Day Before The Day

On a night like this, the photos tell the story.




I'm too overwhelmed emotionally to write anything worthwhile.



Tomorrow, my oldest daughter is to be married.




Tonight, in the park where she played as a child, we practiced.



There was a lot of laughter, as (how shall I say it?) we are not exacty ready for prime time yet.



There is the flower girl who ran away into the woods; the "acorns" that fall and could well cause a guest to scream; there was the tiny dog that got loose, leading all the kids in the ceremony to break ranks and run amok.

There are the language challenges facing the non-native English speakers, although their errors, if any, will only add to the charm tomorrow.

The kids are still scripting this wedding. Don't even ask me how we are doing designing the centerpieces!

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Party Clan

(All photos by Junko Sasaki.)

It's begun. As the enormous number of details involved in pulling off a wedding of this size (latest RSVP count: 181) converge, appropriately enough, on the dwindling hours until the exchange of "I do's," much like the words, sentences, paragraphs, ledes, transitions, and kickers bury a journalist on deadline, we all -- my harried family and I -- take on the haunted look of caffeine-fueled foreign correspondents, outsiders at our own party.



I've always loved the image, so romantic, of Kipling in the window, late into the sweltering Indian night, typing his story, sipping an icy drink, savoring the tiniest of breezes, rendolent, as always of the spices of the east.

Or Conrad.

Here, in San Francisco, one of the cities where east and west mingle effortlessly, our partiers tonight were speaking their native languages -- French, Japanese, and English with some Spanish, Yiddish, and Tagalog tossed in for good luck. Just to make it an even 7 :) in terms of the languages that reached my ears, I mumbled a bit of Farsi under my breath.

I do things that way, superstitiously.

Baseball is the sport of superstition. Today, our superstitions all paid off as Barry Bonds had a day for the ages, even though his pathetic Giants lost, once again. Bonds went 3-3 with a walk, two HRs and six RBIs, 3 runs scored to break out of the worst slump of his long career. He is now only two homeruns behind Hank Aaron's all-time career record of 755.



The little boys got their tuxedos today. I want them to wear sunglasses on Saturday and pose as the Blues Brothers. They'll be escorting two flower girls each on Saturday.

***

Night time in the Mission. It's past midnight, all is quiet. Then, a sharp sound breaks the night. I know immediately it is a small caliber handgun, quite close by. Within minutes, the street is criss-crossed with cop cars, their lights rotating, an ambulence, yellow hazard tape demarkating the scene, but no additional sounds. Officers walk here and there with flashlights and cameras.

A couple was robbed at gunpoint, something went awry. A gun was fired, a man was hit in his side or maybe only his arm. His companion, a woman, was unharmed. The two victims fled south; the gunman fled north. The Chinese couple across the way saw all three; I saw no one.

But they stayed inside, whereas I went out front to talk with the police. I gave a statement and my name, address, phone number. My philosophy as a citizen is the same as my approach to blogging. No secrecy, no lies. If they catch the guy, my evidence will be only marginaly helpful, but since I know the Chinese couple, perhaps I can eliccit some useful information if it comes to that.

This morning, up early, I walked the streets, searching for a bullet that may have eluded the police. I did not find that but I did find three splotches of blood between here and there, where the victim collapsed down the street.

***

It's hot in the city. You don't need clothes, you don't need blankets, you don't need the windows closed, and you certainly don't need gunshots. But all stories have their own arc; I am only the witness.

Life, death, hope, love, sex, happiness, loss and gain all converge around us. The air is heavy, the fog is light. The day is sweet, and so is the night. Nothing is wrong and nothing is right. Once I was blind but now I have sight.

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Happy Together*

Right before our eyes, and therefore practically invisible to us, the old assumptions governing our perceptions of reality have been dissolving.

Most of us, no doubt, hide our eyes and therefore continue to identify ourselves as members of certain ethnic or racial groups, affiliated with certain religions, supporters of some political party, citizens of a certain nation, steady of gender and sexual orientation, and proud of our various educational and professional pedigrees.

In plainer words, we think we know who we are.

But, excuse this cliche, we are what we consume, and few of us bother to check where the foods and tools and clothes and software that we rely on comes from.

Hint #1: China.
Hint #2: India, Korea, Vietnam, and places less known.

Over the past year, according to various reports, those using the Internet has been growing at the astonishing pace of 33% in India, and 20% in China. The Chinese Internet audience (86.8 million users) is now the second largest, behind the United States, in the world. Meanwhile, the U.S. audience grew only 2% over the past year to 153.4 million users.

