Loving Entrenpreneurs

When you look at the new media products depicted above, consider that they are the latest examples of the entrepreneurial spirit that never quite dies in San Francisco. Weekend Sherpa and TODO are the best of the current crop of new offerings.

Of course, my perspective is informed by the past. As I look around my room, it isn’t difficult to locate the evidence of years of work, here and there, all of which sticks with me. Books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, published photos, business cards, ID tags, office signs, IPO prospectuses, issues of magazines and newspapers I've edited, books I edited or contributed to, anthologies, screenplays, videos of movies I wrote or "acted" (as an extra) in, tapes of publicity tours, speeches, lectures, and on and on.

It's been quite a public life for such a private person.

I won't deny that I appreciate the success and the recognition. But I keep all the awards and medals stashed away in a dusty closet. The best of them were the result of collaborations -- teamwork -- much more than my individual effort. At this point in time, the creative process of inventing media requires so many separate skillsets that only the stubbornest of lone wolves would go it alone.

In my closet somewhere is a huge collection of T-shirts and hats, mainly from the dot.bomb era. Throughout my house are boxes of files of clippings. Once a friend put together as many of the clips as she could locate about our Patty Hearst stories in Rolling Stone (1975-6). There were thousands of them, and I don't know what's become of those.

As all records transition to digital form, I wonder how many of these momentos will survive. Already, many are crumbling into brown flecks of dry paper, breaking off, leaving jagged edges where there used to be smoothness.

Looking in the mirror, I see jagged lines, brown edges, aging flesh where there used to be smoothness. It seems like everything we knew is slowly disintegrating, dust back into dust. I'm not sure what it adds up to -- my lifetime of work. And, until this blog, I've never shared publically how I feel about it all.

I realize that after my departure, the blog may be all that survives of my work. They'll be a book here and there, and when the kids find the old awards and T-shirts, maybe they'll give them away or sell them on eBay (a good choice.)

Meanwhile, these hundreds of thousands of words blinking in electronic text format will outlive me. Knowing this, I choose each word as if it is my last.

One of them inevitably will be, of course. I would hope it would turn out to be Love.

More Warm San Francisco Nights

Wednesday Night

Windows are open, fan's on, the sweet smell of jasmine drifts in from out front, while the intoxicating odor of rotting fruit rises from the backyard grasses, brown and trampled. The echoes of hours past follow me into the night. The sounds of basketballs hitting the backboard, swishing through the hoop, and bouncing on the cement. The children's frequent calls: "Dad?" "Daddy?" as they sought my help with math homework, permission to snack before dinner, or where to find clean clothes. (Hint: check the dryer before asking Dad.)

Oliver lazes on the bench out back, and shakes his tag at me. He loves to visit. Mary knows of two kittens I could adopt and I'm sorely tempted to do so, but fear I'm not home enough to be a good pet-owner.

After all, I even failed to grow any pumpkins! The vine may be big, but the fruit is dead. This is not a good sign about my current capacity to be in a relationship, according to C.W. (Conventional Wisdom.) Plus, my only pet, Sparkie the Hamster, died this past winter.

These things hit me hard.

So, for now, no cat for me.

***

Is it okay to have a commuter crush? This morning, I flowed southward on 101 next to that pretty Asian girl in the orange Mini. She gets on at my entrance and gets off at my exit. She parks in my lot and enters my building. We've never met, but I enjoy commuting alongside of her, when it happens.

Probably if I ever met her, she'd turn out to be a man-eating dragon who is wanted for a string of felonies in six states. But that would be fine as long as I never knew what hit me.

-30-

Unchained malady

The latest from suburbia; My friend Dave's son is in a classroom that has banned kids from bringing any Lego guns to school. In case you are a bit out of date on your Lego news, the popular toys include characters with weapons -- light sabers, wands, pistols, etc. These have been determined to be in violation of the school's policy against weapons, which includes toy guns, and now even tiny ones.

Fall is hunting season. My friend Kyle went out last weekend and said it was beautiful. I miss autumns in Michigan, and walking through the fields and woods with my 16 gauge, and my dog racing around me, following every trail she could pick up.

It's windy in the valley today. Did you know that hurricanes sometimes run out of steam so dramatically that they are absorbed back into other storm systems? That is apparently what is happening with one in the Atlantic today. I don't like to refer to hurricanes by their human names, because it seems insulting.

I can think of several Katrinas, for example, in my life, and they are all very nice people. So, I'd rather call hurricanes by software names, like H06.1, H06.2, TS06.3 (for tropical storms). I'm not anticipating my idea will catch on any time soon, though.

Last night, I stumbled upon the foreign editions of my books in a bookshelf rarely visited this summer in a corner of what was then my highly cluttered living room. Nowadays it is looking quite spiffy and neat, as I'm sorting and discarding various items, and recovering lost jewels, the occasional one of which I photograph and post here, maybe to remind me later on what they actually look like.

