Daylight 1.1

A big yellow flower on our pumpkin plant greeted us in the morning sunshine. This plant is aggressively taking over the garden, its large green leaves quivering in the tiniest of breezes, tender drops of water around each serrated edge. In my fantasy several giant pumpkins will swell into existence here.

In Magnolia, many disconnected yet randomly interrelated lives merge through the experience of sharing one song in one moment in time. Sometimes we can collectively sense that a new force has entered our world. It may be a threatening force or it may be a gentle influence. In Japanese, there are words for the various types of people, as I understand it, and one type is "she who has a calming and peaceful effect."

In Telephone Company Park last night an aging superstar past his prime blew up at what he thought what a bad call by an umpire. The umpire threw him out of the game. It was a critical turning point. The Giants trailed by three runs, there was one out in the bottom of the 9th inning, one runner on base, and the count on Bonds was now 2-2. The tying run was on deck. Earlier Bonds had blasted his 723rd homerun in this, what may well be his last season in the game.

The game had to be stopped for 11 minutes because the angry crowd through trash on the field. I don't ever recall seeing this happen in San Francisco before. It's been the oddest baseball season, very disconnected, and difficult to enjoy. It feels as if it ended last night with the meltdown by Bonds, who normally has stayed calm and focused throughout his career. Watching him self-destruct, partly under the pressure of a grand jury probe that feels vindictive, and unnecessary, is one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed in baseball.

Still, even at times like that, we can experience the sweetest happinesses. It's all in the details of our own lives, how we adjust and adapt and grow and connect, disconnect, and reconnect again. The special moments when we all share the same song, no matter how broken our individual lives may appear from the outside.

Inside there may be gentleness, peace and a sense of calm.

Some of my friends recently started trying to introduce me to new women. One of them said, "You should find someone who loves baseball as much as you do, David." It's funny that until she said that, though it occurred to me that somebody might well share many of my major passions -- for words, stories, baseball, languages, books, movies, music, sex, intimacy, blogging, writing, and kids -- the one I would have 'most unlikely' on that list was baseball. It would seem to be a small miracle if somebody could connect with me on that level, along with many of the others.

Buy maybe that's how it always feels when we are alone, without a soul mate. As if we are the only one...

Last winter I was so lonely, especially on Saturday nights and during the holiday seasons. Those are times when I feel the deepest need for a partner. It's nice to go out to a movie with someone you love.

When my ex left for Mississippi last November, I knew I was in for a bad winter. I never would have guessed I would essentially stop eating to the point I shed 30 pounds, but that is what happened. When she broke up with me this spring, I was swept by a wave of anxiety that I could never survive another season of holidays alone.

Then, slowly, something changed, and I stopped thinking so far ahead. Who knows what the future holds? The day I started focusing only on that day, with no thought of the future, was the day I started becoming well. I can't recall which day that was.

Probably just one like any other. A day that led me here, to this warm, sunny day and to this particular Saturday night.

Timing is everything

The graceful rhythm of a baseball game is as good a place as any to start with in this post. Because baseball is all about timing. Case in point: Ichiro, the greatest hitter of this era. I am amazed that he has not yet hit .400, but perhaps he is saving that for his last act.

There's a wonderful children's book called Buzz Buzz Buzz It is about the random interconnectedness of life. A bee stings a farm animal, which races away, triggering a series of unlikely events that eventually reach in a circular way all the way back to -- you guessed it -- the bee.

This underlying principle expresses itself in my life almost every day, particularly when I find myself in a highly biological state of alertness, which is currently the case. In this agitated condition, I'm acutely aware of my own role in the human ecology that envelops me.

That, combined with my recent insight that standing in line at Safeway may indeed be as good as it gets, leads me to a mathematical puzzle I'm confronting. Let's say I already know the answer, and that it is (to select a random number) 30.

Now, let’s say the only way to get to 30 is in increments of one, and we currently are at, let's say, point 7, though tonight we will reach point 8.

Now, any school child can deduce that we have 23 more steps to go. If we can only achieve at most one of those per day, and today is the 4th of the month, it is clear that the soonest we could reach our goal is the 26th of the month.

An interesting wrinkle to this problem is that the hard deadline for reaching our goal is also the 26th. Given the many competing priorities, and the random distribution of unanticipated disruptive events, it's virtually impossible, therefore, to reach our goal.

We have options. We could reduce our goal from 30 to a lower number; or we could increase the steps we take per day to more than one.

