My city?

I took these two pictures this morning before I came to work. I start my work week on Sundays, and although it's a bit sad at times to have to work when most people will be enjoying the day off, it is mostly quiet and pretty relaxed both on the street in the early morning, as well as at my job. I was earlier than I needed to be to start working, so I decided to drive up to Twin Peaks, a hill with great views near where I work, and an often visited tourist locale as well.
   I have been thinking about my future in San Francisco the last few months, wondering how long I imagined staying here amid the ever increasing flow of young technology professionals that are beginning to make the city feel more crowded and too young for this particular fifty one year old man. Just yesterday, while discussing this issue with my wife, I began to feel a sense of urgency about moving, and almost broke into a sort of panic because of it.
   I calmed down a bit later after sitting and writing in a small, quiet coffee shop in the hip area which had helped to elicit these negative feelings within me, and some of the intensity began to subside. I started to think about how I can spend the greater part of my time in places that I love here, such as the parks, beach, and hills like the one where I took the pictures below. I realized that to live in the middle of nowhere would not afford me the choice to look in trendy shops or sample many new restaurants should I choose to, and choice is important to me. I realized that there are a kind of two parts of the city for me, and I can choose, for the most part, when I want to leave the quieter, western part of the city where I live.
   I can't imagine that there are many even remotely cosmopolitan places in the world that can offer me the kind of natural environments that San Francisco does, that still thrill me at times even after more than nine years, and that can offer me secluded woods just a short drive out of the city.

A panoramic view of the city (facing northeast)

 

View to the west

A city map

Collapsing side mirrors

   Whether or not people have been folding in the side view windows of their cars for a long time I don't know, but I've certainly been noticing it more over the last year or so. I'm sure that these mirrors have been collapsible for some time now, but my focus on them seems to have accelerated over time, probably due to my negative feelings about the types of cars that people seem to exercise this option with.
   Let me state here that certain people with money make me uncomfortable, in particular when I believe that the appearance of it is diplayed ostentatiously, and like most things that annoy me, I seem to spend more time dwelling on then I do on things that don't. Almost without fail, when I see a car with it's side mirrors folded in, it is on a luxury car, such as an Audi, Lexus, or Mercedes Benz, as pictured below.
   The reason that the mirrors on these cars tend to be folded in more than on other cars seems apparent to me; the cars mentioned are expensive, and the owners want to protect them. What interests me is why people with pricey cars should want to protect them more than people with ones that don't cost as much. Should I assume that if one has a fairly inexpensive car than they don't need to worry about it being damaged because they could easily buy another one, or is it a matter of investment, and people with expensive cars want their resale value to remain high? I own an inexpensive car, and although it would not be without financial pain for me to have to buy a new one, I don't fold in my mirrors as a matter of practice.
   I believe that ir's because the cars being talked about here mean a lot as status symbols to the people that own them, and that is what I am writing this blog entry. To me, anything that a person can buy says nothing positive about that individual; in fact, it seems kind of sad, but most cultures do teach their inhabitants that symbols of wealth are good, and perhaps it is that which makes me so angry.
   I generally choose to write about things that fascinate or bother me, as a way to get a better understanding on the subjects, and if the subject bothers me, to hopefully find a place of peace with it, at least temporarily.
In this particular case, I don't believe that thinking and writing on this subject will necessarily help me to feel more understanding of the people with these cars, but writing as a practice does make me feel better as an act of creative expression, and sometimes that is good enough.

A Mercedes Benz, windows folded in (even on 

the right side where no cars could inadvertantly clip it).

Country-tinged music from when I was a kid

   I never really cared much for American country music, in fact, I never liked it at all, until the last few years, when I began to discover some of it that I found both soothing and sad, in ways that spoke to my own inner hurt. I discovered most of this music, mostly country-tinged music rather than standard country, by searching the internet and music blogs that I respected, and found that nearly all of the music from this category that I liked had been recorded in the period from the late nineteen sixties through the mid nineteen seventies. I can't tell whether knowing the years that the music was recorded somehow influenced my choice to like it, or if the music from that period had a flavor and sound distinct to that time, but pretty much without fail it is only that period which I like.
   I don't believe it a coincidence that this country music that I like is sad in sound (not all country music is sad), because the music from this time that I am writing about coincides with a time in my life that started as seemingly stable (as far as I can remember), to a time filled with pain and crippling anxiety, due in no small part to my parent's bitter separation and eventual divorce. It's as if the music is able to bring me back emotionally to that time, drop me in the pain there, and allow me to gradually experience it as an adult in a way that I couldn't withstand years ago, so I just stuffed it down the best that I could.
   So now, when I listen to certain country-styled music from that time, it's like I've split off into two people, and one of these people has the task of experiencing new things in a way that connects some of the past to the other half that still lives mostly in the present. It's helps me to get back to places that I had previously shut out emotionally, and although it can make me sad, I feel like it helps me to partially loosen some of the knots that restrict me internally.
   When I used to engage in visual art-making regularly, I used to subscribe to the idea that content, or ideas, should determine the form. When it comes to my emotional life and memories, it seems that form can justifiably help to determine content as well; without this possibility, I doubt that I would have expereienced some of these feelings enabled by my exploration of this music.

The cover from the album featuring a song which never fails
to move me, released when I was four or five years old.