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.

That Song by Alison Krauss, or, A Way With Words

Formal-ly

I go through cycles of music and podcasts when I head out on my walks to the ocean these days.  If all of the podcasts are spent, I switch to a playlist that drives me to pick up my feet.  If there are podcasts waiting, they get first priority, for walking allows my brain the only multi-task that receives the information.

I listen to all kinds of programs:

• "The Writer's Almanac" with Garrison Keillor;
• "The Rachel Maddow Show" with Rachel Maddow;
• "Here's the Thing" with Alec Baldwin (yes, THAT Alec Baldwin);
• "Selected Shorts" with various celebrities reading short works of fiction to an audience;
• "Alt.Latino" with Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras;
• "WTF" with Marc Maron;
• "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross;
• "A Way With Words" with Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.

Notice a pattern?  No?  Well, then just remember the last one on the list.  That one will stick out--like a sore thumb, as the saying goes--later.

*****

I've been in love with words all the way back to pre-kindergarten days.  According to legend, I'd run around the house playing with words (I was a neat freak even at that age and playing with my toys often meant, well, organizing them) that I heard from my parents, my live-in grandmother, and rare glances at television.  My mother was a huge proponent of children's literature, particularly rhyme, and I would beat out a song of Seuss or Silverstein until I drove everyone crazy or concerned.  When my mother saw how hungry I was for words, she collaborated with my father and grandmother to mispronounce some things, out of fear that my using words like "compromise," "obliterate" (say that one for a second...it's like a KA-POW from a comic book), etc would get me all kinds of teasing from my schoolmates on the first day.  So they "corrected" me to call that long, thin pasta with the accent on the first syllable instead of the second ("SPAG-hetti") and that "compromise" word as an altered promise instead of its own saying.  

As you can imagine, I got laughed at anyway, for the wrong reason.  I learned to shut up, in other words, which I guess is the blessing one is looking for when one's child is running around the house audibly tasting words like "obliterate."

As a side effect, I also learned to (quietly) be even better at grammar, spelling, and usage than most kids, then most adolescents (that wasn't hard--have you ever listened to teenagers?), and then most adults.  I wouldn't correct people, but I would look up what they said later if it was questionable.  It usually was, but, again, I didn't question the person who uttered the word or phrase--I just used it as a learning experience of my own.  I loved entertainers who played with correct and incorrect usage, or language that leaned to one tone or another: a favorite was David Letterman ("I don't think there's a man, woman, or child alive today who doesn't enjoy a good beverage," spoken with an extra-thick layer of cheeeeez).  I listened to Garrison Keillor on "A Prairie Home Companion" and spoke like a Minnesotan for hours after; I listened to my dad tell a story and would ask people the next day what the "Sam Hill" they meant by something.  I learned what was "formally correct" and loved the rest, just as much as a good beverage.

Somewhere in there, though, my mother's fears were realized.  I was a freak when it came to language, and she even admitted to me that when I went to college she was afraid to write me for fear I would sit at the receiving end with a red pen the size of a sword and proof her letters.  I found this both stunning and not surprising.  Sure, I loved English (with passing crushes on Spanish, French, German, Italian and varying dialects of English), but didn't everyone else, too?  Come ON, the word is "obliterate."  Slowly, roll it off your tongue.  The word is packed with passion, no?

Eh, not so much, answered the world.

College didn't help the addiction; rather, it festered there.  My first class was Intro to Literature, and there I read Joyce's "Araby," with its "music" in "horse harnesses."  Now I was hearing the music of words and the music that I was supposed to hear from description, and God help us all.  I took a Shakespeare course and learned that back in the Bard's day you had one way of talking to your friends and one way of talking to people higher in the classes than you were or could hope to be.  That taught me more about formal and informal usage than my French classes ("tu," "vous;" it's all you) and my required grammar course.  I put that grammar course off until the very end, thinking it was going to be some woman wearing a tight bun with a ruler in her hand ready to smack me if I mixed "I" and "me" the wrong way.  Turns out, that class was about shifting trends in English over the years, etymology, and the nuances of formal and informal.  No rulers would be damaged in the participation of that class, and the gentle provocations of my professor taught me to think about language with even more love and devotion.

Doktor Enabler.

