Offense and defense

   A couple of weeks ago, I was in Trader Joe's on Masonic Avenue doing my weekly shopping, quite contented that it was emptier than normal. I had felt pretty confident before going there that it would be so, as the Golden Gate Warriors basketball team were in the playoffs, and most of San Francisco seemed quite invested in the team's plight. I had heard a report on the news a few evenings before that for one of the earlier games, eighty percent of televisions in the San Francisco bay area had been tuned in. Mine was not one of them.
   The idea that so much enthusiam was as focused as it was on a sports team, although satisfying for me at that particular moment, was also concerning; it reminded me how banal I often find people's interests, how 'group think' seems so prevalent in so much of the world, and also, I imagine, that I could not share in that excitement due to my own beliefs and prejudices.
   It's often hard for me to tease out whether I avoid considering myself a part of large groups because of a lack of shared pursuit, or for fear of being rejected, but the satisfaction that I must receive from feeling a bit superior to people in my interests doesn't near the sadness of feeling so apart from them.
   Back to the Trader Joe's experience,  after I had finished doing my shopping, I got online to pay. When my turn came, I began bagging my items as they were being tallied by the cashier, and decided to talk with him. Sometimes, I reach out to people in this way as a way to combat my tendency to isolate myself, despite feeling apprehension at doing so. I thought I'd share with him my thoughts regarding the lack of a crowd there.
   "I wish the warriors were in the playoffs every night" I said, or something like it, and told the young man that I didn't care for crowds or sports very much.
   "Me neither", he said, and I became somewhat excited that my attempt to feel related had paid off.
   I asked him what he was interested in, thinking that perhaps we had something in common, and he began to tell me that he spent most of his free time making suits of armor, sometimes spending a lot of money on very expensive materials. I believe he said they were high tensile steels.
   I don't know if my facial expression changed noticeably, but I felt great disappointment that my experiment had apparently failed. I felt at that moment that I should have just kept to myself, that I would have felt more related to a basketball fan than this person at that moment. In hindsight, this man's enthusiasm for his hobby, which was somewhat out of the ordinary, should have given me hope, but there at the checkout counter, I was disillusioned.
   As I think about it now, I imagine that this kind of disappointment is what keeps me so defended in the first place.

Dogs carrying their own leashes

    Recently, I saw a man walking his dog, or more correctly, walking next to his dog, as his pet had a collar around it's neck attached to a leash, but the leash was being carried in the animal's mouth rather rather than in it's owner's hand. I am often annoyed by what I perceive as people making up their own rules around posted signs (such as "dogs must be on leash"), but on this occasion my judgment was diverted by this sight of the dog, which was quite powerful for me.
   What felt like a blossoming of allusions rushed forward as I watched the dog happily, seemingly proudly, trotting along with the end of it's own restraining device between its' teeth. Of course, one could make the point that these animals appear to often feel affection for their masters, and so should be proud to do something for them (such as carrying the leash), but it still struck me as an odd, unnatural setup.
   I'm well aware that many dogs have crates, basically a cage, where their owner lives, and which are supposed to be used by its' master to replicate the animal's home den (and which they seem to generally like), but this too feels like they are used to repress, even if the animal seems to enjoy it. The leash in particular strikes me as a device which serves to tame and divert it from it's original, wild nature.
   I have been careful to use the term owner or master when referring to the person that walks and cares for their dog, because I feel like it is important to be honest about the realities of where the power lies in this and all relationships.
   To see an animal that seems to accept, at times revel, in their own restraint, whatever the living thing, disturbs me.

Where am I coming from?

