Book and Music, By...

As I write this today I am listening to a collection of music that I own but haven't heard yet.  Every Tuesday I lengthen this listen:  my Starbucks Rewards app on my phone holds up a red-circled "1" like an auction bidder, and I go in to check the notification and find a free iTunes song waiting for my redeem, and every Tuesday iTunes itself features a free song for downloading from the home page.  The current playlist of new stuff looks like this:

• "Amsterdam" by Imagine Dragons
• "If Only" by Dave Matthews Band
• "My Dear" by Ruby Velle & The Soulphonics
• "How Do You Ruin Me?" by Black Prairie
• "Trouble" by Jose James

I don't know if any of these songs or the artists singing them are the latest "in" thing.  It's free music.  It's not likely I'll remember the songs or the artists in the morning.  Music is my one-night stand.  That explains why I probably knew who Amy Winehouse was but couldn't remember who she was when her death was announced.  Unless your name is Bruce Springsteen or Mary Chapin Carpenter, I probably love you, but not enough to marry your music.

It's free.  I'm no judge, going either way.

*****

I am reading a LOT of library books this year.  More than I ever have since I was a kid.  When I was a kid, all the way up to when my mother passed away, I hoarded books.  At one point in Missouri I had over 500 books, most of them literature (technically, I still have them--they're in storage in Missouri with a collection of other things), and I organized them by color.  I expected to live out my life in Missouri, even though my life of nomad behavior pointed to moving again at least once more in my life.  When my mother died, though, something no longer connected there.  I read books and donated them to the library.  I packed up the unread ones when I moved to California, and when I read most books in California I donated them to the library, sold them in my last weeks in San Francisco, or "set them free" through an application called BookCrossing.  I still considered books precious and requiring a physical care, but I could let them go when I read them, with few exceptions.

This year I've evolved again...books, through reading them, are starting to morph into the vehicles that I am sure they have been all along.  Don't get me wrong--I would not arbitrarily deface or destroy a book, but I am learning of ways where it is acceptable to do so:

• If you have decided to journey a substantial length of a mountain range on foot, and your backpack starts out too heavy; read Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" for particulars on burning your books along the trail for fire starters;
• If you want to write in a book but you don't want others reading what you have written, tuck your secrets in the negative spaces of others' books; read "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje;
• If you want to pack a fat novel that you've always wanted to read but it won't fit in your bicycle's handlebar pack, slice up the book and pack it in your backpack, deep in the gaps...but don't toss the wrong section; ask Willie Weir in his blog of his experience of reading "Atlas Shrugged" in cycling through South America.

Or just borrow a book from the library and return it after.  Whichever is lighter and fits the journey.  Borrowing a book from the library preserves it, yes, but...someday (I write this smacking my lips in some sort of lust) I want to be on a journey where a book becomes that one-night stand, that song that I remember but can't name, either by title or artist.

Onward, dear reader.

Commencement

I loved my university years.  I got to go to a classroom  and talk about (and listen to) good books and writings, and I had to participate with a grasp (nay, a love) of the subject or hold a diminished opinion in the eyes of mentors I revered.  Despite that pressure, university life fit me like a glove.  I had clear expectations and yet enough play on the rope to either create a hammock or hang myself.  I always managed to create the hammock.

Sooner or later, though, I had to graduate.  Sooner or later, my luck in life ran out.  I got back to the same setting later, for a semester, at Berkeley’s extension.  But that experience was a mild reprieve, too brief.  Be sensible, sayeth the world.  Go out and do the things to support yourself, to conform, regardless of the cost in the long run.

In my own way, I dropped out of college.

*****

Lately, I’ve had a fascination with commencement addresses.  I find them on YouTube and Facebook--not by purposefully searching for them, but by skimming through the day’s news and stumbling upon them--and I post them on my Facebook page.  (“Share.”  Such a powerful word when I was a kid, and so diminished now.  Shouldn’t we call the button “Shout-Out” instead of “Share?”  Perhaps the term “Shout-Out” is too MySpace.)  Sometimes I post them first to watch later, and sometimes I watch them first.

I’ve spent the last two weeks reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, and at one point in the narrative Isaacson urges the reader off the page to go explore YouTube, to go find and watch Jobs 2005 commencement address at Stanford.  Jobs attended college himself only briefly, and spent much of that short stay skipping his required courses and attending courses that truly inspired him.  (If you haven’t seen the video, I too encourage you to see it, just to experience how a college drop-out--someone who would normally have no business standing behind a podium addressing a field of college graduates--addresses a field of college graduates.)

