A little ramble for the rumble

Putting together now the pieces of a recent move, I’m thinking about significance and what constitutes a journal and a blog, and where do the routes meet and diverge, and why? You don’t need me to write about politics, yet I can say that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco has a lot of work to do to fight with the mandate of what we all have desired a voice for – change; however, if change does not come then it’s our responsibility to declare the honeymoon over and to start cracking even our Democratic Party’s skulls. You don’t need me to discuss the idea of Quality, an all-too-Pirsig-esque notion, yet a notion which continues to articulate itself from every nook of my surroundings on every part of the globe, never mind the fact that it’s not the best conversation starter on biergarten nights in Munich though talk inevitably arrives at the idea of quality when deciding where the best ribs are and how the lighting best makes our faces glow to the people across the table. But I digress.

I was part of the exclamation point on Ocean Beach a few weeks ago and I didn’t even know if I wanted the dude impeached, but it also had to do with walking a few weeks prior in Toronto for the 2006 Gulu Walk and standing up (and walking) for the need to understand Africa even a little better, a continent which continues to baffle and entrance me. If this is the year of change in this country… after so many years of sad reluctance of the unchangeable political heads screwing this country in its solitary place, and thus causing a massive shaking of heads, then of fists… we need to be less passive in our actions, but more importantly we must be less passive with our knowledge and with how we gather information to support that knowledge.

Informed awareness. Another good word(s) for 2007.

Drifts of Perspective and a word

The sun shines pretty hard these days as it works to fight off the cold that has gripped the Pacific Coast. Cold always wins, and all heat fleets, thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. I took a drive up to Ashland Oregon on the weekend to visit some good friends and meet new ones at a coastal house with a hot tub on a bluff, a journey that was decided upon one minute and began the next minute. Two cars left at the same time from two different states, planning to meet at a bar on a Christmas-lit street in the middle, in Ashland, sometime after midnight (Q: At what speed was car A moving?). Turned out it was a ridiculously quick drive in the end, which makes this entire country seem smaller and distances between friends far less, thank goodness for that. But we did hit snow in the high passes, a fact that brought out the SHIT HOLY SHIT YES's from my co-pilot the snowboarder, and instilled slight fear in me because the roads rode like mashed potato beds and the sky filled with shooting stars of white aimed directly at our windshield. Yes, snow certainly is exciting.

It will be a long December. There is much to say at the end of this year that I will never post in a blog, though my mind swells with thoughts and realizations, explanations and words that rise and fall like the wind or the tides. Only with action will better words come that move forward and take all the good of the worst of life into an unknown future. I'm thankful this thanksgiving for an 83 year old father who hears his son coughing from a few late nights in a row and silently lays a shot glass of schnapps next to the laptop, "for the cough." I'm thankful for friends and family who love me no matter how much I screw up and continually tell them about it. I'm thankful for perspective and the knowledge that it won't be the last time I screw things up, but also for the lessons that keep me from making the same mistake again. And I am thankful for hope and love which are all that stand once those words of emotion ebb and flow. I know hope and love in my heart, and no matter what the future holds I will have nothing else but that regarding her. Lots to say. Lots to be thankful for today.

I hope that December and 2007 to follow bring one thing to all of us - community - including but not limited to the neighborhood/political variety, more the wide variety of people that surround you in some form, in multiple forms. What else is there when you break down your joys and sorrows, and who is it that you most want to share these with? What keeps you from being alone whether you want it or not? What keeps you from destroying yourself? What is renewable, and what swells and shrinks yet is always there in some form? When you land somewhere on a lonely patch, what is the first thing you search for, and which searches for you? And if you were to comment on this and leave a one word answer, I know there would be about 100 funny and intriguing words, and only a few of them would be community. So go ahead, post 'em. (Yes, even you, Neil).

But for now, here's to our individual communities, and may you each be enriched and emboldened by the mere fact that people love and support you without having to tell you nor you asking for it.

Seriously...

Been too long a while since I blogged it up, but the treehouse is being remodeled inside and out.

I understand that there are serious and highly important issues to choose to write about, and with just some minimal thought and attention to the morning paper, your favorite under-the-radar information service, or your own inquisitive mind one can’t help but be stirred to act upon or at least write on one of the many pertinent, sad, hilarious, horrific, passionate, significant, triumphant occurrences of today and yesterday, with the hope to put another voice out there for the readers of tomorrow. Yet… I have to say that Tide with Febreze is a fantastic detergent.

As is Persil! But you can only get Persil in Europe, or maybe just Germany. And knowing how even the pungent odor of mildew reminds me of a few of my happiest childhood memories in rural northern California, there’s something to be said for this. My clothes offered up the most pleasant smell to any room after they were bathed in Persil, the green liquid kind, offering a smell that gently permeated the air around my clothing, even (EVEN!) when my shirts were tucked away in a drawer in Toronto a few weeks later! That’s some good pungent-ness. And while I couldn’t get Persil in Toronto, I found Tide with Febreze to be the next best thing, and my clothes made the apartment, the elevator, and even the TTC subway cars reek with clean. So now that I am back in San Francisco I have a problem, and I think it’s found in the dryer. My clothes, though washed with Tide with Febreze, continually smell like a clothes dryer motor, the same scent they always had when I lived in San Francisco, using the same clothes dryer. After the heat turns cool, the Tide with Febreze has been, well, erased.

We use scent to contact our memories. I remember smelling the blanket that Dorothy laid on the first night she came over to my place in 2002 to watch a movies, and it had her lovely scented perfume on it when she left, subtle but ever-present. The next evening a good friend came to spend the night and I purposely hid that blanket from his patchouli-laden body, but even the hiding place was eventually infiltrated with this hippie oil effervescence, yet I hoarded that Dorothy-scent for as long as it could last, until it seemed to be gone, though it would definitely not be the last time I would have her over.

But now, the Tide with Febreze is another scent with an attached memory, and I have been robbed of it by the motor of an ancient clothes dryer. For to have that simple smell around me over the course of a day makes me happy, in the car, in a room, just below my nose and chin, whenever I need it. It just feels like it fades faster than it should, and the dryer is the thief.

Flavor, scent, color, harmony and texture. Thankfully, the senses shoot an unfiltered direct line to the memory when it comes to importance and significance. And thankfully, there is nothing we can do about it.