On the other hand, faced with particular dilemma, we might change course entirely, realizing we were asking the wrong question in the first place, giving far too much weight to one particular outcome (that represented by 30), when other, deeper questions remain unaddressed.

BTW, this is the kind of problem people face every day here in Silicon Valley. See
Walking through the valley of algorithms. This is a place of puzzling patterns mixing questions needing answers and answers seeking the right question.

An algorithm is essentially a solution to a problem, usually expressed as a mathematical formula. In the world of high tech, algorithms drive virtually every outcome.

But I don't intend to write much about my professional life, despite the descriptor of this blogspace as existing at the "intersection of the personal, political and professional." For that, I maintain another blog: Editor's Pick.

So, what does any of this have to do with Safeway and Buzz Buzz Buzz? Well, last night was the best night I've had at Safeway in a long, long time. We were shopping for the components for a late dinner, and with a little persistence, we found them all. I get strangely excited at the prospect of cooking a meal for other people, partly because I never follow recipes and the experience is therefore destined to be one big experiment. If it is successful, that's nice, but it will most likely not be repeated, not precisely, because I add or subtract ingredients at will and according to what catches my eye.

So eating me with is like a one night stand. Over time, however, since my culinary range is so narrow, just a few main dishes appear over and over -- though as my kids would be the first to testify -- never quite identical to the time before.

This morning, I was racing through my routines, headed for an early meeting at work. I almost forgot my lunch, which was to be leftovers from last night's meal, but at the last moment before dashing out the door, I remembered it.

Had I been better organized, I would have slipped the Tupperware containing this food into a bag, but instead I balanced it precariously on top of a book containing algorithms and a newspaper wrapped in plastic, as I walked the block to where I'd parked my car last night after midnight.

As I neared the car, which was parked headfirst at an angle, I veered out into the street to angle in toward its trunk. As I did so, a young woman emerged from her apartment and started hustling down the sidewalk on her way to work. She was a pretty Asian woman, and I called out, in my newly hyper-friendly way, "Good morning!"

I'm not sure why I have become so hyper-friendly this summer, but talking to strangers seems to be my new habit. There's hardly anyone that if you smile and say hi won't return the favor. But this woman did more than that. She stopped, and backed up to her apartment door. "You reminded me I forgot my lunch!"

She rushed back upstairs, yelling "thanks" behind her. I drove south to my office and a few minutes ago I finished those leftovers, while someone, somewhere is eating her leftovers as well. Do you see? Buzz Buzz Buzz. Had I not arrived at that precise spot at that precise moment, balancing my Tupperware container awkwardly while being my hyper-friendly self to a passerby, she would have had to buy her lunch today.

That's it. A rather simple little story, unless you consider the math behind it all...

The un-Dress Rehearsal 1.1

Our young friend Taylor has dress rehearsal today for her theatrical performances tomorrow and Saturday. Three of her fans were nodding in agreement last night as she described that jittery feeling she gets before a big performance. Everyone gets butterflies when they have to stand up before a crowd and speak, dance, sing, you name it. Everyone except the rare person who enjoys the sound of his own voice so much he never realizes he is singing out of tune.

Writing in this blog about personal things and feelings can leave me feeling exposed. Naked. There isn't much space between brutal emotional honesty (a good thing) and narcissistic self-absorption (not so nice). It can be hard to stay in tune. There is also pressure of another kind -- how much to actually reveal, especially about other people. Even as I work to tell my stories honestly, I'm protecting people. There are things that ought not to be revealed, not here.

One lesson from film writing was the inherent power of leaving some things unstated. And it's true of all editing processes -- what you leave out should enhance what you choose to leave in. A certain kind of pressure builds up, almost like hunger or sexual tension, if you write your way around salient facts that need to be kept confidential. You know your reader can sense that there are scenes behind the curtain, but you don't want to unduly stimulate a curiosity you won't be able to satisfy later.

Anticipation is one of the most powerful of emotional states. That fiendishly thrilling sense that something special is about to happen. Last night, in Northern California, the ground moved. Those of us in the backyard, clustered around our young actress friend, didn't feel it, but we all started acted oddly, come to think of it. Then her cellphone rang; her brother felt it just a fence (and two backyards away) inside their aunt's house.

My older kids felt it, too, inside my house. For those of us who have been through many of these shakers, it was small -- between 4.4 and 4.6 -- and distant (Sonoma). No damage was reported.

But out here when the earth moves, other things start rearranging themselves as well. Even the slightest tremor can cause a sheet of paper to shift just so, exposing the corner of a photograph you'd forgotten. As you slide it into full view, you see pretty toenail polish on the bare feet of a pretty girl in boxer shorts sitting cross-legged on a bed reading the paper. Another flood of memories...

