feather2pixels

It’s eight in the morning and, from what I understand, the apartment is imploding. All i know is what i have overheard from people passing by my closed bedroom door:

To-Shi-O: “…ceiling collapsed…”
Unidentified Man: “RMC emergency”
To-Shi-O: “downstairs too?”

If I don’t open the door, it’s not my problem, right? dare i open it? I am going open it. Oh just thank God Gen isn’t here.

This week I returned from a trip home–or whatever Blue Bell is to me. Do I have a home? What does that even mean? Is home just one of the many fictions I have invented to deal with myself? Argh! I have been desperately trying to claw out of my imaginary worlds; you would think a trip back East would provide some much needed clarity.

But at least it was an efficient trip. In four days and five nights I was able to do everything I wanted to do without down time. Time is sanity at home. More importantly, I was able to eat (almost) everything I was hoping to eat. Plus, I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of experiencing live reggae in Blue Bell. It did not disappoint.

That particular excursion happened to be the first time I have drank (Yuengling, none the less) legally with Danny, as he reached the end of his twenty-first year last January. From now on, the powers that be will have to think of a better reason to kick us out of Slim’s. The entire family, which, more and more is starting to resemble a bona fide clan, also made it down to Philly Chinatown, where I sampled the worst carrot juice and the best wonton soup of my life in the same meal.

OK, so there was a little clarity.

On Saturday, the clan traveled to a barbecue near the nuclear power plant, where tomatoes apparently grow to the size of dodge balls. Those were enjoyed with burgers and bottled water on the lovely little ranch of my dad’s longtime lab manager, Marella. Danny, Michelle & Andy (Mandy?), and I got a casual game of whiffle ball/frisbee/tennis/football (fiffle ball?) going and that was really the main event.

That nigt, Joe was cast into the final weeks of his bachelorhood with a party designed to, um, be like, the opposite of a wedding? Or something. I guess I don’t really understand bachelor parties. Maybe this mental block is linked to why I will be the last of my friends to get married. But, as with the family, everyone was together for the first time in a while, and that was good. I’ve got good friends. Plus, Shal and I got scrapple–that’s good too. Especially in a crowded diner at 2AM.

The next day I had probably the best pastrami half sandwich of my life. I use the term sandwich loosely to describe what was more of a small mountain of freshly carved, hot meat, dripping with pastrami goodness between slices of bread. The Rascal, sitting across from me in a busy corner of the Reading Terminal Market, ate the other half, which was slathered with an ill-advised layer of mustard. Not only did she decline my mustard advice, but that girl still insists I love mustard, which is like saying that Donkey Kong loves short Italian plumbers. Just because I once ate half a jar of it rather than risking certain starvation strikes me as irrelevant. Irrelevant!
Speaking of advice, some of the too hip for their own good SF coffee shops could learn something from the quiet dignity of La Colombe at Rittenhouse Square.

Finally: cheesesteaks and baby cows. It was a surprisingly good combination, the cheesesteaks in question coming from Palermo’s in Blue Bell (because at the time it was not one of Pudge’s four hours of operation) and the baby cows from Merrymead Farms, where one can watch really cute feedings in the early evening, complete with oversized baby bottles.

Look at how nice these photo booth pictures of me and To-Shi-O from The Knockout came out:

Screen printing is so good, it’s hard to contain myself. Tonight, Kristin joined me at Cellspace after a hard day working the dreaded Exploratorium summer camp. While an impossibly loud break dancing group practiced downstairs, we made a series of three postcards up in the silk screening loft. They came out really good. The gifs don’t do it justice. The images and words are (unmistakably) hers; I helped with the design.

Bulldogger recently bought a 1996 black Volkswagen Jetta. The good thing about it is that it has only logged 50,000 miles. The bad thing about it is that the driver side window dismantled itself almost immediately. So I agreed to join her quest to repair it in Oakland. The most remarkable thing about Bulldogger’s 1996 black Volkswagen Jetta was how thoroughly she had managed to blanket it with bird shit in only a week—-it’s hard to imagine how she would achieve a more consistent coat if she were trying. I opened the passenger door carefully, slid in the passenger seat, and we drove across the bridge to downtown Oakland.

While a commune of mechanics replaced the small motor, we took a walk around the deceptively long perimeter of Lake Merrit and talked about dressing up: another conversation prompted by my newly acquired Vietnamese suit (it is enjoying a second voyage around the far side of the earth and I will see it in September). Of course the literal begets the metaphorical. “I feel less feminine in dresses, like I’m an impostor,” she said, and even though it’s been over a decade since I was in one one myself, dressed up as Lillian Gish for Mrs. French-Folk’s social studies class, I knew exactly what she meant. One continuous observation since finding myself back on dry land has been an excess of style over substance. I’m not against that, necessarily, but does anyone really fit into the 94110? A little later on, smoothies in hand, she announced her independence from the Mission, the City, and the particular complications of her hurried and cluttered life. “I am ready to slow things down,” she said. Which begs the question: should I accept her offer to split the Berkeley Hills house that she inherited from her father?

Specifically: one room, the equivalent second room made from half an art studio and half a garage, eternal sunshine, and a thirty foot walk to the wilds of Tilden Park. “Get a dog if you want.” She’s moving this month.

Jesus, that is tempting.

