I'm Following Along As You Read Aloud

Most of the hip cats have a phrase for "I understand":  "I smell what you're steppin' in."  My lax version of "I understand" is "I'm following along as you read aloud."

Yes, I'm under the realization that this reference goes all the way back to kindergarten and the books with the records and headphones that played a "tone" when you were supposed to turn the pages.

That's the way things work in my world of flashback quotients.

*****

I come from a long line of discussion about reading aloud and being read to.  Here is the short list of memory:

• My mother reading to me before kindergarten (children's books were her favorite)
• My father reading the Reader's Digest issues to my mother while she made dinner
• My mother confessing to me while I was studying literature in college that she hated her literature classes in college because the professor read everything out loud (Mom?  Have you mentioned this to Dad?)
• Going to prose and poetry readings in college at the university during English Week at MSU
• Listening to Garrison Keillor read poetry on the Writer's Almanac
• Reading "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" to my mother the last two weeks of her life (You sure, Mom?  You wouldn't prefer music or, say, a book without dialect?)
• Selected Shorts
• Readings by the authors at LitQuake

All center me.

*****

"Writers write so that readers can read.  Let someone else read it."

~ "Finding Forrester"

During the two writing classes that I've taken in a college setting in my lifetime (one in Missouri, one at Berkeley), I was unable to read my work out loud.  I can read other's work really well (and make it sound better if needed), but mine is a problem.  Psychologically, it's on par with handing someone a magnifying glass and telling them to look very closely at my complexion.  Why would I want to put anyone through that?

I also have a hard time with audio books and/or lengthy podcasts.  The last audio book I listened to was when I lived back in Missouri eight years ago, and I didn't finish it.  I have a tendency to fall asleep when I try.  When it comes to podcasts like The New Yorker Fiction podcast, Selected Shorts, or This American Life, I usually end up breaking them off into bite-sized segments or listening to them more than once.  I have attributed this to an ever-decreasing attention span and a deep-seated fight with being read to.  Do I love it?  Do I hate it?

Did my mother know either?

*****

I haven't reached out enough when things look good.  Let's change that for a paragraph or two.

Whenever I'm going through a difficult moment (dental work, nausea, having to be present for others' arguments, etc) I touch my college class ring and my mother's wedding band and try to channel her and my strength, my composition.

Yesterday I found myself interlacing my fingers for a different reason:  sharing.

My sis-in-love volunteers for the local library here in Carlsbad, and yesterday was their appreciation "tea" at the Carlsbad Senior Center.  She asked me to go with her about a month ago when she received the invitation, and I, curious about volunteer opportunities and always looking for new ways to bond, said yes.  As frosting on the cake, the event promised a visit from a San Diego group called Write Out Loud, a troupe that "performs" short stories.  

The members of Write Out Loud do not write, or, if they do, they certainly don't read what they write.  Instead, they read obscure pieces from local or famous writers that fit into a theme, loose or clearly defined.  Yesterday they performed three stories, somewhat about marriage but about more, too.  The first performer, a woman, read a story of Twain's about a woman trying to marry a man who was continually maimed the night before his wedding day.  The second selection was a duet between the same woman and a man about a debutant who marries a man bound for Death Row and gets him acquitted, and the last selection was the same man alone, reading a selection about a father who refused to drive for the majority of his life.

When people perform stories, it's different than just reading them.  There's a love there, a lyric, a poetry to the prose.  Pauses are made, words are tasted and then released into the air like soap bubbles.  I sat there, getting more than a full effect, revolving my rings and thinking of my mother.  Mom, listen to this...

Maybe she did.  The dialect wasn't that far off.

Read on, dear reader.  Or listen, too.

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.