Other changes roll in. A close friend calls: Her documentary about online dating has just been delayed until next year, due to the turmoil in the Middle East. She confides a sense of urgency now to speed up a certain social process that was otherwise moving along rather more gradually.

Then another friend emails a hot rumor; later it turns out to be true. Someone has quit his job, a familiar workplace is suddenly leaderless again.

Your 25-year-old son discovers he left his keys to the place he is house-sitting in Marin at another friend's house in San Francisco, and now he worries whether he'll be able to get into the one out there late tonight.

You're driving around, when a tiny black screw suddenly falls from the ceiling of your car, and shortly after that, a small plastic piece that holds the sun visor in place. You remember you were summoned to jury duty but you've misplaced the paper, Maybe the earthquake took it. Probably now you'll get in trouble.

Your seven-year-old realizes she left her new Converses at her Mom's house, and that she won't feel like walking to Bart in her sandals tomorrow morning when her day camp goes bowling. You've misplaced a nice bottle of wine you bought for your friendly upstairs neighbor's house-warming party; probably it rolled away in the earthquake.

Late one night, the two of us were entwined in a car. You put your hands there and your lips here and I put my hands here and my lips there. The windshield grew foggy.

Front seat feelings, you might call them. Was that real or did I imagine it? Did this happen to or with you or did it happen to or with me? Our clothing seems to have all come undone in the dark. This is pushed up, that is pushed down. This is opened, that is unsnapped. These are cast aside. When, how, why? Who did these things?

Then, there is the mystery of the two pairs of fallen pajamas on the floor next to a wall heater. They could tell a story. When was that, why did it happen that way, where exactly has that passion gone...

The earthquake must have made you do it. Things come around. What happens to you happens to me. At times like this, lovers rearrange just as lost photos emerge and wine bottles roll away. So why do I feel as if ghosts are in the room? Did they shake free in the aftershocks? Who knows what could happen once ghosts are on the loose! After all, the Holy Ghost went about his business at just such a moment as this, no?

A large hunger grows within you, suddenly a rushing sound fills your head, and time feel short, very short. We are visited by a sense of scarcity -- too little time, too little money, too little love, too little opportunity. Every moment feels precious, as if we might not be here again, that there may be no future.

What looks like the start of World War III is raging in the Middle East. Editor's Pick Collection .

Q When will they ever learn? (B. Dylan)

A They? Never? None of us ever will learn, and that sucks.

So, live in each moment, as if the next one will be your last. We know the earth will be shaking again, perhaps with such violence that our houses will all fall down.
All we have is now (F.Lips).

This is not a dress rehearsal. (Me.)

Family Nights

Backyard basketball, with the smoke from a barbecue blowing in softly on the western breeze...

Over the course of raising six kids these past 30 years, my definition of family has expanded along with my budget. All seven of us tend to like each other's friends, and get excited whenever a new friend enters the circle. Last summer's wedding and next summer's should be similar events, lots of joy, hope, love, and inclusiveness, and not much by way of pretension. My kids all know how to produce events frugally. The girls used to stage giant "band jams" in high school. They rented an old theatre in Petaluma, invited bands from all the local high schools, and charged a nominal admission fee.

Their little brother Peter and I were the ticket takers. He'd get mad if I fell for a pretty girl's story at the window that she didn't have the full $6 admission, and let her in anyway.

Old-fashioned? Chauvinistic?

I don't know. A hopeful smile always deserves some sort of positive response. Rules are meant to be bent.

The kids in this extended family of mine are competitors, also. They play hard; they work hard. Sometimes they are high achievers; other times they go into reflective stages, and ignore their "careers” for a while. The sounds of their dribbling, shooting, and scoring (or not) echo through our neighborhood these summer nights. Friends are always welcome at these events. We have a rolling set of people of all ages who show up out there, from six to sixty. It's special when any ex-partners are part of the group, too.

That's it. Just what one family does to ward off post-modern discontinuity. Many other groups do the same. The alternative, as we age, is to isolate, which is fatal in more ways than one. I say: If you find someone who feels like family, adopt him or her! Then let the game go on, as players come and go, obeying the natural rhythms of life.

The first day of spring...1.1

...finally came for me this year on the first night of August. A slender yellow moon hanging in the western sky looked down over our dark, chilly city and saw everything. There are no secrets.

