Pocket Contents after...

Someone Else's Christmas Party 2012 (Black Wool Winter Coat)

- photobooth pictures

- one empty cigarette packet

- keys (not mine)

- half a cookie

- a bolt

Someone Else's Christmas Parties* 2013 (brown leather jacket)

- two Lindt truffles: dark chocolate and peanut butter

- one business card

- three bobby pins

- one small composition book, last page scrawl: "Vincent, bass. looking for soul singer (number)" 

Christmas Eve 2013 (brown leather jacket)

- three paper towels, folded

- one new telephone

- one pair athletic socks

- one recipe for phylo dough-blue cheese-mushroom tart

- one receipt for phylo dough, blue cheese, mushrooms

New Year's Eve 2013/4 (blue bathrobe from Santa on Christmas Day costume for All-Holiday costume party)

- one champagne cork

- one pair sunglasses, found in street on walk from 26th and South Van Ness to Page and Haight.

- keys (mine)

- two halves of yellow plastic easter egg

- one red Hershey's Kiss wrapper

Tonight (beige wool and leather jacket)

- one bobby pin

- one tab from grocery store flyer "I'll bring two friends $10 yoga · Sunday@8:30pm 350 Divis@Oak"

- candy cane wrapper

- lint

*three, in fact. Also of interest: arrived at house arms full of tiny potted poinsettias, exact details of procurement unknown, later used as Christmas gifts.

Run SF, Run

I thought I couldn't run the most well-known footrace in San Francisco because I had a softball game double-header. Turns out it wouldn't have made a difference, even the god-I-love-them nutters who jog Bay to Breakers get up at running time to hit the streets. But I didn't realize this until the night before, over mac and cheese and broccoli and sardines with my buddy Hanna. So I sat this one out, but the two of us made plans to set out early for coffee and looky-loo.

When I woke up at 8, I could already hear the cheers and the music from my open window. The race and follow-up frivolity goes by not so far from my spot on the southern side of Golden Gate Park's panhandle. That is, it turns out a half mile is not so far when it comes to this particular event.

Hanna and I got in touch and I went to get a coffee and wait for her on the corner of Divisadero and Fell. It was a gorgeous gorgeous day. I had put on sunscreen and my team jersey, planning to walk to the fields in time for my game. When I got there, I immediately regretted not rocking the more deliciously garish colors the B2B deserves.

In the twenty minutes I was on my own waiting for my friend, I got to watch the amazing people of my newly rediscovered hometown go by in droves. There were unicorns, toga groups, three sets of homemade MarioCart characters, pokemon, a gaggle of bright yellow chicks, and the usual hot girls wearing hot girl costumes. There was a band of Mormons with bike helmets who greeted each other excitedly in the street, blue-painted tighty whitey wearing guys with the white hats of smurfs (plus one in a yellow smurfette wig), and a group of at least twenty ghostbusters. There were more naked men than I had seen in all of my almost nine years in Paris. There were people dressed as Legos. There was an Italian guy from behind me who taunted the police officers as they stopped people and poured out glass containers into the gutter. "Wow, your job must be incredibly difficult today." 

I struck up a conversation with him and a girl standing next to me. Italian guy eventually wandered off, but she and I continued to muse over what Bay to Breakers is all about. "You must have done this a hundred times, being from the area and all." "No, actually, I've been away for a while in France." "France?? Why would you ever come back?" I looked at her blankly and then gestured to the parade of ridiculous, wonderful people in front of us. It was easily the most satisfying answer I have ever been able to give to that question.

Hanna showed up and we walked up the route a bit to find some shade. We set down our stuff across from a makeshift garage DJ playing house and soul. We danced. She was done up a bit in tie-dyed leggings and running shorts. Again, I was jealous. We shouted out to all our favorite costumes:

- Tie-dye power!

- Yeah opera hats!

- Woohoo Mariachis!

- Right on guy in suit and rollerblades, way to commit!

- Bacon! Yeah! I don't even eat bacon and I love you!