   Yesterday, during the time I spend trying to think as clearly as possible, I had a thought that I was surprised by; the sense that  was I was not really at home in California.
   For many, many years, I had considered myself a New Yorker, by birth and deep in my bones, and even during my first five or six years living in San Francisco I thought I was a member of that metropolis that just happened to be living here on the west coast. It's not that I didn't very much like the city here or the state that I have explored and continue to love to investigate; it's just that I didn't imagine that the New Yorker could ever be supplanted. It seemed like it eventually was.
   At some point, I declared to myself and anyone who showed any interest that I had adopted California as my state. It wasn't that I had forsaken my origins, nor had I become a true member of this newer place; I had merely made a declaration to it.
   Some years passed, and I imagined that the problem of figuring out how to refer to me had been solved (comfortable in thinking of myself as a sort of Californian) until yesterday, when I sensed that I didn't think of myself in the same way anymore. It was a bit of a revelation.
   It's not that I had been aware of thinking consciously about the subject at that moment, but was perhaps a little more in touch with the lack of visibility and support I had often felt as a child. Sensing that I was and am not cared for has always made it difficult for me to feel rooted.
   As I ponder it now, I wonder how to situate myself psychically when I feel so much like a visitor at times, even in a city that I know much of so well. While it is frightening to feel as if I am dangled in the world by an apparatus that I cannot verify, I sense that there is something good about this suspension, that perhaps the recognition of this very old and primal fear inside of me is a step towards it no longer mastering me so blindly.

Sports fans, local teams, and the personal pronoun "we".

   When my wife and I first moved to San Francisco, our home for the past decade, I never imagined that it was a city where sports would be so heralded. The natural beauty of the place, it's history as being a welcoming place to the LGBT community, and it's reputation for progressive politics gave me the impression that professional sports would not capture the interest of the people here on a wide scale. I was wrong.
   It's true that over the past few years there have been three bay area teams that have either won or nearly won their sport's respective championship title, but I still find the excitement and sustained interest difficult to comprehend. Perhaps it was the same way in New York when I lived there and the Yankees baseball team and Giants football team were both winning, but I don't remember it that way now.
   Many times I've heard people talk about one of the local teams and have noticed the word "we" used in the sentence, such as 'we should have won last night' or the like. It could be that there is nothing particularly novel in this usage, that I just never noticed it when used by people in reference to their favorite teams, but it certainly never registered with me.
   When I hear someone using the plural form when speaking about a particular play, score or whatever, I can hardly contain myself from asking the speaker if they are on the team they are speaking of. I mean this in a tongue-in-cheek way, of course, but there is a part of me that is genuinely perplexed. As I think about it now, I wonder who it was that first employed this form as a technique for feeling included in their team's plight. it's an interesting trope.
   Surely, a sports team relies on their fans as a whole to support them financially (money made from ticket sales, the purchasing of authorized merchandise, etc.), but I am disturbed by this idea, ridiculous and obvious as it may seem; the fans probably know quite a bit about the athletes, but the athletes most likely know nothing about the fans. One group knows the other's names, the other does not.
   So while it's apparent that only one group is in the public eye, the unevenness of the relationship bothers me, and is in my opinion not deserving of the word "we" in referencing it.

Thinking in two places at once

   A few mornings ago as I was driving, I felt unusually calm. It was during the morning commute, and although I was not in a rush, I had the impression that everyone else was.
   Often, when there is a lot of frantic activity around me, I tend to get caught up in it. If I feel that people are being inconsiderate or rude (and driving seems to bring these things out in many people, including myself), the feelings that I have about the world can quickly change from those of relative satisfaction into agitation. Sometimes at these moments, I feel like I don't want to be part of it at all any more.
   As the traffic flow accelerated and the drivers appeared more aggressive, I began to feel constricted. I could sense those familiar feelings of despondency arising, but on this occasion I could see them as a thought, without their immediate metamorphosis into something like an undeniable reality.
   Many, many times, I have attempted to think myself down from this kind of escalation by trying to amend my very emotional response with a rational thought, reminding myself that the deep hurts I have felt were not necessarily what were happening in the current moment. Unfortunately for me, this technique has been a mostly losing proposition. Although I have been so terribly frustrated at times in these endeavors, it makes what happened this particular morning that much more remarkable, as my thoughts at that moment seemed to happen independently of my attempts at intervention.
   I have tended to think about this experience in a kind of moralistic way (i.e.-I reacted in a 'better' or more 'appropriate' manner on this occasion), but believe now that I really don't know why I experienced this change at that particular moment. I've thought a lot about the possible explanations, written them here, edited them, then rewritten them, but I think I'm just going to leave it as a question.

