I Count Myself...

among the luckiest of individuals. And I'm so glad my personality seems to have escaped that bear-trap of a vice known as psychopathy. Or whatever. I'm not trying to invite a slew of close reading into the above sentence; it's just something I'm increasingly thanking my Lucky Charms for, and I thought I'd share. Life is fartooshort to spend any moment of it being anything but glad for where you're at and excited for where you could potentially be a few thousand - or a few hundred thousand - breaths down the road. A fine line divides all of us from that crazy bitch the next window over, the one who spends her days shouting hoarsely to a host of acquaintances that abandoned her for sunnier dispositions. If any of you see me heading down her path, please immediately do something drastic.


Otherwise, San Francisco is melting under a heat wave's wrath, the movie Catfish is definitely at least worth a rental a few months from now, Folsom Street Fair was all kinds of crazy, and my uoregon email account subtly deactivated itself a month ago, so you can now only get a hold of me via gmail.

Message for the address!

Awesome-O!

This kind of innovation gives me such hope for the future of theme parks, real life, etc.

(As usual, this is a link so as not to compromise frame size):

3D Projection Mapping

The Fleeting thoughts of a Fire Rabbit

So I'm at Cafe Abir, again, and the crazy-ass barista (the one who didn't mistake me for Matt Damon my first two times here) just christened me a Fire Rabbit... this after attempting, straight-faced, to charge me $1000 for my bagel and coffee for a solid sixty seconds. Previously, during my jaunt down the sidewalk to get here, I sidestepped a perfectly respectable couple on their hands and knees, heedless of the cement's grime, photographing a little twig of a succulent that had sprung up from a crack in the turf. And even earlier, my insane neighbor lady woke me up by shouting "7 am... 7 am... 7 AM!!!" over and over and over.


Point is, I'm surrounded by crazies. Even the ones who aren't obvious enough for me to flat-out avoid have at least one or two demented characteristics stuffed up their sleeve, and they're all just waiting for a naive little Oregon boy to walk by and trigger them. Simone and I were talking the other day about how neither of us is able to walk by a clearly homeless/begging person without making eye contact and, in so doing, acknowledging them as fellow humans - for her, though, these brief encounters really bring down her good spirits. I suppose this means my near-total soullessness actually is good for something other than what might be considered downright scathing observational skills. Still, I can't help but wonder how much further I might inadvertently sink by the simple act of gradually growing more and more numb to both the characters and the antics that populate this city.

But enough of that. Work = work (has it been 8 hours yet?!?). My days off = sleep. Night = drinking and/or repeat episodes of Mad Men. Opportunity beckons, I just need to get off my lazy ass and chase it. Also: come visit!

Sweat!

I'm sitting at Cafe Abir on the corner of Divisadero (Divis, in local speak) and Fulton with a large glass of coffee. It's two in the afternoon.

This is how I handle quitting caffeine cold turkey.

Prior to my move to San Francisco, I drank coffee lots. And lots and lots. My new job at Apple, though, has turned me into a nervous sweater the likes of which my armpits haven't experienced since those early high school years. And caffeine (according to online) = nervous sweats, which are disgusting. I find myself lurching around the store halfway through my shift, Frankenstein-style, in an attempt to shield others from the sopping portion of shirt that sometimes trails all the way to my belt line. Stuffing paper towels under my armpits during breaks only makes me look more awkward, and the remedy of wearing a black shirt is only going to take me as far as tomorrow, when I officially don my blue Apple jersey. CertainDri, Dove Clinical Strength Protection, and good old stick deodorant aren't doing the trick, either. So I've abandoned coffee in favor of a constant headache and the occasional giant mug of liquid crack at two in the afternoon on my days off. I'm a junkie, only instead of finding needled solace in the night's grimiest shadows, I take to the Cafes of Divis on sunny afternoons for my coffee fix, a lone rogue among the masses of normal sippers. Why, why, why can't I be normal? At all? Ever?


I should also mention that I haven't eaten yet, which means my head is buzzing (in addition to the headache) and my hands are clumsy and I'm not really sure if these sentences are making any sense (we can most certainly kiss 'clever' as an adjective goodbye, at least for now). Molly woke me up early so we could run to 24-Hour Fitness together, which means I couldn't eat beforehand (in addition to nervous sweats, I cramp easily). Our gym is a legit inner-city type confabulation, with the relevant smells, foreigners, strange workout costumes, poor equipment, and seriously shady smoothie bar included. Every time I walk in and out unscathed I give myself a mental pat on the shoulder for what must be a hardcore, take-neither-my-weights-nor-my-lunch-money face. And then I run back home through Japantown, sweaty and proud, and life is good.