Reading about Jobs for the last two weeks, I realized that there were lots of things Steve Jobs had no "authority" to do.  His temper provokes most of that impression.  I can’t judge whether it should, for I have a temper myself, a temper that like Jobs tends to fester from what Jobs called “B players.”  In the opinion of most, Steve Jobs shouldn’t have managed people.  Steve Jobs shouldn’t have had kids.  Steve Jobs shouldn't have been issued a California driver’s license.

Well, that last one is more of an observable fact than a judgment call.

Questions on management and children, however, are an easy way out of the debate as stating that a college drop-out shouldn’t speak to a group of graduates.  Is this the phrase that should preface the judgment call?

“But then, who am I to say?”

I can say that phrase when I see a college drop-out giving a commencement speech, because, while I did graduate from college, I never got to attend my commencement.  A Missouri ice storm in December prevented me.

*****

“But then, who am I to say?”

My review of the Jobs biography will most assuredly be misconstrued for hero worship.  Fascination with the subject and the writing are sure to produce that in the reader who comes here wanting to know, “Well, how was it?”

It?  The life or the book?

The book was inspiring.  That’s the only adjective you’ll get, to take a page from Jobs’s simplistic style.  At times I worried that Isaacson might pull a little hero-worship of his own, but then he would throw in an anecdote or quote of Jobs and make you realize that Jobs could be the grumpy, moody, reality-challenged guy the media claimed he was.  Just when the reader is about to give up on Jobs, then Isaacson pulls you back the other way, and you look up from the book with a gasp and realize what a genius looks like.

The writer or the life...

Well, the writer, yes...I have to say that it takes a lot of courage to write a book like the book Isaacson wrote--a lot of courage and maybe a small measure of stupidity.  But the writer also brought a thin, Gorilla-glass layer of wonder to the page.  Isaacson is no techie--some of the terms are explained in repetition, and for those of us who hear “RAM” and “ROM” and “USB” and glaze over, that was helpful.  For anyone more tech-minded this might fester into the most boring account of Jobs’s genius that you could find.

But not having a tech-bent aspect to it, just a wonder aspect, means you remember the driving force of the other genius--Jobs--and what I now take beyond the last pages of the book: nothing’s impossible (even when it is).

“But then, who am I to say?”

The life of Steve Jobs taught me a lot about what drives me, too, particularly in my least favorable character trait:  my temper.  Surprise, I have one.  If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably encountered it, and if you haven’t, I’ll do my level best to keep it from you, but I will be fighting it all my life, so be warned.  For years I’ve fought with it--hard to say when it started, but it became much harder to control after my mother passed--but I couldn’t really give you clues into why it would surface so strongly and so fiercely.  After finishing this biography, I have a pretty strong clue--my tolerance for “B Players” is about as steady as Jobs’s.  

As Aaron Sorkin stated in his commencement address this year, “More and more we expect less and less of each other.”  Jobs refused to accept less, and I have a hard time with it as well.  Recognition is half the battle, no?  And now that I know why the trigger occurs, and recognizing it from seeing it mirrored in the account of Jobs, means I have a stronger hold on how to improve my approach from that of Jobs.

Curb your antagonism.  Nothing’s impossible (even when it is).  Not a bad take-away from 600+ pages.

Textbook closed, dear reader, and onward, to infinity.

That Song by Melissa Etheridge, or, Every Woman's Quest At Some Point

Take a good look at the woman in this picture. And take a look at the size of the meal she's about to eat.

This is typical fare for when I visit my family, either here in the Bay Area or in San Diego.

Take a look again at the woman. She's fat. Can't imagine why. Jeebus.

This is first time I've ever been fat and unemployed. When I first arrived in California I was woefully out of shape and my brother took me to Chinatown my second day here, and nearly gave me a heart attack on the uphill streets. I lived in Sunnyvale but traveled to San Francisco as much as I could and climbed all kinds of whacked-out streets--California, Telegraph, walking from Caltrain station to Golden Gate Bridge's cafe called the Warming Hut. I gave myself blisters on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Then, after I lost my first job to downsizing, I found myself also with a broken heart at that time, and swam one to two times a day in Sunnyvale and took up running to avoid thinking about the asshole that walked away. I was in the best shape of my life. And the second time I was downsized I was already thin, so I just continued the quest--and the torch burning for the heartbreak.

When I started working at Grainger I spent those four years forgetting about the asshole and moved on to other assholes (all of which are happily out of my life at the moment), but I abused the crap out of my body due to lifting things without having help available. That didn't change until my last year there--where I was relieved of my physical tasks most readily under the leadership of the Airman--and, without a broken heart, with the physical break from breaking myself in half, I gained weight hand over fist.