- Marry me Michael Phelps! Nice swimmies!

- Pac Man!

- Juicing cyclists and their nurses!

- Jamaican bobsled team!

- Ostriches!

- Super buffed out dude with girl in fat suit!

- Another Jamaican bobsled team!

etc.

It was wonderful. We were there for about an hour and I then I had to go. My walking route to the field was about the same as the race route, so I got to see more chaos on the way. Including Alamo Square, with all the Full House colorful victorians and hundreds of merry makers. And hundreds going by. 

Next year I will get it together and run the race. There is something so appealing about doing something both athletic and ridiculous. Something encouraging silliness and community. Something so San Francisco. 

And frankly, I was impressed at the level of contained mischief. I had talked with a couple of very coppy looking cops a few days before. The two of them were drinking snob coffee in a hipster cafe and we chatted about the upcoming event. They said they were cracking down this year, but "Honestly, what are you gonna do? Aside from clearing away people who are too drunk to walk. Besides, we're at the bottom of the pay scale. It's just not worth it to keep people from having fun."

Turns out they did a good job. When I got back to Lyon St at the end of the day, no one was passed out in the front lawn. In fact, it didn't even smell like pee.

Reflection hebdomadaire

I was feeling kind of down the other day. 

"Meh, I said, stuff is kind of sucky and not going as I want. Maybe I should have stayed in France where the wine is cheap."

But then I started thinking about my week.

corn memorial

There was a half marathon in Humboldt where I reached a personal goal of mine and got to spend time cooking and eating and playing badminton and catch and innappropriately mocking a corn memorial with some super special people.

There was a pub quiz in which a our team was almost triumphant and they gave us free drinks just for being awesome.

panda and mr perfect

There was a baseball game where I got to cheer and sing my heart out and dance around in excellent company, reminded that winning is almost never everything, and group singing works best with 2000 people and a jumbotron.

There was an evening spent watching friends get riled up over a basketball game and heading home absurdly thrilled at being reunited with night-riding thanks to the discounted purchase of bike lights.

even the pre-show projections were rad.

There was some work, including two days of teaching hilarious fifth graders a variety of things, such as how to appropriately goalie-throw for maximum effect during dodgeball (or balle-aux-prisonniers depending on your linguistic preference), how to reconfigure fraction word problems so they don't seem so intimidating, and how to use Powerpoint.

There were amazing seats to a super nutty, scenically and theatrically creative ballet rendition of Cinderella that juiced me up for another run at writing for performance and allowed me to watch my mom and her boyfriend giggle.

There were a couple of glasses of lovely wine in a lovely secret garden backyard in lovely Hayes Valley, where the light filtered through the leaves in that way it has and we could still hear the sounds of the city just over the wall.

Funky Door Yoga on Waller 

There was the beginning of a Bikram Yoga series that kicked my butt and various other muscles and left me clamoring for more.

There was the best burrito I have ever tasted. Really.

There was Karaoke in the Chinese mall in El Cerrito, followed by a surprisingly satisfying hangout in the parking lot of a Mill Valley 7-11 that allowed me to deliciously relive my youth over orange flavored soda and Coke Zero.

mom's day hydrangea

There was Mother's day, and another ballgame with blue skies and garlic fries and a win this time, and the wonderful gift of being with family on one of those family holidays that you wouldn't travel across the country or the ocean for, one of those days that manifests its own importance by simple declaration, one of those days that in a string of days is a memory of time spent physically with people I love and haven't been able to passively be with for so long.

So, thanks California. Thanks for that. I feel better already.

Ganache

The car was warm and the cake was heavy. Really, really heavy. Well, maybe it wasn’t the cake itself, the unmatched layers covered with beginning-to-drip ganache, maybe it was the two and a half inch butcher block we had somehow decided to carry it on. In any case, it was heavy, and my duty was to balance our creation (well, mostly Kate’s creation, but she was busy at the wheel) all the way to Monterey. And I was killing it.