I intended to purchase this open-faced bagel sandwich type thing they serve here at Abir, but the lady just let me on the fact that they don't have bagels so late in the day, which means I'll probably end up scarfing a burrito in another twenty minutes. This city has more burritos than something that should have a lot of something else that's funny, and the salsas are killer.

My apartment is grand. My window looks out on a 35-foot pit of other windows, each one providing a glimpse into the lives of others (no shit, huh?). So far, these include:
- Adjacent: A family from Eastern Europe (or someplace) that occasionally shouts.
- Adjacent 2: Molly's window. Boooring.
- Across: A senile old woman with a smoker's voice who begins her days promptly at 7 am and spends them shouting at her helper Alison, another ambiguous elderly person who always wants to use her phone, the television set ("OH GOD, NOOOOO!!!"), and telephone operators ("I'd like to speak to a representative. I'd LIKE to speak to a representative. I'D LIKE TO SPEAK TO A REPRESENTATIVE. I'D LIKE TO SPEAK TO A REPRESENTATIVE."). Someone should seriously kill the bitch. Seriously.
- Across and below: A girl who spends most of her time lounging in bed, surfing Facebook.
- Below and out of sight: Frequent sex noises. A gay guy who listens to lots of disco and club pop. Bros and their beer pong.


Apple so far is simultaneously completely overwhelming and pretty fun. I also, however, can't fathom the remainder of my life without regular summer breakage, and unless something major changes, I'm carrying out my plan to return to school in two or three years to earn a master's, make an intellectual impact, and morph into a professor so as to spend the rest of my life on a college campus, reading books and writing papers and arguing with those whose opinions are wrong. But more on that later. For now, I included above a picture of the glass staircase at the store where I work, which apparently is some kind of patented technological wonder that doesn't exist anywhere else. All I can think about whenever I look at it is how embarrassing it's going to be when I finally eat shit on its transparent surface and provide the entire watchful store with a painful, sweat-streaked tumble.

What else? I'm determined to start posting more frequently now that the initial month of craziness has come and gone, so there's no need to get too deep with this one. My "internship" rocks, though I'm afraid that now I'm done editing all their extant material they'll have no more use for me. Either way, I come out on top, because if I'm not doing that I'll have more time to focus on my writing, which kind of just stopped as soon as I showed up here. For those of you who aren't aware, check it out: about.nonchalance.com.

Which renegade radio station transmits across Dolores Park...?

Until next time, take care. And visit! For christ's sake, visit. Unless you already live here, in which case let's go out! Oh, that's another thing: most of my readership is/are now my neighbors, so I don't really know how to be entertaining while rehashing stuff everyone here already knows about. Tis a tough set of circumstances, tis.

OK

I spent allllll morning working on a huge update and it just deleted. I'm pissed. Stay tuned.

Vacillating

If my room here at 61165 River Bluff Trail consists mostly of me and the things I've put into it, then I shouldn't be the least bit sad about leaving behind its jagged, lofty architecture. What I care about is coming with me, and what now only serve as relics will be disassembled, boxed, forgotten - much as they would have anyway, but without the slow creep of time further distancing me from my attachment. This here's a change, swift as the best of them... one of those that makes life worth living.

Excitement! Moving on and on and on. Personal growth. THE FUTURE.

But what of my brother in the next room over? And the view from the porch's corner? And this, the most silent of silences, over which a literal glut of stars preside? What am I supposed to do with my bone-deep love for these things? They can't be boxed, and they most certainly can't be forgotten. Resigning them to memory seems like something an old person would do.

Ah, that word again: old. I'm getting old. Probably not so much in the eyes of those older than me - though, of course, their gaze isn't the one that matters. My own is the one that keeps eyeing the boxes now housing approximately 83% of my existence. My own is the one that can't bring itself to stare down the rest and justify my leaving it behind because it. just. doesn't. matter. Because it belonged to youth - or, at least, a more youthful part of youth. Youth within youth. And youth within youth within youth. But you can only go so far until youth just can't fit any more youth within it, and that's when you know you're leaving it, and that's the landmark I rapidly feel myself approaching.

And the stars will keep blinking. And my brother will keep sitting in the next room over, himself aging until he as well abandons his room. And then it will just be my parents, alone here with the most silent of silences, wilting nightly under the looming stars. And it's almost too much to think about. Almost.

A job might ease the unease, but will it really? I have a hunch it will just make those moments of silence all the more unbearable, because when you finally take a breath after God knows how many months of not, and it all comes rushing back, what kind of job could possibly make the distance, the time, the leaving behind of the posters, all worthwhile? What shimmering future moment could possibly equate to the glory of youth?

Past-Blasting!

A verbatim excerpt from a piece of paper I just found in my underwear drawer... which I obviously need to clean out more:

9/29/00 - St. Francis Bingo Night

Tonight I joined first clique. 8th grader in it! Talked about "stuff"! Going to a pool party. I feel really mature now. Cool!!!