Spilt Melk, or, Shortcuts

Warning:  This is a baseball post.

Oh, and...

Warning:  This is a writing post, too.

As the Airman used to say to me, "Sit down, shut up, and hang on."

*****

This morning my favorite PBS affiliate, KQED in San Francisco, posted this article to Facebook and Twitter, an open letter from a fan to the Giants.  In it, the fan deliberates so many repercussions of SF Giants' outfielder Melky Cabrera's positive test result for performance-enhancing drugs.  KQED asked in their teaser, "Do you still love the San Francisco Giants?"

Oo, boy.

Yes, Virginia, I still love the San Francisco Giants.  I also happen to still love every other baseball team, with the exception of the New York Yankees.  I love all of the minor league teams, I love the college teams, I love the Little League teams, and I love the little kid who was at the park the other night in a batting helmet almost too big for him sending grounders past his dad.  I love baseball, pure and simple.  I love so many things about baseball.

But I've only loved them recently.

When I graduated from high school, I was a huge Twins fan.  Loved all things Kirby.  Had my own "Buy a vowel Hrbek" sign.  Wanted to see the park someday.  I still haven't got there--and won't because they are in a new ballpark now--but I got a little heartbroken along the way and got sidetracked.  In the mid to late nineties I sort of gave up on baseball...right about the time Mr. McGwire and Mr. Sosa started beefing up and hitting home runs all over the place.  I didn't give up on baseball because they had been found to have used drugs, but because baseball, by my definition, was a sport where you didn't look like an athlete of any kind of stereotype but yet you made amazing things happen.  I stopped watching baseball when they stopped looking like average guys and started looking like cartoon characters.  To me, the game didn't look amazing anymore.

And, of course, we all found out why.

(Someone that I dated once said that he stopped watching baseball when the players went on strike in the nineties.  Strangely, even in my cash-strapped position, that would be less heartbreaking than drug use.  A union fight is a union fight.  Drug use is a short cut.)

I didn't come back to the game until 2004, and that's only because my brother was fool enough to take me to a ballpark.  I was hooked at the entrance gate.  Keep in mind that I saw Bonds play that day, and while I wasn't impressed and knew what was going on already with him, I wasn't following players at that point.  I was following ballpark experience, the experience of going to a game at AT&T.  Since then I have visited the Coliseum (blech; sorry, Oakland, I love you, but I hate your venue) and Petco Park (nice ballpark, no excitement, though).  AT&T still wins.  AT&T wins regardless of whether the Giants do.  I attended games through the Bonds' era, and into the long drought after Bonds, and even when I had to fight to get seats from opponents' fans who were sitting around me waiting for us to lose and Johnny-come-lately Giants' fans who decided to start flooding the ballpark in 2011.  I loved AT&T after we sent Molina to Texas and Dave Roberts moved to San Diego and Mike Matheny left to heal from concussions.  I'm not there now, but I'm still there in spirit.

Let me just say this about Melky Cabrera:  I didn't hate him, and I don't hate him now.  I can say that even though he doped up AND even though he used to be a Yankee.  (Chris Stewart is now a Yankee, and I don't hate him, and I have always love Sabathia, so I think the Yankee hatred lies in their leadership...no, I don't like A-Rod, either.)  Honestly, I was sort of ambivalent about him.  I liked the idea that we got a better batter for an awful pitcher (Sanchez), but I'm sure that now someone in Kansas City is getting the last laugh on that one.  I was probably more hurt by Mota getting suspended for his drug use than Melky, because I didn't know Melky as well.  But any drug use is not okay.  When Mota comes back, I'll treat his bullpen time like I did Bonds' at-bats, with silence.  I will pause the passion and look away.  And I'll do the same for Melky.

I too have questions on how this could happen, and what the Giants (or any other ball club) could do to stop it in the future.  It all comes down to this--do you assume that any phenomenal player is using something as a crutch?  Should we presume guilt on Jeter, Fielder, Wright, Vogelsong, Cain, Dickey, Harper, Pence, Sandoval, Strasburg, etc, etc, ad nauseum?  What then, would be the magic number?  What's "too good" for you?

I didn't hate Melky.  But I was bored by him.  I'm not bored by the Giants, or baseball, in general.  Only if the player is too good am I bored.  Show me your humanity and I'm interested.  Which, remarkably, sort of makes the guys who take the shortcuts perfect for the job in my eyes, if it weren't for my love of integrity as well, and my hatred for shortcuts.

*****

As a side-note, I promised that this post would be about writing as well.

In the past couple of months we've heard some pretty wild things from the political ad campaigns and from non-fiction writers fabricating certain things in their books.  I won't point fingers; you've probably read/heard about them from MSNBC, Fox News, or other news organizations.  It makes it difficult for me to care about current events, or to pick up a memoir without wondering how much of it is a shortcut to get me, the reader, to pick it up.

Does that mean I'm going to give up on current events?
Does that mean I'm going to only read novels?  (Hmm, that's a thoug--juuuust kidding...)
Does that mean I'm going to give up baseball?

Lack of integrity, and the short ride instead of run to the finish line, could ruin the journey.  Or it could pinpoint who I cheer for.  I'm still cheering for the Giants, but not all of them.  I'm still reading books, but not all of them.  And I'm still following current events, but not all of them.

After all, I have my own race to run.  And I can't afford a shortcut.

Sit down.  Shut up.  And hang on, dear reader.  

This Worldwide Life

According to my Facebook feed, I was promised an early edition of This American Life this week.  The content was supposed to be a hot topic.  The broadcast was supposed to be popular and full of angst.  I've been checking my iPhone for THREE DAYS on the cursed This American Life app, for crying out loud, and no episode!  I finally had to manually find it on the Internet.  JEEZ!  WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY IS THIS...?

