Self-assured people

   About a month and a half ago, for Presidents Day weekend, Fernanda and I took a trip up north to the Russian River area. On the first morning, we took a short drive into Guerneville from the town of Monte Rio, where we stayed in a sweet, small bed and breakfast called the Highland Dell Lodge.
   The four mile trip to Guerneville was taken with the express desire to eat lunch at a place that we had been to previously, called the Big Bottom Market. We had had really nice experiences there on two previous occasions, enjoying both the healthful food and kind staff, and were looking forward to this visit, too.
   After parking the car, we could see that it was much more crowded than we remembered it being, but were able to procure a table, and ordered our food and coffees. As we waited, we witnessed a constant parade of mostly young, fashion conscious people that seemed ridiculous in this rural environment. Though the workers in the place were themselves young and perhaps a bit hip, they were not like these people in their attitude; they seemed to care more about where they were than how they looked.
   At a table near us were a group of young families, all appearing to me to be confident in themselves, and I wondered, as I do at times, how people like that live and view the world and their own lives, as theirs seems so different from mine. They seem like they either know what they are doing in life or will be able to figure it out rather easily as they go along. Of course, I don't really know what living is like for them at all, but that's just how it seemed to me.
   On the same trip we also had coffee and baked goods at a place called Bia Cafe, located in Monte Rio, which was much less crowded, and had an extremely outgoing proprietor and decidedly less-than-hip clientele. It was much more to our liking. The owner was middle aged, appeared down-to-earth, and was certainly vivacious.
   Then, at some point during a congenially spirited conversation with one of her regular customers, she said proudly, "honey, you're never gonna' meet another me!"
   Although Fernanda and I certainly found this woman a lot more likable than the hip youngsters in the Guerneville place, it was her self-assured, confident attitude which took me back a bit as I thought about it later. Although I do believe that everyone is to some extent distinctive, I find the idea of people being so confident in their uniqueness a bit cocky and unreal. For me, freedom often lies in the  betweens, doubts and contradictions in the people and things in the world, because it is here that I am allowed  to join the millieu. Like a room, I can only enter where there is an opening.
   Although I myself am often less than self-assured, I don't think that it is this fact which solely determines my mistrust of the confident; I believe that my feelings of fallability, held so closely, keeps me in constant touch with my own humanity, which will always be imperfect. I don't always like how it can often foster so much insecurity within me, but when I think about, it makes me proud in some way.

Does insensitivity sell?

   There is a commercial that I see on television pretty regularly for the BMW X1 automobile. The advertisement begins with a young man walking with what appears to be mail in his hands, apparently coming back from his mailbox. We see a car enter the driveway in reverse, cargo door open as it screeches to a stop, spilling out it's trunk's contents at the man's feet. A laundry basket and assorted clothing are most evident.
   Next, we are taken to the interior of the car, where we see an attractive woman looking back in the rear view mirror as she drives away, a smirk on her face. A neighbor appears to the left of the man in the next driveway, to which he says, "it's complicated", then looks down at his things, as if to ascertain if everything is there. He goes on to say, "she's just dropping off my stuff". It seems that these two were once a couple, but their relationship had ended.
   I've seen this commercial many times and have found it distasteful on every occasion, but now when I see it I find it very sad, both in content and in the fact that it took a number of people and money to create something so cold. Perhaps the first time I viewed it in this way I was feeling a bit more sad than I usually do, but I imagine that this sadness only helped me to see the insensitivity of the portrayal more clearly.
   Though no expert on failed relationships, I have had enough experience with them, both platonic and sexual, to know that they hurt, even when they are necessary and their dissolution seems necessary. I wonder then what the producers of the commercial were thinking when they thought it would be 'amusing' or 'lighthearted' (I've seen it referred to in both these ways online) to show someone literally dumping out another's belongings in such a thoughtless, or worse yet, thoughtful way, as if that person had no feelings at all.
   Interestingly, the man seems almost unaffected emotionally by this act, save for perhaps being embarassed in front of his neighbor. The woman driving the car, the one taking the initiative, is perhaps supposed to appear healthy by doing this, being empowered enough to do what's right for her; but is this where we as a society must exert our will, at someone else's expense?
   If there were to be a backstory to what we are seeing in the spot, say if the man had been equally or more rude to the woman previously, should we still feel the same way about what we're witnessing now?
   I wonder why it is that neither man nor woman in this commercial seems very saddened by what has happened, and it disturbs me that we as viewers are not apparently supposed to be either.

