun begins to fall at six-thirty instead of seven or eight. I imagine that there is an overall smell of Earth in the air--soil, pine, grass--though that is probably just wishful thinking. I've never been a summer kind of kid and have always felt most comfortable in fall and winter. I like burrowing in with warm jackets and blankets and hot drinks--there is something so cozy about these months. I can't wait for it to start raining. Sun is nice in the summertime, but I'm more into stormy weather.

The downside to all of this is how far-flung a lot of my friends are. Most of them are spending their junior year in London or Paris or wherever else, so we have to plan updates weeks in advance. I talked to Dana on iChat yesterday. I used to get freaked out by how voyeuristic iChat seemed, but now I'm hooked. I got to see her little French bedroom and everything. I am going to send a letter off to Ali's London apartment today. I also miss this one:

Martina and I have been going to lots of yoga classes in the meantime. We've been taking this amazing Thursday class that always leaves me feeling both unknotted and sore everywhere. Years of ballet has left us both pretty flexible, so we can usually handle all sorts of bendy poses, but the people in this class are unbelievable. I think Mart and I are the only people who can't do a headstand. This is our goal for the year.

There is a farmer's market a few blocks away from my house on Saturdays, and I stopped by on my way to work yesterday to pick up a handful of heirloom tomatoes. They are so good. As a result, there are only two left .

and it is almost autumn

2008-09-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

This is the thing about leaving a place: the longer you've been gone, the more difficult it becomes to remember it--really remember it. This probably seems obvious, but the last time I went somewhere new, the reverse was true. Home, in some incarnation (just-baked bread, the curve of these hills, fog you can't see through) was all I could think about. Even then, though, it was a called-up home, a home I half constructed myself. Isn't it weird, that creationary aspect of memory? I've always been too imaginative for my own good, and that kind of invention lends itself well to nostalgia. But this time feels different.

Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough, thinking of life in New York often enough, and I guess that is partly the point. There are so many new things to think about here. Money spending is a biggie. I've begun to mentally file potential purchases into one of three categories: Things I Need (laundry detergent, coffee filters), Things I Think I Need But Actually Don't (five avocados, right now), and Things I Really Don't Need at All (butter lettuce seeds, the "San Francisco" refrigerator poem magnet set that goes for $22.50 at Just For Fun). Surplus cash goes into the doggy piggy bank on my desk (a hand-me-down from Nora), but there isn't very much of that right now, so the poem magnets will have to wait.

In other and less moody news: I went to the 49ers game today. At the beginning, when all of the players were running out, there was a small explosion with fireworks every time the announcer called a name. It was all very dramatic.

The guy sitting in the seat behind us drank a lot of beer and asked if he could marry me. Ellen said that would be O.K. if he could bring one thousand Obama votes to the table. It felt like some kind of reverse dowry. I was wearing the black stickers they give out that you are supposed to put underneath your eyes to look like face paint, and now I have a sunburn around the edges of both rectangles.

And: finally/most importantly/et cetera, I am becoming inexplicably attracted to guys with tattoos on their arms. I prefer one to three well-placed, individual designs to the full sleeve variety.

vroom vroom

2008-09-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

Why don't the muni trains run in the Richmond? I am really feeling the J Church right now, and I think SF should follow New York's lead: all-day every-day subway, or at least above-ground trains that reach from the beach to the Embarcadero. They're faster and roomier, and they don't break down every two seconds like the buses do. (Yesterday, while heading up Fulton on the 5, the bus veered off track in the middle of the Divisadero intersection and had to wheel slowly to safety on the other side of the street. Then, all five thousand of us passengers waited crankily for the next one, which was already full and drove right past us. This is not a good system!)

Anyhow: another cool thing about the J. According to Wikipedia (the best source for everything), a private right-of-way was created especially for it so that the train didn't have to go up and down Church street's steep hills. This right-of-way always scares me a little bit, probably because I remember once being trapped while walking in it when a J went by. I had to press myself into the plants that line the tracks to avoid being run over. Not comfy.

Nora and I do a lot of waiting for the J. The other day, we discovered an alien train at the bus stop. 92 Esplanade?? Where do you come from?

We also found a colorful house on Church. It makes me think of children's books. Or the Teletubbies.

I dressed like Christmas last weekend. This may have been subconsciously intentional.