Everything is blooming; fresh growth surrounds us. Mysteries unfold. "What is going on?" we ask ourselves. Old friends, new friends. People parting ways even as new couples are falling in love. All of a sudden, a new sense of possibility hangs in the air. Anything can happen, and probably will.

There's something about a nickname. "Cat," for instance. Cats have nine lives. They are resilient and always land on their feet. When I was around eight, my big sister and her girlfriend nicknamed me "Snake Hips." Hmmm.

Just when you least expect it, the biggest surprise arrives. You didn't see it coming, though somewhere, deep in your instinctive core, you remember now that you did feel a clue. Just a small wave of excitement, a random surge seemingly from nowhere, as if a new magnetic force had somehow entered your field, pulling you forward, away from your past.

It propels you out where you might otherwise never have gone. You don't necessarily even see where you are headed, just that it is time to move on.

In the dark of the night, it can sometimes be hard to separate what is reality and what is imagination. Soon enough we will know, as the light of day helps us understand what has happened.

When I was very young I wrote a poem:

Suddenly at night, on the edge of sleep,
I stiffen, imagining things beyond the realm of possibility;
Then I go on to know them in my dreams.


Dream softly. Set your imagination free. Fact can be stranger than fiction. Dance like a snake. The moon knows.

Letter from a long lost love

I never know what email will bring. Last night, this arrived:

Dear David,

Sorry I went into silence again for so long. Things between me and that guy are getting more and more complicated and depressing, which stopped me from writing when I felt I was on the verge of self-loathing. I am struggling a lot to try to get out of it, but only to find myself trapped more deeply.

Yesterday I had dinner with one of my friends and his girlfriend. The girl was just like hundreds of other girls around here, good-looking, spoiled, nagging all the time. But she was adored by her boyfriend, who will do anything to please her. I cannot help but wonder: What's wrong with me? Why I am never in a relationship like that -- easy, comfortable, and getting taken care of all the time? Why do my feelings always turn into a stressful, heart-breaking relationship that leads nowhere? Why do I always take a rocky road, on which I am totally on my own?

There must be something wrong with me.

So I'm going to Italy for two weeks this Friday by myself, where I have friends to show me around. I think I have finally reached the point where I cannot deal with the emotional turmoil anymore. I need this getaway to learn to forget.

***

I wish I could answer my friend's questions. She is a lovely, smart, upbeat person, though you might not be able to tell that from this particular message. Maybe I'll suggest she take a break from dating for a while. Try to recover a sense of herself, get "whole" again, and rediscover her ability to hope.

From what I know since she was with me, she has gone through a divorce and then a series of relationships that didn't work out. This most recent one seems by far the most intense emotionally. I don't think she has ever spent any substantial time alone, but gone man to man to man. From what I can tell, getting involved too fast after a painful breakup is almost always a mistake.

It's good she is getting away; new perspectives can come from afar. Beyond that, time helps.

But she sounds like she's in pretty much the same boat as me, these many years after our time together ended: Learning how to forget.

Night Visions 1.1

As I saw my daughter and her husband off tonight, out my front door, I suddenly saw what looked to be a familiar car parked two doors down. Could it be? A peppercorn-colored Mini, just like the one that parked here so many times before.

Streets like this one don't really change all that much year to year. Some folks move out, others move in. The mix of people stays pretty much the same. The cars become familiar to all of us. One relentlessly negative aspect of living on the west side of Hampshire Street is the wind tunnel that inevitably blows trash our way, day after day and night after night.

Negative, that is, for everyone but me. I love to wonder along my street and others nearby, camera in hand. The result is my photo site Sidewalk Images. Tonight, for example, I found an old wooden picture frame propped against a tree, and a discarded box of PopPops from China.

Couples form here, make sweet love, break up. One person disappears,perhaps forever. As it happens, J had a close connection to my exact spot on this block because her close friend Laura used to live across the street until not long before J and I met. By then, Laura had moved, but for J, it was deja vu all over again.

I never told her this, but when we found her apartment, on the corner of 27th and Dolores, it was just a few blocks from where an ex-girlfriend of mine once lived. It also was so close to where I lived until three years ago with my second wife that we often ended up shopping at the same corner store, the same coffee shop, the same laundry, the same restaurants.

The particular corner store I'm thinking of sells the ginger ale J prefers at a good price; once this spring when she was feeling ill, I went there and got it for her.

In my neighborhood, many people know me as that guy with three young kids. The guys at the corner store adore them, the neighbors smile at them, people down the block ask after them when they aren't here.

Tonight, my second-youngest artist went to work on a cartoon he's creating.


