feather2pixels

The annual Academy career fair took place yesterday. There were so many companies in attendance that the event overflowed from the gymnasium to the student center. That’s basically all the room we have here. Dressed in my steadily downgrading work clothes (jeans and homemade Willie Nelson tee-shirt for this non-teaching day), I took a few minutes after lunch to check it out.

It turned out to be one of those moments, like graduation or our arrival in Kobe last summer, that made me feel love for my job and the people involved with it. I found most of my seniors moseying around, dressed fancy, looking slightly uneasy. Here, in their quest for maritime employment between two Division III basketball nets, they suddenly seemed young. For a few moments, I was struck by the idea that I might be doing something here beyond amusing myself for twelve hours a week. And they all seemed very happy to see me.
Then, I walked to my office and read celebrity gossip on Yahoo.

Rachel was in town recently. As I was giving my mouse pad a much needed cleaning, the doorbell rang and she was suddenly standing on my stoop, unmistakably her. After a tour of the premises, we took off in her brother’s hard-clutched Subaru for my San Francisco Highlights tour on a blustery Thursday afternoon. Even though those events were more or less planned, it was one of the more notable visits of my time in Mission.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to describe exactly who Rachel is. My first girlfriend, who I met in the summer of eighth grade at YMCA camp in South Jersey has too many prepositional phrases. At the top of Twin Peaks, where she treaded close to the inner curb (“I don’t do well with heights”), the air tasted thin and the still bay in front of us felt like a memory of something that never happened to me. Really, she was my first great penpal and my first great obsession in a life that has basically been a series of penpals and obsessions. But the idea of a patterned existence seemed reassuring up there. For a year or two, her letters were the only things that made me happy. Today they are among my most treasured possessions. This summer I re-read them and they blew me away. Somehow, they are at once intelligent and well-written, hopeful and heartbreaking. They teem with what it is to be young. Somehow, they remind me of who I am today. And that is fucking crazy.

At one point at Land’s End, she stopped to sit on a rock. Here, the refuge of the bay gives way to the open ocean and today it looked cold and patient. I excused myself to take a piss on an old gnarled tree and then we sat around for a bit until the wind became unbearable. She’s been through a lot since then, Rachel. It was in her eyes. Is it in my eyes, too? Things feel fucked up with me and I can’t even explain to people why.

These days, Rachel is a writer (in the sense of being a writer that I truly respect: she writes). It’s deeply satisfying for me to recognize the passion of her old letters to me in the words she writes today. It’s deeply satisfying to stand on a rock and know something about the essence of someone I don’t really know anymore. I don’t explain much to her on the rock.

Fall was in ridiculously full effect over Thanksgiving week. I don’t remember Southeast Pennsylvanian leaves ever being that out of the tube yellow–I certainly don’t remember Morris Road invoking the feeling of an SUV commercial–but my friends and family insist it’s no fluke. Even my neighborhood, which usually resembles the scrolling set of a 1930’s cartoon, this year looks way quainter than it has a right to, as the powers that be took it upon themselves to plant corn in the field behind my house that usually just accommodates two rows of 110,000 volt transmission lines.

Foliage or not, autumnal is way that describes the way the way home feels now. My household has matured into Plowshare Road‘s equivalent of the grand old estate, with a new tiled patio and, thanks to my sister and Andy living in the area, a legitimate family quorum. Better to shelter everyone from the entire region, which is under a ravenous development that somehow feels like a collective burying of heads in the sand. New soulless shopping plazas. New nostalgia radio stations that anonymously program soulless nineties rock. More traffic. A CVS for every square mile. Blue Bell Country Club is practically a legitimate city-state. What the fuck is going on?

Beth’s shoes stand out in my mind. The Saturday after our ten year high school reunion, Joe, Nowell, and I ran into her and a few friends who you couldn’t have hand picked for more awkwardness–in the period spanning ninth grade to a year ago, we’ve been involved with all of their private parts in some way or another. All with bad results. For my part, I haven’t spoken with Beth in over a decade for no reason that carries any legitimacy, and I was vaguely regretting missing my chance at the reunion. But for whatever obstacles that existed the night before (like, um, the inexplicable rock band rendering communication next to impossible) they were outdone by extreme awkwardness during breakfast the morning after. Even the timing seem intelligently designed for maximum weirdness. We arrived, ate, left in unison, and as we all shuffled back to our SUVs I noticed her shoes: brown and simple, outmoded.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that that in the center of a rapidly metastasizing cancer of bullshit threatening to destroy what little here I like, Beth was standing before me, passing on a quiet fuck you to the mall with her ugly loafers. Beth is not my enemy. She never has been. In fact, she’s one of the only girls that ever found a way overlook a whole lot of uncoolness and give me a chance in high school. I admire Beth. No: for what she has shown me today, I love Beth!

At that moment, the point of my entire life became Beth quickly walking away from my Mom’s black Rav4 in the parking lot of Rich’s Other Place. If she makes it it to her car, I lose. Everything in myself that I am too afraid to face wins, the easy suburban targets that I pretend made me an angry fucked up little kid become real, and five years of self reflective walks through the misty California chaparral become pointless. I ran up to her from behind. “Hey,” I said, and hugged her.

Joe’s gone. Before he left, Nowell, him, and I enjoyed a fancy civic center dude evening with the Kronos Quartet at the never comfortable Herbst Theater (has it always been hot as hell in there?). After checking in with the wives, we headed down to the bars south of Cesar Chavez, which are slowly becoming my favorite places to drink in the Mission: the courtyard at El Rio is downright charming, the photo booth at The Knockout is second to none, and for good measure there’s even a Taqueria Can-cun in the area. Even the Argus lounge makes up for an overall lack of inspiration with free shots of vodka gimlet and projected Kubrick films.