Nick, however, chose an all-gray palette, perhaps so as to complement his crutches.

a jumble

2008-09-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

Nora and I found the WEIRDEST bug in the laundry room yesterday. It is such a martian. I think it is a stick bug. Nora emailed her Dad about it, because he is good with that sort of thing. He wrote back: "Nora, I believe this is a praying mantis, a very important and good bug to have around. Please do not kill it. P.S. If you kill it, there will be a fine."

Imitation is the highest form of flattery:

Okay. Moving on. Things have been really good lately. I just generally feel so happy here in SF. Riding the J train after midnight--walking up hills with bright-light city views--coming across men in high heels and polka-dotted leotards, dancing to La Cucaracha on Castro (this is a true story; it happened yesterday)--these things just don't happen in Poughkeepsie. Saturday was Nick's birthday. The party was out in Ingleside, and you could see the whole city from up there--just tiers and tiers of lit hills and the spread-out blue bay. We missed the last train back, so we hopped a cab with a driver who told us that the cure for a broken bone was to rub it with a leaf so that it heals like magic. Hmm. Must test this theory.

This is Ingleside. Imagine it is nighttime.

On Friday, grabbed a sushi boat dinner with Nora and Helen at a little spot on 16th we recently discovered. Later we ran around the Mission and I put a temporary tattoo of a leaf in a creative place. (That was not intended to sound as dirty as it somehow did.) Since I'm going backwards in time right now--last weekend went with many Nicks and Zach to the Hubba party, for which Zach did a supersick mural. (Would mural be the right word? You decide. Here it is:)

On an unrelated note: I went to Walgreens today, and guess what they had up already? Halloween candy. And decorations! They even had those creepy-looking rubber masks that cover your whole head. Is it even possible to breathe under there? Their identities also all seem to be open to interpretation. For instance:

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this. I'm such a holiday person, it is not even funny. My friends tease me because I get really excited about Christmas in July. However, who is going to be buying a witch nose in the beginning of September?

Hmm. This has been a very disjointed entry, kind of a medley. If it were food, I think it would look like this:

hot hot heat

2008-09-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to the Ella Fitzgerald song "Come Rain or Come Shine", and right now I would really be feeling some rain, some of that stormy weather. It is eighty degrees out today, and last week it hit ninety. I like parts of this Indian summer (picnics with Bi-Rite sandwiches on the grass; the fact that the carrots have SPROUTED!), but I am most comfortable in the sixty-to-seventy range. Still, it was good weather for Labor Day. Dolores Park was packed.

Yesterday was a wonderful day because I received a package in the mail! It was an Indian bedspread from my grandmother. She is amazing. I will cover my big big bed with it.

I have been slacking on the blogging lately because I've just started school. No more lazy days in the grass for me; now I'm always racing to catch the 24, walking up the one hundred-plus steps to campus, which is conveniently located on a mountain, and trying to get adjusted to new classes, new teachers, new rooms and halls and bus routes. So far my favorite class is Poetry. I've felt so-so about poetry in the past--I like little weirdo poems and quirkiness and irreverence, but I get frustrated when it feels lofty and inaccessible. I love the basis on this class, though, which looks at poetry though the lens of home and location and as a result focuses largely on SFSFSF. Later in the semester we're taking a field trip to the Neptune Society Columbarium (whaaat how dope), which houses ashes and memorial shadow box-like displays in vaults.

Here are some neighborhood things I like:

Yum yum.

Would you call this a carriage? I REALLY want to ride in it.

tutorial

2008-08-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

HOW TO GROW A THING

1. Assemble your tools.

2. Do not put glove on the wrong hand.

3. Optional: Enlist a friend!

4. Take account of your own personal and situational weaknesses. Are you lazy? Not a morning person? Busy on weekends? A resident of San Francisco, where there is no sun? If you answered yes to all of the above, the Cosmo Candy Stripe might be the plant for you. If you can get past the girly-drink sound of its name, the instructions are very appealing: "The Cosmo Candy Stripe does best when neglected!"

5. Ready, set, begin! Reading the directions on the back of your seed packet is a good thing to do here. For instance: should seeds be planted a quarter-inch deep or scattered across the top of the soil? Can you put them in a pot, or do they need to be planted in a garden? If so, and your garden is as weedy as mine, you might be in trouble.

6. After planting, find a way to figure out which seeds are which. You could tape a post-it to the pot or come up with helpful mnemonic devices.

7. Admire your handiwork. Sending photos to far-flung family members is one way to say, "You don't have to worry about me. I am a mature, responsible adult. I plant!"

