Laughlin

I am spending today recovering; it seems that I have been go-go-go for weeks, and today I sit down with laptop, writing instruments, and a glass of water to set a stage or something.  I have witnessed two baseball games--one awful, one nail-biting--pushed and shoved two loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, my bathroom, and my bedroom, and now I'm here, fresh out of excuses not to be.

So, in the spirit of Jamaica Kincaid, here is what I have been doing lately:

• Not sitting in trees or dreaming, two things I wish for;
• Working without a day missed until Friday, when I made my first trip to the doctor in 2 years.  The result?  I may have a thyroid issue that goes beyond the regular symptoms instead of having a thyroid issue and Crohn's.  I can only hope.  I received a tetanus shot, a lecture on my cholesterol ("you're too young for that medication"--it's your call, Doc), a thorough exam, and a dosage of birth control.  The thyroid meds followed yesterday.  To describe what it is like to be without health insurance and the proper medication for years and then rejoin the healthy was overwhelming this morning as I took a pill that will bring me back to vitality, focus, and, hopefully, dropping forty pounds;
• Work is back to going well...and I am learning to let it affect me less.  I'm shopping for a position 470 miles north of here, but learning all I can while I stay;
• The desert continues to master me.  I hate it.  I hate the sprawl that it has prompted.  I hate the conservatism, homicidal tendencies, and entitlement it provokes.  But one day last weekend, on a Sunday morning with my sister-in-law watching from the beach, I stepped from the sand of Laughlin, Nevada and into the coldest summer river in my history.  The water was clear, the current strong, and, at best, the temperature of it was about 60 degrees.  60 sounds fine, but in water temperature it feels like it possesses a windchill factor of 30.  I stood ankle-deep, waited for the ache to pass, waded to knee deep, waited for the ache to pass, drifted to waist deep, waited for the ache to pass, and then dunked down and up quickly.  It was like dunking in menthol, peppermint oil, snow, lightning, vodka...anything cold and stripping.  Eighteen months of dry, baking, desert sun and wind fled my soul.  Down and up, gasp, down and up.  Bless the mighty Colorado;
• My writing has been limited to miles of journaling, free-writing the novel, and what you see here;
• But I read like a M.F.-er.

The podcasts and a boss who loves words as much as I keeps me sharp.  Talking workforce management eight hours a day is a gift, writing for my love of it is a gift, and that river was a gift.  (Are all a baptism?  I guess there is redemption there.)  

One more thing should be noted about Laughlin:  I am normally not a gambler.  Gambling (as with most games, save baseball) bores me senseless and rattled.  But our first day in Laughlin I could feel something was up.  I dropped $5 in a machine to expel it from me and landed $120.  About six hours later I landed $40 on $5, and the next morning I tried to break the hundred dollar bill from the first win and pulled in another $30.  So, my gut instincts still have it.  I say this not to roll in riches (the money went to the doctor and pharmacist this week), but to say that I know, I can feel, that I will go home, not only as a goal, but as an unavoidable destination.

I wonder what it will be like the second time.  A gamble, again.

Onward, dear reader.

Marcel

Vanity Fair magazine interviews celebrities from time to time with the following questions, taken in the spirit of what Proust used to pose to his friends and acquaintances.  Since I haven't seen such a monster on the social networks (Facebook, I be lookin' at you, yo) in some time, and it's a slow writing day, here's a little near-bullet-point list for your reading round-up...

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Teaching anything and watching the learner suddenly get it.

What is your greatest fear?

Being ignored.

Which living person do you most admire?

Barack Obama.

What is your favorite journey?

The one my pen takes on a blank page, with no end in sight, accompanied by a cup of strong, black coffee.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Chastity.

On what occasion do you lie?

When someone asks me what I think of the food.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?

My hindquarters.  Apparently, and mysteriously to me, it’s desirable.  I’d rather have a knock-out set of, say, eyes.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

“Loathe.”  “Absolutely.” 

What is your greatest regret?

The men I have been intimate with.

Who or what is the greatest love of your life?

Writing.

When and where were you happiest?