Assessing rather than feeling

The woman with the book

   There is a woman that I see regularly while walking on the path encircling Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. The course that she chooses is clockwise, opposite my direction, and she approaches at such a hurried pace, with head and shoulders leaning far enough forward, that it appears to me that she could at any moment fall flat on her face. It's as if the upper half of her body is exhorting the lower half to catch up.
   As far as I can recall, on every single occasion that I have seen this woman (which I believe is always on Saturdays and Sundays), she possesses two articles which I always recognize as hers; a gray sweatshirt with the words Michigan State printed on it, and a book being carried in her left hand. I know nothing about her except that she seems friendly enough, smiling at me each time that we pass.
   I didn't think too much about her ensemble the first few times I saw her, and quickly became so accustomed to it that it no longer struck me as unusual until perhaps a week ago, when something allowed me to be filled with wonder about this interesting character (and I mean character in the most loving way possible, as this word is often used with derision when describing people).
   I don't know what allowed me to see her in this way, in her uniqueness, but I got to thinking about these two pieces of her outfit, and many questions came to me. I wondered if it was always the same book that she carried, and whether it was or not, did she read it regularly? If she did, was it before or after her walk, or was she carrying it more as some kind of accessory, as I suspected? I also thought about that sweatshirt with the school name printed on it, and wondered what her relation to that institution was; student, teacher, or maybe just a Michigan native fondly remembering or proudly advertising her home state?
   In my mind, I have the belief that these two articles of clothing, which I have never seen her wear anything but, function as a kind of security blanket, a tradition which gives her comfort in the world. I certainly have my own, as I imagine most, or all of us do.
   The writing of this blog entry has taken a couple of days of unsteady work, and during the process, I could not conjure up anything else specific about her walking ensemble. There is something fascinating to me that I can so specifically remember certain things, yet be so seemingly blind to, and forgetful of others. Perhaps this woman with the sweatshirt and book uses those two things to keep in mind some of the things important to her.

Freshly left ball

   I saw the tennis ball seen in the picture below as I strolled around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. I walk at a pretty swift pace (each one mile lap taking me about seventeen and a half minutes), and what interested me most about this object was the fact that I hadn't noticed it there the previous time around. When I say that I hadn't noticed it, I mean that I'm pretty certain that it hadn't been there before, and when I realized this, the time that had elapsed since I was last there became for me suddenly filled with possibilities.
   What had happened during my absence, and why the ball had been left there puzzled me a bit. I imagined it had belonged to a dog. and wondered why dog or owner had allowed the ball to be left there. Was this intentional, or was it an oversight, with neither animal realizing that something was now missing?
   I thought of all of the lives that were being lived, and about how big and supple the world must be to accommodate them all. I have for many years found myself amazed that mores and laws seemed to be enough to stop individuals from killing others haphazardly, and at this moment, in a similar vein, wondered how the earth doesn't buckle under the pressure of the population and its' movement.
   What I'm trying to convey, perhaps not so well, is my awe of the otherness of almost everything that I see. I find it sad and isolating, but also truly remarkable, precisely because of its' impenetrability  For me, one of the most wonderful things about life is all there is that I do not know, and never will. The opaqueness of the world allows my imagination and desire to interpret room to flourish.

Memories and sadness and Judy Collins

   One of the albums that I most disliked hearing in the family apartment as a child was Judy Collins' Colors Of The Day. I had always thought of it as being one of my mother's albums, I surmise now that it must have been chosen by my father, as I don't believe my mother had very much interest in music at that time. Really, I never thought of my mother as really being particularly interested in anything, though she was probably invested in a great many things, as are we all.
   Back to that album. Released on May 8th, 1972, when I was eight and a half years old, it was really boring to me at that age, and full of a kind of an emotional heaviness that I was not able to understand, nor was I prepared to. Though many decades have passed, I can still regress to that hurt, but I've become more open to the feelings associated with it. The sadness and melancholic introspection which so turned me off to that particular record are some of the very things that I enjoy most about it now.
   So it is that when the opening notes of the first song on the album start playing (the country styled "Someday Soon"), I often find myself psychically transported back to the wood-floored living room of my childhood, this while sitting in my car in San Francisco nearly three thousand miles and forty five years away. It often feels perfectly, and strangely natural.
   While much of what I listen to from my childhood and adolescent years is music that I have ambivalent feelings about (especially the top forty music, which I rarely enjoy since then), Colors Of The Day is a recording which has really undergone a complete metamorphosis in my mind. Although I'm pretty sure that it's my attitudes and tastes which have changed, it's almost as if the music itself has. Perhaps I'm just able to hear it differently now.