We're wide awake, the moon and I

A right turn off Shattuck, and cafés and bars and beery, stubbled boys are swallowed up in silence. On either side are close-buttoned houses like sleeping hobbits; I smell rustling trees, unfolding quietly in the dark.

The street rolls under my feet, dreaming of the day's bicycles and cars and dropped keys.

I walk for blocks, checking the address. I should be getting close, but still it's houses and pumpkins on porches and harvest wreaths. I'm not sure I want to get there, I could spend a while here between the sleeping houses, but then I see a pool of light on sidewalk, the sandwich board set out front.

"Here for the Science Review?" asks the waitress.

"I'm here for the band."

They're setting up in the next room, but it's reserved for a collection of beautiful college geeks. I find a place on the fringe, where I can see.

She tests her accordion, a lock of blond hair falling into her face. He tunes his guitar. They play loose and easy. You haven't lived until you hear Princess Yum-Yum sing to a calypso beat and accordion.

The accordionist's brother arrives late in the second set, as the last of the college scientists are wandering out, a last shining look toward the musicians. Brother stretches his legs out under the table and points his iPhone in their direction.

At the mercy of BART schedules, I don't stay long after the show. Back in SF, walking home, I pass a café with people spilling onto the walk. Three hairy white guys are playing hot bluegrass. The one playing harmonica has a washboard hanging from his neck; it sprouts shining cymbals and tiny drums and mysterious noisemakers.

Down South in New Orleans, they sing. The prettiest girls I've ever seen. Did the band in Berkeley sing the same tune? I'm pulled in. They're rocking the place, and I'm in the crowd, stomping and clapping.

It's late before the place closes down, chairs taken in from the sidewalk. I take the long way home, down empty streets.

We're very wide awake, the moon and I.

After the Party

I can hear the footsteps of other guests heading toward their cars. One asks if I'd like a ride. No thanks, I say. Not tonight.

Tonight I want to hear the ocean to my right as I walk along the dark street. My own shoes on the pavement, my breath going in and out. The sound of a small pickup idling at the corner booms out in the silence. It is metallic and outsize, the sound of an entire factory clashing into production.

I turn onto Taraval. Music pushes out from the Riptide. Narrow windows give glances of a tight crowd; boys holding girls hard against them, smokers slouching just out front.

On the bench at the stop is a young kid in a big black cowboy hat. An older man stands guard over a pile of bags and backpacks.

"I'm gonna fill the tub with salt," says the kid.

"You ain't going there," the man says.

"Tsh! Tsh!" the kid shushes.

He stands up and paces back to check the display. He's limping; one heel doesn't reach the ground. "Eight minutes," he says, drawling it out: Aay-it.

The train is full of kids heading out for their Saturday night. They are loud and full and humming with energy. One tall boy wears sneakers with puffy, distended tongues. They look festive, cartoonish.

I get off a stop sooner than I intend, but it works out well. I walk through quieter streets, my head emptying of all the pushing voices.

The host of tonight's party got bad news this week. A tumor. The party had been planned weeks before. My breath stops. Everything at the party stops. He tells us he'll be okay. It's going to be okay. He wrote a song about it, in the key of E. Guitar and accordion and our host singing that he'll be all right, and we all join in for the chorus.

He's going to be okay, he says, but his and his wife's faces are wide open and pale. Their eyes are bright and they smile with their whole tired selves. In the warm of their kitchen, we sing songs and clap out the beat, and one by one we shrug on coats and say goodnight, shining with grace of these people, this moment of being alive.

Thank you Pumpkin

I'm reading in a cafe in the Mission, looking up now and then from my book at the people coming and going. Most of them are young and beautiful - men and women - and they carry an awareness of this, like the sunshine edging in through the open front of the cafe.

A tiny woman enters, delicate-boned, made even smaller by the vicious curve of her spine, curling her completely over like a hook. Her skin is dark brown with large black freckles along her shoulders, the straps of her overalls hanging around her elbows.

A rope of drool hangs from her mouth, catching the light. She holds a brightly colored box of Trix in front of her as she wobbles toward the back of the cafe like a shield, a talisman.