That Song by Snow Patrol, Or, Playing in Traffic

I’m currently reading a book by William Least Heat-Moon (his best known work is “Blue Highways”) called “PrairyErth (A Deep Map).”  Without giving away the gripping tale too much (I’m joking, actually; unless you love history, Least Heat-Moon’s meandering way with words, or the States, you’ll hate this book.  I got lucky), this book is a recount of Bill’s study of Chase County, Kansas.  His study included some poring over of the written records, some quotes from historical figures, and a lot of walking the county on foot and speaking to people he met along the way.  One local provided him with this experience:

I was walking, and now and then a pickup rolled past, driver staring, rarely waving.  When I stopped once...a fellow pulled up and said, Trouble? by which he meant Are you trouble? and I said I was heading to Matfield, and to indict me he said, Ain’t many to walk this road, and that was something I knew:  walking  here is eccentric; even when the citizens take an outing in the hills they go by truck, and to walk along a road is to suggest poverty or peculiarity.

Thoreau would be proud, for I found Bill’s predicament, right here in my own backyard.

*****

Most tourists to Carlsbad or the San Diego area either rent a car or get accommodations along the sea.  I’ve all kinds of reactions to my critique of Carlsbad in its lack of sidewalks.  Yes, I too love its really cute downtown and ocean proximity, where you can walk around without walking in the street.  In outlying areas of Carlsbad, out by the lagoons and in the newly developed sprawl, there are no sidewalks.  Street parking is common, double-parking is allowed--all actions that would get you honked at in downtown Carlsbad or near the ocean.  If you have ever tried to walk around a double-parked car when there are no sidewalks in a drop-off gravel shoulder on a backroad with more traffic crawling around you than you think would be necessary, you understand why I raise an eyebrow.  Word has it they don’t want to destroy nature.  Ah, yes.  The “nature” of the suburban sprawl?  Or the “nature” of me wearing a track in someone’s lawn?

Surprisingly, the locals have not only adapted well to this, but don’t seem to mind putting the burden back on the drivers.  They go out running, oblivious with earbuds in, down the middle of the road, and maybe move over if the car doesn’t show signs of drifting in the other lane to go around them.  Stunning.  That’s a lot of trust in modern drivers who often break the law to pull through the few crosswalks that occur and to look up from their illegal cell phone usage to see a pedestrian.  When I lived in San Francisco I often walked the sidewalks comfortable in wearing my iPod (deters most of those tripping on drugs), with few exceptions.  When I walk here, I leave the iPod in my backpack, for fear I won’t hear the cars, as though I could stop them from hitting me.

I guess if they did hit me that would be one way to reward my brother for taking me in--a nice hefty lawsuit on my behalf of my passing.

*****

My commute, twice a week for the past two weeks, has been a two-mile hike from the Cove to the Carlsbad Library branch on Carlsbad Village Drive.  Beginning Monday I plan to up the detail to three days a week; I was keeping it to two days a week to give my sis-in-love a better exercise schedule (she doesn’t like to walk/workout alone), but I’m not getting any work done when I go twice a week.  This will hopefully put me in shape faster myself.  You may say, “Two miles isn’t bad; didn’t you used to do three and a half one way daily to the ocean?”  Yes, but this two miles goes uphill for the first mile.  After that my sidewalk disappears, but at least it’s flat.

Each trip I pack my laptop, writings, and a book (even though I never seem to have time to read it), as well as water and food (thanks again, Tina).  I set out around 10:30 am and make the hike back at 4:30 pm, or about the time the sis-in-love starts to ask via text if I’m alive.  The first time I did the commute was nerve-wracking and exhausting, but now I’m getting the hang of it to the point where the ocean is damn beautiful to look at stretched out on my western side, and I can admire some of the architecture.  (Not all; most of these homes look pre-fab.)  The trip takes me forty minutes at a good clip but longer coming home due to fatigue and increased traffic.  So far I’ve never done it in the rain.

Last Thursday’s trip was slightly different--I stopped at Rite Aid for something medical.  The clerk behind the counter saw the dark patches of sweat on my shirt under my backpack straps and said, “Hot out there, huh?”  

I shrugged.  “It’s not too bad.  I’m on foot, so...”

Her jaw dropped.  “You don’t have a CAR???”

“No.”  I looked up from fishing for change and met her gaze.

“I don’t get it.”

They won’t.  I counted out nickels and dimes to pay for my purchase, and thought of Least Heat-Moon, hiking.  I must look like poverty in a car culture such as this.  