Shortly after I quit I tried walks and runs to the ocean, frustrated by the fact that it took me the entire morning to work out. So then I started the hill next to my apartment, finding that I had to shower twice a day with that goal--seeming a waste of water. There are a million reasons not to climb that hill or go outdoors for a walk or climb a hill and then there's the pressing need to write at all times. So I'm a fat and somewhat happy writer, or I spend the whole damn day climbing hills. The other times that I've been unemployed I was not in the mindset to write, but now I'm not in the mindset to work out.

The thing is, though, it's now difficult to climb the hills I love. When I look at that picture, I don't see an ugly woman, by any means. My brother and I have this overwhelming programming that if you drop a severe amount of weight you must be sick--which is why when he came home to see my dropping of so much weight during that first heartbreak he took me to Thanksgiving in Yosemite and fed me Dramamine to give me an appetite. It worked. Now I eat anything and resent it, like Liz Gilbert's sidekick in Naples in "Eat Pray Love," and I don't want to have that relationship with food. When I look at that picture, I'm not blown away by the size of the meal in front of me--which I suppose is abnormal--but I look at the woman and say, "Well, no WONDER she's tired all of the time. No wonder she can't climb hills."

No, I'm not going on a diet. I know a lot of people would love that. I instead see that fat suit as possibility--I'm drawn back to the hills. So let's go back to climbing. My quest is to do as much climbing as I can. I'm taking it easy at first (after all, I have a summer cold today that makes everything seem more difficult), but my goal is to climb Telegraph more than once a week without gasping.

That's the next quest. Now that I've found my other mountain climber (Abbey). :)

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration behind the title of today's post of Life For Rent. Sometimes even I know it's never enough.

*Photo courtesy of my sis-in-love's friend Nid, who joined us for breakfast. My dish that you see there is fried mush, or, if you're from anywhere other than the Midwest, fried polenta loaf. It was delicious. The restaurant is Hash House A Go Go in San Diego, and they also have a location in Las Vegas, which is where I first tasted fried chicken and waffles.

iPod Stuck On Repeat, or Still Playing That Song by U2

Stay with me on this one. There's a story and I'm a storyteller, so we'll start with that.

Last week I posted a tale of how I couldn't find Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" for sale in San Francisco. I got lots of great advice, from the Healer on where to find it with Amazon, to this bit of advice from a friend of mine:

Just do what I do - put a hold on it in the library web site. This makes them do the searching in those outlying branches, and if they find it, ship it to your local library at no cost. This eliminates the risk of "I spent two hours on Muni and now it's not on the shelf WTF?"

You're going to see how ironic this all is in about a paragraph. Or two.

So yesterday we were having some things done at the apartment in the morning and I thought to myself, how can I turn this into an adventure for me? I thought, hey, where is that Abbey book I wanted? Which branch of the library? And found out it was in West Portal. Now, I could have followed my friend's recommendation, but I had a hang-up: you mean I'm having someone drive this book to me? This book is an environmental treatise about how they are paving over Arches National Park so that people can wheel themselves up to nature instead of discovering it through roughing it, and I'm supposed to wait for someone to pave the way to the book for me? Seems sacrilegious to what I was supposed to be learning from the book. I felt like I'd be booking a room in the Marriott to read about Walden. (By the way, I have journeyed to Walden. And I've done the Marriott thing. Poor comparison.)

Besides, I had unfinished nostalgia with West Portal. West Portal during the day reads like a forgotten Main Street--families and markets and bookstores and an old, cramped movie theatre. So here was my plan for yesterday:

1. Write at Starbucks, check.
2. Look for the next Maupin book in the "Tales of the City" series, check. I also found a book on the sales table called "Baseball Haiku" that I couldn't resist. (Yes, I looked for Abbey. No dice.)
3. Lunch at Mozzerella di Bufala, where they make my favorite spaghetti bolognese, check.
4. See the last Harry Potter film, check. (Which, by the way, was my first one in a theatre.)
5. Visit Walgreens, check. (West Portal has the Walgreens in the City. Very very little of their garbage is locked up. I love that Walgreens.)
6. Go to the library and pick up "Desert Solitaire."

Yeah, that last one is missing the "check."

It was on hold and in transit. Now, Glen Park library has it. I could have it driven to me. Or I could have tried to hunt down Glen Park Library, before some nimrod put it on hold. And I say "some nimrod" with all of the love in the world, because before I started this crusade last week there were missing copies from the Main Library and four "Check Shelf" copies at the other branches. Now there's ONE open at Glen Park. In other words, between my feed on Twitter and here, I've started a movement.

Well, a four-book movement anyway.

Yes, I said FOUR book movement...because there's more.

