Grateful for Radiance

The season's high points hit fast in fall. No sooner Halloween and Thanksgiving, then in stomps winter and we have the solstice to celebrate, the return of the light.

No better way to spend the darkest day than looking out for scintillation. This year boats in San Rafael and train cars in Niles shone through the cold air that shivered in with Ol' Man Winter, giving me delight.

Our food purveyors up on College Avenue bustled early this morning, Christmas Eve. A bread (ok, cake, pie and cookie) line formed at La Farine and a turkey, prime rib and crab line parleyed at Ver Brugge well before 8am. Cole Coffee started the day with a free cup of Peruvian with purchase of beans. Yasai Market displayed bright Fuyu persimmons with a "Last Chance of the Season" sign, alongside the abundance of ten kinds (and colors) of hard squash, six kinds (and colors) of potatoes.

Cooking it yourself works out in well in good times or bad, especially when the fresh ingredients sparkle like these. Lucky we!

Day of the Dead, Day of the Quick

Autumn arrives again, poignant and beautiful, full of ghosts, full of their tricks. We live to see the pyracantha, called fire thorn, burst its reds against a sharp sky. We live to hear the shiver of dry leaves in an orchard, in a graveyard. Children paint their faces, not knowing that this keeps them safe, but it does. We taste pomegranates and persimmons. They are sweet, they are sour and wake me to the late season.

Kickin' It

My Bush presidency countdown widget tells me there are 107 days, 19 hours, 25 minutes and 45 seconds until W is out of office, minus the seconds it takes me to type this. It cannot come soon enough. We should have ejected this administration like a toxic furball back in the Enron days. Probably sooner.


In a store window on Haight Street I saw a black t-shirt with small pictures of the heads of Bush, Condi and Cheney and the words "Goodbye Fuckers" next to them. This and the sunset and the big legs dangling out of a window and the fluffy pink bicycle parked by the curb were a big scoop of reason-to-live.

Ah, California

There are times in these perilous times that I figure that being in California is being in one of those places people go for succor. Not entirely safe, but extraordinarily fun. And deep. One day I woke up at 9,000 feet in the prosperous burg of Mammoth Lakes, by nightfall I was at sea level in Berkeley, downing oysters plucked from their beds just hours past. Made possible by car, gasoline, highways, roadside stands, no-town restaurants and desire. To carry my bicycle (Li'l Darlin'!) to the eastern Sierra, to ride for an entire day in that sere, gigantic landscape. To smell those Jeffrey pines, those specific ones, some of them with names, like The Pipecleaner. To crunch the pumice under my feet and hear Rainbow Falls.

When I returned home to Oakland on September 7, 2008 I kept seeing the dirtiest cars I have ever seen. I mean crusty. Then today, I saw another one on Alcatraz Avenue. Someone had scrawled with their finger "I love the playa" on its window. Ah ha. I finally got it. These were all Burning Man veterans, all over the place, home from another set of marvelous California stories. Do tell!

Summer of Fire

When I drove up Highway 5 late last month, I couldn't even see Mount Shasta. The smoke was that thick. But Dunsmuir was a nice place to stop for lunch in spite of the haze. There were some muralists at work painting a beautiful scene of the Sacto River with giant trees and an old-fashioned railroad engine. Other artists in town had closed up their studios because the air quality was so bad. Dunno where they went instead. Perhaps to lie down with a damp cloth over their noses. I would have done the same, but I knew that it would be different once I made it to Oregon.

Sure enough, it was green and clear in Ashland. The streams were full of water, the wind fresh.

Philly Pleasures

Philadelphia is lush compared to where I live now in California.

I was very happy there on vacation in June. We stopped for cold martinis at sidewalk tables, admired deciduous trees in full leaf, gazed at the Wissahickon Creek and Schuykill River fat with water, listened to people all around speaking Philly.

Hard to believe my memories of growing up there go back over 40 years. Manayunk is no longer depressed. The Morris Arboretum is a glory of gardens, restored by the University of Pennsylvania. The Art Museum has a new wing and is under construction with a Frank Gehry addition. Mt. Airy still feels like a hip village. The kids in the bars look so young. When did the drinking age drop to 15?

In California Some Potatoes Are Purple

Hop on Pop

funk
rock and roll
reggae
ska
boogie woogie
blues
rhythm and blues
soul
latin
bossa nova
...
not man and fate
not man and nature
not man and humanity
not man and god
but
man and pants
always
man and pants
pants off
when, when
baby
whoo

Three Minute Spring Break

Two of my friends turn 60 this week. Yeah, Pisces. Tonight is the party for the first one. I found him a small 3-minute hourglass with fine red sand. Seemed fitting somehow. Time slips away and gets shorter as we age, but three minutes is still a long time if you pay attention.

I made him a list of things one could pay attention to for three minutes each. It goes like this:

soft boil an egg; breathe through an asana; kiss your beautiful wife; write ten true things; sing a song; peel three oranges; eat a cupcake; brew a cup of tea; tell a joke; read the newspaper; listen to the birds; make a list of things you can do for three minutes

Next Saturday is the party for the second one turning 60.

Monkey's Wedding

If it's raining and sunny at the same time, that's a Monkey's Wedding. Winter in San Francisco holds many Monkey Weddings. Sure, it can be just plain gray and pouring down in dreary sheets of rain. But then come the moments of transition, the windy, dramatic points of change. Sometimes this happens when I am on the ferry back to Oakland. I've been doing this commute for nearly ten years and, at least a few times each winter season, I get a night that pleases me no end. It's blustery on the top deck of the Encinal. There's no other fool up there with me except the captain, ensconced in his cozy pilot house. Me, I'm wrapped in fleece and my biking jacket with the rain tail, gazing gazing gazing at a city that I find endlessly beautiful.