When I was getting my bachelor’s degree.  I was teaching, men admired me for my brain, and I could read good books without being labeled a snob.

Which talent would you most like to have?

Playing the guitar.

What is your current state of mind?

Precarious.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?

My mother would still be living.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Having the courage to leave a “good” job with an abusive employer.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be?

A coffee bean.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?

Shortstop/Mathematician. (Tie.)

What is your most treasured possession?

My penmanship.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Being seen but not heard.

Where would you like to live?

San Francisco.

What is your most marked characteristic?

My “mace face.”

What do you most value in your friends?

A sense of humor.

Who are your heroes in real life?

People who hear what can’t be done and do it in spite of the rest of us to make the world a better place.

What are your favorite names?

Moonlight Graham if it’s a boy, Charlotte if it’s a girl, D'artagnan if it’s a pet, Homer if it's a baseball pitcher, and Moleskine if it’s a notebook.

What is it that you most dislike?

Anything that “should” be done.  I don’t keep up with appearances well.

How would you like to die?

Quickly, not now, and accidentally.

What is your motto?

“Write what you mean.”

That Song From West Side Story, or, Wish You Were Here

First, memories.

When I first moved to the California in July of 2004, I was acutely homesick for Springfield, Missouri.  I didn't so much miss the people (at that point my best days in Missouri were over--I had graduated college and the only people left in my circles were trying to "save" me) as I missed knowing where everything was.  My first few days in California my brother took me everywhere in the Bay Area to show me the wonders of the place to where I had moved--Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Francisco.  I marveled in them all, and, clichéed, dipped my feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  I showed the proper amount of wonder.

I had hoped, in the weeks to come, that I would learn where everything was.  This was more difficult to do in Sunnyvale, where we lived, than I imagined it would be.  Streets didn't run straight, they changed names, and traffic laws were crazy to begin with...and THEN other people broke them continuously.  More and more I got on foot when I could, and learned, through the joy of the internet that I found in cafes on my laptop covered with travel stickers, that mass transit was all around me.  I started "learning" the ins and outs of Caltrain, Muni, SamTrans, VTA.  I found the Bay Area on foot.

At night, I dreamed of streets in Springfield.  I dreamed of green, of rain, of square city blocks, of fall leaves.

Two years later, I moved to San Francisco.  For my entire time there, I never, NOT ONCE, took my residence there for granted.  I could criticize or praise San Francisco, I had the license, because I lived there.  I didn't necessarily love the people; like Springfield, there were a few kind people, and the rest were in their own world.  I didn't have a husband (nor was I likely to find one there of all places) or kids, my friends were in and out of my life, and I accepted the fact that my "family" was my beloved City, with its Giants and its food and its ethnicity that I had never known until then.  I found San Francisco on foot.  Even now, eight months after leaving, I can tell you how to get around by the naming of an intersection.

I dream in color when I dream of San Francisco.  Not of its people, necessarily, although sometimes they sneak in.  Still, of place.

Here in Carlsbad I live with family, and I often feel (although they've tried to reassure me otherwise) that I am in the way.  I don't fit in with Carlsbad as a place, either.  True, they aren't trying to save me here; they're ambivalent, actually.  In many ways Carlsbad The People is exactly like San Francisco The People.  But San Francisco had ethnicity of greater variance, and parks, and art everywhere, and architecture everywhere.  San Francisco was expensive but had good and cheap/free events somewhere every weekend.

San Diego still might.  But San Diego is as far away as Sunnyvale from San Francisco, and the train to San Diego doesn't run half as much as Caltrain.

Here I am.

True, there are moments when I've hated Carlsbad.  True, I still dream of San Francisco.  But somewhere in the last month I've learned to let Carlsbad go.  My ambivalence equals that of a local.  Place no longer has the role of husband/child/friend in my life.  I find joy in slices:  the ocean, a curious snout of a puppy that meets me along the beach, a child at the library learning to read at the table behind me, the breeze when it finally switches and blows over the balcony, writing in my favorite coffee shop. What place used to hold, absolutely, is now held by time to tell a story on the page.  I knew Ohio, Missouri, and San Francisco.  Carlsbad is where I will know the map of me.