I think about oracles in ancient Greece.

People in the cafe look and not-look as she passes. She disappears behind a corner near the restrooms, and one of the waitresses moves to talk with her. I can hear her speak, but I can't make out the words. Her voice is creaky as a cartoon witch's, words punctuated with a truculent "Aaaaah!"

The waitress disappears into the kitchen, and she fills the space with her voice: "Aaaah. Aaaaah! Aaaaah."

The waitress re-emerges with a plastic cup filled with milk, gaily-colored balls of cereal floating at the top, and a spoon.

"Thank you," scratches out the woman.

Her box of cereal replaced with this cup of baubles, she holds it aloft and retraces her path back through the room. She bumps into a woman as she passes, apologizing, and the woman shrinks away, looking her up and down with unveiled horror before her eyes sheath over with not-seeing.

"Thank you, Pumpkin," calls the hook-shaped woman one more time as she disappears into the hard light of the sun.

Mixed tape

I'm sitting near the back of the bus, a group of college-age kids across the aisle.

"Oh that was a long time ago."

"Did you know that Sheila's dad's car has a tape deck? A tape deck!"

"When was the last time they made cars with tape decks?"

"Come on over and listen to my mix tape!"

They laugh uproariously.

But I'm snapped back in time - one instant on the bus, groceries at my feet - the next I'm the car with my brother. He's wired a CD player to the speakers, but it's delicate. On bumpy roads the CD skips. The technology is still new, and I wonder if they'll ever make them stable enough that cars will some day come with CD players built in.

"Oh, sure," says my brother, his arm resting on the sill of the driver's side window. We listen to Elvis Costello, hurtling through the dark.

My brother and I are escaping. It's New Year's, but we didn't spend Christmas home with family. We're in L.A., or rather, leaving L.A. We've each been on our separate trips this week, but tonight we're both staying at my former boyfriend's mother's house in Topanga Canyon.

The mother is away; it's just former boyfriend (now friend), brother and me. There's nothing but bags of wheat germ in the fridge, so the three of us take off down the other side of the canyon looking for food. We're almost ready to settle for a convenience store burrito when we find a bar that's open. The fifty-something waitress has high blond hair and blue eyeshadow. Bar patrons sing Auld Lang Syne and she brings us a vegetarian pizza. All the vegetables are grown in the garden out back, she says.

It seems to be the best pizza I've ever had.

All this I've told again and again. The pizza and how we learned we'd stumbled into San Fernando Valley when a girl exclaimed, "Oh, miga-aawd!"

But I've never told about the three of us in that mid-century modern house hidden in the trees. About the tall windows and the mirrored wall, reflecting our selves back, perched on three mismatched chairs. My brother with his long legs stretched out in front of him. About the deep quiet surrounding us, how I dream of a movie with this image: three people in a white room, trees outside whispering secrets to one another in the dark.

About the furtive kiss with the former boyfriend when my brother is in another room, the relationship over but our bodies unconcerned.

It's one of those rare moments when we're aware - my brother and I - that we're on the verge of something new. My brother will marry soon, become a father. It's the last time we'll be together like this, and I think we know it.

I'm on the bus on my way home from work, groceries between my feet, and I'm missing my brother sharply. Late night talks after a date. Riding to school with him in the '65 Mustang he'd fixed up, rolling in a cloud of music. Staring in shared terror at the black widow on the wall of his basement room, the red hourglass on her abdomen winking out. An early morning drive home from our brother's wedding, windows rolled down and music blasting to keep us awake. Lying on my stomach in his room, reading lyrics from his album covers.

That last drive in the living dark, music rolling over us, as I lean out the window to breathe in the green of the trees.

Why not

This morning on my way to work, a man crosses my path from right to left. Before I see him, I hear an exaggerated plosion of breath, before even looking I recognize the sound of someone whose link to this world - to sidewalk and streetcar and yapping dogs - is fragile, fraying.

A street crazy, I think.