*****

Yeah, that paragraph above is a lie.  I actually have been checking the app, but I've been dreading listening to this episode.  Dreading it because society needs someone to be the center of a witch-hunt.  Dreading it because I agree, but not wholeheartedly.
What was magnificent about this episode of This American Life, once I bit down on my belt and listened to it (correction:  I did not bite down on leather of any kind), was not that another episode had to be retracted.  It's not the lengthy pauses of the liar's answers (burn him!). 
It was Act III.
In Act III of the broadcast, Glass goes out on a limb and trusts a guy who really does claim to be a journalist--not just play one on the stage--and ask him about what actually does happen in China in the manufacturing of some of our most beloved electronics.  In case you don't care to listen, I can summarize:  the situation in Chinese manufacturing is disputed because workers and managers can't agree on whether or not the overtime is wanted or not, the situation of safety in the factories could be safer but isn't because it's not a contract demand, and the situation of labor cost is not the determining factor in keeping manufacturing for items like Apple products in China.
I'll let you absorb that last one for a moment.  Maybe I'll even restate it:  the situation of labor cost is NOT the determining factor in manufacturing Apple products in China.
That wasn't a lie.  Honest.
What IS a determining factor in manufacturing Apple products (and other electronics) in China?  Supply.  Pure and simple.  You can get all of the materials for making Apple products immediately in China.  China is willing and able to provide a faster delivery time than the US, or any other country, for that matter.  It's all a matter of TIME.  We want our toys, we want them now, and Apple will get them the fastest way possible if they make their products in China.
It's not labor costs.
It's because everything must materialize...NOW.

*****

James Frey.  Greg Mortenson.  Mike Daisey.  Let's lynch 'em.
I have to wonder, though, while I go gather rope.  (Hey.  I'm lying.  There is no rope.)  I have to wonder what makes a person do this.  I have to wonder what causes them to resort to fabrication to get in the door.
Maybe...that they aren't getting famous fast enough?  Maybe that they don't know how to do what other, admired, effective, honest activists or memoirists do, but they still get asked by their friends, family: "Hey, how's that fight against substance abuse?"  "Hey, how is that school in the Middle East coming along?"  "Have you managed to change the working conditions in China?"
How you like me now? comes the answer, when the account is on Oprah, when the tea raises millions, when Apple is brought to its embarrassed knees.
Not that all three accounts couldn't have happened honestly.  But honesty requires two things in literature:  effective, well-executed prose, and the time to execute that prose.
A short-cut, in essence, would mean saving time.  A wild account that isn't true could help you, the reader, overlook the prose, or allow you, the writer, to break the rules for prose.  Or break the rules for journalism, memoir.
I'm just thinking, maybe, just maybe, the writer has run out of time, and doesn't know how to make the idea work to sell, and takes a shortcut.
We want spectacular, and we want it instantly.  By God, there it is again.  Like watching a baseball player shoot up 'roids because the fans want more home runs, and they want those runs NOW, THIS SEASON.
Onward, dear reader.  And hurry the hell up.

That Song by David Gray, or, Defying Love

My brother is agonistic. This probably makes him stronger than I am.

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

*****

It's been one of those weeks where I wondered where my head was at the end of March when I signed off at the last employer. You have to have a strong stomach to do this, I thought all week. Probably a stronger one than I have. It's not just a financial aspect. It's proving yourself to what you did last. If you are alone and have no coworkers, do you make a noise when you fall in the woods?

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

I went to bed last night completely sad. Not just "Titanic" weepy (although it probably didn't help that I watched that movie just before bed), but downright alone. My mind tends to tangle up in knots way too easily these days. About the only moment of clarity I've had over the past week was a friend stopping by while I wrote at a cafe (God bless FourSquare) and this morning staring into the irises of paintings at the deYoung. Worse, all this shades of sad and alone were very boxed in. I couldn't get away from them, save for that brief respite of bending someone's ear over coffee yesterday. He's a computer whiz. He showed me a page he created on the web that allows him to follow his friends without signing into all of the popularity contest of Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever. He showed me how he could see me.

I was shocked to find that I wasn't invisible. And I knew that should something happen to me, someone would know. Someone would see a pattern.

I do leave footprints. I'll be damned. Or am.

When you are alone, and don't punch a time clock, that is very, very difficult to prove.

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

*****

This coming week's agenda looks like this:

• Apply at all of the staffing agencies
• Lead writing groups on Monday and Tuesday nights (I am taking a break from the Wednesday group)
• Write a marathon of words on Friday
• Fly out of Northern California this coming weekend and go be with my family in Carlsbad

Oh, good, says the reader...she's off to where someone can shower her with love again for a little while, show her attention, make her happy. God knows we can't do it.

But my mother was here. Nothing is permanent, but occasionally she was here. She stopped in a couple of times this past week, and I believe she wouldn't have shown up if I would have been showered with love. Or showered with "like." Or acknowledgment.

This ain't no love that's guiding me.

Damn, right there. Her footprint. While I led a group in moving their pens, or sat in the library with the immigrants and homeless, while someone somewhere crowed about what is only followed on Facebook--through all of that turning of the Earth, my mother was present and whispered something I either couldn't hear or couldn't understand.

And then I wrote down a controlled burn of the forest I stood in and was immediately shown my footprint.

Ain't no love...that's...guiding me.

Skipped stones splash, happily defying love of gravity.

P.S. - This song is where today's title of Life for Rent comes from. Guide me.

That Song by Adele, or, You Can't Go Home Again

Never thought I would see a box in these colors again.

Keep in mind that this box was bigger than what it should have been. It included the one thing I wanted sent from my previous employer, and it included a bunch of crap that I asked be discarded on site. I explained to several people, on several occasions, that what I left behind I didn't want. If someone else needed them, they could use them. Whoever packed the box packed what I wanted and promptly used that other stuff as packing material.

