"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

Restaurants portions and demand

   As a person that very much enjoys trying different kinds of food, I have been to many types of restaurants over the years, being fortunate enough to have the necessary money and free time required to enjoy the many dining options that the San Francisco bay area has to offer. My experiences have included "mom and pop" places (which are my favorite), food carts and stands, as well as some more expensive places.

   I don't know what set me thinking about the idea of scarcity and restaurant portions, but it seems that often, though not necessarily always, the price of food in the pricier estblishments appears to be proportional to the size of the serving; the more expensive the menu determines that the portion be smaller.

   In general, the capitalist ("market") theory of supply and demand states that the higher the price, the less demand there will be for that good or service, but when the demand is high and the quantity is scarce, the price of the item will increase. There is also the idea in this philosophy that if the supplier of the good or service does not allow what they are selling to become too plentiful, it will be more scarce, and they can attempt to sell it at a higher price.
   This kind of rationing also has what I believe to be a psychological effect on the consumer, where they believe that the thing being sold is worth more, without actually knowing if the supply scarcity is being artificially created, or withheld. In other words, they don't know why or if something is truly rare, nor do they have a tool to determine why it should actually cost more.
   In my own life, there have been circumstances where I wanted to buy an item, and have rushed to do so for fear of the thing being no longer available, based on a determination which may be alluded to by the seller, myself, or a combination of the two. The fear that I had regarding scarcity served to bypass the more normal weighing of options and outcomes that I might normally have considered when purchasing something that I don't really need, and plays on my own particular fear of not having enough, which I experienced in many ways as a child.
   While I find the intentional manufacture of scarcity not always easy to spot when buying products, in restaurants I have a different outlook; I find the system easier to see, and once really seen, it becomes harder to be coerced by it. I order an appetizer or entree, and when it is placed on the table in front of me I am a bit shocked by how little food is on the plate. 
   It would be interesting, or rather beautiful, if I could so easily see this kind of manufacture of the appearance of scarcity in my own thinking. Perhaps I could then understand in a more visceral way that my own frequent thinking of the world as a plate with too little food on it is a trope that I have concoted, or have at least reproduced, for myself. I imagine I would find my own existence more consistently satisfying, without living in the fear that I will not have what I need, or enough of it.

On being Jewish

   As a child, I remember going to my Grandpa Morris and Grandma Jean's house for Jewish holidays, and giggling when my grandfather would recite the Hebrew prayers in his singing style, which I suppose was the way it was supposed to have been done. Although my cousins and I just thought that it sounded kind of 'funny', I believe that I was also embarrassed by it, and of being Jewish as well.
   In high school and college, I recall how I would sometimes cringe when attendance was called in class, self-conscious of how Jewish my name sounded. When I look back at it now, I was probably more ashamed of myself than my name, but I am both surprised and saddened that I should have felt that way about it, especially because a name is not something that a child or young man has any choice over.
   I was never taught to believe that I had very much choice, anyway.
   Although many of my friends were Jewish when I was a kid, as I got older, I felt increasingly 'different' from others, ethnically speaking. I know that many people would say that being Jewish is a religious rather than ethnic issue, but I felt ethnic in a way that made me uncomfortable and ashamed. It's not that I believed that being 'ethnic' was bad; it was just that my brand of ethnicity that appeared so.
   It seems that the value that I was never taught that I embodied (or should I say poor judgments that I did learn) has permeated through my beliefs about myself, others, the world we live in, and of course, my sense of Jewishness. It's interesting that I happen to call home a city where multiculturalism is so highly celebrated and valued, at least in name, as it's only in the past few years that I have come to treat my own ethnicity in the same esteem.
   Perhaps being Jewish has become more important because I no longer live in the most Jewish city outside of Israel (New York), or maybe it's just a normal aspect of aging (my Grandpa Morris, mentioned in the first sentence of this post, gave up his socialist ideas for religion as an older man). Maybe it's just that it's been really difficult accepting myself, and I'm beginning to make some inroads in that direction.