I'm sure Carlsbad has plenty to offer.  I'll let someone else find it--someone with a surfboard, SUV, and cell phone.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's edition of Life for Rent.  A time, and a place.

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.  

The Long Answer On Yelp

When I was a kid my favorite pen for writing in my Hello Kitty journal was a blue PaperMate.  They sold them in either all blue casings, or white with a blue cap.  They were ballpoints, but I didn’t know any better.

I hated Bics.  Still do.

If there were no PaperMates to be found I would write with Crayola markers.  This was back before my calligraphy class, so my handwriting was shit--I wrote more to play with words rather than to draw them.  I miss those days.

Ballpoints and markers stayed with me through college.  I had a brief stint with calligraphy in the sixth and seventh grades, but that was the tedious calligraphy with a nib, a jar of India ink, and no reservoir.  You dip, you pull off the excess on the lip of the ink jar, you write two or three words, you repeat.  Slow going, even for me.

During my university education I discovered an art supply store on National Avenue in Springfield, Missouri, just up the street from my classes.  (In this regard, Springfield is more cultured than my current town of Carlsbad, and the irony never ceases to strike me.)  That store got me started on Zebra gel-writing pens, and later I ventured to Office Max and had a whole color-cased collection of Dr. Grip pens (pink, pearl, purple, blue, green, and aquamarine, all with black ink).  I even managed to have my father write with the Dr. Grip pens, his in black.

And then I came to California.

By the time I hit California I was playing with a cheap (and leaky) Sheaffer fountain pen, one of those sets that comes boxed in a blister-pack with a collection of three nibs (bold,  medium, and fine) and five ink cartridges.  Natalie Goldberg was right--that pen was visceral, and not so flighty and disconnected as a marker.  But I also feel for other gel-writers, in so many colors, which I gobbled up from Patrick’s in San Francisco.

Once I moved to San Francisco from the South Bay, I found Flax, which is akin to finding the summit of Mount Everest for a mountain climber.  Flax has more pens and pen accessories (inks, rests, wax embossers and seals, papers, blotters, cases, nibs, etc) than anywhere I’ve ever experienced.  So, going into the creative drought of art supply stores and their pen supplies in Southern California, I give you the list of what I love to play with.

Gel-writers, disposable:

• Pentel Slicci pens, 0.8 grade, in every color but pink, from Paper Source
• Y&C Xtremes, 0.7 grade, in natural colors, from Blick
• My favorite of the disposables, Stabilo pointVisco style, fine 0.5 grade, in any damn color I can get them, from Blick, who only keeps them in blue, red, and black, but I don’t care for red ink pens

Gel-writers, refillable (but not in SoCal...probably an online venture...):

• Retro Tornado, twist retraction
• Montblanc Meisterstuck retractable, with the ballpoint cartridge pulled and replaced with a rollerball cartridge in black (I got that one as a graduation gift for college)
• Pierre Belvedere capped, with screw cap that also screws on the end of the pen for storage while writing, in blue ink
• Taccia capped, with screw cap, usually in black ink

Fountains, refillable:

• Sheaffer medium nib, which requires one of two cartridges built for Sheaffer, and the easiest to find of the cartridges at Blick or some Office Max locations
• Retro Tornado medium nib, which requires International cartridges, which aren’t to be found in San Diego County (I’m afraid to try L.A. on this stuff, but maybe someday I’ll get brave)
• A Faber Castell medium nib wooden fountain, which also requires the pesky Internationals, or, for added mess, I can research how to fill the reservoir option, which may be next
• A cheap Japanese medium point retractable fountain with a cap that is my secret favorite of the collection.  That thing cost me 12.95 and never hiccups or leaks.  Unfortunately, it also takes the blessed International cartridge
• A Visconti medium nib Homo Sapien style pen, complete with the vacuum reservoir and volcanic rock housing.  By far the most expensive at $600 (that was a consolation purchase after a bad week/month/year at my workplace), the pen writes with no pressure at all (you drag it across the page instead), and refills with bottled ink.  Since I have bottled ink coming out of my ears, that pen gets the most use.  It is also the most high maintenance of the pens--it’s a mess to reload, and I usually end up with ink  on my right hand like a 16th century playwright.  I save that one for home writing; I don’t want the damn thing stolen, and I don’t want to be covered with ink at the cafe or library