Which, of course, caused quite the flashback.

I wanted to be bigger, though, so I responded to the two messages you see above in text messages to the people who wrote them. One isn't signed, but I know who he is.

No acknowledgment of the texts from either one.

To be honest, I have sent folks from that branch text messages just after leaving, with very limited response. Two people know me on Facebook, so we can stay in touch one way or another. But the others have completely ignored me. I'm always a little stunned by this, given how much I used to do for the people who worked for me.

I try to rationalize it. It doesn't work. I've often thought of just walking in on them one day to say hi, but honestly...would any of them care one way or the other? Two of them would, but we see each other on Facebook.

About a month out, I talked to the Airman about this. He said it would probably just be best to stay in touch with those who wanted to, and to not walk back in that building. He wasn't trying to protect me, he just didn't see the point.

If nothing else, this will teach me not to look back. I have a whole new set of "coworkers" now in the Meetup writing sessions that I attend, and some of them I see over and over. Others I saw twice and they disappeared. It teaches me, once again, not to take things for granted. To take in and relax with every interaction, and to appreciate people for as long as I get to know them. This will also teach me how much weight to give people...differing degrees of commitment from others should grant me options in how much commitment I portion out to others. When I worked with my last employer, I had these nightmares where I would work the counter or phones alone, with no employees. And then it really happened, during a little period expansion, and it happened for a month. I learned that I could do it, but that I shouldn't do it. There are limits to health. And I crossed them. Several times.

Given that I have been deserted while I worked with these people (I won't discuss how that happened when I broke my hand) and that it took them over two months to send the one thing I wanted from Oakland to San Francisco (and the fact that they didn't listen and included about twelve things I didn't need when I finally did get it), tells me that that part of my life is over, regardless of how desperate in the employment department I get.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This is where the title of today's post of Life For Rent comes from. It seemed extreme...for only about a minute. "I won't let you close enough to hurt me." Again.

One of Those Songs From Glee, or, Moving Forward

It's no secret.

I...HATE...FACEBOOK.

I wish I could love it. I wish I could use it to the best of my ability, like the manipulative love affair that I have with Twitter. But there's something about Facebook that spells the following to me:

• I'm a failure. No husband, no kids, no traditional employment (heck, no employment that involves the rich and famous).
• I'm unimportant. No comments = no one gives a crap that I exist.

Which is why I'm trying not to sign in to it. It hit me yesterday, thinking on it, that I'm fighting a few things here with Facebook:

• Very few of my friends are readers. Most just play games or post pictures.
• Very few of my friends have the same amount of friends that I have or fewer. I can't imagine how they keep with their friends, especially those at more than 100 friends. I have a feeling that in order to get their attention I would either have to shut down my FB account (tempting...) or threaten something rash (also tempting).

But I'm trying to move in another direction instead.

The new goal is to not check FB, and instead start working on other sites that focus more writing, like Gather and Twitter. I can post things remotely, but I don't need to check on it to see if anyone said hi. Most people don't say hi. And friends who enjoy me the way I am talk to me in e-mail, on Twitter, or via text.

Less posts, no visits, and no letting folks know about the new blog posts. The list won't read them anyway. The link will stay up. A diamond in the rough for the diehards, should they exist. My life in Facebook will show up by remote feed from other websites, that help me to rise up and celebrate life. Not this moronic, constant, popularity contest on-line.

(A remarkable coincidence, since Zuckerberg seemed to create this idea from being socially rejected. Maybe that's why I think it sucks...it spawned from pain and didn't nurture healing.)

Please, FB, let me quit you.

P.S. - This is where the title of this post of Life For Rent comes from. This is obviously not the Glee version, but I love this version and couldn't find a clip from Glee that wasn't just audio. Enjoy, and onward, dear reader.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Reading, Part 2

Subject Matter

I've been asked before, on occasion, what it is that I read over the course of a day. (In fact, my favorite question to ask at book signings of authors is, "What are you reading?" even though I may never jump into their literary choices. It's kind of like glimpsing into someone's medicine cabinet.) In addition to books (I'll address how I select those in a moment) I have a variety of other sources for reading and therefore lots of material to respond to in my writing. Currently I'm at around 5% each of the two Kindle books that I read from daily, about 50 pages a day from a paperback I'm reading, and two articles a day from that week's New Yorker magazine. In terms of internet surfing, here's what I dip into on a daily basis:

• I check my Yahoo! e-mail--that's usually the source for my writing group information
• ProBlogger, which publishes a daily post on how to successfully blog
• Powell's Books, both their websites for book "Review-A-Day" and their Books Blog, which is supported creatively by a rotating roster of authors who guest-blog
• Twitter. Twitter gets a lot of crap for the same reasons that Facebook gets a lot of crap, but both are so intricate now that you can pretty much treat them like a salad bar--if you pick the right blend of feeds and notifications you get the best combination of news and entertainment. If you don't pick the right blend for you, you have what amounts to an informational compost heap. I find that I have to be flexible enough to constantly tweak my Twitter streams as well--if I don't, I get discouraged pretty easily.
• Google. For me, Google is like an iceberg--I'm sure I see only about a quarter of what I could be seeing or using. I usually check e-mail (best and safest e-mail in my opinion), Google Reader (which gives me a comprehensive one-page update of all of the blogs I'm following), and Google News. News gets a skimming on Google--I can usually (sadly) catch the same feed of stories on Facebook or may have already seen most of it on Twitter. The Reader is eclectic and is sort of like an unabridged version of Twitter; categories include: Bay Area, Books and Literary Adventures, Creating Good Habits, Language Adventures (I subscribe to Spanish, French, and Italian blogs), and Travel.
• NPR. Probably not the most objective place to get my news, but what is? I find it's the least assaultive place to get my news.
• Monster/CareerBuilder/LinkedIn--to keep the career opportunities fresh.
• Facebook. Ugh. I have made many comparisons in my hatred of Facebook, from comparing it to Walmart to comparing it to a high school clique or a college fraternity. Like Twitter, I've tweaked my feeds on Facebook: if a friend spends all of their status updates on how great their kids and husband are, I tend to turn off the feed and just check on them occasionally. I also hide stuff about any game or event on Facebook that has a title that ends in "-ville" or "Wars"--this kind of activity is roughly on par with watching paint dry. I do tune into feeds that keep it real--book/movie/music recommendations, marathons ran, dishes attempted and cooked or ruined, thoughts on the political climate. I tend not to care where people are, so location feeds only excite me if I've been there, too. A bonus for me on Facebook is that I'm nearly invisible--I don't have more than a hundred friends on Facebook and I don't generate a constant or large number of comments. That, and most of my friends have better things to do than to read me. (In contrast, I have 100 followers on Twitter, but that's a different crowd.)