After college I wrote training manuals and kick-ass emails on a corporate path to what I thought would be something phenomenal--a big City.  San Francisco must be not only full of metropolitan, worldly-wise English-speakers, but I was looking forward to hearing other languages, which didn't happen much in Southwest Missouri outside of a college campus.  I showed up in the Bay Area and soaked up the music of Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Italian (umm-HMMM, that's what I'm talking about), Cantonese, Korean, Tagalog...no French except from a friend who spoke it as a second (maybe third) language.  But the English in San Francisco...I was so disappointed, and had a hard time hiding it.  A regret now is that I shared my cringing at, like, you know, the vast, like, people who, like, talk like, well, you know, this.  Argh, I growled to anyone who knew me, half those words can be, what's the word, OBLITERATED, and we could have...English.  Musical, Seuss-ical, English.  Or I could stand to listen to your conversation.  Your, like, hesitating, is, like, killing my writing and wordsmith's ear.

Worse than alienating people with my love of language was when they asked me to help them correct the issue and I discovered that most of them possessed a) no love of language, and/or b) a strong aversion to learning a love of it after grade school.  My first roommate in San Francisco asked me to proof her college papers for a comp class.  I did, returned them, and she took offense.  "My instructor said this sentence was fine, and he used to work for the New York Times."  I swallowed the urge to point out to her that he used to work for the New York Times.  I backed away, telling her that I was probably wrong, and that I wouldn't mess her up by proofing her pieces anymore.  She looked relieved.  I felt relieved myself, but a little lonelier for the confrontation.  Didn't she love words enough to play with them?  Didn't she respect herself enough to question the instructor?

Maybe, though, I thought in a scary supposition to myself, I had been in the City so long that I was mispronouncing spaghetti all over again.

*****

These days, unemployed, I see plenty of assaults on the English language by people who are supposed to guide the rest of us to success.  I see people who are gainfully employed getting paid to treat words like dollar bills at Magic Mike's.  I see entry-level, middle management, and top leadership communicating poorly.  And I'm expected to expect less.

I do.  Because, regrettably, in the last few years expecting more has cost me friendships, and, still not regrettably, brownie points with managers.  But privately, secretly, in the dark of night or on those morning walks to the ocean, if no one's around, I correct myself, or correct big shots in media (NBC Olympic commentators, mostly, or business leaders who had it in for me).  I never correct friends or my beloved baseball players that don't speak English so well...not because I couldn't, but because I don't speak Spanish so well and I have no desire to correct people I love.  I guess that's part of the problem.  I should have remembered that regarding correcting myself.

Obliterate.  Ok, Rainman, enough...

Back to my podcasts...for in them lies the most release if there is no music playing.  (Can I just say that the best song lyrics are better than the words I used to say wandering around the house as a toddler?)  The last podcast on that list, "A Way With Words," is one of the rare cultural gems of San Diego County.  The show is recorded and produced here, where people used to, as late as last year, speak in golden sentences and now talk, like, you know, San Franciscan, like, English.  This morning I listened to this week's podcast with relish.  I learned why the word "colonel" is said with an "r" sound.  And then a caller came on and asked why we couldn't just readily exchange "I" and "me" in a sentence, and why the heck all the rules, and blah, blah, blah.

I held my breath, hoping there were no rulers in the room.

The hosts, as gently as they could, sympathized with the caller.  They expressed the belief that people who felt the need to correct others should probably be selective about the time and place for the correction.  And then The Reason came in, and my loneliness in love of language was relieved for a moment.  The female host expressed the belief that there are different applications of language for different situations in our world...formal and informal.  While use of "me and my friends went to the movies" isn't incorrect, it's not as formal as "My friends and I went to the movies."  There's a time and place for "Me and my friends went to the movies," and there's a time and place for "My friends and I went to the movies."  Knowing the difference, she explained, is like dressing for the party.  One kind of party requires t-shirt and jeans.  Another kind of party requires a floor-length gown.  It dresses the speaker for the situation.  She also mentioned that knowing the difference and using the difference is a form of respect for others.  Fitting the language to the situation works to respect the other person not only in fitting in with the group, but, she said, in putting others first.  "If you say, 'My friends and I,'" she said, "the placement in the sentence is putting others--'my friends'--before myself."

Wow.

And that, dear reader, says it all for me.  Que milagro, as they would say just south of here.  And I'll say nothing at all again about the subject for a little while, again, now. 

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's rendition of Life For Rent.  Silence, and golden considerations.

That Song by Brandi Carlile, or, Plotlines

Tell me a story, riddle me this.


Tell me a story with a happy ending.