I wish I could have made that clerk feel better, and cared about her estimation of me.  But here I am.  Trouble.

Onward, dear reader. 

P.S. - The inspiration of today’s post of Life For Rent can be found here.  We’ll do it all, everything, on our own...just forget the world... 

New Gig

Put on your analyzation cap, for I'm about to disclose what I do for a living, now.

There's a new on-line company out of Fresno that offered me a contract position at the beginning of January to sell their software to colleges, trade schools, career service centers, and even Native American reservations.  The software basically gives the graduating student or placement candidate the tools to get a job with exercises in interviews, resume creation, dressing and speaking to impress, etc.  I won't go into too many details because I'm saving my schpeel for the customers.

The position is pure commission, which means that I don't have a salary.  I like this because I own the progress of it, and, because the company is a new start-up, I have the entire country to transition to this stuff.  Basically what I do is contact career centers for colleges and speak to them about preparing their students for the real world.  I'm very excited.

My brother and sis-in-love know the guy who runs this company, which I'm not sure is a good thing or a challenging thing.  I'm just taking it one day at a time and learning new things every day, and I'm too broke to care what the job is as long as I don't have to spend money to do the job.  (So far, I don't.)

Yes, it's a sales position.  That's the neat boxed-in description.  But I like the idea of working and networking around in education again.

As Tom Hanks's character says in "Cast Away," "You breathe in and breathe out.  Then one day the tide comes in, and brings you a sail."

Onward, dear reader.

That Song by Barbra Streisand, or, The M.R.S. Degree

When I went to college, there were two practical expectations from the world of what I would gain from it:  a practical degree that would put me into a job right after graduation, or, an MRS degree.

An MRS degree, in case you can't figure it out by lowering the case on the last two letters, is the equivalent of a husband.  "I met my husband in college."  Congratulations.  I didn't even belong to clubs, events, or ANYTHING extra-cirricular in college; I went to school in the morning, full-time, and taught call center agents in the afternoon and evening.  I fed my soul in the morning and burnished it into pure gold in my love of mentorship in the latter parts of the day.

My first lover in California was right when he said, "It was just bad timing for a relationship."  I wouldn't have called it bad timing.  I would have called it "do what you love and the rest will follow."

*****

Natalie Goldberg, in her memoir "Long Quiet Highway," talks about the daughter of one of her writing students in one particular passage:

It was April, but unusually cold.  My student's daughter was a [horse] trainer.  She was twenty-nine years old.  She'd fallen the year before.  She was hurt badly, recovered, and was back on the horses.
"Do you worry about her?" I asked...
"There's nothing I can do.  Once you're in this life, it's the only life.  She just lives horses," my student told me and shrugged.
"Does she go out, have relationships?" I asked.  I was trying to understand this life.
She smiled.  "Nope.  She doesn't have time, doesn't care.  This is her life."

This is my life.

*****

I bring this up because of two things that occurred at Litquake last weekend.  The first thing that happened was getting the opportunity to see writers married/partnered with other writers.  The second thing that happened was that two different men hit on me.
Clarification:  they hit on me between the short story and novel panels, within minutes of each other.  I'll come back to them.
I was struck by the husband/wife, wife/husband partnerships in the panel members because the partners had such widely varying approaches to writing, and still were respected by their partners.  I have never had the pleasure to be in a romantic relationship where my method of approach was just as valued as the other and completely different approach.  But, then, I've never been in a romantic relationship with a writer.  Hell, I've never been in a romantic relationship with a reader.  So you can imagine how exotic (and desirable) these partnerships looked to me.
As to the men who hit on me...somewhere, in another lifetime when I was a college student, I could imagine hearing older friends and aunts hoping that I would give both of these men some sort of access to my soul, since I so would love to find another writer to love.  But that kind of behavior looks hungry.  Mind you, I didn't cut either man off--I asked about them and their writing just as much as they did of me--but I didn't suggest that we form an alliance for dinner or the Litcrawl event later.  For a brief moment talking with first one, then later, the other (whom I ended up sitting next to--he looked vaguely like Nathan Fillion, so you would have thought I would have tossed writing out the window) I had a sense that I might get asked for my plans for the evening, but I didn't prepare an answer.  See, I live the horses.  If either of these gentlemen really wanted a writing partner, or if that was the paramount of my purpose, we would have made it so.
But my purpose was the horses, the words.  I live the words.  If someone comes along, YAY, but goodness, I'm good without the MRS degree now.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's title of Life For Rent.  "May I be worthy.  Amen."

