« 05 september 2004 - 11 september 2004 | Main | 19 september 2004 - 25 september 2004 »

17 september 2004

The Blind Watchmaker

He posted again, after about a week of not. He's gone that long without posting, longer even, but time seems to bend between New York and San Francisco. Or maybe it's just that life is finally reconfiguring itself into something that sits still long enough to be recognized for such—and this time around, Michael isn't part of the quotidian or even fortnightly mix, causing me some distress.

This time around, there are enough brand new elements that by sheer number and importance they over-illuminate those parts which (thankfully) have remained. Things that have been lost for a little while have returned, but they draw a small enough arc over time to remain effortlessly companionable. For instance, yesterday I managed to leave the office a bit early and Sam and I got our butts to the gym. There I ran into Allen and Mitch, both of whom I hadn't seen in a very long while specifically because I had not been to the gym in a very long while. There, I ran into R., a big army-sergeant of a man who I dated for a few weeks about a thousand years ago. There I ran into a few others who I recognized solely from the gym. Come to think of it, there are a lot of those casual friendships in my life, where Place is relied upon as the guarantor of famliarity.

That's not so much a condemnation of my own laissez-faire approach as it is a simple statement of San Francisco's almost incestuous social reticulum (which, in turn, makes me wonder if the clear crispness limning New York City for me on our visit there was simply taking a break from the "kelp crawl" of our world-class hamlet here).

This time around, we make it out to more parts of San Francisco on a regular basis. This time around, we do things that I've only talked about doing for ages. This time around, I'm happily installed in a house that's not just mine. This time around, there's love like I've never known. This time around, there's far less wishing because there's far more fulfillment.

There are pieces of the life puzzle that no longer build the picture; friends and confidantes and conversation partners who have moved away, or moved on, or walked away. Places I don't get to as much as I used to. Things that must give up their long ensconcements in the home.

I never get it right when it comes to predicting which I'll miss terribly, which I can do without, etc. Typically it is the people, of course, that I miss the most, but not always. Prince wrote in a song, Sometimes It Snows in April that finishes with

All good things they say, never last...
Love isn't love, til it's past.

Ever the optimist, though, I interpret the first line as an opportunity for new good things to come along. Ever the analyst, I posit that the second line admits that history will decide what was valuable and real.

I miss Tucson, to be honest. Or rather, I miss having a not-San-Francisco place that I can go to that is familiar and exotic. Maybe New York City will fill the bill. I don't miss Chicago at all, even though I lived there for a year.

I miss Michael, of course. If you've ever met Michael, there's nothing further I'd have to say. I miss knowing I can just email him and meet him for coffee and conversation that grows a life of its own. There are friends, close and not, who have literally disappeared from me, who I am strangely neutral and dispassionate about.

But each and all of us have our lives that proceed apace—whether or not we're comfortable with that pace—and all these things, thankfully, demand our time only on occasion.

Whether Happy is achieved by thinking, by doing, by loving, by befriending or by sequestration, we all seem to spend more effort in the attempt than in the analysis of failure.

And that's what gives me certainty that there will always be more good things ahead, and that the past is just the past.

Posted by jeff at 09:40 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack

16 september 2004

Repolling

The "Bush Bounce" done bounced. Another poll is out, putting the two in a dead heat again.

You know what they say: what goes up....is likely to be a shiny distraction for the Republican throngs.

I've already stated how I feel about the lack of value in polling. There's no denying the effect of a poll let loose on an unthinking public, however.

Posted by jeff at 06:13 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trip & Fall

I may be a little slow on the uptake for such things, but the whole Republican thing strikes me as a plain old, ages-old, garden variety power trip. It's a fevered rush for more and more.

More what, you ask? Well, aren't you little Miss Beside-The-Point!

MORE. If they qualified it with concrete units like dollars or acreage, it would just burst the illusion they've convinced themselves of: that they're actually ascetic monks bringing the Right Way of Life to us over-intellectual-yet-unwashed elitists.

Believe it. They talk about sacrifice and they talk about god's favor; the sacrifice comes in the form of obscene cost in materials and human lives. And god's favor? Well, they hate our way of life, and our way is christian, right, Right? Saddam Hussein is a secular power, incompatible with religious ascendancy in every last way. That's why we got rid of him, right, Right?

Treating his own people like second class citizens, over-burdening their lives and for what? For his own selfish needs! President Bush and his flunkies would never do that kind of thing! Only evil people like Saddam.