Tell me a story I'll believe.


Tell me a story I'll want to listen to.


Tell me a compelling lie.

*****

I follow a lot of stories lately.  On Twitter I follow the stories of baseball games, usually involving the casts of men from San Francisco, Oakland, Tampa Bay, D.C., and Texas.  I follow the journey of a young gay poet from Harlem who recently sold his possessions and is traveling the world.  I follow the success of a Oregonian who walked for three months straight in 1995 and lived to write about it.

On Google Reader I follow the continued adventures of a baseball fan who has found a delightful amount of fantasy in the California flora.

On Facebook I follow the uplifting adventures of a fellow artist from way back as she bench-presses.  Dead-lift?  She brings it to life.  I follow the continuing story of one of my favorite authors as he leaves the City we both love and lets go, goes on.  I follow a friend I met twice who lives on the other side of the world, the land of this year's Olympians, and takes photos of rings without color, giving them clarity.  I follow a former teacher as he writes the final sentence in a chapter of his life.

I'm from Missouri.  You've got to "Show Me."

And they do.  Stories like this are my lifeline, the bubbles back into what is at times my own flat soda.  I follow them for so many reasons the character motivation becomes murky, at best, but primarily they keep me afloat.  They are not stories with happy endings.  They have no ending at all, bless 'em.  As to happy...bittersweet.  Bittersweet is better, bittersweet is easier to believe, bittersweet shows me that they are human instead of "perfect."  I am wary of "perfect."  Bittersweet has a rounded flavor, a richness..."Your cat exploded?  Make good art," says Neil Gaiman, a bittersweet statement if there ever was one.  Every one of these people has a setback or challenge to get past, whether it takes up an hour, a day, or years.  The poet from Twitter is afraid of the Phoenix airport.  The Giants have two struggling pitchers.  The Nats have a nark.  The hiker wants us to be brave, regardless.

The triffids may get us all someday, but wouldn't it be better to walk on the wild side?

Ah, sweet friends...tell me a story.

Tell it well.  Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration by today's installment of Life For Rent.  "Lines across my face," lines across my palm, same thing.

Somewhere Ages and Ages Hence, or, What I Have Been Doing Lately

A little over a year ago a self-important man asked me where my head was.  I told him my head was wondering what he had in mind for me within his organization, then and in the never-to-happen future.

He never answered my question.

I answered his.

******

A little over a week ago a very busy man received my resignation.  I told him that I couldn't afford to work for footing expenses up front, I sent him months of free research, and voiced the hope that we could stay in touch in the event that my financial situation changed.

I haven't heard from him since.

I got my answer again.

*****

From time to time, you know, I like to send out what I've been doing lately.  (Ah, the lyrical lines of the Jamaica Kincaid story start to trip through my memory like a spring...)  Looking at my Twitter and Facebook feeds, one might get the impression that I do nothing but watch movies, read books, and surf the internet.  Much of my down time is spent doing those things--Carlsbad is not the bustling metropolis that San Francisco was, and provides me with fresh air and that's about it.  (Peace?  No--noisy neighbors.  Quiet?  See previous.)  Sometimes, though, all I need is the air that I breathe.  I'll take this barrel bottom.  It's round and sturdy.

So, for those who are curious, here's my days...

Monday through Thursday:

• Job searches
• Workouts (running to the ocean, core work)
• Working on the novel, Draft Two
• Working on short stories, and where to sell them
• Finding things to clean, to contribute to in the house (animal husbandry, home engineering, culinary arts)

Friday through Sunday:

• Reading
• Movies
• Fishing with my brother, if he's not working and the weather likes us
• Visiting the farmer's market, when in session
• More of the culinary arts

Please note:  I can't afford bon-bons and too much television makes me grumpy.  The most television I watch is on Sunday nights--one hour of "Frozen Planet" and one hour of "Mad Men"--and the rest is reading in the room while the brother and sis-in-love watch tv, or Netflix.

But baseball starts Thursday here in San Diego County, so all things are prone to change.

Go Padres.

And there's your answer.

*****

Where's my head right now?  I'm not hopeless, most of the time.  Most of the time I'm just working on creating life where there is little of it.  Do I think I'll be employed anytime soon?  No, but it's not making me panic or depressed, for I've learned how fruitless those actions and emotions are.  I've lost a lot, but I've been given a huge swath of time to learn, to surgically remove regret (and not the source of regret that you the reader might think).  I've learned to appreciate some of the corniest things.  I've learned to shut up and back out when I know I'm not needed or wanted.