It was good to have a night out drinking. The moon was high and brilliant. Mission Street felt like a loving old relative with questionable hygiene. The city glowed. Joe is a believer in the well-timed sentiment and so we spilled lots of beer over locked-eye toasts as we made our way through the rounds. Each new drink comes with a small slug of intensity and that’s how drinking with Nowell and Joe is. Later, Joe learned that on this side of the Cascades, ordering a “carne asada” gets you a plate, not a buritto. Nowell successfully ordered a chorizo burrito (every time Nowell gets chorizo, it seems to generate a new inside joke) and I got my secret weapon: cheese quesadilla.

A few days later, I found myself south of Cesar Chavez again, with Adrienne to watch her boyfriend’s band play the Knockout on a Monday night. Spontaneity! Plus a chance to revisit the photo booth! Adrienne remind me of me. Since starting graduate school, she’s been constantly embattled, yet she’s full of plans for displaying our crafts to the world. Thank goodness somebody is.

At one point the city was my best friend. We spent a lot time alone, made each other feel good, and I have many memories of being intoxicated with her beauty. (I think I almost got her pregnant back in the spring of 2004). Now I wake up at five to spend my days in Vallejo and there is the sense that SF and I have drifted apart a little. But it was a sunny weekend of wandering around town around and it felt good to remember that old, mischievous spark.

[flv:http://www.feather2pixels.com/blog/post_video/beach.flv 320 240]
And then, while I was wading along Ocean Beach, two tall guys from Amsterdam asked permission to photograph me for their Dutch design magazine. “We take pictures of people in the park,” they said. They had bad teeth. For fifteen minutes I posed.

And then we surprised A-kik-o (trivia team: general knowledge, handicrafts, geography).

[flv:http://www.feather2pixels.com/blog/post_video/surprise.flv 320 240]
And then Joe and Ana arrived in town for the final leg of their honeymoon.

And then I skipped my open studio show completely because who cares about a bunch of postcards?

I can’t avoid this any longer.  It is August and I’m not quite sure what happened to July.  I hit a brick wall.  My life slowed to a halt.  Everything was suspended.  And now it’s time for that to be over.

But right now there are only two ways things can go.  And I need them to go forward.

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?

The Rascal is gone forever. We had our final goodbye on Sunday night and it was short and sad. Three years we spent in our little home together on top of the hill with the cable cars, asian seniors, and that bachelor with his dalmation pup. I don’t know how *in* love we were, but I have never loved a girl like I loved her.

I woke up in a strange neighborhood today. The morning sun was high and to the south. I was enjoying it on the walk to the 24 bus line, happy to be alive and thinking that maybe I will never not feel alone, but the city will always be here for me. And that’s almost enough–she always gives me back everything I give to her and more. I got to the corner of Baker and Divisadero and a woman on the corner was wearing an SF SPCA shirt. It pleased me. I asked her if she worked there. She did. “Cool,” I said.

I am starting a new online journal. Let’s get a few things squared away:

A. Motivation
The only way that the stupid shit happening to me makes any sense whatsoever is allegorically. Trust me, I have been trying to deal at face value with the basic structure of my life for a few months now and it’s been a minor disaster. That shit is for the birds. And I am no bird. I have hair all over my body, give birth to live young and nourish them with my milk. The life of the mammal is shrouded in metaphor.

B. Fuck You
Just like you, I believe that publishing a personal journal on the internet means that, at best, you are a narcissistic loser and, at worst…well, there really is no lower limit is there? Anyways, fuck you I don’t care what you think about me. Don’t get me wrong, if you find me creative and charming that’s exactly what I am going for. If not, though, go dot-com your asshole to a tree.

A lot of stuff has happened to me in the last few months. After living together for 3+ years, me and The Rascal broke up and I moved to a 4br in the Mission district. I got a full time job teaching electrical engineering to college seniors on the shores of San Pablo Bay. Lastly, I spent the summer back in Berkeley, doting on a mysterious woman who let me down. Maybe some sort of chaos is a better characterization than “minor disaster.” I prefer the one that makes me appear more victimized.

The mysterious woman was alluring from a distance. Here is a list of things we did and didn’t have in common:

In Common:

• Both honest more in writing than in person.
• Both took French.
• Both twenty-seven and on the verge.
• Both work well with people professionally.

Not in Common:

• I project what I feel, she feels what she projects.
• The word “hella.”
• I let people in, she ins people let.

We had an amazing elixir summer but in the end she broke things off with me hella quick after a Friday night in the Marina. Was it Al Green who had his baby change the lock to her heart on a Tuesday while he was at work? I know how that guy feels. Actually, that’s bullshit–nevermind her heart, I didn’t even have the key to her front porch. And I constantly wonder how I ever felt so close to someone so opaque. Because I wasn’t. OK, since my new online journal is already at risk of boring my one reader back to craigslist’s casual encounters, I will just say that my biggest problem for now is that I am confused about what it means to touch someone. I don’t even know if I want anyone touching me for a while. In other words, nothing good ever happens when you go out in the Marina.

The job is as ridiculous as it sounds. If you return to feather2pixels.com, you will understand.

My bedroom still resembles the storage unit that preceded it as the place I keep my stuff, but you could make a decent argument that my house is sitting on the best block in the entire city. It’s right off the BART station and there is a lot of foot traffic. That’s what makes the Mission awesome–people’s lives here are happening on the streets. It seems like the type of place where you get into a band because your neighbor had a CD on the other night, not beacue you read a review online. As for the hipsters, they are harmless really. I actually think it’s quite charming how so many of them are mediocre, making up for it with some kind of creative energy. I can deny it all I want but I fit right in.