But it doesn’t feel quite right; funny thing is, I can’t really convince myself why. Maybe it too much resembles the kind of settling that I promised myself wasn’t happening when I accepted a full time job last year. Maybe a part of me needs to feel dressed up with nowhere to go in order to actually get anywhere. Or maybe I am still too infatuated with the city to imagine leaving—-the Berkeley Hills are magical but they lack the majesty of the coast. This is more or less the same internal quarrel I experience every time I leave the city limits of San Francisco. Oh, why do all of the dilemmas always blow in from the East?

Homecoming 1 Hour Photos:

corinne

jill and nowell @ the dumpling king

to-shi-o

bulldogger and me

my room

in front of the church of light

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One of my favorite friends is Kristin. The following are seven items I admire about her.

1. She gave me a typewriter. Weighed in pure inspiration, it’s the best gift I have ever received.
2. She sends mail.
3. Her aesthetics are paramount to her meanings.
4. She always picks up the phone, even after midnight.
5. She grew up in Astoria.
6. She owns every Bob Dylan album except one on vinyl.
7. She saw Rocky Balboa in the theater five times.

My wide-eyed cousin visited last weekend.  More on that later.

How do I want you to feel about my life today?

Well, I finally started cranking out some silkscreened postcards. I am still cutting most of them out, but a limited run (of postcard no. 9, out of sequence only because they were the most plentiful) was dropped in the Mission and 24th mailbox on Friday. Prepare yourself.

There are more on the way. I seriously underestimated the issues involved in screening 220 postcards (matching fronts and backs, successfully printing little letters, finding a good halftone but that’s vague but not too vague) but that’s what workshops are for. Joanna continued to crank out some pretty cool stuff too. I grabbed one of her test strips.

On Wednesday, Phanna and I won trivia night with an unprecedented two man team! It came down to a rare tiebreaker question: “what was the average weight, in lbs, of a knight’s armor in the middle ages?” We said forty-five. It’s fifty. Add one Pig Buck to the bank.

Work is so silly. I read about valves and programmable logic controllers and things like that, and the next day I show thirty-five college kids what I learned. Part of their training is licensing as a third engineer (on a ship) and this week Baby Bluehawk and her friend passed the exam requirement. She stopped by my office beaming to deliver the news and it was charming. So that’s a good part of my job, right?

The second Critical Mass of 2007 was much more successful than the first. This time I coralled the Bulldogger and Marella to join me, but we cut it too close and, again, I missed the beginning (do they really start at 6:30?). Luckily, we intercepted a fellow straggler who came prepared with a walkie-talkie and he led us to Fisherman’s Wharf, where somehow the mass had extended itself. After that (and besides a rare Pac Heights excursion) it was a pretty standard ride. The guy with the ridiculously loud speaker cart was there this time, which makes a big difference.

This week, after nine and a half years of post secondary education, Jill started her first job since the ol’ sandwich shop in high school. That’s the kind of irony grad school gets you. But suddenly she’s a development engineer at a fancy biotech company on the Peninsula and I am very proud of her. I still remember first meeting her in Dr. Stewart’s Physiscs class on virtually our first day at Pitt. We ended up choosing the same major (bioengineering) and working together on just about every group project, sometimes against our will. I caught up with her for a rushed Guinness (which she claims to only drink with me) on Wednesday night and asked her how it was going. “Lonely,” she said. She will be fine. Jill is always fine.

Oh Morgan Jameson, what the fuck are we doing? I wrote her a really heartfelt email a little while ago but it was utterly unsendable. So I didn’t send it, we didn’t speak for a while, and now, somehow, I am doing this thing where I write her about every little detail of my madness. And make no mistake, it is madness: we wrote 5,548 words to each other this weekend. It’s helped bring things to a conclusion but now she just thinks I am insane and self absorbed, which of course is kind of true, but I think I regret it. As it stands now, the plan is to not write each other for a month.
I went to an Oscar party at Louise’s tonight. I will say several things about Louise: (a) she throws a damn good Oscar party. Just like last year, it featured her baked potato bar, which is executed with such authority that it transcends the irony that would surely destroy any lesser baked potato bar. This brings up another good thing about Louise: (b) she’s groomed her irony into sincerity, which seems to me like your only viable option if you are going to stick with this type of disposition(At least without becoming an insufferable Mission jerkoff). Louise does karaoke and Stevie Nicks parties and sundae bars because she loves them. We also made buttons, which I realized is an awesome thing to do.

After another Sparky’s breakfast this week, Sadie took Nowell and I to the giant camera obscura at the Cliff House. It was closed (apparently because the day wasn’t “beautiful enough”) but at least it made for a good Polaroid.

The rumors are true: Ben Hill and Aimee made a San Francisco pit stop to begin their mid-winter drive up the coast to Portland. They were a short twenty-two hours, but long enough to eat out three times and purchase two different quasi-legal drugs. For all his last minute-ness, it was Ben Hill‘s third visit to San Francisco. His first year out, Ben Hill was just reentering society, dazed and despondent after an autumn of skeleton shifts and nights on the couch. Ben Hill was on the move by the time of his second appearance, and on Saturday Ben Hill arrived married.

Nowell got involved for the unexpectedly good sushi feast on Saturday night and was a good sport the next morning, beating us to an early morning rendezvous at Sparky’s for breakfast. Later that day and as usual, he left us in awe of the new home that he and Sadie purchased that week. It is not so much a home as it is a compound, with square faucets and soaked in thick buttery sunlight on a pretty block in Cole Valley. It’s hard to imagine being unhappy there. Not that I was happy. Anyways, the weather was spectacular and there were plenty of glow in the dark tattoos to go around.

Ben Hill: A short Appreciation: