feather2pixels

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.

I accidentally pulled out my favorite hair last yesterday. Even though it was right in front, the hair in question managed to survive several rounds of haircuts and I admired its perseverance. And since I haven’t cut any of my hairs in almost eight months it’s not surprising that this one was almost eight inches long. I am sad.

Thanksgiving lunch at school.  So fucking good.  Roasted turkey, honey baked ham, real mashed potatoes and stuffing: the mess hall is slowly growing on me.  It helps their cause that since I started waking up at five, my body has become a black hole, trapping all edible matter unfortunate enough to be caught within my gravity field.  I’m starved by lunch time.  During yesterday’s feast, the room was packed so I ended up sitting with an old married couple who were part of a busload of seniors touring campus for some reason I didn’t quite understand.  I had forgotten what a simple pleasure it is to talk to older people.  People who aren’t difficult to please: what         a breath of fresh air.

The Mission was in top form for last week’s Day of the Dead. The procession traversed a couple of blocks about twenty-fourth street and there were lots of the following:

-candles
-faces painted white
-drums
-(bacon-scented?) incense

To-shi-o, Corinne and I stumbled down the street to take it all in and I’m now convinced that all parades–even non-occult related parades–should take place at night. The darkness enhanced everything good about it: the intrigue, the seemingly controlled chaos, the sense of the familiar becoming unfamiliar. The brown bagged beer also enhanced these things.

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Oh, and the oil spill. The fucking oil spill. The Chronicle led the next day with a 140 gallon estimate and at an actual figure of 58,000 gallons, as usual, the Chronicle was 0.8% correct. Or 99.2% wrong. Depends on your perspective I guess. Of course, the error isn’t really the Chronicle’s fault (although a six block walk to the bay would have confirmed this number as ridiculous), as everyone is now sorting through the explanation of the USCG’s now famous slowness in getting its story straight (it now appears that at least part of the explanation involves damage to the sounding tubes used to measure tank depth).

Overall it just sucks. Every major beach in the area is closed except Ocean Beach, the greatest of the beaches, and it’s unclear when they will be safe or even if they will ever be truly safe–even small amounts of benzene are enough to can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches, tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness. Anyway I was on the beach today and it was very unclear what was going on. There were ominous looking signs and loads of workers in white haz-mat outfits picking at the sand, but there were also plenty of surfers, dogs, and general beach miscellany. Are we safe or are we unsafe?

As the media hunts for prey to satiate its never ending bloodlust for blame, the people around me seem to be reacting with varying levels of defensiveness and xenophobia (“Down with Hanjin!”) across party lines. The old boys club at the Maritime Academy (which may actually turn out be the alma mater of the pilot in question) has been decidedly defensive. If you are asking me, they are giving way too much attention to the reactionary nonsense of the first 48 hours, which has included everything from “no single hulled ships in the bay” to “no ships in the bay.” Right. Also, they were really pissed about the front page pictures of oiled birds on day two of the Chronicle’s coverage. One thing conservatives have grown to hate, I’ve noticed, is any level of insinuation that non-human life may be as important as human life. Or human money. Or human jobs.

Wow, for ten minutes I didn’t write on endlessly about myself! (Though you should know I printed some really shitty new postcards this week) Here are some pictures.

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.

Halloween in the Mission District took the form of a mass of costumed nine year olds, most with pumpkin buckets and parents in tow. The sheer number of kids in the neighborhood was fairly amazing to me and seeing them all dressed up made Mission Halloween that much better—it all seemed worlds superior to the non-celebration going on in the Castro, where an armada of cops was apparently deployed to ensure that nobody was having too much fun. I was disappointed that our apartment didn’t receive any trick-or-treaters, but apparently hitting up the local businesses rather than residences is more in line with tradition. For the sake of variety, this probably makes more sense and an informal survey discovered vegan mini cupcakes being distributed at Ritual Coffee Roasters, peanut butter cups at the Bartlett/24th liquor store, and mint flavored toothpicks at the take-out Chinese place across from the BART station. As usual, this area was the center of activity.

After a bit of aimless wandering, I put on my biking gloves, climbed up to our back balcony where nobody can see me, and played songs into the cool night air. This is becoming a routine during these solitary times. It finally feels like Fall.