8. Disregard above advice. I am only a beginner.

it feels so planetary here.

2008-08-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

I have been feeling very domestic lately--washing dishes, purchasing Tilex. Yesterday I took a walk to the Mission (I have discovered the best route! Going down 24th street to Valencia and over to 18th is easy; it's getting back up the hill that is the both the best part and the problem). I bought medicinal flower seeds at the Scarlet Sage Herb Company. The cashier told me I should eat the flowers to receive all of their health benefits. Hmm. I picture myself standing out on the porch, leaning against the railing, chewing calendula? Too weird. "You can also make tea," she added. I'll do that.

Also on the flower theme: I planted poppies yesterday! I sat down on the ground and pushed soil around the seeds with my hands. The wind blew the dirt back in my face. Blech. The seeds are old, so the flowers might not grow. Who knows? It will be such a surprise. One day: brown earth. Next day: poppies! Can you tell I've never gardened before?

Ghazy and Helen came over on Friday night. Nora and I cooked them dinner: gnocchi in vodka sauce (2FRESH) and the biggest nicoise salad we'd ever seen. It took me about an hour to arrange it. The purple potatoes were the best part.

We like our napkins mismatched and our lighting romantic.

The next day was Nora's birthday. Twenty-one! Our landlady brought her a balloon. We made birthday breakfast waffles with Nora's mickey mouse waffle maker. On the side: sliced strawberries and yo-gurt. Yum. At night we grabbed dinner on Mission with friends.

In other news: Nora bought nail decals and Raiders temporary tattoos at Walgreens. We went right to work. I feel half-trashy, half-fantastic.

Went to outer space (that is: PLUTO'S!) with Mart and Elana last night. I am always happy when I'm with those girls. I ate strip steak. This is a really food-heavy entry. Miam miam. Elana stopped by to see the apartment afterwards. She lives so close now--fun!

I am reading "The Book of Other People" right now. Some of the stories I like, some I don't. The Miranda July is really good. Vendela Vida, too, and Heidi Julavitz's I keep thinking about. I love stories like that--ones that have so much good material you can just go around and around in your head afterwards. And when you discover something new, hours or days or maybe even weeks later--while doing something completely unrelated--I get it now: that connects! My favorite stories, though, are usually the ones that make me want to write. I have that problem--stopping in the middle of a page to work on something of my own. Sometimes I feel guilty. There is so much left to read. But how will I ever get to it all? That is the great and awful thing about short stories.

where are your mugs with the gnomes on them?

2008-08-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

HOME is now a little pink weirdo with potted plants on the porch, bamboo in the bathroom, angel sculptures and abalone shells in the kitchen--and our oddball cleans up so nice. Nora and I have been working working working and the place is finally starting to shape up, clear out. Now that you can finally see the floors and open the refrigerator, it's looking good. It would have probably taken less time to unpack if we didn't keep getting sidetracked by all of our bizarre decorating ideas. ("Would you mind if I put my Pillsbury Doughman sculpture on the windowsill? Let's arrange that incense on the fireplace. Shall I hang my Native American clay platter above the stove?") Nora had to convince me to not deal with setting up my coffee maker the first night we moved in. It was two in the morning and I stood in my bike shorts, Peet's in hand, holding the directions upside-down. I crawled into bed; we went to the neighborhood bakery for bran muffins and caffeine in the morning instead.

In the afternoon we sat in our shorts on the back porch and planted flowers. I am not used to this warmth! It is a whole new San Francisco out here. We set them up on a ledge so that they receive more sun. Hopefully, there will be no wind.

At the end of the day we made pizzas with raw dough. We cooked them in our cutty gas oven that you have to light with a match. Afterwards Ghazy came over with a friend. We sat in the living room on a jumbled assortment of chairs.

"Yo, I found a rocking chair on Castro street. And I copped it."

You should have seen the kitchen a day ago. So many boxes--getting through it was like jumping hurdles.

Now, it is perhaps the strangest room in the house.

Breakfast.

I built this dresser myself! Well, a handyman built it, but I selected the knobs. They are all different, with some Ikea ones mixed in. Is it the weirdest thing you've ever seen? The handyman thought I was insane.

"Aren't they supposed to match?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I have weird taste."

Figuring out where to put my favorite postcard was an important task.

So is hanging out in the laundry room.

The garden: it's a jungle out there...