In terms of choosing books to read once I've finished one, I have a particular method of selection. I think on my religion, or better, my spirituality. I know that God has more important things to do than to help me to choose what to read, just as President Obama has more important things to do than to talk to Oprah on the day his "long-form" birth certificate comes out. But I would like to think that God enjoys the task of helping me choose a book, and maybe that's why I feel like He's present when the next book selection happens. Perhaps it's not even Him--perhaps the spirit is some aspect of my mother instead--but I like to believe that God loves a good story. Why else the Bible? Why else the by-lines in the New Testament of the same event told in the voice of a variety of different people? "According to Matthew, this is what happened." "But according to Mark, THIS is what happened."

Oh, for heaven's sake.

So some visage of God comes along with me to bookstores, libraries, or to browse the shelves of what my roommate has in the living room. God sits on shoulders of firemen and soldiers, yes, so why not me? 'Tis a strange way to be guided, to be sure. (And before you lock me up, no, I don't believe I'm "chosen" for this. It's kind of like prayer--I believe anyone can do it. This happens to be the most effective way for me to pray.) Because I have such a black-and-white approach to the world I have tried many times to break this process down into a science, but it's not a science. Neither is it something happening because I've been "saved"--as a Unitarian I struggle with that salvation piece. (Trust me when I write this--you don't want to chase down this rabbit now.) Instead, it's akin to picking up an instrument and playing, or knowing how to shoot a gun or crochet a sweater; it presents itself as a repeated display of muscle memory.

In this light, I can give you pieces of what happens in a bookstore, library, or bookshelves. I often browse the entire store or library first, quickly, just to get a feel for the space. (For the San Francisco Library I just browse fiction for this trick.) Then I narrow my search to a particular letter of the alphabet or specialized section (like "New Arrivals" or "Staff Picks"), and begin opening volumes. I flip through, read jacket summaries, look deeply into typeface (can I live with Helvetica on cream linen for 400 pages?), and admire cover artwork. There's a courtship here. I put books back and go to new ones I've previously opened. And, when the time is right, I start working around with first chapters.

Those first chapters are the final step--God and I find my literary dance partner for the next 400 pages and we have a winner. Why, you may ask yourself or ask me, would this be so important? Why put so much emphasis on it? Not to be ungrateful, but I've had so much required reading in my life (former literature student) and so many bad recommendations in my life ("Oh, you like books? You should read THIS...") that this is my sacred pleasure. I'll ask others how they liked books, I'll raid reviews for bits and pieces of information, but at the end of the day this final selection process works. There are so many books and so little time that this method keeps me from wasting time with books I won't finish. I tweak the process at the selection or root cause, and this continual check and adjust with the aid of a Divine Spirit seems to give me the confidence I need to read a book I enjoy.

Onward, dear reader.

Post Script--You may wonder: Since Kindle books aren't in a store, what's the process for those?

SHEER IMPULSE BUY. NO TRICKS UP MY SLEEVE AT ALL FOR THOSE. On the flip side, I have so many Kindle books that I haven't read because of that. *Sigh*

What I Have Been Doing Lately - Part II

It's been a while since I've posted, so I thought it best to review my resolutions and where I am with them:

• Try one new thing every day - Mostly circles around wine, but haven't done it much in the last week since it's been a full-time occupation to get to work and get well.
• Do not buy any new books - Still haven't broken this one, thanks to the San Francisco Public Library. At our last manager meeting I also received a gift card for $25, which I'm holding on to until I take a trip to one of my independent bookstores and someone else buys me $25 worth of books.
• Do not buy any new pens - Sadly, at my last manager meeting something else also occurred--a couple of managers took home half my pens from the cup at work. So I had to go buy new pens for the cup. Note to self--the cup doesn't come out at manager meetings anymore.
• Give up Facebook - Sorry, folks, BUT I'M LOVING THIS. All my good stuff shows up on Twitter, like walking poetry. My Facebook feed looks like a news ticker, since I can't see anyone else living a "better" life than me anymore.
• Tweet more - and having fun at it, whether I'm read or not. This is still the case.
• Blog more - Yep, this one and the first one are my opportunities.
• Give up sex for a year - Still strong here, and it's actually easier not only to turn men down, but to enjoy people for everything besides their "coolness."
• Not hoarding food - And another opportunity. Didn't get lunch yesterday and hoarded food last night.
• Want what I've got - a challenge this week, but I got back there
• Stop reacting - Opportunity as well

Now, those reading this and those following my Facebook changes may seeing an inconsistency. My Facebook profile lists me as "In A Relationship," and I am. But not with someone else--with me. I'm thoroughly enjoying being single. Keep in mind that this isn't sour grapes--I was propositioned three times the first week of February, and passed without explanation all three times. Men will have to get much better at their advances to get to me, and if that makes me frigid, well, I'd rather be frigid and healthily happy than following men around like a sheep. I have come to the realization that men are not stupid, nor are they necessarily flawed, but very few of them are a fit for me. Those that are a fit for me will begin because they want a conversation with me, those that are not will see me as a shortcut to pleasure.