We were going to Dre’s wedding, at the Naval Post Graduate School where she worked and had met her sweetie. The drive was two hours long, down the freeway and the coast past Santa Cruz, our university stomping grounds. It was a winding road, and I balanced the cake on the plane of my lap, working the centrifugal force by stacking left and right, keeping my side of the conversation going and the wedding cake intact.

the gown.

Probably, the cake would have survived regardless of my MarioCart-inspired acrobatics, but I wanted to feel that I had contributed just that much more. The week preceding, Kate and I had traveled down to see Dre and Peter, for his going-away party (in a UHaul full of DJ equipment, positioned open, facing the dolphins and seals and sunset of the bay). We had ended up in a pink champagne and Ben & Jerry’s fueled girls’ night arranging of Dre’s bridal costume, a gorgeously appropriate layering of classic lace and bright orange embroidery. Kate had volunteered our presence for the Big Little Day, and then her cake concocting for this last-minute affair.

Like other weddings of my international friends, this one had been pushed forward by the requirements of Green Cards and cross-continental travel. Peter is Swiss-Austrian, and the two of them would be Europe bound soon enough. The ceremony itself would be aptly silly. Complementing the bride’s orange gown, the groom would wear a lipstick kiss in all his wedding photos and, after the outdoor naval-base ceremony involving dancing and bubbles and singing along to Home Is Where You Are, we would all have to stop and freeze for the playing of TAPS.

It had been unexpected, this wedding. For me anyway. I had found out about the engagement some months before by phone outside in San Francisco’s financial district.

“I have something to tell you,” Dre had said, on speaker in her car during commute hours.

“What?”

“I’m getting married.”

“WHAT?”

“I’m GETTING MARRIED.”

“Hold on, I can’t hear you…”

“Ok, is that better?”

“Um, yeah. Yeah I think so.”

“I’m getting married.”

“WHAT?”

And so on.

marzipan  and construction paper.

But really, it’s that time. Kate had gotten married a year or two earlier, in a wedding filled with tiered cakes and mason jars, with forage-inspired floral displays and a mountain lodge retreat on the side of Mt Tamalpais, where the fog and wind whipped at all of us but my friend the bride looked so serene. There had been quite a few others. Mostly out-of-the-ordinary, non-religious, and with unmatched bridesmaids. The most traditional looking was secretly an open marriage, and the least- involving second and third takes, sheep, two bands and a jam session, a campfire, and a double teepee- has proven one of the strongest and longest so far.

So I suppose I am starting to evaluate things I had never considered. Maybe that’s why I would act a little weird once we arrived in Monterey. Maybe because of the couplings all around. Maybe because of her impending escape to the very place I had just left. Maybe because I was tired from drinking too much wine the night before while the Kitchenaid threatened to fling batter all over Kate’s linoleum, maybe because of uncertainty in the face of the surprising inevitability of Time Marching On.

Meanwhile though, I was working so hard to hold this now-intact velvety chocolate cake aloft, to prove my support for one of my closest friends’ great big decision, for everything that had happened before and would happen after. To prove my capacity for tackling a task at hand. So, every turn, I paid attention. I looked ahead. I anticipated motion and kept it all level. So that this cake would arrive and be beautiful and delicious and worthy of all the things I and we wanted for her. Worthy of her. And through the hilly expanse of agricultural Northern Califonia, flanked by cows and sheep and what would be artichokes, with my other best girl at my side and my stomach aching from laughter and travel, with a mind full of silly memories and the pushed-back feeling that things were changing regardless of me, with an extra towel just in case the ganache slipped, and a cup of coffee wedged in the door of the City Car Share rental: I had to feel like I was killing it. 

Pion

Pion- 1. (nm) pawn, piece, checker. 2. (nm/nf) person paid to supervise schoolchildren.

I have been working for a few months now as a substitute teacher in the French primary school I frequented when I was a kid. Originally, I applied to teach at the high school level, but my services were more useful, it seemed, with the little ones.