There is a Walgreens only a block away! Must not blow whole paycheck.

If you go out the back entrance, there is an alleyway. Across the street:

na na na

2008-08-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

New apartment is crazy amazing messy not unpacked so much fun. Tonight girls coming over for wine talk sitting on floor because no couch no getting too rowdy because no living room drapes. This update is short because I still have to find Nora's spoons, switch laundry to dry cycle, and jump on all of our paper boxes the way people crush grapes so they will fit inside the overflowing recycling bin outside. Pictures to come.

ready, set, go

2008-08-07T13:24:00.000-07:00

I am having a real tough time believing it is August already.

This weekend is THE BIG MOVE! What? How did that come up so fast? I usually have these perfectionist tendencies that make it tough for me to be completely satisfied with anything, but I have this feeling of calm about this place and about the year in general. I'm just in awe of the way things are coming together. I'm getting ready for a new job and a new internship and a new school and a new home, and this newness is wonderful and motivating and a little bit terrifying, too. Am I ready to deal with my own finances? Not lose a new set of keys? Make my own dinner at night? Nora will help with that part. I am good at making coffee and cookies and not much else.

I am thinking of potted plants for the windowsill, words I want to put up on my wall, gardening boots, three-pot coffee makers. Laundry detergent and sponges and swiffer dusters and soft bath mats. How to change my cable? Cook complicated pasta dishes? Where is the nearest sushi spot? Who will be my neighbor? I am really down with the twenty-four bus line, the closest one to the apartment, so that is one thing I don't have to worry about.

For the time being, though, things are much less exciting. I am sitting at my desk, drinking coffee with soy milk, planning my escape from the office for a lunchtime yoga class. That's kind of exciting. Maybe a two on a 1-to-5 action scale, with one being Jason Robards in Magnolia and five being Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Uma

Jason

what are you talking about?

2008-07-31T12:44:00.000-07:00

Nora and I made dinner last night.

We went to an Asian market on Clement street to purchase ingredients. We filled our basket: curry noodles, teriyaki seaweed, shittake mushrooms, green onion. I suggested protein. We entered the fish market: cocktail shrimp in tupperware, catfish, live creatures just chilling? We exited the fish market, empty-handed.

Back at Nora's, I chopped while she unwrapped the pasta. I found a miniature caterpillar on my hand. EW! Nora said that's normal. "He probably came in with our fresh vegetables." I said, Yucky. She put it outside the window.

After I finished my dicing duties I entertained myself by taking pictures of Nora's home.

Then I read her a little bit of a Miranda July story, the one about the sewing class. By that time, the water had come to a boil.

I'll let you imagine what the pink-swirled white discs are. Be creative! The reality is probably less appealing.

TA DA!

I had a discount candy medley for dessert. It included white chocolate gummy bears, Haribo graprefruits, nonpareils (why are they called that?? I've never understood), chocolate-covered raisons MY FAVORITE and one malt ball.

Itadakimasu.

our own creatures

2008-07-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

My brother and I went for a walk. We found some neat things on the pavement.

Such as, a skull.

And a veggie tales sticker.

Can you imagine all of the things we might see if we just looked down?

What's new, what's new. I finished a story. It is a long one so I'm feeling a little emptied out. It's the best kind of emptied out, but I need some break time, so this will be a picture post.

So: things that have happened.

Mistah Fab came to the Mission.

Angus made us all dress up. Then he fed us lobster.

I'm getting hooked on spin classes.*

The feeling of empowerment and deafening James Brown music I like. The overaggressive instructor who screamed "GET IN FRONT! BEAT YOUR NEIGHBOR! BEAT YOUR NEIGHBOR!" despite the fact that we were in an enclosed space on stationary bikes? Not so much, but hey. You can't have everything.

* Note: the bike above is the LeMond RevMaster Indoor Cycle. Just so I don't get sued.

Oh, and. Nora and I found an apartment. It's kind of the best place ever. And it has a clawfoot tub. Big smile.

four four two two

2008-07-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

Apartment hunting is HARD! I guess this is obvious, especially in San Francisco, where the housing market is insanely competitive and ridiculously expensive. Today Nora and I took three different buses, wound up in a super cut (definitely not Noe Valley, as advertised in the apartment's craigslist post), trudged up an enormous hill, and hid from the heat beneath a willow tree for half an hour before realizing that the landlord definitely wasn't showing up. Going to see an apartment--especially one whose post doesn't have photos--is kind of like going on a blind date. Other bad dates of ours have included the incredible-sounding two-bedroom near Dolores Park that looked, in every way (lack of doors between rooms, brown egg-colored walls, stained carpeting), exactly like a sketchy motel; the edwardian in the Mission that, according to the real estate agent, "could probably be converted into a two bedroom if you, like, put a twin bed in the walk-in closet"; and the perfect spot, the kind of yellow-walled, pretty-gardened guy you dream about, which was snapped up before we could even submit an application.