Recently I was asked on Yelp, after reviewing an art supply store in San Diego called Artist and Craftsman Supply, if I had missed their extensive calligraphy section when I visited there in vain hope of pen supplies.  No, I answered the curious reader, I hadn’t missed the calligraphy section.  I saw it, and sighed, wishing it were more than just calligraphy.  Calligraphy nibs are used for short bursts of text, like wedding invitations or announcements.  I discovered last week on Fresh Air that they can also be used for old school comic strip artists; Barry Blitt, cartoonist with the New Yorker, still uses them, as he has no patience for creating his art on the computer.  A guy after my own art, but more his art than mine.  I can’t use a calligraphy nib with the dipping every third word.  I already have to refill the Visconti once a page, the fountain cartridges once every fourth page, and the disposable gel-writers in a week.  It’s been suggested that I write with those seven year pens, which are ballpoints.  Writing with a ballpoint is like writing on paper with a bar of soap.

I write a LOT, on a daily basis.  It’s important to me to have an instrument that keeps up with my pace and fills me with inspiration.  It’s important to have a bridge to some measure of happiness in the process, and pens and paper, in the right choice, lead me me to the point of accomplishment.

The "Workplace"

I was raised in a house of tiptoe-ing--my father is a grumpy man sensitive to noise, and my mother was accommodating.  Surprisingly, despite hating this sensitivity in my childhood, I’ve ended up with the same condition as an adult.  (Yep, it’s a psychological condition called misophonia.)

I first saw it emerging when I was in college--if someone had a cold or allergies on exam day, you could bet my jaw ached from grinding my teeth by the end of the class period.  Since then it’s become terrifically acute, sharpened by noises emitted from the homeless and cell phone owners of San Francisco.  Here in Carlsbad it feeds itself on my sis-in-love’s enjoyment of coffee or tea and our neighbor’s abuse of her sound system.

My iPod has always served as a refuge (save for the tea slurping, which I usually have to endure).  Since I work independently on writing and educational software consulting, there’s a certain measure of sanity to be gained from working in a noise-free/noise-controlled environment.  If you were to search for a business or organization that should grant you some form of quiet work environment, what location would you think of first?  A cafe?  A bar?

Or would you go with a time-tried tradition of the local library?

Anymore, the cafe or the bar might be quieter.

Mind you, I am surprisingly not talking about children in libraries.  Remarkably, in all three branches of the Carlsbad City Library, the children are the most often shushed and the quietest of the patrons, and, remarkably too, the ones I not only can handle but enjoy listening to.  (I have this habit of attending children’s movies in the theatre so I can hang out with kids.  The movie is just a bonus.)

The children walk into the libraries hushed, reverent.  They probably have been waiting a whole two days since the last visit on story hour to come back and check out something else, to peek at another world.  They are a joy to watch.  Being a regular myself, I love seeing regular visits from the kids.  Even the teenagers that start to stream in for study groups after three o’clock are mindful of being quiet.

Senior citizens are comfortably silent as well.  I have gotten a routine picture of the woman who shops the dollar books for sale on Mondays, the man who stacks his hold selections gently on the corner of my table, the books and media covered in typing paper bearing his name and bound in rubber bands, and another gentleman, who looks like an East Indian version of Spencer Tracy, who methodically works through all of the newspaper subscriptions.  When they all go the way of virtuality--the dollar books, the hold selections, the newspapers--I hope God takes these gentle souls to a place where paper is still dreamed.

The young, the old, the bookends, if you will, of a life.  They respect the holiness of the this place.