I interviewed with the director, a tall, imposing, well put-together man with impeccably cut white hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, and the occasional ascot. During my interview, I emphasized that I had years of experience teaching adults and university students English, and that ESL and History and French and Theater and Music and that kind of stuff would be fine, but I just wasn’t sure about Math and Science… He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, leaned in closer and said: “You realize this is a Primary School. You should be able to handle it.”

Well. He was wrong.

My first few 7AM calls brought me in to teach second grade, but, as I had surmised, I was somewhat useless at demonstrating the basic concepts of arithmetic to children. It seems that a ukulele and strong leaning towards play acting does not an improvised math teacher make, and I am suspicious that my fallbacks in this department have lessened the gigs lording over classrooms of the truly tiny. It may also have something to do with my inadvertent destruction of an expensive piece of equipment, a certain overhead-projected interactive computer screen that looked uncannily like the whiteboard next to it, but I digress. 

Now I am mostly called in to do Yard Duty. I am, as the French say, a pion.

In the book series Le Petit Nicolas, there is a famous pion. He is an imposing guy, brilliantly rendered by Sempé and Goscinny. He is always harrumphing around, googly-eyed, being pranked and generally inducing hilarity. I think of him often.

In reality, there are six to eight of us on the playground at any given time. We are not supposed to fraternize, lest we neglect out task of keeping the children safe. So, when the need for adult interaction becomes unbearable, we have to chat whilst stealing sideways glances at windows, exits, and each other. There is talk amongst the Surveillants (that’s what they call us- the Surveyors) that there is a spy among us, reporting back to the director at all time, but no one is sure. When he occasionally appears, we scatter, we kowtow, we say "Oui Monsieur".

Anyway, being a pion is kind of awesome. Basically my job is to hand out balls and jump ropes, clean up scrapes (but not remove splinters, this counts as surgery apparently and I am not qualified), and tell children not to tattle on each other.

“Noah called me a Lady Gagaface.”

“Well… Are you a Lady Gagaface?”

“No!”

“There you go. Problem solved.”

Because the school goes from nursery to 5^th grade, there is also the odd pre-adolescent murmur. Some of these are highly dramatic and require meetings with teachers and parents where I must recount embarrassingly inaccurate anatomical misconceptions, but more often than not the most challenging part of the job is maintaining a straight face when talking to a 4^th grade boy about the inappropriate aspects of the term “Little Jigglers”, explaining to a 2^nd grader why they should ask their parents about why a vagina is and yet isn’t “like an inside-out penis”, and generally discouraging the playing of “butt-tag”.

I am sadly not sure how much longer I can take it, however. I do love the kiddies. They are alternately adorable (saying-the-darndest-things, enveloping my legs with brazen hugs, language-leaping through to bilingualism), and maddening (playing who-can-hit-the-highest-pitch-screech, insisting they don’t need to go and then sobbing as their pants get wet, constantly stealing each other’s shoes). But I’m afraid of the side effects. Yes, I almost scolded a loudly arguing adult couple in front of Whole Foods yesterday. Yes, I nearly confiscated a tube of lipstick from a teenager in the street this morning. But what if it goes further? What if, against so many years of Higher Education and Literature and Music, I am reduced to bitterly harrumphing like a Goscinny character? What if my lines go two-dimensional and all I can do is rip exciting things out of children’s hands “Because I said so”? I shudder to think that once you go pion, you never go back.

On the plus side though, my paper airplanes are getting WAY better.

Epicurean Regression

oooh... stock image

After six months of re-American life, I started to feel the hankering for French things again. I had been staying away from them: not looking at pictures of Paris (more difficult to avoid than one might think), not interacting too much with the people I left behind, avoiding bakeries. But about a month ago I found myself ordering a (disappointing) croissant in a cafe. Selecting brie instead of pepper jack. Reverting to "pardon" when I bumped into people by mistake. It seemed I was ready to confront the France that I missed in a more direct, need I say visceral, way.