The kid that was a selfie stick

   I was walking in the Presidio of San Francisco, just south of Crissy Field near dusk, when I saw a cluster of people in the distance. The smaller members of the group, apparently children, were moving around quickly, seemingly excited at whatever it was that had, was, or was going to occur shortly. As I got a little closer, I saw that one of these smaller individuals was handed something by one of the larger ones, who had in turn moved away to join another larger member. The individual that was handed the object also moved away, in the opposite direction, creating a distance of about nine or ten feet.
   As I approached closer still, I realized that this smaller one was preparing to take a picture of the two others, who were apparently its' parents, and it dawned on me that they were using the child as a kind of selfie stick.
   Although I don't recall in years or times past thinking that one individual taking a picture of others as being unusual, in this light, location and time it occurred to me in a powerful way that this kid was more of a selfie stick for its' parents than was their child. I don't know why, but that is how it seemed.
   As I got close enough to see them I noticed that they appeared to be Americans of Indian heritage (the country, not the indigenous people), or genetically from that part of the world, anyway. Passing them, the child, who I could see at this point was a boy, called out, "maybe it's a garbage can". I inferred that he was referring to an object that he saw in the distance, and was trying, like me, to understand something that seemed new or different to him in this particular environment.
   Maybe it was that object, perhaps a garbage can,  that had caused what I had perceived as his excited wonder when I first saw him in the dusk from afar; the disorienting freedom that can occur when things appear familiar, strange and fantastic all at once.

Losing televised sports as an interest

   When I was a kid, I loved sports. I enjoyed playing and watching them, and baseball was my favorite. I very much liked seeing the games in person at the stadium, but the television experience was still plenty exciting to me. In those years I was a big fan of very non-local teams like the Reds (from Cincinnati) and the A's (from Oakland), I imagine at least partly because they were so successful back then. I certainly didn't know where Cincinnati or Oakland were located, nor did I seem to care.
   A few years later, perhaps in my mid-teens, I recall going to Yankee stadium with my father and being amazed that he would get bored so early in the game and want to leave. At this point I was beginning to prefer other sports (I believe that hockey, being a sport that my friends at that time would play, was becoming a new favorite), and these preferences would continue to change the older I became. Still, I couldn't understand the boredom on my father's part.
   Now I can.
   I don't know exactly when it happened, when the actual break took place, but I realized perhaps a week ago that I generally cannot watch any sport on television for more than a little while without becoming extremely bored.
   This change did not occur suddenly, but over time I did notice that the different type of sports I watched had shrunken, as had the time I could bear to do so. Baseball was the first to go, then hockey, and now American football, which seemed for a time to take the reins and keep my sports interest from completely disappearing altogether. For a few weeks, European football (soccer in the U.S.), and even basketball had briefly appeared as a possible replacement sports interest, but these were short lived.
   At some point, I had developed the boredom and lack of interest of my father that had so perplexed me years earlier.
   For years, televised sports were something that I used to unwind after work, a passive activity that I could engage in without having to care much about the outcome. For a nervous person such as myself, being able to engage without invested attachment to something was alluring and relaxing, and it worked most of the time. My wife and I even coined a term, 'stupid t.v.' to signify watching television for this same effect, and we would often watch different programs together (She also allowed me to watch the sports I wanted, even though she absolutely hates them. and I am thankful to her for that).
   So it is that this lack of interest in sports has meant not only a change, but also the disappearance of an avenue for me that was useful for decompressing from a world that I often feel quite fearful in. I mourn this loss, truly, but hope that it signifies that I will be moving on to discover new methods that are more in fitting with the person I am currently and will become. This is not only a hope, but also a wish.

An altered view

   Below is a picture that I took as I walked around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. About a week ago, we had a good rainstorm accompanied by strong winds here in San Francisco, and one of the large trees fell into the lake. It had stood next to the bench seen below.
   For some days the car path located just outside of the picture was cordoned off for what the people that walk here said was a crane to remove the trunk, but after a few days the fallen tree and cones remained.
   It's interesting to me that somehow the area had appeared relatively unchanged from how I'd known it for some years (even with the tree laying horizontally in the water), but today I noticed that something was different; it had finally been removed.
   Although I have passed this spot more than a thousand times, and seen here much more than just this specific tree, the visual absence of it made the area appear completely new. It really fascinated me that my perception could be so radically altered by the removal of just one thing, no matter the size, from my field of vision.
   I realized at that moment in a very visceral way that my eyes did not in fact translate empirical information, but rather helped to form the subjective beliefs that I use to determine what is true and not in the world. It was a powerful reminder that what I often determine to be irrevocably correct can conceivably be so to the contrary.