Still, it's hard to get down about the process. Looking at each place feels like trying on different personalities--personalities with Victorian ceilings, or tiered vegetable gardens, or clawfoot tubs. I picture myself sitting on lime green stoops and looking out of rounded Painted Lady windows, getting sleepy Monday morning coffee at corner shops with witty names and homemade scones. Mmm. I kind of just want to make my own apartment, combine all of my favorite qualities in the ideal do-it-yourself project: a taped-together paper doll with a pointed roof of a head, windowed octagonal arms, five fingers of steps and skin the color of a mango.

It was foggy today. The view from my office:

charm school

2008-07-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

I am back! It feels good. I have a limit for the amount of time that I can spend comfortably away from San Francisco, and it is something like eleven days. After that I just start to get really emotional whenever it gets foggy out, or I see a 415 in an address or telephone number.

A few things happened while I was away.

I began to dream of a mint green apartment.

I developed an interest in clotheslines.

I was impressed by sick graffiti.

...and colorful food.

I had to buy a notebook.

I wanted to adopt.

I bought a shirt for my brother.

On the plane ride home, I watched the movie "Manhattan" and ate Swiss chocolate. The dinner British Airways tried to feed us was fish pie. Who at British Airways thought this would be a good idea?

Now it is July 4th. Phew. I made it back to the US just in time.

gradisco voi di più e più

2008-06-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I leave for ROME!

Oh hey guys.

It's 8:30 pm and I still haven't started to pack. I always do this. Long plane rides and airports are among my least favorite things, but I'm excited to get there.

I am really down to go to the Cappuchin Crypt. It's a tiny area beneath the Santa Maria della Immacolata Concezione church in which the walls are decorated with the bones of over 4,000 Cappuchin monks. There's even a Crypt of the Skulls with flower shapes formed with skulls and wings made out of shoulder blades. Creepy!

After Rome we catch an old-fashioned train to Venice. My dad is very excited about this (the train, not Venice). Then we go to Lake Como.

Fly home from Switzerland on the 2nd. My dad says pack big coats for the alps. Will it be snowy?, I ask--Really snowy? Will there be Saint Bernard dogs? Can I pet them?

How am I supposed to know?, says Dad. Just bring a sweater.

Let me know if you'll be in Europe at the same time. Otherwise: andiamo!

'cause ladies from the west got game.

2008-06-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

Two disturbing things happened today. The first was the realization that with all of the writing and reading I've been doing for my internship, I haven't picked up a real, live novel since Vassar let out for the summer. (Suggestions? Comment me.) The second was what I found my ten-year-old brother doing when I arrived back home this afternoon: pretending to smoke five fake cigarettes at once, which he had carefully constructed out of rolled-up colored paper (white for the tiny cylinder, red and orange for its fire tip). He had also created a matching rectangular box for the cigarettes, which read "Cigarettes" across the front in crayon. He then told me he was just heading upstairs to watch Winnie the Pooh. I worry he's been renting too many black and white movies. He's a big fan of Bogart.

Bad boy, Humphrey.

Nora and I tattooed vulgar phrases on each other's arms at Nick's the other night. I had to wash all of them off except this one:

On Saturday we're going to check out our first apartment. I'm really getting into this house-hunting business. The one we're going to see this weekend is near everything we need for an optimal quality of life: friends, a sushi boat spot, and our favorite park.

Nora and gatorade, sittin' (by) a tree.

making frozen ravioli in the microwave was not such a good idea.

2008-06-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

I was feeling creative, so I made stationary out of origami paper and the strange postcards from communist Russia that I found at a fair in Poughkeepsie. They look like this.

This postcard originally had the communist sickle and hammer insignia symbol on the back. COOL!

Cutty Russian dolls.