It began at Christmas, when a friend flew back a box of macarons. Those little delicate cookie creations, vibrant colored crackling puffs sandwiching fragrant creams and jellies in flavors like Vanilla Olive Oil, Hazelnut Cocoa Bean, Moroccan Mandarin, Rose and Lavender... I ate them almost exclusively at night. In bed. Guiltily cheating on my homeland and its Oreos.

I began having cravings for French food. Some of these were satisfied by the family friend with whom I'm staying, a woman who has learned from three decades of marriage to a Frenchman how to simply, matter-of-factly concoct the perfect tarte aux pommes, to make pate à choux rise just so, and to flavor everything with cream and butter. She also makes killer chocolate chip cookies, but I digress. Regardless of Priscilla's kitchen prowess, what I really wanted was escargot.

My date and I got dolled up on a Wednesday and headed to the inner Richmond for a night of inner richness (ha ha ha). He was excited. Ordered a town car. He had never had snails before and was raring to go. He was not disappointed. 

mmm... stock image

It is difficult to mess up escargot. The traditional recipe exists essentially as an excuse to consume butter perfumed with garlic and parsley, but oh, it is so so good. Especially helped out with a glass or two of Sancerre. We had oysters too, with red wine vinegar mignonette, and then I had bouillabaisse and there were digestifs and a complimentary apple tart (not as good as Priscilla's)... I was in heaven. I was in fake Paris. I knew it was fake because a female French customer told us we looked fabulous.

But that wasn't enough. I needed more invertebrates. For my birthday Kate took me up the coast to Tomales Bay, where we sat in the freezing cold sunshine (ah, Northern California winters) and I learned to shuck, shuck, shuck my little heart out. My dear friend knew just what to do. She brought champagne, a spread of cheeses, lemons, and a beautiful baguette. I thought of my uncle Jean François and the mountains of oysters we put away during the holidays in Toulouse, of my first bivalve off the coast of Brittany, of my father and his skilled wielding of the blunt, heavy-handled knife. Kate and I ate ours raw, of course, all 36 of them. I looked at the families around us, many foolishly barbecuing their little gems of the sea, and scoffed.

Then the next day I reviewed the places on Yelp, had a burrito,  and everything went back to normal.

Can You Handel It?

Georgie Handel himself

Christmas time has come and gone. New year's day as well. Now, a time to reflect, to ponder, to look forward with the wisdom of another year. A time to ask such burning questions as: Why could I not find a Sing-Along Messiah in San Francisco??

For the last decade or so, I have been able to belt out yearly Hallelujah choruses and ridiculous melisma, sometimes accompanied by baroque orchestras, sometimes by solo organ. I have been able to socially breeze across voices in a hodgepodge of choir-members and weekend singers, singing alto with my lower-voiced buddies, soprano I with the high pipers, outside of the restrictions of "rehearsal" and "assigned parts". More often than not this happened in the American Cathedral on George V, led by a spirited choir director expertly hiding fear of losing the reigns of the packed and weighty-voiced house. 

As I was on the board of the Paris Choral Society, I was charged with getting the word out, and I always depended on touting the grand tradition of a Handel's Messiah Sing-Along to a susceptible French audience. But it appears I was full of lies. Did I make it up? Is singing the Messiah alongside a trained choir not a thing we do in the States?

PCS Sing-Along in action

I was certain that some opportunity to whip out my well-worn sheet music would come along. But no. Oh, there were plenty of Messiahs out there, but I couldn't find a single one that would encourage the audience to join in. Perhaps I was not sufficiently observant, but I was nonetheless outraged. I didn't want to LISTEN. I wanted to EMOTE VOCALLY. I took to singing it from beginning to end as I walked through the city. I put it on at every opportunity, hoping to spark a flash-mob. 

But it didn't happen. I was reduced to attempting to get my family humming on Christmas Eve, to no avail. I suppose America is not quite what my rose-colored memory retained.