That Song by Elton John, or, Litquake

I have been a little out of sorts over the past few weeks, floating just under the surface of a freshwater pond, looking out from under the water to the blue sky above and telling myself to maintain optimism.  I am happiest when I do that, and lately it's been a challenge, particularly with my writing, or the writing world in general.  Folks are lined up, on Twitter, on Facebook, in my Google Reader blog feed, with writing miseries and how I am to expect that the writing world sucks and will never change.

Yet, it's supposed to be worthy of writing about.

Where, I ask myself, holding my breath in the pond, is the hope of being a writer?  If all is screwed, then why make notes?  Why curve off some letters into thoughts?  I needed a Church of Hopeful Optimistic Writers, San Francisco Parish.  I needed a family of fellow scribes from all walks--poets, journalists, novelists, short story writers--to comfort me.  I didn't want the answers.  I just wanted hope.

I have lived in the Bay Area for seven years, and have always wanted to go to Litquake, the Bay Area literary festival held every year in October, but have never been able to go.  The reasons why are no longer important, but finally making there is.  I had my writing groups on Monday and Tuesday nights, an interview on Wednesday morning, and then Thursday came and the reasons for staying away were irrelevant at last.  I reviewed the rest of the week's events and found the following:

Thursday Evening, San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch

• Religious Renegades - Writing about religion in a secular city
• Literature as a Window to Iran - Self-explanatory
• Where News is Headed In the Bay Area - Partnering Technology with Getting the Story Out in the Bay Area

Saturday Afternoon, Z Space in the Mission District

• Short Story Writers Panel - Discussing their craft
• Novelists - Discussing their craft

Saturday Evening, Litcrawl

• Various venues in the Mission
• My destination was 826 Valencia, but they were full up before the "doors" opened, so I headed home

I required only one thing of myself:  to attend with no expectation of what I would hear.  I wanted hope, but if the panels were full of negativity like the internet, then I had the option to head home.  I didn't find what I wanted to see based on preconceived notions, like "Iranian literature...they're all going to talk about American stuff in Tehran," or "Nobody reads short stories, so why listen to the writers?"  None of the world outside of the pond surface came with me.  

By expecting nothing and shelving everyone else's negativity for the day, I found I could come up for air, even get out of the water.  Let me stress again, there were no answers given, no solutions established.  Writing doesn't work that way.  But there was hope in abundance.  One woman had written a novel about Hester Prynne's child, and she was from East India; she spoke of how people asked her at the time of the novel's release, "Are you supposed to be writing that story?"  She too saw the negativity, the giving up of others.  The panel joined her in saying that, given the choice between squashing the external force keeping you from writing and writing the thing everyone feels you have no authority to write, you should go for the thing you have no authority to write.  The others, they all agreed, can sit back there and complain about the world and hold its rules to gospel while you learn to fly.

We're not going to tell you how to fly, mind you, they said.  Just know that you can.  That you have your own answers, no matter "how the world works."

Play ball, and bless you, scribes.  

P.S. - This song is the inspiration of today's post of Life For Rent.  The video is choppy, yes.  I picked it because the lyrics fit for me and the courtesan's character seemed to represent the world above the surface, while the poet sings of hope, a bird insistent to rise out of the pond.  Oh, yeah, and "Moulin Rouge" is my and my brother's favorite Baz Luhrmann movie.  The French subtitles are free of charge.

Into the Wild: Kingsolver by the Sea

This past Friday I turned yet another book loose into the wild through the BookCrossing program.  I'm trying to find places that would be appropriate for the theme of the book (my last release was a book of poems by Mary Oliver, who writes primarily about nature, so I put her on a park bench at the top of the Pablo stairs), and since Kingsolver's book is titled "High Tide in Tucson" I thought I should take the book where tide and land meet, to Ocean Beach.