In other words, the U.S. market is pretty much saturated. But the rest of the world is embracing this interactive, networked technology. As they go, so do we. But only if Americans recognize this opportunity for what it is, and embrace globalism, will we be truly part of the best possible future, which now beckons.

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* Apologies, Turtles.

Faceoff: Obama Girl v. Giuliani Girl

You Tube Video


In case you don't think the Internet is changing political campaigning, check out this video clip for an example of political commentary of a kind rarely seen in the past.

The music video format is already wildly popular, of course, and is the media form that has rocketed YouTube to success.

The tired, staid world of Presidential politics needs a new beat, and this is the kind of contribution that might just supply it. Stay tuned for future episodes of Obama Girl, already a big hit in the world of politainment.

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Countdown

Just four days until my daughter's wedding. Already, I'm experiencing wild emotional swings. I wish no one would take anything I say or do seriously at this point. Although not totally "out of control," I'm happy, sad, excited, nervous, anxious, calm -- the usual bundle of anticipatory feelings -- wash over me as if I a body surfer, yet the ocean is far away from here.

Instead, I am sitting quietly in a modernistic high-rise building on landfill near the Bay, in a place that used to be a water adventure park. Trying to remain calm and appear professional, when what I feel like is a little kid, wishing to wiggle like my grandson. Last night, giving in to this impulse, my friend and I danced wildly around my apartment for a while.

That helped a bit. But today, I've got to pretend to be a grown-up.

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Creative People

So, things have not changed very much over the centuries. If you are a man, or a woman of ideas, you probably are considered expendable by the bookkeepers, the MBA's, those who continue to run our world. Your job is at risk, your contributions are unrecognized, and always undervalued.

Those who control whether your family will be housed and fed care not about the nuances and subtleties you bring to their "products." They also remain oblivious to their own weaknesses, their lack of vision, their utter lack of social responsibility.

In the eyes of history, those who control our fate may be no more than the dust under our feet. You and I, by contrast, are even less, just roadkill; history records our deaths and our failures, never quite able to estimate the contributions we tried, and might have made, to the mindless enterprises that dominate this age.

Money vs. art. It isn't even a match worth watching. We all know who loses when the deck is thus stacked.

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San Francisco Sunday (now with soundtrack)

I was so tired late last night when I finally got around to uploading these photos that, for once, words failed me. I stared at the images and decided they probably told their own stories of the day, another anomalously sunny, hot summer scorcher. (Don't worry--we are paying for it today as the deep wet blanketing fog sweeps over this peninsula.



If your kid happens to be the one in twenty who still reads a morning newspaper in America (as referenced in last week's study), there are ancillary benefits. For example, as you are running around your house, getting your 12-year-old ready for soccer camp, your eleven-year-old reads out the headline, "Coyotes Attack Dogs in Golden Gate Park."



This leads to a serious discussion with his eight-year-old sister about how they can defend themselves should coyotes come after them this Saturday at their big sister's wedding, in said park.

Dylan decided his "light saber skills" might come in handy, although he briefly pondered whether patrolling the perimeter of Shakespeare Garden with my (always unloaded) 16-gauge shotgun and his Red Army Cossack hat might not act as a deterrent.



I reminded him he actually has a role in the ceremony -- ring bearer, or usher, or whatnot -- so we'd probably have to leave security up to somebody else. "Anyway, I don't see what's so scary about being attacked by a dog or a coyote or animals like that," he observed. "You can just kick them."

Easy for him to say, practiced Ninja warrior that he is...



Little James came by several times, stealing the show every visit, especially when he started in on his Pavarotti imitation at 11 p.m. That's quite a serious tenor in the making, apparently.



It was also a day of feminine grace.



Now, she has her silver shoes to go with her white flower girl dress, Julia is ready to practice her moves.



I wonder if it is okay that she dances down the aisle?



Beneath her gentle exterior, this girl has a biker's nature when it comes to fights or body tattoos. Both her arms are tattooed shoulder to hand, and most of the rest of us around here are sporting at least one new body ornament as well.



Her experiments with color continue to grace this place. I've moved on to floral arrangements, never an easy or enviable task, but she is deep into achieving a rainbow of effects.



At the end of every day, with all of the complications and interruptions, with emotional highs and lows inexplicably bouncing you around like a bathtub toy on the mighty ocean, there is no sight or sound quite as sweet as a laughing baby with twinkling eyes, surrounded by his admirers.

Whenever we lose hope, it is wise to return to that image, and recover some tiny piece of our innocence lost.

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