And the resolution continues.

Onward.

Trifecta

I'm never asked much about my life, so, being a writer, I offer up slices of it, complete with utensils for consumption, when I blog. I figure this--write what interests me, because I don't have many seats in the wings filled, and I am constantly alienating people by asking for help.

Gretchen lied.

Ok, maybe lied is too strong, but the favor requests haven't worked for me for the last two weeks, and I've been primarily told to face a wall and shut up by a whole slew of peers, so tonight I drift back into the past, where I have been transported this week, with my mentors that didn't insist on telling me to change but seemed delighted with my passion for writing and the writing of others.

Those three mentors were, in chronological order--Tim Friend, Michael Pulley, and Clark Closser.

Notice they are all men--so we can stop assuming that my default setting is Ani Difranco or Alanis Morrissette. And I had nothing against my female teachers--my high school history teacher stands out in my positive memory, and my Shakespeare professor at university was wonderful.

But we're talking writing here, dear reader. The thing I can't live without. So let's begin at the beginning.

TF

I had been in love with writing, but not so much reading, for 15 years when I met Mr. Friend. I would play with words, write a lot of poetry, and had signed up for journalism because I couldn't help myself--I wanted to write. Writing for the school newspaper was a joy on two levels--in the four years of this activity I learned how to write something compelling, and then shape the text to wrap into shapes on a page, like a snake. It was a hunger that made me even more hungry with consumption of the practice, and in my senior year of high school this mentor had me working on special study, where I met writers like Dorothy Parker. ("Dance with you? Dance with you? I'd just LOVE to dance with you...dance with you my eye...")

I was allowed to love to write. Selah.

MP

Two years after high school found me living in Southwest Missouri and visiting the College of the Ozarks library on my off time to study magazines I thought might be literary: Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. A boss of mine at the time saw this appetite and was taking a class with a professor of the name of Michael Pulley at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Missouri. She suggested I audit his Introduction to Literature class. I started and was so engrossed with the text that I switched to credit for the class immediately. The grade wasn't the point, however--I was officially in love with literature by the time I finished. Stories like "Araby" by Joyce, "A Rose For Emily" by Faulkner, and "What I Have Been Doing Lately" by Kincaid ripped my soul loose and allowed it to soar. Mr. Pulley got me back in college and gave me enough momentum to get my Associate of Arts in what is considered on my resume to be general studies but was actually three years of literature and history with a few requirements thrown in.

I learned to love to read. Selah.

CC

After I got my Associate's I went home, thinking I could make life work there, but really found myself drowning. I went back to southwest Missouri, and continued the debt cycle by heading to university this time--what was Southwest Missouri State and which later became Missouri State University. There, in my first semester, I met Dr. Closser.

Dr. Closser had me hooked from the moment he took attendance in the first class--apparently my last name means "one who lives in a castle" and his last name means "one who lives in a hut," so he made the observation that I out-ranked him. He spent the next three years proving that statement wrong. Dr. Closser had one of those rare minds that could make literature not only digestible but intriguing to the common man without the saturation of "-isms" in his lectures like the other literary and history profs. He would simply open up the text at the beginning of class to a place he had marked with a shred of paper no bigger than a thumbnail and say in his deliberate Arkansas drawl, "Well, what did you think?" Or "On page such and such...wasn't that GOOD?" Or "Who does Wharton's protagonist remind you of?" No answer was too wild if you could show a link in your thought process. I wrote a paper for him once linking Camus's "The Plague" to a local labor union snafu that a friend of mine was fighting in--and he was blown away. He would offer a lot of "Well, if you liked this, then I highly recommend this title here," and I read much of those, too. He enjoyed my writing enough to ask me to write a recommendation for tenure to the dean of the English department for him--I never knew if he received tenure, but I was honored to write the letter. I loved his tests and essays, and I got the feeling from his comments he enjoyed reading my responses and assignments.

I was allowed a voice. Selah.

*****

This past week I was re-united with two of these gentlemen--one of whom is aware of my presence again and the other who is not. Thanks to the mixed blessings of Facebook I'm back in touch with the man who started me on journalism, and thanks to the possibilities of iTunes and iTunes U I am again in the classroom of "one who lives in a hut." Missouri State has a whole semester of him on video podcasts--he looks the same as I remember, he says much of the same things, and I'm back in love with literature, or, I should say, I'm allowed to be. Mr. Friend, Mr. Pulley, Dr. Closser, gentlemen all, here is my letter to you, memories which have rushed to the surface:

All of you gave me something in myself to trust and to shape, like iron or glass structures, and I thank you. All of you were from a time when my mother could hear of you, and when I could write without hesitation, and when I believed that whether or not I had something to say, I would still say it, because I loved to sing. Bless you. Thousands of miles have I come, and I've been shaped by so many ugly, opinionated, and cutting voices since I last saw you, and I have wandered so far off the path that I was built to take that I may die lost, but to paraphrase cummings: "I carry your [art] with me, I carry it in my [art], I am never without it." That is why I remember.

I'm sure there's not a soul on the planet who wasn't lit up by the beacon of a teacher. I was lucky. I had three who showed me my capacity on full beams. And they have shown me my capacity again. I mourned my lack of a support structure this week at work--and I shouldn't have. My work lies elsewhere, and therefore my support structure lies elsewhere, too.

"Dear God, I'm here!" - Alice Walker

Onward.

