when i am lucky, with a day or at least a morning off, i'll get a croissant w/butter & apricot jam and a coffee at tartine. a mighty, thousand-caloric-intake-at-least endeavor, i find this breakfast a terrific treat with good psychic benefits, though it leaves me gastronomically bereft for the rest of the day.
it's also good just to leave the house. even less than one block is enough.
friday was a rainy such lucky day. my friend nait was working, nait who once set his moustache aflame trying to light a broiler in a trailer in france, and who humors me since i am newly learning french: confiture. beurre.
when you are solo at public table, there becomes a dance. this particular dance-for-one is one of the world's great dances. there are others. pas de deux, etc. etc. but i'm erring at that dance, you know, when you are alone at a cafe table trying to eat and drink and also read a book. mine is a borrowed book, and i am extra-concerned about crumbs and buttery fingerprints.
failing smoothness, i find sequence: i have eaten and now want to read. it's gray out, husky even, the air a cold wet breath, and everyone's crammed in here. i feel the lust for my table. couples wearing fleeces seemingly don't notice the guy against the wall (who has been giving me one eye) has been here longer, nursing one small paper cup. his stenographer's notepad seems criminal. i am too sensitive to the din. i'm gonna pack it in.
then appears a young woman in the aisle, cradling a latte bowl, who asks, can i share the table with you. yes, of course. i am relieved; i can keep reading. for now the book, nameless, remains face-down on the table while we two strangers flutter & settle. it is easy. i pick up the book, and she too produces some perfect-bound printed-matter. placid to share the space, and also curious about what she's reading, i look across the table, nosing like a dog at another dog's butt, getting a sense. we haven't even introduced ourselves.
NO YOU'RE NOT, i say. no you are not.
i hold up my book to her. she flips hers over like a playing card. there, on the table lay two copies of the book
if on a winter's night a traveler BY ITALO CALVINO.
aye, maman. after nervous laughter at the lovely SYNCHRONISTIC, SEEMINGLY RANDOM BUT EXPERTLY QUILTED UNIVERSE>>>>>> i learnt her name is katherine.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
miracle of day-before-yesterday
miracles of the day started in june 2007. or rather not nearly to say the miracles themselves started occurring then, nor that that was the first that i acknowledged quotidien graces, but the nomenclature of such moments of the world's shine, or pizazz, or flair: that began in june 2007 in new york city, visiting with susannah-while-pregnant, walking with lauren in her neighborhood after brunch at tom's diner.
so miracles of the day are just oh!shit! moments wherein the world lays its vivid awesomeness plain. like a palm heel to the face; like a third eye rub.
the very first one remains in my memory very much like the flash of lightning it was. i had locked myself (and susannah) out of her loft by canal street, with a foolhardy, innocent-enough twist of the lock on the inside doorknob. this lock has no key.
i had been napping on babar sheets left for me; susannah was on an errand. when we met on mercer street--she was wearing an irisy light purple sundress--and shared an incredulous hug hello at our circumstances, both of being in the same geographical place and at being locked out of her house during the first hours of my visit--lightning literally struck, right above our heads in a snap onto the firescape above us; we looked up and saw a bright coin of lightning; i.e. it was a circle of lightning because it was pointed straight down at us. it was maybe more of an oh!fuck! moment, but we decided--having survived--that we were marked as beloved to each other forever.
new york teemed with miracles of the day. when i returned to san francisco, which is a balm of a place--lovely architecture in technicolor, bossy blooms in everywhere gardens, and the agreeable californian attitude + weather--i appealed to lauren: "there aren't as many miracles here as there"
there in soot brick building new york, where many girls have fallen from the sky at once...
she said, "they're not as obvious there, because it's really nice there"
so i have seen. and though the ratio of cosmic significance is much lower in san francisco than in new york city, often still is it poignant.
now this one from day-before-yesterday don't mean shit, but it stands.
alameda is a vortex of anachronism and anomaly in minature. the town ought to have an official bumper sticker (nod to denise for this) which would read: ONLY IN ALAMEDA. she and i were walking back to her truck, as it was parked near the meat & poultry safety division of the agricultural department, at crab cove, where we had just been strolling by the bay. which in alameda they like to call the beach. (is it a beach, if it's a bay? that's like a getting new jeans at bradlee's which is a little like getting new jeans at kmart: stiff, cheap)
darting down central avenue comes a man on a unicycle, balanced precariously but pedalling furiously. he was in his thirties donning a black leather jacket, and hell-bent at a pace meant for serious locomotion. he was getting it done, from here to there, completely uninterested in the circus connotations of his ride, nor the burner points he could have scored. he was wobbling with the force of his demeanor. he had no grace. he even seemed angry. he was crouched over. and he was wearing a hat with floppy ewok ears.
so miracles of the day are just oh!shit! moments wherein the world lays its vivid awesomeness plain. like a palm heel to the face; like a third eye rub.
the very first one remains in my memory very much like the flash of lightning it was. i had locked myself (and susannah) out of her loft by canal street, with a foolhardy, innocent-enough twist of the lock on the inside doorknob. this lock has no key.
i had been napping on babar sheets left for me; susannah was on an errand. when we met on mercer street--she was wearing an irisy light purple sundress--and shared an incredulous hug hello at our circumstances, both of being in the same geographical place and at being locked out of her house during the first hours of my visit--lightning literally struck, right above our heads in a snap onto the firescape above us; we looked up and saw a bright coin of lightning; i.e. it was a circle of lightning because it was pointed straight down at us. it was maybe more of an oh!fuck! moment, but we decided--having survived--that we were marked as beloved to each other forever.
