transition to Fall

We're transitioning from summer to fall as the school year starts again. It's always a weird time because it just begins to get truly hot in San Francisco in September and October, and while you're trying very hard to say goodbye to summer it feels a whole like what the rest of the country calls summer June through August when school is the last thing on anyone's mind. Prepping for the start of school helps a little. Slickers and rain boots are purchased (and will sit unused for at least 8 weeks). New jean gets shoved in the back of drawer while the shorts you've ignored all summer get pulled out. Lovely shaggy summer hair gets trimmed so you can actually see what your teacher is doing up there in the front of your overly hot classroom. Ah, San Francisco: you're weird.

"San Francisco is a funny place. Everyone says that and nobody laughs."
- CW Nevius

contrasts

my life. one week apart.




we needed one to get ready for the other.

words | "lose"

"Often he'd couch it in historical anecdote, or pepper his conversation with apt examples, but the gist was: Lose. Lose early. lose often. For it's how you lose that counts. And you will lose. Your hair, your looks, your teeth, your body fluids and fecal matter; you will lose friends, your memory, and if you're one of the elite few, who expect to be remembered, give it time: Eventually, the world will lose it memory of you, too."
- from "The Heights" by Peter Hedges

Sometimes when I'm reading a book I get stuck on a phrase or paragraph that I can't stop thinking about. A string of words, the perfect use of comas and/or colons (God, I love colons although semi-colons confound me) that just nails it. Peter Hedges above take on loss comes just about as close to the bone as anything I've read lately. I'm about as comfortable with loss as a person can reasonably expect to be. I've experienced it profoundly and casually and will again and again. I've also had innumerable moments of appreciating my lack of loss and spend a majority of my free time polishing every single silver lining I can get my hands on.

an accopmlishment

For the longest time I have ogled photographs of people who are clearly outside yet are seemingly standing before a blown out white background. You know the type. Pure geniuses, that's who. I love the way the subject pops and the big sky background seems to go on forever until it blurs out completely. I happened to be in sunny Santa Cruz last weekend and had the energy to haul out my actual fancy, real-life camera instead of depending on my cell phone camera with the very funky photo application and hey! I did it. One more thing to cross off the list of mad skills to acquire. I truly don't think I've been this proud of myself in a long time. Straight out of the camera, people! Now ask me if I can figure out doing it again? maybe. just maybe...

the cheez whiz | try it

Mew York Magazine posted 50 Steps to Simple Happiness.

Try The Cheese Whiz. I did. Don't I look relaxed, confident and like I know what I'm doing??

“Leave your mouth in that slightly upturned position it takes after saying ‘Cheez Whiz.’ It’s a relaxed, confident look that will convince other people you know what you’re doing.”

sum

I just finished the book Sum, by David Eagleman and found it amusing and thought-provoking in an unexpectedly playful way. Eagleman cobbled together "Forty Tales From the Afterlives." 40 vignettes about what may happen after we die. I admit I'm a sucker for this type of hypothesizing. I loved Mary Roache's Stiff too. I find these explorations into the fantasy of heaven and the science of death oddly reassuring. Lots of people think this is weird. What can I say? I'm dark like that. Here's my favorite tale from Sum (the first chapter, also called "Sum"). It really has me thinking about how I spend my time. I think I'd have to add time spent chimping my camera and deleting digital pictures, as well as at least 5 hours spent smelling my kids hair to my own sum. And surly my time spent doing laundry should be upped.

What would you add to yours?

Sum | David Eagleman

In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this times with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together.

You spend two months driving the street in from of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazine while sitting on the toilet.

You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Bones break, cars crash, skin in cut, babies are born. Once you make it through, it's agony-free for the rest of your afterlife.

But that doesn't mean it's always pleasant. You spend six days clipping your nails. Fifteen months looking for lost items. Eighteen months waiting in line. Two years of boredom: staring out a bus window. Sitting in an airport terminal. One year reading books. Your eyes hurt, and you itch, because you can't take a shower until it's your time to take a marathon two-hundred day shower. Two weeks wondering what happens when you die. One minute realizing your body is falling. Seventy-seven hours of confusion. One hour realizing you've forgotten someone's name. Three weeks realizing you are wrong. Two days lying. Six weeks waiting for a green light. Seven hours vomiting. Fourteen minutes experiencing pure joy. Three months doing laundry. Fifteen hours writing your signature. Two days tying shoelaces. Sixty-seven days of heart-break. Five weeks of driving lost. Three days calculating restaurant tips. Fifty-one days deciding what to wear. Nine days pretending you know that is being talked about. Two weeks counting money. Eighteen days staring at the refrigerator. Thirty-four days longing. Six months watching commercials. Four weeks sitting in thought, wondering if there is something better you could be doing with your time. Three years swallowing food. Five days working buttons and zippers. Four minutes wondering what your life would be like if you reshuffled the order of events. In this part of the afterlife, you imagine something analogous to your Earthly life, and the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand.

beautiful & true

and literally breathtaking. Puts into words, how I feel in my parenthood: privileged, fierce and very often lost. but lucky, so lucky.