My head, my heart, my actions...I'm grateful.  That's where I am, Rick.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This poem is the inspiration for today's title of Life for Rent.  That's made all the difference.

Photo courtesy of M. Schlosser, en route to the Bay Area from Fresno, March 31st, 2012.

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 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 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.

That Song by Sheryl Crow, or, Unified

The time it would take me to explain Unitarian Universalism would probably choke up six or seven blog posts, and I would be awful at it.  If you have twenty minutes sometime and are so inclined, you can look it up on Wikipedia.

I’m Unitarian Universalist.

For those who looked it up and think I’m bound for eternal damnation, take a number.  The religion is such an odd one that some Christians, Jews, Islamists and Buddhists have dropped the running conversation and said a few words over me when they have discovered me to be Unitarian, while some agnostics and atheists have rolled their eyes at what looks like a pathetic hanging on of the last vestiges of God.

As what happens in all cases of faith, I didn’t pick Unitarianism--it picked me.

I have been Unitarian since my college days in Missouri.  My religion wasn’t found for lack of trying.  Growing up, my religious education consisted of attending friends’ churches, friends’ Bible study summer camps, and listening to all manner of services, broadcasted on Sunday mornings on the local radio stations.  When all of the services were over (they were able to find every denomination but Muslim, Buddhist, Judaism, and...Unitarian, but this was Northwest Ohio, after all), my mother played the gospel records of Jim Neighbors and Tennessee Ernie Ford well into the Sunday afternoons.

When I was introduced to Unitarianism, I had to look it up, too.  No such thing existed in my world, until friends introduced me to it and my reading of the Transcendentalists in college literature set the mold.  It stuck because even when I found others and my own conscience unforgiving of my soul, Unitarianism seemed to forgive all of it.

Including me.

*****

In other notes, my brother’s name is Michael, an ironic choice on my mother’s part for three reasons:

• It’s Hebrew, like mine; sort of a strange historical pairing with a German last name;
• My father wanted consistency, and wanted to give us German first names, while my mother wanted names from the Bible;
• My brother’s name means, in Hebrew, “Who is God?”

That last reason is the ironic clincher:  my brother is agnostic.

*****

I occasionally go to church.  Not every Sunday.  I would like to every Sunday, but the reasons that I don’t go aren’t good ones and therefore I won’t bore you with them.  I usually make it there once a month.  You would think I would go more as an unemployed person, but it just hasn’t happened.

Last night it seemed important that I go this morning, so this morning I cracked off my morning free-writing pages and then hopped the bus for the Hayes Valley/Civic Center corridor.  I have no particular joy for the Van Ness buses anytime, let alone Sunday mornings, so I walked up the hill on Van Ness from Market, passed by well-dressed children with their parents leaving a morning opera performance, passed by the ripe and muttering homeless, passed by the mammoth monuments bathed in thin sunlight.  I took a left at the KRON 4 studios and climbed up to Franklin, where I took a right.

The Unitarian Church of San Francisco is no Grace Cathedral, but it has more stained glass than this Midwesterner deserves.  I like to arrive early; there’s no batting practice, but attendees are encouraged to enter the sanctuary in reverence and to sit in the same.

In other words, sit down and shut up.

With my mood lately, it's been best to sit down and shut up.

Today I sat down, contemplated the colors and the candles (Unitarians like Advent as much as the next parishioner), and occasionally looked down at my hands.  Whether it’s the appropriate time for it or not, I can’t help but pray to myself in a Unitarian church.  My heart loosens its grip and I inwardly jabber like a monkey, my imagination conjuring up images of God, the one guy who reads my mind before I write.

Today, though, just as I was warming up, a group of seniors came in and sat in the pew in front of me, giving me outwardly competition.  Reverence?  Pshaw, we’ve lived a long time, and life’s too short for f-ing reverence.  The man in the group actually dropped F-bombs--he looked like Mark Twain and swore like him, too.  Their idea of reverence was having a near-deaf conversation among themselves for the rest of us to listen to on how God can go screw himself and how the only reason to come to church was to hear the majesty of the organ.

They were having this conversation while the organ was playing, and they were doing their level best to shout above it.

