“Of all the people, you are one of the ones I wonder about.” We were walking down Mission Street after Moulin Rouge (not the absinthe-laced free-for-all some reviewers seemed to think it was but nevertheless a riot of sound and color nicely flavored with love and tragedy), when someone behind us called my name. Called it three times before I figured out the voice might be addressing me. It turned out to be one of those movie-moments that never happen to real people: time and distance fade to nothing, and someone from the past recognizes your present self. In this …
“Children are very good at pulling you into the moment, if you will let them.” I watched a mother I know play with her two year old son, trying to wear him out so he would sleep when she took him downstairs to his bedroom. He lay back on a huge, floppy stuffed lion, commanded “onetwothree,” then squirmed and giggled as his mother blew on his side, tickling him with her hair. Evidently, “onetwothree” was inadvertent education. His parents used it as a drumroll when playing games with him. “Get ready…” Now, the child says it back, onetwothree, make me …
“Don’t suspect a friend, Report him!” The ads are plastered to the sides of the Muni trains I take downtown. “Brazil!” they scream, in a font that seems disturbingly close to that for the title of the Terry Gilliam movie of the same name. It struck me as more than a little odd, an ad campaign that conjures images of tiny offices, bureaucracy run rampant, and duct work. Not to mention the shoe-hat. I wonder if the marketing department has any idea? It’s not dystopia they’re advertising, evidently. No, it’s Macy’s 55th Annual Flower Show. Yes, it seems a bit …
“Walk me down the aisle, Daddy, it’s just about time; Does my wedding gown look pretty, Daddy? Daddy, don’t cry.” Dear Dad, I turned 26 yesterday. I had a party last weekend and got drunk on Brazilian cocktails. Grandpa and Grandma sent me flowers, a delivered arrangement, like they have every year since I was 19. The flowers were roses this year, pink and white. I had a birthday yesterday. Did you even notice? The last birthday card I ever got from you came in a business size envelope. You used the letter wizard in Word, probably, and sent me …
“Here is the church, here is the steeple; Open the doors and see all the people!” While walking to my neighborhood BART station yesterday, I passed a church. I’d walked by it before, for months actually, without its church-ness being all that obvious. It sits on its own artificial hill, squatting over its parking lot. The building itself is a marvel of non-traditional architecture, with three parallel roof segments, and a front wall entirely of glass, revealing a spider’s web of steel support beams inside. It reminds me of those collapsible plastic spheres you see in toy stores these days. …
“Ignore Reality. There’s nothing you can do about it.” The other day I found myself thinking about things I wrote during my last significant period of creativity, pieces written when I was certain that I would be a writer and when I did not doubt that I had something to say. The stories are neatly packaged narratives, written with the simple belief in the clean orderliness of the world. Right is right, wrong is wrong. I wrote them when I knew everything. Now, 10 years later, it seems I know so very little. When I left my small high school …