I think two of my books were translated into about a dozen languages each, and I supposedly have one copy of each foreign edition. But they're all mixed in with other books by other people, also in multiple languages. I've got a bunch of books in Chinese, French, Spanish and Japanese, for starters, not to emotion Arabic and Farsi. But before anyone gets too impressed, I should add that can't read any of these languages, with the partial exception of Spanish.

But I've traveled to virtually every one of the countries that published my books, at least, with the exceptions of Portugal and Korea. Except for that strange northern neighbor of our's, I haven't been visiting any foreign parts lately. Mainly it's New York where I go, which reminds me I am slated to visit there again, for the first time since last April { :-( }.

I'm hoping to take a new companion this time, somebody who never has been there before. It should be fun to see the city through her bright brown eyes, rather than my own jaded blue ones.

-30-

Fortune Cookies

Despite all the efficiencies we enjoy in this era, much of life for most of us still involves waiting. Waiting in line at Safeway with your nightly dinner not yet cooked, where the only distraction is that beautiful security guard and her no-nonsense ability to capture the irony of the situation.

"Hey, baby, it's way too late for someone who looks like me to be here. Who's gonna be scared of little ol' me? They should have a great big guy here. Hell, I can't intimidate nobody, let alone some gang guys. Shit."

(Note to reader: I agree with her. I would much rather date this woman than pretend to be scared of her.)

Waiting in your doctor's office, or your dentist's, optometrist’s or therapist's. "What if this is as good as it gets? Movie Link .

Tonight, my fate was to sit and wait around my house for four hours for the Comcast repairperson to show up. You know how it goes. My high-speed modem started malfunctioning weeks ago. My son and I tinkered with the equipment, and were able to get ourselves back online now and then, but the problem appeared to be getting progressively worse over time.

By this past weekend, I was reduced to going to a nearby cafe in order to do my work from home. So I did what consumers do, in this age where our main identity in this culture is defined not by what we do or what we have to offer others but by what we pay for. I called Customer Service at Comcast and made an appointment.

It took a while ("all of our service representatives are busy helping other customers; your wait will be approximately...five...minutes"), plus, of course, the ubiquitous: "Your call may be monitored for quality-control purposes."

Right.

Long story short, Comcast never showed up. When I called at 8 pm, and explained that I had left work early to be here, and missed an important appointment tonight, waiting for their "technician," their extremely polite Customer Service Representative offered a carefully worded explanation: "Your problem may have been determined to be a network problem, in other words, not specific to your modem or router or computer."

The bottom line?

I have been unilaterally (by Comcast) rescheduled for a new appointment tomorrow, between 8 am until 8 pm! When I explained that I have a job that explicitly requires me to not be here from 8 am to 6 pm, the extremely polite Consumer Service Representative told me not to worry, probably the problem was outside my house, not inside, so that is why they rescheduled their visit to explore my problem in this way.

Well, after I wondered for a second whether I should share some relevant information with him, I confided that their technician cannot access my "outside" cable unless (s)he can get into my basement, which requires that I be here, with the key, which until after 6 pm, I certainly will not be.

Whatever. The answer from the extremely polite Customer Service Representative was that if they cannot fix whatever my problem may be on the outside, they will hope that I will call and schedule a new time when they can visit me again.

(This reminds me of a project a friend and I did together, exploring how many of our "service providers" were in fact ripping us off. We did this in early '05. I bet this friend does not even remember.)

***

What does any of this have to do with that Fortune Cookie photo posted above? Well, I guess I do love to try to take care of the people I love, as my recent fortune claimed, but the problem I, and all of us, face, is we don't really have enough of whatever is required to do so in the face of a consumer culture that renders all of us more or less powerless...

And, BTW, this is not as good as it gets. This totally sucks.

Home is where your story is...

One of my favorite bookmarks is Found Magazine link . In the collegial spirit of the Internet, I am starting to post similar items, but only those that somehow land right in front of my house in the Mission District of San Francisco.

You see, my side of the street -- the west side -- is the recipient of many lost items, courtesy of a wind tunnel that swirls through here much as those that used to cause those pop-ups of legend back at old Candlestick Park. This one I am posting tonight came drifting into my front "yard" the other day.

The note, which has two sides, reads:

Michelle & Justin:

I am trying to sell my car. I need bus money only to get hom(sic) to Detroit. Michelle this is your moms(sic) car. Do you want it? My food stamps didn't come. I don't want to cause anyone any trouble. I just want to get home!! I'll see you later.

The author shares my original hometown -- Detroit -- which makes his story only the more poignant to me. San Francisco is not for everyone, so I hope he gets enough bus money to make it back home.