I should probably explain that, among other things, Unitarians are taught to practice tolerance in places where other churches condemn.  The old man’s atheism wasn’t the offensive aspect of this little tableau--God knows I’ve had my moments of telling God to f-off myself--but the shouting manner of its execution was offensive.  “God,” I snapped in my soul, “lightning bolt.  Now.”

My experience has been that God doesn’t do command performances, and He’s even leery about taking requests.  So the next prayer grade was, “Help me deal with this without switching to a face that would scare off the drug lords of the Tenderloin.”  Then there is a shift up one more level, asking for helping this guy deal with his own anger.  He came to this sanctuary to blot out his own love of music with his need for all of us to hear about what a crock God is.  “And I’m saying it in a church!” he exclaimed.  “This is really sticking it to the Big Guy, isn’t it?”  The two old women egged him on, like a Shakespearean chorus, following his pronouncements as though he were...

You guessed it.

As though he were a god.

You had to think, listening to him, who had he alienated to get to the point where he had to come to a church, surrounded by patient members and to surprised strangers, to say what he felt.  I didn’t pity him, per se, but I stopped being angry.  A weird situation, forgiving someone for ruining reverence.  It was my only way for obtaining reverence in a City that turns away when someone weeps or screams.

After the service I walked slowly down to Van Ness again, and found thin sunshine to walk in.  For the length of a stoplight, the world went quiet.  Then a siren ripped off somewhere, and reverence would have to find another venue, again.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's installment of Life For Rent.  I do everything late, and it is my last chance to invest.

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.

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 The Boss, or, Where I Was

For the last two weeks, all kinds of media has asked me to remember.  "Share your story," demands Twitter, Facebook, the New Yorker, The New York Times, the LA Times, most cable networks, even some libraries.

You talkin' to me?

Ok, once upon a time, on September 11th, 2001, back in the States...

• I was working two jobs at the time.  I was working two jobs because I had thought that I would be in a higher paying job in New York City training people to make fundraising calls on behalf of art organizations like the opera and museums and such.  My training was to have been held, starting in August, 2001, in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  I turned it down because I would have to pay for the relocation.  I would have been fine with one job but my mother got sick and created a boatload of expense to go back and forth from Missouri to Ohio to take care of her.  That's why I had two jobs.
• My morning job, from 7 am to 12 pm, was to enter benefit paperwork for Blue Cross and Blue Shield.  My evening job, from 1:30 pm to 10 pm, was to train people how to be nice and knowledgeable on the phones at Bass Pro Shops.
• That morning I was wired, because my mother was starting radiation 680 miles away.
• My morning job was solely data entry.  During that time, because I missed learning and missed college so much that I ached, I listened to NPR on headsets.  Everyone else listened to rock stations.
• At around 7:55 am Central time, Carl Kasell came on the radio with his news update stating a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  At that point the news was being broadcast as though the crash were a malfunction.  I still found myself standing up, nevertheless.  The woman working next to me said, "What are you doing?"  I replied with the news.  "You're crazy," she said, and begged me to get back to work--we were measured on metrics.
• Five minutes later was our break.  We made our way to the breakroom and turned on the television.  By the time we had just about settled into watching the news, the second plane hit.
• When we all finished our break, everyone's radio was on NPR.
• In the distance between my first job and my apartment, gas prices were rising faster than I could drive.  And I was on a third of a tank.  Luckily, all of my workplaces were in one city.
• When I got home, my brother had left a message that WW III had started.  My parents had left no message at all.  I didn't eat lunch.  I just rotted in front of the television until 1 pm.
• When I got to my second workplace I sat and watched the news in the breakroom for my entire shift.  No calls were coming in to the call center, save for one notable one that someone got wanting to know why he had not received his camping gear when he paid for one day air.  We issued a credit and told him his gear was probably grounded, and that he might want to turn on the news.

That's where I was.  As to all this 9/11 remembrance hype, you've missed it with me, dear media.  That was the year my mother was sick.  In my selfish, scarred heart, I was just glad for the diversion that day from the silent phone from Ohio.  But I do remember 9/11 in my own way--every time a digital clock reads 9:11, either am or pm, I think of this song.  That number seems to remind me not to rot in front of the news.

P.S. - This song is where the title for today's post of Life For Rent comes from.  You can call me Jo.

That Song By Rogers & Hammerstein, Or, The List

When you're unconventionally employed and struggling, a surprising number of people will offer advice.  But then, I've encountered many more opinionated people the older I get, and like my mother I don't know what to do with them.  So I accept them reverently--surely all of these people so sure of themselves have to be right just by sheer will, yes?