I had a lovely day in West Portal, regardless of the main purpose getting lost in the shuffle. I came back to the apartment, changed into cooler clothes (summer sneaked in for a few hours yesterday), and watched "Shrek Forever After" on HBO On Demand. About an hour into the movie my Twitter feed revealed to me a reply from an inquiry I sent a week ago, from a challenge to Green Apple Books and Booksmith--Green Apple had "Desert Solitaire." (Booksmith never said boo, which is odd considering I've talked up their store on the Examiner before.)

I waited until the movie was over and took the 44 bus down to Green Apple. I looked. They didn't have it. (By the way, if you look under their website and click the little "Other Editions of this Title" link, it says they still have it today.) So I went to the counter. Inquired. Told the lovely young lady where I had looked, after a smart aleck behind me said, "Why don't you look under Abbey?" The lovely young lady behind the counter said it might be in the mass market field guides on the floor next to the nature section I looked in. Excellent. I went back up and looked there. Nothing.

I left the library giggling. I left Green Apple ready to cry. Either someone saw the Twitter exchange and bee-lined it for Green Apple, or Green Apple has no frickin' clue of half the titles in its repertoire. (Both are highly possible.) You may ask, Sarah/Jo/Sadie, when you go into these bookstores, where are you looking for this book? It's non-fiction, so here's where I look:

• Nature
• Environmental
• Memoir
• Biography
• Travel
• And, if I get desperate, I assume the worst possible intelligence in the bookstore clerks and look for it with his Fiction

Here are my remaining options:

• Wait for the hype to go down and for me to catch up on the rest of my reading (I now have a stack of books up to my belt buckle), and then go get the damn thing from the library in a manner that would make Abbey spin in his desert pyre--by transferring it to my local branch.
• Order the thing from Alexander's, which has never promised me anything or ignored me for any reason, read the book when it comes in, and donate the book to the library, which obviously needs it.
• Order the thing from Amazon, to ship to me, and wait for Abbey to strike me with lightning. Read the damn thing and donate it to the library.
• Wait and finish the book when I go back down to see my brother again. I think he has the only copy I'm able to touch, but it could have been a mirage.

I like that last one. Kill two birds with one stone, by the method of airline fuel. Curse you, Abbey.

By the way, the Carlsbad Library, my brother and sis-in-love's local, also has just one copy. And it's on hold. Okay, I'm back to giggling. You'll have to wait, Edward. I'm on a quest, and it doesn't involve Amazon or Borders liquidation or empty promises. When you're ready to drop back into my life, I'll find you.

I will climb/Highest mountains/I will run/Through the fields.

And yes, this book is JUST...THAT...GOOD.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This is still the inspiration of where the title of today's Life For Rent comes from. Since we had the Boss last time, thought I would go with the original this time.

That Song by U2, or, Disappointment

My brother is a huge devotee of Edward Abbey. Back when I lived in the States I introduced him to "A Fool's Progress," a novel that I thought was hilarious and sad, and he took the horse by the reins and opened it up on the plains, reading and buying anything Abbey. He loved in particular Abbey's works on the desert, and traveled to Page, Arizona on a dare that he read between Abbey's lines.

This past week in Carlsbad my brother and I got in an impassioned discussion about nature and society and he loaned me "Desert Solitaire" to read. I made it to a chapter entitled "Cowboys and Indians" before I had to give it back. Since I now hail from a City entrenched in environmentalism and green, I thought I would find a gazillion copies of "Desert Solitaire" over a span of the San Francisco libraries and bookstores.

The Main Branch of the San Francisco Library no longer has it--they are all overdue and billed or missing. (How fitting, given Abbey's anarchy.) There are copies available in two other branches that I don't often go to, but I may have to make a special trip, for the book is not to be found on the shelves of bookstores in San Francisco. If you want Abbey in this town, you can read "The Monkey Wrench Gang." THAT'S IT. Not "A Fool's Progress," which I could readily find in Southwest Missouri. Not "Desert Solitaire."

What. The. F....

To add insult to injury, if you go to the websites of two Pacific Northwest favorites of mine, Powell's Books of Portland, Oregon, and Elliott Bay Book Company of Seattle, Washington, Abbey is readily available in nearly all of his forms.

Our big-time, supposedly literary and environmental City, is shown up by the grunge capitals of the universe. It may be time for me to move north.

My hope was this: I have the free time. I'll find this book in my City, my beloved land of culture and anarchy and nature-loving, tree-hugging freaks. I'll find it and see the City again and I'll be proud to BUY LOCAL. But local doesn't have it. So I'll have to check it out of the library, instead of reading it and donating it to the library.

It's a heartache.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This is where the title of this post of Life For Rent comes from. Thought I'd pick one with my Boss in it, as well. Enjoy.