What I Have Been Doing Lately

A lot of my New Year Resolutions are going well:

• Try one new thing every day - Mostly circles around wine, but I'm trying it too with breakfast locations
• Do not buy any new books - And the pressure seems to be off so that I can just enjoy the 600+page book I chose to read next
• Do not buy any new pens - I still have a whole cup of new pens at work, and thinned down the disposables at home
• Give up Facebook - well, the worst parts of it
• Tweet more - and having fun at it, whether I'm read or not
• Blog more - what this post is hoping to help with
• Give up sex for a year - which will be easy after you finish reading this post
• Not hoarding food - good days, bad days, but mostly a success
• Want what I've got - a challenge this week, but I got back there
• Stop reacting

Still working on that last one.

Here's what put that last one into real practice. In the last week my father went from having had a heart attack to having had one in the last year to getting hernia surgery to being uncommunicative to being unavailable when I tried to return calls he asked for. After a distinct and well-established level of gullibility, I decided that he is getting a letter. He has a girlfriend he is currently living with and a best friend who knows more about his health than I do, so really, trying to take care of him from 3,000 miles away seems futile and draining. I know, I'm awful and will go to hell. I've been told that before I stopped worshipping him because I'm Unitarian, so no real change can be claimed there. But I am defensive about the whole thing, which means that everyone else wins while I hate myself for not being able to do something I can't do.

So letting that one go is step one.

Then, if I get past that, there is another.

Turns out the guy that I got all excited about at the end of the year is not only a jerk that dated me in hopes of sex, but the one reason I went out with him turns out to be a lie--like the others, he's married. Has been. The whole time. Found that out on Facebook yesterday morning. Suddenly sex seems gross and love seems even more than a joke than ever before. I was reading my chosen paperback this morning and the hero falls in the love with his lady and I had to put the book down--it was the suspension of belief that I couldn't muster. I was reading an article in the New Yorker this afternoon on psychology and how men fall in love much faster than women and the comment that sprang to my lips was, "Must just be in New York." When you're 38 and no man has ever fallen in love with you, that truth seems much stranger than fiction. More self-hate piled on the initial foundation of the father dilemma.

And yesterday afternoon I developed my second cold in a month. So this morning when I woke up I made it simple. Yesterday was my day to explore--I went to North Beach. Today was my day to soothe--I ate eggs, with cheese. I had tea and water and soup. I talked to myself in the grocery store just for the companionship. I am sipping another red wine that I'm trying out for the first time tonight (see resolution number one), and a new chocolate brand I'm trying. I've been writing all day and feel human again. I'm wearing a Giants shirt because my boys comfort me. Tomorrow, I will not be at work, or at my work. I will be volunteering in the morning with a food bank and then meeting some friends in the afternoon, and then getting a massage in the evening, thank God. I will not be surrounded by enemies. Hopefully tomorrow will be another comfort day, before I go back to Oakland and its charms on Tuesday.

When I left work Friday afternoon, one of my employees asked me what I was doing on my day off on Monday. I told him I was volunteering at the local food bank. "Oh, so you DO have a heart then!" My boss thought that was hilarious.

No, you're right. I will probably go to hell, my dearest charge, for putting up with your bullshit and getting insulted by you for it. But my heart is called there. I was asked and I said yes. I was asked to call my father and I said yes. I was asked out by the fifth married guy and said yes.

In the words of Natalie Wood's character in "Miracle on 34th Street":

I believe, I believe. I know it's silly, but I believe.

Someone, somewhere, loves me for what I'm willing to be.

Onward.

Where I'm Headed and What I'm Looking Forward To

Yesterday I addressed what I loved about 2010, after being inspired to do so by writer Susan Orlean on Twitter. I also promised to provide a list of what I am looking forward to in 2011. I got this list from a combination of resolutions and processes that I'm working on right now. In no particular order:

• Maintaining breath, instead of holding it
• Trying one new thing every day, no matter how small or large
• Not buying any new books in 2011. I'm reading down the formidable stack in my room that I've already bought, reading some of my roommate's books that tempt me on the shelves in the living room, and rediscovering the San Francisco Public Library
• Not buying any new pens in 2011. For those who have seen some of my pens, you know this will be a challenge, but for those of you who have seen my pens, you know I have way too many
• Finding my peace with Facebook. I received some tips on how to make it better this past week from a friend (thanks much, Mike!) and I've put those in play and already feel better
• Being more entertaining on Twitter. I crack myself up
• Writing more of these blog entries. It's something I love to do and something I've sold myself out on
• Giving up sex for a year. Liz Gilbert seems healthier for it, and I could use an adult relationship
• Enjoying food again, instead of hoarding it in case I don't get to eat for the rest of the day
• Wanting what I've got
• Processing instead of reacting and resenting
• Dreaming
• Getting back on a saddle, literally
• Trying the trapeze again
• Opening Day at At&t Park
• Meditation
• Walking to the ocean more
• Meeting new people
• Learning a language so that I'm fluent

Not saying that they will all come true...I'm just saying that I'm looking forward to the effort.

Onward.

The Kids' Table

If you were raised in a large extended family you remember it--the kids' table, the sequestered plank where you were eye-balled to behave from afar and treated like clique or not to clique up close. I was never in the clique, regardless of the family side I attended, which is why I guess California fits me--there are no kids and there is no table. I sit here on the couch and watch birds fly across the rare-in-December-blue sky.

On-line, it's a bit different.

It's no secret that I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook--hmm, no, wait, that should probably be redefined. I have a habit/hate relationship with Facebook. I keep tuning in every day hoping I won't feel stupid and childish because the following:

• I'm single
• I'm in a job that I'm not effective in, and therefore...
• I'm in a job that I hate
• I love the City that I live in
• I love the music that I do
• I love movies
• I love books

Facebook, someone explained to me once, is to see the extended family and friends that you could never keep up with otherwise. No more e-mails! No more phone calls! No more letters! (A letter? People still write those? Happily for me, some still do.) Just post a status and everyone will know what you're up to! In fact, not only will everyone know what you're up to, but they will RESPOND, that is if they are truly cool or truly love you.