Although, since this is a choral-oriented post, one thing San Francisco HAS offered in that realm was a FABULOUS semi-amateur choir rendition of Orff's Carmina Burana (of car commercial and pop canon fame). I attended because a friend was singing, and was delighted. The singing was nice, the orchestra too, but the best part was the showmanship. During O Fortuna (the big one A-AAh A-AAh, A-AAh A-AAh, A-AAh-a-aah- AAh. AAh. AAh), the singers held tiny LED flashlights to their faces as if telling ghost stories. During the Tavern movement (basically about men drinking in the tavern and how great it is), the choir shined the same lights through what looked like owl masks at the audience. Fabulous. Oh, and the soloists had three costume changes each. Including the tenor, who made all his onstage during his one dying-swan aria. 

When we performed Carmina Burana in Paris, I remember having to wear flowers in my hair, but that was it (well, it's possible the male choristers sported potato sacks, but maybe I made that up). Our crowning glory was found in the flurry of young modern dancers in colorful leotards that came in and out of the aisles during instrumental movements. The San Francisco Choral Society? Same dancers. From the Champs Elysées to Davies Hall, semi-pro choral scene brings kitsch and swooping drama. Wonderful, comforting consistency. My heart is a little warmer for it. 

Hallelujah.

Mode-us Operandi

I would like to preface this post with an acknowledgement that I have no legs to stand on in my commentary. I am far from fashion plate. That being said...

Perhaps it's the extended stay in Mother Europe that warped my born-and-bred Californian perspective, or some kind of deep-rooted desire for structure, but  think it's a bummer that there seem to be no more dress codes. While this is the norm out West ("down with the New Upper Class and their despisal of white after labor day! I will wear sneakers to the office and tattoos will be a prerequisite for employment!"), it surprised me to find that in Paris, things were not so different.

I suppose this in somewhat unfair... In Paris I lived mostly in the lands of the hipster bohemes, who peered over their espressos and cigarettes with a fashion-eye towards London. Their jeans were expertly worn and their vintage clothing was often Hermes and YSL and had real fur and I'm pretty sure they had it all dry-cleaned, but it was calculatedly cool. Very "what, this old thing?". In the other, more western parts of town things remain brand-new Chanel suits and Vuitton bags, sky-high shoes and various thousand-euro takes on the Little Black Dress. So I'm not saying San Francisco and Paris have converged on the plane of vestimental theory. But there are some commonalities to bemoan, and some puzzling discrepancies.

When I first came to France as more than a toddler, on a monthlong visit in the summer of 1995, my father warned me. He looked me up and down and said they dressed... different there. I didn't really get it until I arrived in Nice and, while I slept off my jet lag, my grandmother filtered out and hid the clothing she deemed inappropriate for my international coming-out. Gone were my docs, my overalls and plaid men's shirts and the baggy jeans with the fabric panels sewn down the sides. Mamie was not having any of that California laxness in her house. She then took adolescent me shopping for flowing bright-patterned silk pants, a pinstripe tailored suit and a light classic raincoat, among other things I must have burned when I came back home as I am sad to say I can no longer find them. 

When I moved to France in 2003, things were much the same. Christmas in Toulouse was a flurry of champagne corks and cufflinks, gold jewelry and aprons worn over gorgeous dark floral prints. Mamie whispered in my ear then too, nixing what she termed revealing necklines, but she wasn't the only one. My cousin Stephan, when we went out for (what is apparently traditional) Christmas-eve clubbing told me he wasn't sure I was going to be able to get in. "You know, the first thing they look at is your shoes."

And yet, going to the opera, or the ballet, or the theater seems to do nothing at all to the French. I suppose I should say the Parisians. I once went to a first-run of the Sellars-Viola production of Tristan and Isolde and found myself seated between one couple in black tie and another in jeans. The tourists in the rush seats were in shorts. I was confused. If you don't dress up for the opera, what do you dress up for?