Nest building

   I took the picture below as I passed the small pile of stuff seen below. It appears to be comprised of mostly grasses and perhaps a few small twigs, and I imagined that it was gathered to build a nest when I first saw it. It is spring here in San Francisco, and many of the birds around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park are preparing for, or have already had babies.
   As I thought about it a bit, I figured that what is in the picture may not in fact nesting material, but perhaps the leftovers from a lawn mowed nearby.  Anyway, it got me thinking about material, in general, and it's relation to that which has not yet been realized.
   Most people that visit the park seem to focus there attentions on the babies already born there, but I find it much more beautiful to see a blackbird or great blue heron with a few sticks or dried grass in their beaks. The image holds the idea of the possibile before the completed task. Even a nest, finished as it may be, can hold this potential for me, especially when there are only adults visible in it; the likelihood of a developing life in an egg or eggs below remains hidden, almost literally pregnant with possibilities.
   To embrace the idea of the unseen is so wonderful, because it involves keeping my senses and self open to what is around and inside of me, including feelings, smells, and the minutiae of the physical world.
   As the grasses in the picture below could have been used to construct an object for something which has yet to exist, the process of writing and the words that I choose to use are the materials that I find available to construct and realize ideas that I have, and the ones yet to formulated.

Perhaps my next blog entry is in there

Smoke coming from my nose, peripherally.

   I have been having nosebleeds pretty regularly for the past six months or so, and finally decided to go to a specialist a couple of months ago. I had been to an ear, nose and throat doctor a few years back when I suffered from the same thing then, and the doctor had cauterized some blood vessels in my right nostril, which stopped the nosebleeds. That worked for a couple of years.
   I was hesitant at first to go back for this procedure, as I figured that it had not really solved the problem altogether; I also hadn't loved the bedside manner of the doctor that had performed it. Eventually, the nosebleeds became more regular, so I decided to search out a different physician, and made an appointment.
   The new specialist put me at ease with his likable personality, and I felt like we hit it off immediately. We talked about a variety of things, many of which did not include my nose. I enjoyed his company.
   He performed a cauterization, but approximately ten days later the nosebleeds returned, and back I went.
   He seemed a bit surprised to see me again so soon, but back up there he looked, bright light strapped around his forehead like a coal miner heading into my nose. He identified and thoroughly cauterized a small, raised area in my upper right nostril that he felt certain had been the site where the nosebleeds had been emanating from, but I soon got another one, exactly four days and five hours later.
   It's interesting how certain things can make one so precisely aware of time.
   The doctor had told me that if this cauterization didn't work, he would do it the next time with a laser, and when it didn't, I was in his office again.
   He explained what the procedure would entail, showed me on a tongue depressor what the instrument did when it contacted something (it blackened it!), and informed me that I'd smell something like burning flesh. For some reason, that description didn't shock me as much as I feel like it should have as I think about it now. Perhaps it was the beginning of the surreal quality of the entire experience.
   He began, and I immediately got a whiff of, then saw peripherally, that there was quite a bit of smoke coming from my right side. As he continued, he asked an assistant to come in to help him by holding my right nostril up so he could see the area better. It was then that the vapors seemed to increase a lot. I noted this, and he admitted to being surprised by the amount.
   I looked to the face of the assistant to see if her expression transmitted anything about what was happening in front of her, but it revealed nothing that I could positively identify.
   It really was quite a unique experience to see smoke coming from my body, and the fact that my head was tilted up and back to the left, right nostril flared and in my field of vision, made the smoke difficult to see clearly. The event was at the same time hazy, dreamlike and undeniably visceral.
   As I write about it now one week later, I am reminded of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein theorizing about pain and subjectivity. He posited the question of how a person can know for certain that the pain that they feel is their pain, and not another's. I remember being both amused, but also fascinated by the idea when I first read about it.
   My own body's emission of smoke struck me as undeniably real, yet as if it was happening to someone else, too. It felt as if I could have been watching myself, but using someone else's vision.
   How wonderful it would be to have that option regularly.