Sadly, there’s a wide span of the population left that couldn’t give a rat’s patoot about the quality of sound (or striving for absence of it).  They sit with each other as though at a cafe, sometimes not even using their “inside voices.”  They talk on their cell phones.  They eat three-course meals from noisy Taco Bell bags.  They strike up forty-five minute whine and cheese festivals with the librarians, who vent right back.  At one point, I overheard a patron approach a librarian and ask her to “shush” another noisier patron.  For twenty seconds, I was grateful to my fellow patron, until I heard the librarian’s response:  “Oh, libraries don’t work that way anymore.”

Apparently, the quiet library is going the way of dollar books, selections on hold, and paper newspapers.

*****

Carlsbad Library didn’t always have this atmosphere.  As recently as last August I found myself sitting in San Francisco Libraries wishing, homesick for the quieter and better-behaved Carlsbad counterpart.  The only way to escape noise at a San Francisco Library branch was to find one with study or conference rooms and sign up or schedule them.  Again, the big culprits of noise were adults between college age and retirement.  Not that anyone got shushed there, either.  San Francisco is supposed to be progressive.

But as recently as Thanksgiving I started seeing a change in Carlsbad as well.  Now I go to the last known refuge--the genealogy floor of Georgina Cole Branch.  There you get dirty looks for the sniffles.  There are a lot of senior citizens up there.  I often move up there after starting out somewhere else in the building--it’s not the world’s fault that I have this condition, and I try to keep it out of the conversation that pops up in the world.

I do miss the children, though, and their occasional whisperings of wonder between the cracks of intrusive racket the adults throw around.

That Song by Tony Bennett, Or, Home Game

Look, dear reader, at this long line of footprints in the sand.  It stretches all the way back to April 15th of this year, nine months ago in a week, long enough to give birth to another life.  If I would have known it was going to end up like this I can't say that I would have ever hunted for a job, but then, I would have missed out on getting glimpses into so many different lines of work in interviews.

Regret is a poison of any measure but particularly toxic on me; I tend to soak it up too quickly and steep in it before someone finds the antidote.  Regret was not what I was feeling last week, strangely enough, when I knew that my time in San Francisco was going to have to end in some way.  I didn't sit there and think, Gee, I should have never quit Grainger.  That wasn't the regret.  The regret was not spending more time with my writing.

I'm getting over that regret this week.

I had nine beautiful months with the love of my life, my City (as Carrie Bradshaw would tell you), mostly uninterrupted, and now my City and I have to part ways for a while.  I have to tell you that last week at this time I was torn between two choices, and you do not want to know what the other choice was.  So I am moving in with my brother to Southern California.  There maybe I can get in shape, write, and work on a telecommuting opportunity that will restore my hope in the world of education.

The responses from friends who have been told has been the following, paraphrased to protect us all:

• Look at this as an opportunity to start over;
• I'm so excited for you;
• I like Carlsbad better than San Francisco anyway;
• We'll be able to spot you right away in Petco because you'll be the one in Orange and Black;
• I'm not going to say goodbye, I'm going to say see you later.

That last one is from my writing group founder, whom I've worked with for four years, and it's my favorite of the collection.

To address the others:

• "Look at this as an opportunity to start over."  I did.  That logic kept me from choosing the other option last week.  When I come back here (and I will come back here) it will be strong, self-sufficient, and living independently;
• "I'm so excited for you."  I'm excited, too.  Trying to work it over to excited in a good way, but excited;
• "I like Carlsbad better than San Francisco anyway."  Umm...yeah.  I'll have to come back to this one in a minute;
• "We'll be able to spot you right away at Petco."  Not true but wonderful to imagine.  The last game that the Giants played at Petco there were more Giants fans than Padres fans.  The bonus is this:  if the Padres aren't playing the Giants, I have a Petco jersey to wear.  If the Padres ARE playing the Giants, then I will get to see my boyz play for about one quarter the price they would charge me at AT&T, and the seats would be warmer.

Now, back to that bit about Carlsbad being better than San Francisco.