Sushi makes me hun-gry.

talkin' bout my girl

2008-05-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

Went to Nora's house to drink green tea and make poems with her refrigerator magnets. A few of our creations (I guess we were feeling morose):

Mother deer

Extra bald

Kill

Evil head

Custody unknown

Confess

Divorce would blow d

Burt hates my lover

Sick!

Controversial Loni

So satanic

show me how it's done.

2008-05-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

Ooh, headache. I'm gonna try a little OJ/coffee/advil mix and see what works.

Rewind, playback: the last few days have been so nice. I'm really into this summer thing so far. On Friday night Ghazy and I went to check out a party for a gallery opening in the Haight. We looked at paintings of cavemen, saw some kids we knew and danced to sick hip-hop by an mc named AO. Someone proposed to me? Sloshing vodka and coke and a sloppy kiss on the cheek--very romantic, exactly as I always hoped it would happen. Later I found four dollars on the ground at Haight and Steiner. What a score. I felt a bad taking it--as though I should have strewn the dollars around on trash cans and tree branches or hooked beneath window wipers for other people to find--so I gave it to the cab driver on the way home.

Saturday G and I kicked it at Nick's with bay friends. They played us beats, Adam taught me a lighter game and we missed the last 1 California bus at 3--oops. Five hours of sleep and one slice of momma's homemade wheat bread later, Nora and I hopped the 33 to Carnaval in the Mission. We missed the parade (who's up at 9 am on a Sunday, anyway?), so we grabbed some coffee at Ritual and headed to Dolores Park instead. So gorgeous there--I'm in love with these San Francisco days. We assembled and split our own avocado sandwich with materials from an organic deli, eating it cross-legged on the grass. Later some boys came through--Robin brought his big boy puppy, a Husky that sat on my feet and tried to eat someone's pot cookies. At home I lay on my bed for an hour and then went with baby to get dinner here:

Today I found a stapled paper booklet in the recycling. It had a cartoon drawing of an elderly couple and the word "CHANGING" on the front. I did some sleuthing and found out that it's a discarded informational packet from my brother's fifth-grade Puberty class. I don't know what's better--the fact that the booklet has a drawing of the elderly on its cover or that the class itself is called Puberty. Whatever happened to plain old, less awkward "Health"?

In the afternoon Ghazy had a memorial day barbecue in her garden--what a hostess. The guys brought beer and I brought cookies. Andreana came by for a bit, I've missed seeing that girl. We made strip steak sandwiches with avocado and gruyere on baguette--quality. Later we headed down to AP to play some basketball. I did my best but I'm kind of terrible--think I'll stick to the yoga.

Monta, some day I'll play like you.

We tried to understand. Of sand?

2008-05-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the 415. Hello, you.

Yesterday was a typical San Francisco day: ineffably lovely, climatically bipolar and filled with the sort of random discoveries that always win me over (lavender-flavored yogurt at the corner store; a crumpled bus receipt when I had no cash; an unopened jar of cinnamon, hiding behind the coffee maker.) Though by evening the sky was entirely foggy and dense with mist, at eleven-thirty it was clear and sunny. Nora and I brought each other presents (an avocado for her, an iced latte for me) and walked down to the beach, setting up camp beside a Hello Kitty kite. It felt so good to lie there in the warmth. When it got windy, we went back to her house. Bitty made rice-infused green tea and snap peas--mine!

Nora has a large chair I like to sit in.

Today I got up at eight-thirty in the morning, downed two cups of coffee, and went to meet Ghazy for a 10 am yoga class. Being up that early felt slightly unnatural and somehow a little bit exhilarating (maybe that part was the yoga.) I always forget that most of the world wakes up before noon on non-school or work days.

Want to do this with me? I call being the top.

In the afternoon Elana and I went to see Martina's show. It was so nice to be back with them. Excited for Chesnut time this weekend. I still can't get over how crazy it feels to think that I'll be here for so long--that I'm not going back to Vassar after a week-long break. The best part of my travel day was the sprinkle-topped you're-almost-there ice cream I bought from the Coldstone Creamery in the Phoenix airport. It was birthday cake remix, a size small, and seven dollars. Excuse me? How do they charge seven dollars for an ice cream? Was it the extra cookie dough? That goes on the "things I can't figure out" list, along with the obsession every 30+ woman in the Phoenix airport seemed to have with Shania Twain, whose "That Don't Impress Me Much" was playing on repeat in Terminal 2.

