Jun

12

Back in school(ish)!

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So my roommate Aurora is teaching a class at SF State, and she asked me if I wanted to TA, which I totally jumped at the chance to do.  I’m so glad I did.  Last night was the first class, and I left feeling absolutely giddy.  I just got how much I love writing, talking about writing, reading, and talking about reading.  I mean, it’s an intro to creative writing class, and the exercises are ones that I’ve done a million times before, the readings are mostly things I’ve read before, and the discussions are well-worn paths for me, but I’m loving every minute of it.  Part of it is Aurora, who (not surprisingly) is an awesome person to learn from.  She presents things in a way where you want to participate, because much of the intimidation and uncertainty is mitigated by her down to earth approach and demeanor.  And the class responded.  The first night, and they were tearing into poetry so much that she had to slow them down.  And when Aurora introduced me as someone who was in the graduate program for creative writing, I got a little shiver…the first real excitement about the program I’ve felt thus far.

I love this stuff.  I rode home at speeds my mother would disapprove of (as would the California Highway Patrol, now that I think about it), grinning like a fool the whole way.  If there was ever a doubt that this is what I am supposed to be doing, it was washed away last night. The fall is looking better and better

Jun

10

Paris goes to jail, Opus returns, and I think about dating

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All in all, this was not a bad week. So as much as I try not to get caught up in celebrity news bullshit, I found myself sucked in by the black hole like gravitational pull of Paris Hilton’s incarceration. I swear, celebrity gossip, especially of this high an order, hooks you quicker than smoking a mixed ball of heroin, crack, and meth. One article, and I was along for the glorious ride. First, the little no talent hack gets busted (finally) for a gazillion DUI’s and driving on a suspended license. Now I’m no legal expert, but from my experience, a couple of those and most mortals would end up in county lockup for at least a few days. Finally, Paris gets hers. Yaaaaay! Then the judge sticks to his guns and insists that she serve 45 days. Double Yaaaaaay! I then find a petition through a link I find on neurotica_redux requesting that she be kept for longer than 45 days. Triple Yaaaaay! Then stupid sheriff lets her out because of some mysterious illness (note to sheriff…being a moron is neither mysterious nor an illness) after only 4 days. Boooooo! Then the judge says “Oh, HELLS no!” (or something to that affect), and hauls her weeping ass back into court and spanks her into hysterics and slams her ass for the remainder of her sentence. Ultimate Yaaaaaaay! I have to admit, after seeing this photo I felt a stab of sympathy for her, but luckily it passed quickly and I was able to continue gloating.

Then, I find out that Salon.com is adding the comic strip “Opus” by Berkeley Breathed to their regular lineup. Yaaaaaaay! I grew up on a steady diet of Bloom County, and even though I didn’t understand half the references, some of my best memories are of reading books of the compilations of the strip over and over again. I even stayed in his corner with the not-so-popular “Outland” just so I could see Opus. Now I get it every week on my favorite news site. Yaaaaay!

After a six-month or so hiatus, I have decided to try dating again with some trepidation. I’m not sure how I’m going to go about doing this, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to do the online dating thing. Online dating is oh so easy, and I’ve actually had some pretty incredible experiences with it, but I just think that I’m using it as a crutch to some degree, and it allows one to avoid the discomfort of just putting yourself out there and risking a little. We’ll see….

It’s late on Sunday, and I’ve had a busy and rad day today which included a fantastic walk with one of my favorite puppies at Point Isabelle, and a kick-ass lunch at Gregoire in Berkeley (thank you to the lovely Lia), and I’m fading quickly.

Jun

10

On a sorting life

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We are a sorting species. Maybe it’s part of the evolutionary process, but today we have become obsessed with sorting out our lives, trying to make some sense of it. This thought dawns on me as I’m sitting in a MacDonald’s, watching a homeless man sort out his entire life, right in front of me. He drops a stretched and wrinkled garbage bag on the chair next to the table, and begins unloading the contents, one by one, onto the table in front of him. Clothes, papers, food, empty bottles, shoes, books, and the undifferentiated detritus that one, presumably, picks up on the street, and has a practical, or secret, use. His skin is black, taut, and oily, and his entire face seems to puff outward, bloating like a corpse. His eyes are that jaundice yellow that eyes turn when there is too much alcohol, drugs, malnourishment, or sun, and they are focused intently on the task in front of him. He arranges everything into various piles on the shiny plastic table, some of the piles making a certain logical sense, others a sense known only to him.
This act strikes me as profound, and I can’t tear my eyes away from him, as if he is putting on some performance, some desperate attempt to express the pain and chaos he must feel in his life. No one notices him, either by habit or by choice, and people eat, talk, clean tables, and walk around him, almost as if he were a permanent fixture there, which, I consider, he might be. Despite his presumed housing situation, probable drug or alcohol addiction, certain mental illness, and undeniable poverty, I find myself curiously envious of him in that moment. My life seems to be made up of continuous sorting of things; I sort with my shrink, in AA, with my friends, at work, in self-help books, at the gym, on my motorcycle, even here on the page, and it feels like it takes the space of the entire world to do it. This man looks like he can sort out everything his life, in its physical manifestation anyway, on a single table in a MacDonald’s.
This both enviable and tragic fact makes me feel like I’m about to collapse inside, like everything I have built up over the years is a cheap illusion that the slightest breeze can destroy without warning. Truth be told, everything is a cheap illusion, a false sense of security that I have fed myself to give me comfort. Beneath the structures, though, is the fear of losing them, the fear of watching everything fall apart. This man no longer fears that, and whatever terrible events transpire in his life on a day-to-day basis, he will never fear that.
Either that or the ridiculous amounts of sugar and fat that I’ve just ingested are sending me into some type of diabetic coma…not sure which.

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