I'm perfecting the art of this kind of book release with each drop.  Ocean Beach is usually pretty populated, save for days that it's raining or there's the threat of tsunami (I've been there at both).  I know that my chances are better for getting stopped when I try places like this, but I also know how to pace things so that I can walk away from the book without revealing ties to it.  Today was a calm and cool day, and the population sparse, so I just dropped it on the bench.

I have dropped thirteen books so far with this program, and no one has registered them found and/or added notes.  This business is a haphazard one, very much a "message in a bottle" technique.  I can only hope that they aren't discarded--that someone finds them and enjoys them.  And if it's just the homeless finding them, well, at least I'm giving the homeless something at last.  And I'm giving them something that doesn't enable them to drink or get high.

BookCrossing has another type of release, called a "controlled release," where you go on the site and see if anyone wants your specific book and you send it to them.  I'm saving that for a mood booster--just leaving books and never hearing back can border on the "imaginary friend" side after a while.  And some of these books have me perplexed as to where to leave them; where, in God's name, am I going to drop the Reagan biography in Northern California without someone torching it?  That one may go to the library, she says with a wan smile.

In other notes:  I actually walked the three and a half miles from my apartment to the ocean to place this item, a refreshing walk in the cool morning through the forest of Golden Gate Park.  As I passed I was warned that coyotes had recently been spotted in the outer reaches, I passed a crowd of people heading to a bluegrass festival that wasn't strictly such, and I had the opportunity to see a newly-minted windmill on the approach to the sand.

I love the copper band around the rim, but...couldn't they have made the windows bigger?  I don't know my maritime architectural requirements.  It just seems as though with the view this building affords that windows so small are limiting the occupants.

Books next to release in the wild:

• "Dutch:  A Memoir of Ronald Reagan" by Edmund Morris.  Currently on page 500, with 192 readable pages to go and clearing about 100 pages a weekend;
• "Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way," a collection of poems by Charles Bukowski.  Currently on page 109, savoring at no discernible rate of consumption, but I know where I'm putting this one upon completion, and am looking forward to the drop--a location that I haven't been to in six years.

Onward, dear reader.

Pablo Stairs

Some of you have been hinting around..."What are the 'Pablo Stairs'?"

Well, other than reading my earlier post, here are some pictures.  I did not take them.  (The only electronic gadget I take up the Pablo stairs with me is my iPod.  It provides more inspiration than my phone.)

Stairs leading up from Moraga Street (five of the flights, the other two flights are below the buildings in the center of the picture.  My neighborhood is pictured.  Photo courtesy Jason DeFillippo):

The bench at the pinnacle of Moraga Hill/Grandview Park/Pablo stairs (provides view of Golden Gate Bridge.  Photo courtesy the SF Chronicle):

Ocean view (Pablo stairs are also apparently called Larsen Peak, according to unnamed credits):

Boardwalk stairs on Daly City side, on what I call a "treehouse effect" day (meaning you can't see any view at the top due to the marine layer, or, you're enclosed.  Photo courtesy Derek Sisson):

View of Downtown San Francisco, approaching Pablo stairs for descent (blogger also calls this "Turtle Hill."  Photo courtesy The Toasted Blog):

Now you know where I am every morning after breakfast.  I wouldn't sneak up on me, though--I tend to be combative during workouts.  (It's all that Taylor Swift tunage I listen to.)

Onward, dear reader.

That Song by Enya, or, The Neighborhood

Come to think of it, I've never written of where I live.  I rarely think about where I live in relation to the City I love.

I tend to think of my home in terms of the entire City, and not necessarily its parts.  To draw generalizations about San Francisco (or any city--I just learned yesterday that Denver has a neighborhood called LoDo, for Lower Downtown, and the baseball announcers were trying to sew that place up neatly, and probably failing to any local listening) is to invite criticism from someone who lives there, used to live there, had a sainted uncle living there, etc.  I don't like to grant generalizations either...the practice assumes the door's closed.  I am simply thrilled to suddenly be made aware of my neighborhood in terms of description from my perspective, which is through the eyes of an amateur writer.