The answer, it seemed, was jogging. I used to go out wearing whatever I could get my hands on, lots of it or very little depending on the season, but nothing that was particularly attractive. I would stop at a traffic light or a moving bridge, red in the face and sweating through my T-shirt and 49ers hat. People waiting with me would politely ignore, and the other occasional jogging Miss in velour sweatsuit or a sports bra that matched her shoes or the collar on her tiny dog would raise her eyebrow at me. "You leave your house in THAT?"

Now, running through Golden Gate Park I have no fear or self-consciousness. There are people just as shabby as me huffing down those paths. There are also people napping half-hidden in hollowed out tree trunks, but that is a different story. As far as clothing goes, there doesn't seem to be much restriction at all. I have been to two weddings in the last couple of years where the entire groom's party wore sneakers, and I must have seem thousands of photos of cowboy boots under white gowns. 

I went out for drinks and dinner with an old friend the other day, steering him away from the upscale fast food place that opened in Mill Valley and towards a tavern with outdoor seating and black-clad waitstaff. On the walk from the car, he mentioned something about hoping he wasn't underdressed. But inside, sitting at a white-tablecloth for two, was a dude in track pants and a woman in a crisp peter-pan collar. I guess the mix makes the mix. Still, maybe I'm lazy, but I would like a little more warning. I wore strappy heels to an art opening, but it was in Olema (farmland/winecountry) and so everyone else was in flip flops. I wore jeans to a comedy show and everyone else was in buttoned shirts and sweet swinging dresses. I might just go the way of a friend back in France, restrict all my wardrobe to the cuts of various black dresses and add the occasional swanky coat or bright tights. LBD LBD.

This is not to say that there are no restrictions and no judgements (I mean, really, this isn't Berlin). My brother often remarks on my Mom jeans. I have nothing to retort, having adopted them directly out of Mom's closet, but it stings a little coming from someone wearing a stocking cap. It is a stylish stocking cap though. That seems to be the underlying rule, regardless of the location: if you are going casual, go stylish casual. In the Bay Area though, you can't look like you're trying. In Paris, you can't look like you're not.

Retirée

It has been a while.

I am not sure if I have been getting used to California again or if I have just become accustomed to the Summer Vacation Lifestyle of staying at my mother’s, in my childhood and adolescent bedroom, watching TV and sitting around the deck. Now with the addition of a bottle of beer.

Maya with electric lines (or whatever)

The view has gotten better. They have cut down the trees in front of the house and now the only thing marring the strangely enticing view of the freeway and the bay is the collection of thick, low-arching electric lines. Electric or telephone, I guess I don’t know, but they are definitely there.

I have been escaping quite a bit, to San Francisco and Oakland, Santa Cruz and Monterey, a fledgling music and cabaret festival on the Russian River. I still have a lot of friends here. Last week I made myself stay home for ten days, telling myself that I had to get down to good old brass tacks, send off thousands of resumés and get moving. Also I spent ten dollars on a promotional ten days of Bikram and Power yoga in order to force the issue. I bought a new yoga mat that my mother laughed at. It’s brown and she says it looks like poop. She is a bit obsessed with poop. She also says my cat, who has an asymmetrical spot on her muzzle, looks like she has been eating poop. I always said Nutella, but mom won’t let it go. 

Dolores Park, on a day without bubbles but with Mime Troupe

The other night I was in San Francisco with my friend Charlotte, we ate take out in Dolores Park between some hippies from Denmark in neon green jumpsuits and multicolored dreadlocks and some homeless guys with an all-terrain skateboard and a dog that tried to eat Charlotte’s falafel. There was a band with a battery-powered amp and someone with a bubble machine. When it got cold and we got tired of posing for a modern-day Maupin novel, we walked to the apartment Charlotte was subletting between circus contracts and she made us tea. We laughed a lot and very hard.