Sort of like a sick combination of the questionnaire that went around in study hall ("what do you think of Sarah?") and the kids table, where everyone else talks about the cool thing they got for Christmas while you got a dollhouse handmade from your dad but not really a COOL present in modern day society.

I keep trying though, to post interesting stuff--movie reviews, and, up until a few weeks back, my reading site was posting to Facebook. Now only Twitter takes all this stuff with a smile. Facebook seems to bleeding exclusivity, like the Yankees or Tiffany's, and it keeps me away. Twitter is thought in motion, a world of people free to read me, only one of which I've met and yet--they seem to accept me. I don't read Twitter hoping to have been read--I read Twitter in happy eagerness to the other people I can relate to.

Facebook? Strangely, Facebook seems like one big mirror with all of my imperfections magnified, like sitting at the kids' table, having knocked the table leg and spilled a little of everyone's water, and a dollhouse in my memory while the rest of the world had Walkmans.

Walk away from the habit. Onward.

From the Files of Misery Loves Company

Open Apology To Those Who Want Me to Join Something...Or Join Anything...Or Be Someone They'll Like More:

• I'm sorry, but that's not me.
• I'm sorry, I saw the same concept in another book that seems a little kinder.
• I'm sorry, this bullet-pointed grammar sucks.
• I'm sorry, but I don't respond well to being strong-armed.
• I'm sorry that I wanted to find my own passions.
• I'm sorry that I need to be fixed.
• I'm sorry, just in general, because you believe I won't be joining you in the afterlife.
• I'm sorry, BUT ONLY I KNOW HOW TO FIX ME...ONLY I KNOW WHAT CAUSES I WANT TO BELIEVE IN...
• I'm sorry, but I'm Unitarian.
• I'm sorry, but I believe in God.
• I'm sorry, but I believe in true love. I wish I didn't, but I do.
• I'm sorry, but I like country music.
• I'm sorry, but I like ABBA.
• I'm sorry, but I liked "Love and Other Drugs."
• I'm sorry, but I prefer novels to non-fiction.
• I'm sorry, but I'm an Independent.
• I'm sorry, but I voted for the guy in the White House. And I'll do it again.
• I'm sorry, but I love the Giants.
• I'm sorry, but I drink tequila.
• I'm sorry, but I can't drink beer.
• I'm sorry, but I love New York City.
• I'm sorry, but I love the country life.
• I'm sorry, but I don't have a car.
• I am who I am. THAT I'm not sorry for.

Live, and let me live. Onward.

Spicy Mind Food, or, Vodka, Preferring Tequila

"Good morning from canyon land!"

Oops. Wrong beginning. :)

In few minutes I'm off to Pac Heights for a doctor appointment, hopefully the last one of the annual autumn series, but the good news is I took the day off to keep this appointment (seemed stupid to travel two hours after the appointment to go to work for two hours and then travel two hours home, particularly since what I would probably end up doing at work is serving others). Taking the day off for a mid-day appointment means sleeping in, reading The New York Times in flannel, and catching up on podcasts. My habits are such that I am drawn to certain podcasts first--Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," NPR Books and Food podcasts, and "Fresh Air." Strangely, although it's the only podcast that lets me multi-task, I always end up putting off NPR All Songs Considered until there are four or five podcasts piled up, and then every time I finally get around to them I'm exasperated with myself for putting it off, because there's always something I like that I have to load off of iTunes.

This morning the first podcast yielded a Christmas song by Paul Simon with a very global feel, and then the second podcast was a glimpse into an NPR Latino program called Alt.Latino, which I fell in love with by the third bar of guitar. That one sent me back to iTunes to load all of the podcasts for Alt.Latino, which features music written and performed from all of South America, Central America, Mexico, and Southwest United States. This program served up a Texas Chicano piece and a Brazilian beat that I loved. So now I have 20 music podcasts to put off...

Let's try to break the habit, shall we, Jo?

*****

In a side note, here's where my Facebook status comes from today, taken from a message sent to me:

Last year it was about writing the color of the bra you were wearing in your FB status... and it left men wondering for days why did the girls have colors (apparently random) in our status.

This year it has to do with our love relationships, in other words, for the moment you are going through with your relationships.
What do you drink?

tequila: I'm a single woman
rum: I'm a touch and go woman
champagne: I'm an engaged woman
redbull: I'm a woman in a relationship
beer: I'm a married woman
vodka: I'm the "other one"
sprite: I'm a woman that can't find the right man
whisky: I'm a single woman but with friends that won't stop partying
liquor: I'm a woman that wishes she was single.
gin: I'm a woman that wants to get married

Nepotism

Quick Pop Quiz:

Which would you more readily give out for a flimsy reason? Your time? Or your money?

Think on it. I'll come back to this.

Onward.

Assassin

I behaved myself for most of the morning and fell into the proper intellectual role, but this afternoon the podcasts were done and the playlist fell on "Assassin" by John Mayer. I know, he's not an artist obscure, but there's something about that song today, while I picked up the makeup of beef bourguignon, a prescription, and grabbed a bowl of creamy hot chocolate at La Boulange de Cole that spoke to me. Deep drums, intended mischief turned, and I hit the back button to hear it again.

You get in, you get done and then you get gone...

Last night was awful. The kind of awful where you have a drink at your fourth choice of a bar only to find out it's cash only for something that probably isn't Don Julio Anejo, as asked for. Then the solution was tried of getting a small pizza with extra basil and taking it back home to enjoy with a glass of wine.