new york teemed with miracles of the day. when i returned to san francisco, which is a balm of a place--lovely architecture in technicolor, bossy blooms in everywhere gardens, and the agreeable californian attitude + weather--i appealed to lauren: "there aren't as many miracles here as there"
there in soot brick building new york, where many girls have fallen from the sky at once...
she said, "they're not as obvious there, because it's really nice there"
so i have seen. and though the ratio of cosmic significance is much lower in san francisco than in new york city, often still is it poignant.
now this one from day-before-yesterday don't mean shit, but it stands.
alameda is a vortex of anachronism and anomaly in minature. the town ought to have an official bumper sticker (nod to denise for this) which would read: ONLY IN ALAMEDA. she and i were walking back to her truck, as it was parked near the meat & poultry safety division of the agricultural department, at crab cove, where we had just been strolling by the bay. which in alameda they like to call the beach. (is it a beach, if it's a bay? that's like a getting new jeans at bradlee's which is a little like getting new jeans at kmart: stiff, cheap)
darting down central avenue comes a man on a unicycle, balanced precariously but pedalling furiously. he was in his thirties donning a black leather jacket, and hell-bent at a pace meant for serious locomotion. he was getting it done, from here to there, completely uninterested in the circus connotations of his ride, nor the burner points he could have scored. he was wobbling with the force of his demeanor. he had no grace. he even seemed angry. he was crouched over. and he was wearing a hat with floppy ewok ears.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Why I Wore One Dress For Nine Days in October 2008
when i went to help my dad through his first round of chemo (stage IV matesticized non-hodgkins lymphoma; central florida right on the atlantic ocean), i brought one dress. for nine days, i wore this one dress. i considered it my "power dress", because i needed all the help i could get, and so shopped particularly for it , and knew exactly when i had found it at the store (the only dress of its kind at the H&M store in downtown san francisco; slate gray cotton jumper adorned with crimson & cream roses, empire waisted & cinched with a thick ribbon at the back, hitting below the knee, and billowing in a circle in windy conditions), and knew that wearing this one dress would accomplish Things for me on my impending harrowing chemotherapy-support errand. my one-dress hypothesis was a polyphony, and did raise secondary implications, such as would the dress smell bad at the end of the trip, and also, accordingly, would i ever again wear this dress.
13 reasons for the Nine Day Power Dress
1. it would be like a uniform, which would lend simplicity to packing, dressing
2. it would be like a uniform, which would provide protection from judgment in mirrors & from others
3. it would be like a uniform, which would send the message that things are not usual--as when a person travels with a suitcase filled with clothing items intended to manipulate as events and weather dictate for the duration of the trip--but rather navigating the inverted horror of a parent with a terminal disease.
4. it would be, according to my aesthetic tastes, wholeheartedly "me" and thus i would remember: i do not myself have cancer. i am vital,vibrant, and healthy.
5. it would be like a portable altar, the wearing of which would be the act of praying. that he will be ok. that i will be ok. that the swirling sadnesses are justified by the knowing of the cosmos, and that nothing is as senseless as it seems. and the heaviness.
6. it would be like a uniform, as i would be acting the nurse
7. it would denote that i am not fooling around: ego & vanity, take a backseat. summon strength
8. it would be a desperate act of beauty, or a beautiful act of desperation--an exasperated and incandescent art-prayer, like a worrying stone or a rosary, or a letter written to a gone-person and burnt before the eyes of deer in some pyre by the sea/in a forest
9. it would distract me
10. it would swathe me in a lovely fabric. my body in the dress, and so the girl in the light
11. it would later become a talisman. my body sweating in the dress, and sew the girl in the light. sand in the seams
12. it would not be a dress from my current rotation and thus it would be unruinable-- a bit of virgin cloth to an impending heavy set of days
13. it would Let Others Know I Am Freaking Out
13 reasons for the Nine Day Power Dress
1. it would be like a uniform, which would lend simplicity to packing, dressing
2. it would be like a uniform, which would provide protection from judgment in mirrors & from others
3. it would be like a uniform, which would send the message that things are not usual--as when a person travels with a suitcase filled with clothing items intended to manipulate as events and weather dictate for the duration of the trip--but rather navigating the inverted horror of a parent with a terminal disease.
4. it would be, according to my aesthetic tastes, wholeheartedly "me" and thus i would remember: i do not myself have cancer. i am vital,vibrant, and healthy.
5. it would be like a portable altar, the wearing of which would be the act of praying. that he will be ok. that i will be ok. that the swirling sadnesses are justified by the knowing of the cosmos, and that nothing is as senseless as it seems. and the heaviness.
6. it would be like a uniform, as i would be acting the nurse
7. it would denote that i am not fooling around: ego & vanity, take a backseat. summon strength
8. it would be a desperate act of beauty, or a beautiful act of desperation--an exasperated and incandescent art-prayer, like a worrying stone or a rosary, or a letter written to a gone-person and burnt before the eyes of deer in some pyre by the sea/in a forest
9. it would distract me
10. it would swathe me in a lovely fabric. my body in the dress, and so the girl in the light
11. it would later become a talisman. my body sweating in the dress, and sew the girl in the light. sand in the seams
12. it would not be a dress from my current rotation and thus it would be unruinable-- a bit of virgin cloth to an impending heavy set of days
13. it would Let Others Know I Am Freaking Out
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