I guess I've been seeing this more and more lately, and I find myself at a crossroads.  Continue to worship them and gain their endorsement?  Or be myself, and ultimately end up alone despite trusting myself?

Amidst all of this, I considered simplifying the task.  Don't raze the field, Jo.  Don't burn bridges.  And don't not burn the bridges because you'll be afraid you may need that person later, but because it just ain't nice.  Why make the lives of others miserable?

The task--simplified--was inspired by my brother's Bob the Cat.  He knows what he likes, whether you like it or not.  So, for you now, whether or not it's politically correct, whether it offends or not, whether it makes me boring, pathetic, or naive...

These are a few of my favorite things:

• Declawed large and loving cats
• Stews made with so many ingredients you think you'd died and gone to heaven
• Language, foreign or domestic
• Cottage cheese
• Seasides
• Literature with a love of language and twists of plot
• The music of Bruce Springsteen
• Baseball
• Basil
• Horse stables
• The roar of a crowd, winning
• Bright, copper kettles
• Warm, woolen mittens
• Lists
• Love
• Sex, well played
• Don Julio Anejo, neat, accompanied by a lime, a cutting board, and a knife
• Dahlias 
• Tres Leches cake
• Making my brother laugh
• Making EVERYONE laugh
• Teaching
• Writing
• Libraries
• Movies
• God.  And God all to myself (I prefer to not be an evangelist)
• Cattle ranches
• Flying in Cessnas and Piper Cubs
• Riding in Amtrak trains
• Dark chocolate with chilis
• Warm rolls
• Acceptance

P.S. - This song is the inspiration of today's installment of Life For Rent.  What's on your list?

That Song by Nelly Furtado, or, Purpose For A Day

Often what is most encouraged in the unemployed is to volunteer, and other than the writing group hosting I am committed to another set of learners, a tutoring organization in the Mission called 826 Valencia. I've written of them before.

Skip ahead to a fund-raising event for them last Friday called "826 Day Write-A-Thon." I had three sponsors and two cheerleaders who told me I had the chops and the talent to finish this, and finish it strong. And that I did. I sat down and hashed out two pages for the Healer, five pages for a fellow blogger, and ongoing support for a fellow writer. I wrote a couple of pages for me, a love letter in the name of my mother, and walked around the Mission, finding another branch of the library for the first time, delivering sponsorships to my kids, and then having dinner with friends that night to cap things off.

I went through the day feeling that I deserve to live.

This is the recurring theme: I'm single, childless, and unemployed. When I complete a calling and present it to the needed party, I feel as though there is a point to my existence. But dammit, I have to keep looking outside myself to find it.

The volunteering is a great way to do that. I'm not saying everyone should be a volunteer. But I'm saying that if you feeling like hanging it all up, there's always giving to those who won't expect any more from you than you can give and are grateful for what they can get.

And that goes for my writing groups as well. I finally have a balance there. I'm in Carlsbad right now writing this because I have a supportive family and because there's a network of writers who understand that Wonder Woman overcommitted and needs to share. So someone is subbing for me this week, someone is MY back-up, which is something always new and strange to me from my assistant manager experience. When I return next week I will have a reduced meeting schedule--and as of October I will have an even greater reduced one. That means more time to find a job that contributes to my existence and to sit down and finally do what is ultimately scaring me but won't leave me alone: write a novel. I want to have the rough draft completed by opening day for the Giants, 2012.

See, it's a baseball novel...

More details to come.

Meantime...

Big thanks to my support system, wherever it can be found. Here's to you.

P.S. - This song is the inspiration for today's post of Life For Rent. Decisions, decisions.

That Song by David Gray, or, Defying Love

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

This coming week's agenda looks like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skipped stones splash, happily defying love of gravity.

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

That Song by Marvin and Tammi, or, Mountain Out (of a) Moraga (Hill)

When I was about thirteen my parents decided to have a pond dug on our property--3/4 of an acre, and deep as the contractors could haul it without getting the equipment stuck in the grade. Deep, of course, meant that the contractors had to displace a lot of dirt.