Why that perspective?  Well, I find it a great starting point, since branching out our writing group to this neighborhood has opened my eyes to the fact that this neighborhood--in fact, the whole western half of the City--is crawling with closeted creatives.

Why would I say such a thing?  What makes them closeted?  What puts them all out here in the Avenues, desperate for the creative acknowledgment that it's acceptable to be a writer?

Some points to consider:

• The Inner Sunset is, for the most part, NOT a tourist destination in San Francisco.  Tourists pass through here on their way to the ocean, to the Park, or to the museums;
• The Inner Sunset is mostly residential.  We don't have THE bar the hipster crowd is chasing.  We don't have THE best of any one ethnic cuisine (although there are some eclectic delights here).  There are a lot of family places.  It's very much like living in a suburb;
• Graffiti, if found here, is usually tagging, not art;
• It's cold and dark, mostly (ask Garrison Keillor and Natalie Goldberg about differences in writers from cold climates to warmer climates);
• By assumption, more writers are seen working in cafes in North Beach, the Mission, the Haight, or the Castro.  If you look over someone's shoulder in a cafe in the Inner Sunset you're more likely to find a medical case study (UCSF is up the hill) or a spreadsheet;
• Residents here live here to get away from the "weird" San Francisco.

So we're all closeted weird, I suppose.  I know that's why I love it here...it seems sane compared to the rest of the City.  MaryAnn of "Tales" would have thought she went back to Ohio--until the fog started. But in that sane comfort, there's a compromise--lack of creativity.  So when I announce a writing group in this area and the relief floods out like a swarm, it's, "Thank you SO much for putting this together!"  You're welcome, but...are you afraid of coming out in the light on your own?

No matter.  I was too, in my own small way, and had to head to a tourist trap to write in the past.  No more.

Onward, dear reader.

(By the way, I was writing at the beach this morning, longhand, and a woman walking her dog drew up short next to me on the bench.  "My goodness," she gasped, "look at your handwriting.  It's like graphic art."  I smiled and thanked her, patted her dog, and they continued in the sun.  The waves of my up- and downstrokes lapped the page edges, and I was grateful to be standing alone, tagging a blank page like a gangsta from the Haight.)

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for the title of this post of Life For Rent.  Waves waving...Ruskin's rolling in his grave.

That Song by Deborah Kerr, or, Fake It 'Til You Make It

Sometimes you just have to do what you don't want to do.

Today is no exception.

I'm overcoming two challenges today:

• Leading a writing group three blocks from the protest-ridden Mission office of the SFPD when I really want to curl up at the Carlsbad library, where the librarians greet you at the door.
• I am to the point in my current short story writing where I have to write a sex scene.

Depending on how you look at my past employment, the fear factors are a toss-up. After spending three years working in Oakland, I'm more scared of the writing assignment. After working in California for seven years, I'm more scared of the protestors.

Flip a coin and whistle a little and dance on-ward, dear reader.

P.S. - This is where the title of today's post of Life For Rent comes from. This is song I'm playing to be brave...it serves dual duty. It makes me feel sexy. No white boy has ever called me "mama," so Mat is turning me on. Well, that, and the lyrics help. :) Standin' there like a Tennessee queen sayin' 'Don't look at me, don't look at me...'

*Picture courtesy of my sis-in-love Serena. Find Bob in the picture and win keys to the Buick. To borrow from Shakira: "No hiding, no hiding."

Those Songs by the Proclaimers, or, You're Not Really Lost

My brother has this saying: "You're not really lost until you run out of fuel." He said that a lot when I first moved to California, along with the advice that the best way to get around and know where you were going was to just drive out beyond your comfort zone and get lost.

I had a car for my first two years in California, and, having not had a car for the last five years, I have to say in hindsight that I missed a lot those first two years. I knew this, even then. I would often hop the train in Mountain View and just take off for the Peninsula cities on foot, picking a name off the list and exploring Burlingame, Palo Alto, San Francisco. I was scared at first of San Francisco, and then thought to myself, "Ah, well, you gotta die of something," and took the train into the City more and more. Then I got a job there and got lost the first day. Embarrassing. But I didn't mind--it was a temp job and I loved seeing a part of the City I never would have known otherwise, even if it was the Tenderloin (no joke, and *gulp*). It took me two years to ride my first bus (I limited myself to foot traffic and light rail in the beginning).