Somehow, this is starting to sound like a blues song, Midnight Train to Georgia, etc.

***

Most of us who live here, in this city perched unsteadily above the San Andreas Fault on the tip of a peninsula that measures almost precisely 7 by 7 miles square, have spent many years hearing references to a certain number -- "49." How many of us realize how mathematically perfect this number is for our town? We all know, of course about the Gold Rush that built San Francisco back in 1849, and therefore we probably can guess the origin of the moniker "49ers" that in the present day refers to a football team down on its luck.

Within recent memory, however, is a spectacular string of Super Bowl victories by an earlier iteration of these modern-day gold-diggers that led to dancing in these same streets.

Boom and Bust. That's our cycle here, and we all know it goes with the territory, all 49 square miles of it...

Before the week begins

Mondays are strange. I'm not ready for my week yet. This weather urges me outside. A lone sailboat is anchored in the bay; the water's surface is almost completely smooth. A single cormorant swims, dives, surfaces, and swims again. Its trail is virtually the only blemish in the otherwise glass-like lagoon.

Commuting is like swimming, I imagine, if you're a fish. You are part of a large, ever-shifting school of similar units flowing and weaving through the environment, as if you all know where you are going. When a hazard develops, everyone slows, swerves, and changes lanes. It may not be as rhythmically pleasing as a school of fish, but it has its moments.

I toggle between news and music. My mind is almost always elsewhere. I like to snorkel but I have not been able to do that this year. Remembering Hawaii, Tahiti, Mexico, Costa Rica, Florida, India, and Malaysia all in the same moment.

Reviewing what I sent in the kids' backpacks: homework, notebooks, lunches, soccer clothes, and empty milk boxes for Sunville. What is Sunville? A second-grade project. Julia said she wanted to be Mayor of Sunville, until Dylan told her she'd have to make a speech.

When I send lunch for my kids, I always overdo it. I sometimes get criticized for including too many items, some of which are too sweet or not quite nutritious enough. This criticism makes me sad, but I have come to expect it.

Lately, a sense of contentment has swept over me. I'm who I am; which includes being much more open to change than others I observe around me. But I also feel newly complete, not necessarily needing a partner, at least not one who has to always be hanging around me. There is much richness in my life; I'm content much of the time to be alone.

It is special to run into friends at local cafes, and I seem to be doing that regularly. It's extremely special to get phone calls from friends who are far away. Some people call frequently, some call only occasionally, some never call.

A friend is a friend even when you don't see or talk to them for a long, long time. I understand this now, in ways I never did before. In my new peace, I forgive all of those who have long been absent from me, and I don't take their silence personally. I trust they feel the same toward me.

Maybe this rambling needs to cease. I must not only perform my primary duties at work, but also prepare for tonight's opening class in memoir writing for baby boomers, at the downtown campus of SFSU in San Francisco. There's a coffee store downstairs. They sell red licorice swirls that are otherwise hard to find.

Up the elevator, licorice in my pocket, I will be readying myself for the inevitable emotionality of people letting each other into their lives. That's one thing that can change over time -- even the most guarded among us can learn to open her doors and windows, and let her new community come in for a visit.

Disconnected

I'm sitting in a cafe in the Indian Summer heat, sipping ginger ale and trying to generate a short post while the kids clamour for attention. This will have to be quick. It's amazingly hot here once again.

Peter's settling in at Cal Tech. A long weekend of sports in the sun, from Treasure Island to Golden Gate Park to Parkside to Holly Park, has us all sun-soaked and dehydrated.

Given how addictively wonderful the web and blogging are, it is disorienting to suddenly be unable to access the Internet from home. My Comcast modem has decided to stop sucking bandwith. It just sits there weakly blinking, like an injured droid in Star Wars.

So, tonight, unless I can coax it back to life, I'll spend my time with other friends -- books, probably. There's still homework -- math and Spanish -- and ordering Chinese food, baths, tomorrow's school lunches, this morning's newspapers, and several gallons of cold water to drink.

There's the matter of sweat. I'll change clothes. There's a persistent pain in my side for weeks now. More than clothes may have to be changed to alleviate that.

It's good to be alive in this moment, despite the discomfiture. There's soft music here, and voices of energetic young women studying together. The boys are clusstered around a computer, excited at a game.

The light starts to fade. Your image is framed in my memory by the setting sun, and as I look into your dark, distant eyes, they pool the yellow moonlight. Somewhere between the setting sun and the rising moon one of these nights I'll drift away, if only in my dreams, so that neither of us sleeps alone any more...Until then, sweet lover, imagined, real or a mixture of the two, sense my touch on the night breezes carried with the ocean tides.

You're never alone if someone holds you lovingly in his mind...