That just made things worse.

Should have turned around and left before the sun came up again...

But the sun came up again. And I left the phone off and dressed in misfit colors of orange and black and went to the ocean. I listened to the stories and classrooms of my MP3 and lifted my face to a curtain of fog. Ah, sweet fog. Like snow, drizzle, a brumisateur, fine gray sunshine. The sky clouded over and I took off my cap, wind running through my scalp. Slopes and grass, tall trees and reasons for green.

My phone stayed off today. All day I was quiet. There are probably messages on there, and my employer probably needed something today and I didn't answer, but I needed a safety net last night where there was none and I knew the most important thing was just to do what they tell you to do in trapeze school--"shut off your mind and listen to the commands." What were the commands? Shut off the phone. Shut off Twitter, which is still rehashing a victory and several losses. Go on Facebook, sign off with some cryptic one-liner, and then go back to what I love, word-slaying. According to the world, I suck at this, but if people want to find it and read it, they can find it. The witty one-liners, the hope of network, the belief that there's still wonder--that will now all be found here.

I was a killer, I was the best they've ever seen, I'm an assassin...

Tonight's comfort is a bottle of chianti, a good book, and satisfaction that I created a kick-ass meal from a Julia Child cookbook tonight. My successes. What I can do.

I'm not a complete failure. I have a job to do. Little did I know that the rest of the world were assassins too.

Thanks, John. :)

The Art of Racing in the Rain

This workweek may have been only four days, but it was the longest four days of my life. Because I have everyone's back, I've missed crucial things of my own job over a long series of months, and with this event I am reminded--I'm not supposed to be doing this for a living. This was something that I ended up in, and most of the time I can hold it together and have the strength of thousands and fix everything, but I don't enjoy fixing everything and putting my own health on the line to fix everything. It's just something I feel is the right thing to do.

So when I fail at this occupation, I fail twice--once as a professional, and another time as a person.

I knew I was in real trouble Wednesday...but I figured if I could just get through the day then I could do what animals do: crawl off into a corner somewhere and lose it and be cleansed and ready for the next big problem I have to fix. It's sort of like trying not to pee for an entire day (another distant animal analogy to a dog having to hold it all day indoors), and I almost made it. At around 4 pm I was working on shipping (yes, all of my people are back and I'm still in the workflow), and my shipper said to me, "I got it...you go take a break." It was like someone pulled the cork out. I walked to the back of the warehouse, where the large and dusty items live, and leaned against a racking and tried to get rid of all of it. Where the problem came into play is, it wouldn't stop. My body and mind, faced with a final straw, kept me trapped. So I tried to put the cork back in and walked back into the office to get some work done, a million deadlines raining down like ropes of chain-mail. And five people wondering if I had gone crazy.

The cork wouldn't go back in.

So I ended up being quietly hysterical (the best way to lose it on mass transit, by the way, is to wear sunglasses and stare out the window) until I was able to get home five hours later and pour myself a good quantity of alcohol. THEN the cork was back in. It's a strange feeling to have to drink in order to be sober, but that's what worked. I realize that it wasn't the most healthy option, but it was the best option. Other options wouldn't have been as pleasant.

In the next days following, I was calmer without the aid of alcohol, but feeling empty. I didn't read, I didn't write, I just worked late and tried not to think. I was hibernating (ah, another animal reference). For the past few weeks I have been reading a novel at the recommendation of my roommate, a poignant book by Garth Stein called "The Art of Racing in the Rain," the most perfect title for a quietly roaring book. I know next to the nothing about racing and don't really have an affinity for racing--like I didn't have an affinity for football before reading "The Blind Side." And finishing this book, I don't find myself wanting to watch racing--to follow the true love of this book, I think I would have to get behind a wheel myself. That is only a part of the book too, mind you--the book is told from the point of view of a racing driver's dog, who is only in the car once in the course of the book. Is this too thin of a thread to tie the two? Not with Stein's talents.

I could talk all day about how much I enjoyed this book, what it taught me, what kind of literary art it was, but on a more intuitive level I will only say this--I read the end of the book this morning and got a tremendous sense of relief. I can't pinpoint where or when it happened, but I think this passage helped make it possible:

I know this much about racing in the rain. I know it is about balance. It is about anticipation and patience. I know all of the driving skills that are necessary for one to be successful in the rain. But racing in the rain is also about the mind! It is about owning one's own body. About believing that one's car is merely an extension of one's body. About believing that the track is an extension of the car, and the rain is an extension of the track, and the sky is an extension of the rain. It is about believing that you are not you; you are everything. And everything is you.

If I were a more articulate writer, you'd have a solution to grasp here, a reason to read this book. In all actuality, you just have to trust me. Maybe you haven't been unbalanced in body and mind, or maybe you are doing what you want to do with your life for 10 hours a day. But I'm not. My intention with these posts to Facebook was to give you something positive from California...this post didn't start out that way, but I'd like to think that it had a happy ending this week, even if from a book, with the same kind of happy endings I used to have in college with books. Somewhere in a clear September sky, the track's wet. I'm given the gift of racing in the rain.

Notes From Sea Level - Back to the 'Book

So a few weeks back I closed up my blog "The Smoke and Who's Still Standing When It Clears" on Facebook--I considered it a wise decision since "Smoke" is a blog that Anne Shirley might have written, say she moved to the second craziest city in the country (NOLA being the first, n'est-ce pas?) and fell to too much temptation. But by removing Anne, I removed the bathwater too--I love to live in San Francisco, and I needed a space to share that. "Smoke" was all around observations and struggles..."Notes" is my dream of Anne loving her City and singing ballads to it.

So...

Here are my notes from the City I love...minus the parts of California that I don't.

Bon appétit.