Charlotte and I have a relationship that started when I first moved to France, she was taking time off from a math degree at Berkeley, doing modern dance and sharing an apartment with a French ballerina-type. There was a sheet dividing their rooms if I remember correctly. I had known her ex-boyfriend back in Santa Cruz and we shared many a vegan mush dinner. She returned to Europe after completing her degree, this time to Brussels where she studied handstands 8 hours a day. We’d see each other at least once a year, when she came through on a field trip or a contract, or when I had a visiting friend who wanted to take a train ride out of France, but not so far as Amsterdam. We hung out in Paris right before I came back to California. Last week’s festival- Charlotte was my in- was the first time we had seen each other on this continent.

Charlotte, waffle-ironing.

So yeah, we laughed a lot. The place she was renting had a fake mural on the wall of the kitchen and a fold-out ironing board. I took pictures of Charlotte posing with a waffle iron (we couldn’t find the clothes kind). We talked about our love lives, our work lives, our plans for the future and our lack of plans for now. We talked about things we had done and she reminded me of conversations we had had (somehow I am never the one who remembers). There is something so nice about knowing someone for so long. It was very hard to leave her behind. If I remember correctly, we refilled the teapot six times.

I have been getting this feeling a lot lately, the feeling of sharing life by sharing time. Everyone is becoming an old friend and the bar is getting higher for meeting new people. If I haven’t known you for an approximate decade, you had better be really interesting or attractive, or there is little chance that I will remember your name. I met one girl three times last week. I felt pretty guilty, until I found out she is a twin, then I figured she was probably used to it.

I am definitely going to become crotchety before I hit 35. Maybe the Summer Vacation Lifestyle is really just a glimpse into Retirement.

(While writing this entry, my mother began talking about our genetically high insteps and their relation to loose joints and hip problems. I told her that, as of yet, these are not problems for me. Her words: “Well, you’re a child.” So I guess I’m complaining about nothing. I take it all back.)

Fog

It is very foggy in the Bay Area.

You would think I would remember this, that 8+ years living away would not have wiped my memory of this integral fact, but it seems to have slipped through the cracks. The window that looks out onto the bay from the dining room at my mother's house here in Mill Valley is white with fog, criss-crossed with telephone lines and bordered with leafy green. And red. And greygreenred.

I went jogging today on the bike path that runs under the freeway, to Sausalito and San Francisco, and was almost trampled by a woman with an industrial-sized baby buggy and golden retriever.  They came out of nowhere. Manifested out of the white. I dodged them, barely. Must remember the sporty yuppy factor when in Marin. Not so much a problem back in Paris. In Paris jogging threats were mostly limited to guys overexcited about the idea of a woman with stamina. Or people picnicking on the canal. Or my own incapacity to multitask (unzipping my sweatshirt, changing my music, and keeping my feet going on uneven terrain having ended in bloody knees on more than one occasion). Here it seems the fog can hide all sorts of forgotten threats.

In the strong visibility of of the living room, my cats are having a face-off. Paris trying to gain terrain on California. Shady, so named by one of my college housemates for her ability to sneak around and grab at people's ankles from under beds and tables and couches, is trying to hold her home turf. Her low-pitched threats sound impressive, at least for a cat protected by the slats and legs of the piano chair. Shady is the matriarch. I left her here with my mother in 2003, when I went to Paris "for a year or so" to check things out. Shady has since been joined by Kittyton, the lumbering star of my brother's youtube channel, and now Maya, straight off the plane from France, has come to rattle the delicate balance. Right now Maya is lying on the floor, about five feet away, watching. Every now and then she sneaks closer, bridging the gap, working on reducing the space between them. 

I imagine them outside, in a ring covered in white fog, darting in and out, circling and hissing, until they decide it's not worth it and lie down in a dogpile. Well... catpile.

While the cats try to get used to each other, my brother is lying on the couch, watching baseball. He and my mother are teasing me for my lack of player and stat knowledge. I tell them that it's not that I am not a fan, I just don't particularly care. My mother says it's only a matter of time. That soon enough I'll be sporting orange and black, shouting at the TV and refusing to go to the kitchen to replenish snacks when it's my turn. Maybe so. 

But for now the fog is too much for me.