Normally backfill dirt is pushed around the area surrounding a pond, so that the dirt not only looks like it's part of the grand design (after some grass grows on it, that is) but so the pond appears deeper. But my mother would have none of that--she loved to travel, and her intention was to have her own mountain. Now, anyone who has seen that movie with Hugh Grant or has lived with in the mountainous parts of the world knows how high a mountain actually is, and we tried to correct the semantics on this one for Mom. In fact, the running joke was that this was not only not a mountain but it probably couldn't even be considered a hill--more like a "mosquito bite." But my mother stood fast--"Don't make fun of my mountain."

I don't anymore.

I climb a "mountain," too.

*****

It's no secret that I love the San Francisco Giants--in case you've forgotten, you can refresh your memory here. One of my favorite players on the team drifts back and forth along the infielder positions, and his name is Pablo Sandoval. In 2009 Pablo looked like the next Barry Bonds--making every pitch into a hit or a homer, with one exception...Pablo was happier than Bonds. You couldn't miss it--it was all over his face.

Pablo was happy ALL THE TIME. He was happy batting, happy in the dugout, happy blowing a big pink bubblegum bubble just as he caught and threw a fielded out. They started calling him the Kung Fu Panda, just like the cartoon, or Panda for short.

Last year, in 2010, something changed. Panda spent the season losing his batting average and adding pounds, and became quiet. It was hard to watch Panda benched. He looked benched in the body and the face. All that happy, gone.

My coworkers laughed at him, blaming food and food only, and Pablo's lack of willpower with food. I thought at first something was injured, somewhere, but he wasn't on the DL. You don't go on the DL for a broken heart.

I hesitate to give away too many details of Pablo's story from 2010, because a good measure of it could be rumor. But the rumors, what I heard after the season in December, made sense. Pablo was going through some personal life experiences last year that would make some tough guys cringe, but what was worse was that he was trying not to let the camera see these problems. In covering up the problem, he created a new one--get out of shape and sad (and worse, useless at what he loved) in front of the camera. When I found out what created all of this, I found myself to be a little rankled at all of the jokesters.

When you get what you want but not what you need, writes and sings Coldplay, and I got the feeling someone saw that need in Pablo on a level of friendship. Pablo knew he was out of a job if he couldn't start hitting, and he couldn't hit with the extra physical and emotional garbage hanging on him. So he worked with a trainer. They took him to hills, hot and sandy, in Arizona, and told him to run up those hills.

I'm sure to him, at the bottom both literally and figuratively, those hills looked like a mountains.

Lost souls, creating what they can't find but desperately need. My mother created a mountain out of a hill, and my happy hero leveled mountains. Today Number 48 for the San Francisco Giants brings a higher batting average than weight scale reading, which was not the case in 2010. Does he look any different? From the chin down, a little. Pablo has genetics and frame working against him to even think of being mistaken for Nyjer Morgan. But that face...oh, it breaks the heart. He's beautiful. He's that kind of unabashedly happy that I haven't seen in eleven years, that happy that takes the observer by surprise with its innocence and complete lack of agenda, the happy my mother used to have.

Have mountain. Will travel.

*****

There is a hill six blocks from my apartment, formally called "Grand View Park" because, once climbed, it gives you a view of almost the entire City, as well as Daly City to the south, the Golden Gate Bridge to the north, and the ocean to the west. To many locals in the neighborhood it is called Moraga Hill, named for the street that the hill severs between 15th and 16th Avenues.

Moraga Hill is steep--like many hills in the City--and there are sets of stairs on the east and west sides. The stairs on the west side are a zigzag set of wooden steps, like a vertical boardwalk. Those on the east side--my approach--are concrete, half drifted with sand, sometimes slippery with fog or rain. Each flight on the east side has a small landing. Sometimes, depending on my body, I have to stop one of the landings to catch my breath. I'm hoping that won't always be the case, and little by little I get to a higher and higher landing before I have to stop.

There are seven flights of stairs up the hill.

Do I want to climb the steps when I get up in the morning? Hell, no. It's work. Sometimes the fog is so thick that there's no view. (I call those my treehouse days--the fog closes in walls in the sky.) Regardless of the day I come down from the hill sweating and steaming like a Budweiser Clydesdale.

Do I need to climb the mountain? Hell, yes. I like my writing so much better when I get back to the apartment and scribble a few notes, fresh from the air, streaming sea spray and perspiration. Dogs meet me on the walk back and I offer my hand, knuckles first and slow, and they sniff and lick the salt deposit with absolute...unabashed...joy.

Onward, dear reader.

P.S. - This song is where the inspiration for today's post of Life for Rent comes from. Marvin is so dreamy... :)