I've lived in four places in my life:  Bryan, Ohio; Springfield, Missouri; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; and now Carlsbad, CA.  I don't take offense when people compare them, as people are wont to do.  But I can't compare them.  For me, that would be like asking which child you love best, or which songwriter in your iPod you would take on a deserted island with you.  Uh-uh.  No dice.  You are not going to sucker me into doing it.  Here are my kids, and my love for them:

• Bryan, Ohio:  The sensible eldest who went to medical school and married well, but who watches television every night;
• Springfield, Missouri:  The savvy middle kid who married well but changed careers a couple of times, with security, and coaches his kids and watches sports in a stadium he can drive to;
• San Francisco Bay Area, CA:  The artistic one that I have to worry about, but who doesn't know what tv is, and has season tickets at AT&T Park;
• Carlsbad, CA:  The youngest and most articulate of the crew.  He wants to be an artist, but the sun's out, and he's so damn conservative, and the barbecue is calling his name.

I hate the fact that in Bryan I could never be a writer.  I hate the fact that in Springfield I got booed for voting Democrat.  I hate the fact that you can't swing a cat in San Francisco with getting a crazed beggar in your face, or shitting on your stoop.  And I hate the fact that in Carlsbad everything is driving distance apart.

I love the fact that in Bryan my fear of the unknown is understood.  I love the fact that Springfield is rife with bluegrass, arts festivals, parks, the Mudhouse coffee shop, and my alma mater.  I love the fact that I can go anywhere and everywhere on foot in San Francisco.  And I love the fact that in Carlsbad, the young folks don't pepper their speech with "like" "like" "like."

(And all that said, if I ever have the wherewithal, I'd like to add another kid--New York City.)

At the end of the day, though, the kid that gets along best with me is San Francisco.  When I hate San Francisco I detest it (see homeless note, above), and when I love San Francisco I weep with joy (see Orange and Black note, above).  San Francisco should see me out of this world.

And it will.  But not today.

*****

There's a song that I'll always play getting off the plane at SFO to go back in the City, a song by Train.  For this Carlsbad bender, I played with the words a little.  If you know it, feel free to hum along.  If you don't, no worries.

I used to love the Tenderloin
Till I lost some tender coin
Then I met some fog from Marin
I took the highway to the 1
Down the coast to find the sun
It left me with these blisters on my skin


Don't know just what I had, but it took me down to Carlsbad
So I kept on going, going, going gone right there
I drove into the Grapevine range, stood up again and wrote my pain
Workin' to get right back home to you


I've been high, I've been low
I've been yes, and I've been Oh Hell No
I've been rock and roll and disco
Won't you save me San Francisco


Every day's so Prop 8-ed
I wish they were Golden Gated
Fillmore couldn't feel more miles away
So wrap me up return to sender
Let's forget this five year bender
Take me to my City by the Bay


I always knew just what I had
Now Alcatraz don't sound so bad
At least they'd have a hell of fine merlot
If I could wish upon a star
I would hitch a cable car 
TO THE PLACE THAT I COULD ALWAYS CALL MY OWN


To tell you the truth
I miss everything...everything
It's a wide, wide beautiful world
But there are wide-eyed boyz back there
And they mean everything, everything...


(The Prop 8 reference is an homage to the fact that I'm wandering back into the Red part of the state.  *Sigh*)


*****


One final note I should mention, since there were people I introduced on the pages of this blog in 2011 that I haven't talked about in a while.

The Airman and the Healer.

I've worn out my welcome with both of them, with a combination of being excited about connection and trying to keep them in the loop with this change.  The most ironic part of this story is this:  these two people were my biggest cheerleaders for leaving my job in April.  Don't misunderstand--they didn't make me do it.  But they thought this was a great idea, when everyone else thought it was nuts.

They were right, even though it's still nuts.

The twist to this story is that I sent a lot of people this news early so that they could be aware and not ask me about the City and/or understand what was happening.  Of the list that I sent it to, two people never responded.

Yes, you guessed it.

And so things change, and they stay the same.

Onward, dear reader.  And if you're going to jump, please don't.  I'm on your side.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration of tonight's edition of Life For Rent.  While I'm away I'll write home every day and send all my loving to you.  See you later, City.