I'm sitting next to the most delicious honeydew candle. Being able to light candles in my room is a nice thing about home. This is the Virgin of Guadalupe devotional votive, Nora's favorite kind of candle. We buy them for her in the Mission.

clouds to drink

2008-05-15T21:25:00.000-07:00

Today I made a new discovery: Smart Water. I found it in the college store, sandwiched between a Starbucks Mint Frappuccino and eighty cases of red bull, and was intrigued. What could be smart about water? According to the label on my chicly cylindrical bottle, Smart Water is "vapor distilled so it is in its purest original state. But we don't stop there. We one-up the clouds by adding electrolytes. It's a difference you can taste....unless you have no taste buds." Hmm. I do have taste buds. And even though I don't really get how the water is vapor distilled, I kind of like the idea of a cloud in a bottle. The verdict? It tastes...like water. From an Evian bottle. Or a tap. Smart Water is like the Valentine's Day of water brands: sort of unnecessary and definitely commercialized, but tempting and a little bit sexy nonetheless.

I talked to Ty today. He told me that he's become interested in two new things: golf and immortality. I usually forget that he's 10.

Right now I am packing and listening to Nico. I am amused when she says "I can't help it if you might think I am odd." I miss some things already. Tomorrow I leave. It feels strange to think that this is the last night I'll spend here. Bittersweet. (Corny.) Outside six people are carrying a large floral couch across the quad. Nora time by the ocean on Saturday is a nice thing to think about.

breathe in until you can feel it in your shoulders.

2008-05-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

ALL DONE!

Yesterday was the reading. I know it's silly of me to get so worked up and anxious, but that's what I do, so I couldn't really help it. It's a relief to have it over with, but I had the best, best time. Tuesday half of the class read and the rest of us went to support, so I kind of had a feel for how Wednesday would go. It's crazy how different the experience of hearing a story out loud is from reading it on your own--a lot of the pieces came alive for me in an entirely new way. On Wednesday we read in the Mug, which was smaller and more intimate than the big theater the class used on Tuesday. Anabel dimmed the lights and put on sick music; Liz and Christine set lit candles on the round tables and stools arranged diagonally throughout the space. I was on cookie duty and brought the yummiest thing the Retreat had to offer--those chewy chocolate-chip bad boys, courtesy of the Keebler elves. (Only the best.) I was really surprised by how many people came--there weren't enough seats, so most of us stood. Each person read in front of this incredibly bizarre sculpture, which was hanging from the ceiling (not ours)--an enormous tangled rope, hung with netting and wire and all kinds of objects. I took an inventory to distract myself when I got nervous: Trash bag. Coca-Cola can. Amputated doll arm? Hmm.

Even though I've been stressing for weeks, once I got up there I didn't feel anxious at all. Bernardo wrote the most beautiful introduction for me, which made me laugh and put me at ease. I didn't expect to feel anything but tense, but somehow I just really enjoyed it. This is corny, but it felt like such a gift to be able to read aloud what I've been working on this semester, and to have people there who cared enough to listen. I already miss our class--I feel like it's changed me, opened me up--made me both more internal and more connected to those around me, and certainly more exploratory.

Today it is overcast--weather.com says 77 degrees, but this is definitely a lie. Good news is that it's supposed to be sunny all around when I get to San Francisco next week. I am a little bit in shock that it's so soon. I feel like I have so much to do before then--papers and packing and finals, and how in the world am I going to move all of my shit out of my room and back to the west coast? I need yoga now, please. At least I have three hundred things at home to look forward to--Dolores Park with my bitties, my Fillmore crew, love with Mart and Elana, International Orange, Farmer's Market, being with my family inc. child genius younger brother Ty, the Japanese Tea Garden, Baker Beach, barbecues, big hills, sourdough bread, pounding that city pavement, and this one, of course (people get us confused):

Oh, San Francisco, you pretty thing. See you so soon.

buenos noches, pablo.

2008-05-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

Rawr. I'm really excited about this...and more than a little bit nervous. I still can't decide what to read. I'm on Wednesday the seventh.

chicken soup with stars

2008-04-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

Things I'm into right now:

1. Ella Fitzgerald; she's all I want to listen to. (Just look at her rocking that hat.)

2. Working away at my sweater-in-progress. It's only a baby right now; this will be the neck.

3. 80 degrees today, 76 tomorrow (thanks, weather.com)...ooh, I'm getting spoiled. Time to lie out like the sea lions at fisherman's wharf with my Ali. How happy are they?