Sure, he's selfish and secular and thinking only of himself. That's why he was in league with religious extremists—Islam's analog to Christianity's KKK—ready to throw away all he had acquired to serve the needs of his god and his relig—wait a moment, I think I got lost somewhere.

You have to credit President Bush for convincing his followers that somehow a secular elitist could be compatible with religious extremists who are willing to sacrifice everything in the name of their own righteous faith. You have to credit President Bush for all but erasing the plain unvarished fact that bin Laden is a Saudi. You remember the Saudi's, right? Our partners in crime peace?

Follow the acquisitive ones, that's really all you have to do. Who's better off because Saddam is gone? Who's worse off because of spending gone out of control? Who's dead because of it all?

Maybe President Bush will win the election; I mean, anyone who can turn the worst tragedy to befall our country into Happy Camping for himself has to be able to make it appear like he's won an election, right?

Posted by jeff at 08:56 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack

15 september 2004

Bob on That

A big-ass apology to Unca Bob for missing him yet again. Maybe third time will be the charm? I sure hope so.

Posted by jeff at 04:00 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack

14 september 2004

Grunt...Click...Eep!

The world will go mad on November 3, 2004.

The world will go mad because either way, the current Republican constituency will surrender the remaining dregs of their sanity and give themselves over to either a wailing grief or a hateful finality. Just as there would be no stopping a soi disant conservative George W. President who doesn't have to win another election from running amok over freedom, liberty, truth, decency, good will and humility, to name a few.

It won't be the first time that a regime has convinced its people that they are under threat, that they deserve better than that, that they are better than the rest, that they don't need the rest, that they can guarantee the security of their own people, and that, by might if not by right, they are destined to take what they want in whatever way they want.

Nationalism is a terrible thing; terrible in the sense that a storm can be terrible; terrible in that dictionary definitions #2 & #3 sort of way.

Nationalism flies under the conscious radar and lodges inside somewhere unassailable by rationality, but available to manipulation by threat and by fear.

As I said, it's been done before by others who led their respective nations into ruin.

They say that a good leader is what distinguishes a mob from merely a crowd. And any leader who would create or even attempt to use an unthinking mob in a play for personal ascendancy is, by my own definition, the worst kind of leader.

To think you can control a thing such as that, to think you can even aim such a force of nature for any length of time is pure folly.

One needs only to look at the stances and behaviors of the Republican constituency to find the folly:

These are people who don't wish for less crime, just for more punishment; who don't want a better life, just a better life than you have; who believe that they will be the Chosen People of the Oligarchs and Plutocrats, once they're installed in all the important places.

These are behaviors that desperately strive for a wallet that's even just one dollar-bill fatter than it was before; behaviors that suggest they have no problem with shitting where they eat, because clean-up is someone else's problem; behaviors that suggest walls on either side and bad guys behind, instead of a bright open vista ahead.

I was going to suggest that the Republican mobs play a Zero Sum Game, but they're not playing a game.

Games have rules.

Posted by jeff at 08:49 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack

12 september 2004

Ummm....Ummm....WOW!

I'm utterly speechless.

A massage from Tomo at Kabuki Hot Springs. The look on Sam's face when I gave him a bass guitar for his birthday. A surprise helicopter ride today! And a bunch of our friends wishing us well for our first anniversary (which is tomorrow).

I made the bass happen. Sam made everything else happen. Holy fuck, it was amazing. I was a little oogy about not knowing what was going to be going on; I guess I'm more "that guy" than I thought. Then I was a little oogy about about-to-be in a helicopter.

It was amazing. The pilot was cute. And awkward. And cutely awkward. But, oddly, not awkwardly-cute. Oh, and awkwardly curious about the mens.

"Hmmph. I guess I'm still not going to get to go under the Golden Gate Bridge," I jokingly said to Sam after I found out it was a helicopter ride and not a boat ride we were going on. I've lived in San Francisco for eleven years and never managed to do that one thing. I've wanted to for a long time; it just never worked out that way.

Well, good thing our awkward cute pilot wanted to show off. As we swung around the City side of the bridge, he said, "They built this bridge so I could have something to play with." Then he leaned the helicopter forward and flew under the bridge. Holy fuck, the movie. Go look. But for full effect, punch yourself in the stomach a few times til you feel oogy first. (Sam took the photo)

Sam is the best boyfriend in the entire world. And the most beautiful.

I love you, baby. Thank you for all this happiness.

Posted by jeff at 10:15 pm | Comments (0) | TrackBack