“If they stole my parking lot for some show, I’ll have to go out there and kick someone’s ass… “ The parking lot outside my window is empty of cars, surrounded by a chain-link fence and crawling with men in hard hats. They are raising a large canvas overhead, a feat requiring poles, guy ropes, and perhaps the tractor that keeps driving in tight circles underneath the partially erect tent. The plywood wall that will encircle the lot soon enough is going up in stages. A worker was painting the public side yesterday, careless of her brush in the breeze, …
Category: random thoughts
“What is up with this weather? Yick!” I love autumn. That is reaffirmed for me every year as soon as the last dregs of summer fade. Of course, as soon as the flowers start to appear at winter’s end, I will proclaim, just as loudly I’m sure, that I love spring. I must have driven everyone around me nuts this past spring, exclaiming over every flower, from the flats for sale outside the Bad Breisig florist to the orderly tulips in the Netherlands to riots of unchecked growing in private Cinque Terre gardens. But it is autumn in San Francisco …
“Who let the dogs out? Woof! Woof! Woof!” They started coming before 11, clogging the street and filling the parking lot, then streaming toward the stadium. Despite the early fall chill in the air, they came in summer clothes, T-shirts emblazoned with the Giants’ black and orange logo, caps covered in buttons. There were some with jackets, with the required emblems and colors of course, but mostly they came as if the sunlight wasn’t filtered through a high haze of fog. I sat in my windowed office space and watched the parade stream past. The air conditioning was turned up …
“I’ve been around the world…” A year ago today, I woke up in Germany for the first time. If I close my eyes, and tune out Sting on the stereo, I can still picture that morning. We had arrived at our hotel in Andernach quite late. I remember standing at the window the next morning looking over the biergarten below our room and admiring the age of the stone gate across the road. The light was golden in an early fall sort of way, gilding my nervousness for this adventure with a fierce excitement. Despite the long day of travel …
“I figure if they don’t come home with scrapes and bruises, then they are not learning anything.” I enjoyed a walk with a certain young man, all of 20 months old, and his parents yesterday. The day was lovely in the way that summer-to-fall transition days often are, simultaneously warm and golden, yet still somehow cool and foggy. We walked among hills burnished with dry grasses and small-leaved members of the sage family, in a sea of feathery pampas grass waving over our heads. By our feet, the blackberry leaves were starting to shift from green to reddish-brown. Our climb …
“My name is Moby, and I have a dirty little secret to confess… I like to go out to raves and dance until 7:00 a.m.!” We enjoyed Moby‘s third (!) sold out San Francisco concert on Monday. The genius behind the amazing Play (more than one year among the top five bestsellers) is obviously in love with sound: making it, layering it, exploring it, bathing in it, reveling in it. From our balcony seats, I watched the audience reactions as much as the performance. The main floor was so completely packed that the inclination to dance translated itself to a …