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.

The wonderful person

   I have many thoughts during the day, many of which are produced, or at least guided by the fears that I have and past needs which went unfulfilled. The ideas that I have and actions that I take have often been developed to try to keep me feeling protected from a world based on the past, but there are times, generally when I am quiet and at ease, where I am able to feel and see things in a way which seems quite present and often surprising to me.
   This morning was one of those times.
   As I walked, and the chilly, post-rain air emitted a feeling of "freshness"(as one person I know put it), the idea came to me that my wife is really a beautiful person. This impression was followed with the thought that her struggles to be in the world, which I can at times find irritating as they relate to me, are in a very literal way a reflection of my own difficulties in this area. I use the world literal here because it struck me in such a matter-of-fact way, and I realized then that if I could manage to be more aware, more cognizant and forgiving of her efforts, that perhaps I could do the same in regards to mine, too. It dawned on me what a good heart Fernanda has, and that probably, nearly all that comes from her still sprouts from this kernel, no matter how it may bother me.
   I remember as I am writing this that it was this quality which probably most drew me to her those nearly fifteen years ago, and it is still there, though it has been made murkier by my own struggles to exist in a world that I often find to be hostile, and which very much color my impressions of the person I love most.
   I realize that the more I can see her in this way, the more wholly and with forgiveness I may be able to envision myself, too.

Like ants

   My daily walks around Stow Lake have been started in near darkness for the past couple of months, mostly because the days are fairly short this time of year (but getting longer), but also due to the fact that I've been trying to walk an extra mile when possible in order to lose a few pounds added around the December holidays.The extra exercise feels good, too.
   I quite often find Stow Lake magical, but in the predawn hours it can be especially lovely, due in no small part to the the way the area looks when barely visible, where things in the distance seem mysterious, and my eyes and brain misread the material world. I believe I see animals in the distance that are not actually there, the lights from the few surrounding lamp posts illuminate what's nearest them in strange ways, and I see the distant interactions of people in a way that I only do here; I see them like ants.
   I recall coming home to my apartment after close to a week away on vacation, and seeing a line of seemingly thousands of ants stretching in and out of my refrigerator. While a bit horrified and disgusted (there were hundreds of dead members frozen to death inside inside the cold door), I was also fascinated by their organization, and saw that somewhere amidst the two ends of this line, stretching from the food source towards the nest, was a place where the ants would pause before passing each other.
   I imagined at that time that the individual members would relay some kind of information that was necessary to perform the large scale operation they were undertaking, although what was being transmitted was inaudible to me, Even if there were sounds being made at those many brief meetings, I doubt that I would have been able to decipher them anyway.
   In a similar way, I understood that whatever the people that I saw in the distance at Stow Lake were communicating was not for me to know, and although I assume that it was mostly in a form that I understood, the English language, it may as well as been as foreign to me as the ants' manner was.
   Often, when looking outside of my own subjective experience, I find the ways of others as strange and hard to comprehend.

"Two Jews, from across the room..."

 Early in December of last year, the activity department at my job, which I am a member of, had their holiday party. These parties always take place at least a few weeks before Christmas, I believe in an attempt to be as inclusive as possible (many people are on vacation later in the month). I use the word inclusive in a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way, because these holiday parties are really, as far as I am concerned, Christmas parties, featuring music and decorations pertaining only to that holiday. 

   The distinction between party types is not just a matter of semantics for me, but is important because I often feel like an ethnic afterthought in other people's minds, being the only Jew in the department, as well as possessing a predisposition to feeling invisible, with me since childhood. I know that I am neither physically nor psychically invisible to most people that I know, but it does feel that way more than I  wish it did. 

   So, there I was at this party, feeling uncomfortable, when it was announced that we'd play a raffle game with the tickets we'd been given when we arrived. As the first numbers were called, I realized that I held the winning ticket, and as I went up to claim my prize, I was guided by one of the well-meaning supervisors towards a particular package. I presumed this package held the "Mensch on a Bench" toy that I had been informed might be one of the prizes by this same supervisor earlier in the week.

   I returned to my seat and opened the gift, and felt immediately happy at the stuffed toy inside. The people clapped, and I honestly felt like I suddenly belonged among this group of familiar people listening to Christmas music. Although it was only a toy, and a kind of joke gift at that, to me it was as if someone that I knew and really related to had come to give me support amidst a room of indifferent strangers. I know that seems odd, but I felt as if my circumstances and emotional life at the time had been completely transformed.

   I placed the "Mensch on a Bench" on the table I was sitting behind so it was facing me, and I looked at it. With it's left arm raised as if waving, it seemed like we were destined to be near each other at that moment.

   My feelings of isolation in that peopled room fell away as I looked at that mensch, like the box I pulled him from had opened the one that had previously contained me.

The mensch, at my apartment, watching over the Chanukah candles.

The differentiated artist

   This morning, the local television news was reporting about a small group of people, mostly artists, that were being forced to vacate a warehouse live/work space in nearby Oakland because the building had been condemned as unsafe. The reporter interviewed a few of the tenants, and one spoke, a young woman with spiked hair and dressed in a red blazer, of how most of the people being forced to leave were "small business owners, artists and creative people".
   What she said got me thinking about the idea of being an artist, what it means to different people, and why it seemed that, for her at least, referring to these people as such set these occupants' evictions apart from other people that might face similar circumstances. It got me thinking about my own very conflated feelings about what 'being an artist' may mean culturally, and reminded me of why so many artists' views of themselves illicited a strong negative reaction within me.
   The question for me is why should anyone be treated or thought of as different than other people, and why the role of the artist should be considered as important or vital? In my own experience, I have found that most of the people that I've met or come into contact with that think of themselves as artists are socially important mainly to those that think of themselves similarly; they reinforce eachothers' ideas of self and place.
   I ask the reader to please be careful to note that when I use the term artist, I do so to differentiate the person who thinks of themself as such from the person that merely makes or does things in a creative manner. I make this distinction because I do in fact believe that it is important to have people (at least in my own life and with whatever word one chooses to call them) that seek to explore different ways to think about the material world.
   So it is then a matter for me of not what a person does, but how one defines themselves, and if these distinctions serve to differentiate themselves, or things from the ideas that serve to contain and limit them. For much in the same way that language labels and helps us to make distinctions, it also imprisons us in notions of how things should be.
   For me, freedom lies fundamentally in evicting predetermined ideas from my own limited ideas and sensations, not reinforcing them with a name