Flash forward to 2011. Not only can I find my way around the City without a map or GPS (no joke, again), but I can be in a different city entirely and give you directions and transit routes in San Francisco. I can also find my way to any location in the Bay Area by transit or by car, with a little map help. Yes, I do drive. I don't enjoy it in particular when I drive, but I have that talent. Or, lack of fear of driving, if you will.

The only part of driving that keeps me from doing it all of the time is parking. I loathe and despise parking. Even in places where there is a parking lot, I'm putting my faith in the universe not hitting my car or towing it by some un-posted or poorly-posted law. I hate leaving a good share of me out on the asphalt to trust that it won't be tampered with. But I drive if the need arises, or if the love of adventure dictates it.

This past week I was in Carlsbad, California, visiting family. Carlsbad is a lot like Santa Cruz--mellow beach town. In Southern California, to which Carlsbad belongs, the culture is one of driving. EVERYWHERE. This is a little bit limiting for those of us who rely on the power of our own legs for groceries, work commute, health care, sightseeing, etc. But during the week I had that power--I could take off on my own. I was given an apartment key and, though the insistence was to drop me off where I wanted to go, I had a tendency to wander. I had a backpack with water, snacks, and writing supplies, and I would hop from cafe to library to beach to boutique. My sister-in-law thought I was nuts (she was partially right--they were having a heat wave down there, but hey, I brought water). I just thought it was a wonderful way to really adopt the pace of the city, to get to know the people, to see the nuance. I was right. Carlsbad residents (in fact, the San Diego area in general) are some of the friendliest and most down-to-earth people I have ever met (beating out even Southern and Midwest towns), and I probably would have missed them if I had a car and crammed in a whirlwind tour of the sights. Librarians greeted me as a new regular. Small children taught me how to check out books, operate drinking fountains, and which desserts are the best, by friendly force on their part, if necessary. Wait staff asked me for book reviews and leadership tips. I wouldn't call these people nosy--I would call them refreshingly curious. You knew they were going to take that experience somewhere else and do something with it, just by the nature of the way they asked. You knew they were traveling, too.

Here in the Bay Area, the feel is a little different. I have more friends than not who are outside of my beloved City (although, with the writing groups, that is changing), and from time to time I get asked about the best way to navigate it. I'm wary. Most people who live in the Bay Area but don't live in San Francisco abhor visiting San Francisco--mass transit takes too long, Muni is unreliable, there are too many "weird" people here on the streets, there's no parking, parking is too expensive, what's with all the one-way streets (that last one is the most amusing to me--there are no one-way sidewalks), the tolls are too high to come in, etc. I know. I don't understand, because my adventure threshold is higher, but I know. It's a pain. I just have a higher pain threshold. And I've met others of my kind. A few weeks back I met a traveler from England who journeyed from Fisherman's Wharf to the middle of the Mission via the City's mass transit for a writing group meeting only hours after getting off the plane. THAT'S adventure. I'm not sure even I could do that, jet-lagged and all.

I do have my moments of shame. This past Sunday Mike and Serena wanted to fly kites at the ocean. I was carrying one of my favorite handbags (I'm an art supply/handbag whore, I hasten to admit), and my brother decided, halfway through the journey, to take us on a back-path to the ocean that required cliff descent. Now, I should know better, because my brother loves this crap and does this to me every trip, somehow. But I lashed out. "I wouldn't have packed this handbag if I knew you were going to do this." I'm ashamed to say I sounded like a spoiled-brat city girl. Lesson to remember for Sarah:

1. Visiting brother/loved one?
2. Carry small, athletic, cross-body necessities, and...
3. Open yourself to the opportunity of falling on your ass.

Which, when I think about it, isn't a bad approach to traveling anywhere. Well, for me, anyway.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This (and this) is the inspiration for today's title of Life For Rent. Yeah, I love my Scots, too.