EVEN WHEN ALL IS IN YOUR FAVOR, left and right are justified, skies are blue, food tastes unquestionably delicious, the roof over your head contains no leaks, fibers on your back are clean and soft, locale is distant, vast, unforgettable, and ventures so wholesome as to make you feel formiddable…

Is it what you really want?

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Coastal San Francisco
07.03.10

Today I trekked through Chinatown on my way home from work. I was on a mission: Find snails for a coworker. With the multitude of live creatures present in any given shop, I figured it should be no problem.

I scoured the live animal stores, grazing past decapitated fish bodies of every size and shape, their heads tossed haphazardly on adjacent tables. Live fish gasped for breath in shallow bins as their eyes bulged in desperation. There were frogs larger than my face, crabs enough to feed five, turtles bigger than basketballs waiting to meet their fate. Examining the floor inch to inch, I discovered slime and seafood galore—but no snails.

Then walking down Stockton empty-handed, I pulled the headphones from my ears and tucked away the music. I listened, to the chatter of Chinese and the scurrying to gather the night’s dinner, bargaining for greens and seeds and berries. I saw shop owners tucked behind their cash registers, deep in a forest of cheap goods, waiting. The coalesce of the chaos, the calm, buses passing in transport, people waiting to go where they needed to get. I watched. All I wanted was a snail.

History repeats itself…

TODAY WAS SAN FRANCISCO’S annual Gay Pride Parade, where scores of people spanned Market Street to see the LGBT community in rare form. People parading in cars, costumes, dykes on bikes, music, flags and rainbows. It truly was quite the experience…something everyone should attend at some point. Just to see, and to better understand.

I’ve quite a few photos that I’ll post over the next few days, but for now this will have to suffice:

Be well.

xo
j

How groovy is she, really?

I am slowly coming to grips with the nature of my plans. They’ve not occurred as I practiced for months ahead, they’re not all going as they should, I’m attempting to unearth new ways to feel that I’ve won.

But it’s not all bad news. I have what I have, I’m thankful, I know there’s good all around me to compensate for the aims I’ve missed.

Some day I’m going to find something to be enormously proud of.

Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there

Why it feels amazing to do something about it.

There was no plane, no audience, no charter smile. In lieu of feeling validated—correct—there was a chancy wonder about, like being lost indefinitely. Boundless by a transitory doctrine, somewhere along 1988 and 2010, driven to Union, between Taylor and Jones, far away.

It’s June and I’m wondering, when will passing pay off? And yet, it felt amazing to do something about it, as though I dove into a dream of geography and curiosity and all their trimmings. Though as I tried to anatomize the last dealings back home, of Dad handing me cash and Mom wrapped in her own arms, the dog sick on the floor, the car packed, the color of the lawn, the front door open, waiting for it all to end, to linger back to calm—I could not recall a conclusion. I can hear Mom’s voice over the phone, Are you ready to come home? like she asked when I played at the neighbors years ago.

But this is the kind of playing you do when you’re trying to grow up and be young at once, and when you’re trying to do something about it. I might wake with speculation, but will later walk out the door without itinerary to any step. Streets become bright with chance. Signs suggest. Crosswalks trickle gravel bit to gravel bit, the buildings’ shadows escalate the contrast of inviting ways. It’s the going, going, going again, amazing, amazing to do something about it. It’s simply amazing.

Then step off the transfer, and I’m lost indefinitely.