In the end, that Mini I saw turned out to be yellow and black. So much for my fantasies, which are the fate of a rejected lover. Tonight, J-1 sleeps happily in Biloxi, secure that I am no longer her problem.

Like a relay race. Hand off the baton (read: guy) and hope the next one can take him on.

Tender nights 1.1

For some reason tonight I am swept with waves of soft feelings, not hard feelings, toward the people in my life -- the women, the children, the men, family, friends, colleagues, lovers. Sometimes I get so caught up in story telling that my life feels like a movie, i.e., imaginary. Made-up characters acting in an invented plot.

One of my favorite novels, Passage to India by E.M. Forster, is the perfect illustration of the relationship between fact and fiction and how the truth in many matters is ultimately unknowable. The key scene in that book concerns an English woman and an Indian man inside a cave, and what did or did not happen in there. It's a powerful story about forbidden attractions, the consequences of interracial relationships in racist societies, and how "truth” depends on who is doing the telling.

This is one reason for my melancholy this evening. I am feeling sorry for those about whom I write. It's always possible I could unwittingly do them damage, by invading their privacy, or conveying an inappropriate sense of entitlement to elements of their stories that they alone own.

In fact, I should say as clearly as possible that I know these musings of mine are mine alone. No one represented here should be construed to resemble any living person, unless they are related to me by blood. Even then, since so many of my kids are great writers, whatever imbalance in our story-telling urge now sits in my favor, the natural order of things dictates they should have many years after I fall silent to set the record straight -- as they see it.

Nothing would please me more than if my children, ex-wives, friends and lovers told their stories of me in whatever form they choose, without regard to what they think I might think of those versions of truth. If it feels like truth to them, that will be good enough to me. And, should I look "worse" in their eyes, so be it. I doubt anyone could be harder on me ultimately than I am on myself. The story telling I try to do here is my attempt to give back, in real time, what better people than I am have given me. What I have left now are words, and these words are for those I love, including people I've not yet met but will love, and especially for those who have struggled to love me in return.

These days, emotionally between my J's, as it were, I have no idea whether J-2 and I will forge anything more than a sweet friendship. This is the same place I found myself in two years ago with J-1!

Tonight I feel a wave of tenderness for J-1 and for J-2. Two special women, as different from each other in almost every way as could be imagined, but similar in one essential way. Their deep melancholies. Maybe my role is to find souls such as these, introduce what J-1 once said was the "magic" of my words. Because I do seem to see straight into their souls, right to where the sadness lies. It's okay to cry with me. I understand.

Beauty, art, romance, love -- all spring from an essential inner sadness, a yearning to connect.

Good night, pretty lady visiting Biloxi.

Good night, pretty lady visiting San Francisco.




Everything keeps growing according to nature's plan.

Art in the kitchen

Notice those brand new black high top Converse tennis shoes on my youngest artist. And how they color-coordinate with her black shirt and white shorts. She loves to paint, and she usually signs her creations as "Love, Julia" and gives them to me or somebody else she feels close to. She made a number for J, especially a Welcome Home sign last October after J's first Biloxi trip.

That was a bittersweet reunion, however. J. came back changed, and she didn't really notice or (apparently) care about the Welcome Home sign Julia made, because I found it discarded under our bed table a few weeks later. J's first trip to Mississippi vaulted her into a strange new reality, where, as she explained later, "everything was weird."

The disaster that hit the Gulf Coast last August was so overwhelming that those who showed up, like J, after being cleared by the Red Cross, entered the equivalent of a war zone. The romantic intrigue was high. Shit happened.

Back here, my kids and I were so proud of her for volunteering. Besides the sign Julia made, we had collected money and anticipated that she might visit the kids' school, and explain what she had seen down there.

***

Instead, J and I had to deal with the shit that had happened. The best choice, I now realize, for both her and me would have been to break up then and there. I wanted to, at first, I was so angry with her. How can you stay with someone whom you cannot trust?

But she came after me, apologized to me, explained herself to me, and got me back.

For what? For this: because we remained connected over the winter, I visited her twice at the church on Pass Road. We drove in her peppercorn-colored Mini throughout East Biloxi. I saw the devastation and wrote about it in Salon Everything's Broken . Ever since I have advocated on behalf of the Gulf Coasters whose lives were ruined by this storm of the millennium.

Sometimes, on this blog, I feel so selfish mourning my love for her, the loss of what I felt was a special relationship, because I know she has found a purpose in life that transcends these simple, private things I write about.


***




Yet these details matter too.