As he passes in front of me, I see his profile, then the back of his longish gray hair, well-tended and neatly pulled into a black band. He stops, now, just to my left, and throws one hand up, drawing himself onto his toes beneath his hand, balletic, perfectly executed.

He drops his hand and falls back into man walking down the street. And then, again! The hand lifts, the body follows, and now the other hand reaches out and pulls him into an arabesque.

And then it's gone; he's just a guy, walking.

There's nothing in it of that nutzoid tension, that buildup and valving off promised by his exasperated huff. There's a contradiction here, and I remember the other day when I saw a man flinging himself - beautifully - around the J Church tracks as they disappear into the tunnel. I thought street crazy then, too, until I saw the woman filming him, holding the Trolley Dances clipboard.

The dancer of today stops again, again the hand goes up, again that beautiful form, his long body describing an exquisite curve, and he seems to say Why not?

Why not dance?

Bikinis and swimsuits accepted

The eastern half of Dolores Park is still in sunlight, but I'm in shade. There are bodies scattered over the slope, the woman selling empanadas, the man with marijuana chocolates. Two people are rolled into a blanket, a bare foot showing at one end, a hand at the other.

Just downhill from me is a crusty old man in baggy jeans, no shirt. While I watch, he stands up and unbuckles, sliding the pants down over his hips. Saggy old white man in saggy whities. Or former whities, now nearly transparent and the color of old bones. He reaches a hand down the front of them and roots around in there, and I wonder if we'll get the whole show; nudity is all the rage these days, I'm told. But he pulls his hand free and lies face down on the grass, arms out above his head. He looks like someone flung him there.

I stand up and make my way down the hill, toward Valencia. A boy sitting on a stoop nods at me as I pass, then says something I don't hear. I stop and turn. "You have a great smile," he says.

I'm looking for a cafe described by a Litquake volunteer, and almost miss it. I was distracted by the woman talking about how her bullet hole is still sore.

In the back, by the bathroom, is a poster advertising Halloween festivities here. Costumed guests will get two beers for $8. Bikinis, it says, and swimsuits accepted.

It's dark as I walk home past the tennis courts. I can hear the pok pok of ball against racket, see the green of the balls glowing against black sky.

Downpour

Scattered showers were predicted.

It's mid-afternoon, and a sudden crush of rain halloos and stomps and clatters on the roof. The smell of softening earth springs close behind and I lift my head from my stuporous glaze. I gather up raincoat and umbrella and dash for the stairs while co-workers tsk.

Sacramento street is a crashing river, gutters overflowing until the two streams meet in the middle of the road. I leap as broadly as I can, umbrella high, knowing I'll never clear it and not caring, it feels so good to leap, and I laugh, splashing to my shins, the water sucking at my jeans and slurping over and into the tops of my boots, my socks turning squishy and damp.

I skip my way to the park at the top of the hill, to the top of the park, where bulldozers stand, water puddling in the open seats. I can see the city below, snugged into fogbanks.

One other human is at the top of the park among the giant trees. We hold our umbrellas as lightly as helium balloons. Tufts of reddish hair decorate the perimeter of his bald head, and he grins.

Another rain lover, he says. He was visiting a friend in the hospital when he heard the clamor and had to get outside. He's lived here thirty years, but he still misses the thunderstorms in his hometown in Pennsylvania.

We bow to one another and continue on the way. My jeans are wet to my knees, and my boots won't dry for a day, maybe two. I don't care. I can turn up the heater at work, eat soup for dinner.

The rain backs off, tiptoeing away in squishing socks. When I circle back to Sacramento, the rivers are gone, already gone, the street clean and shining in their wake.

Because I need to start somewhere

I'm emptied out, used up, full to the teeth with other people's words. Yesterday was the crashing finale of Litquake, where I helped unleash an army of volunteers on the streets for the crazed high of the Crawl.

No words of my own, though. My own words slink away like criminals. I'm shattered, shaken and spitwadded, and no words, no words.

Someone might see

I'm walking to work behind a young white couple, she with sleek blond hair and cloddish boots, he in hipsterish black, skinny legs in skinny black jeans.

He walks a little closer to her, lifting one big hand to lightly skim her ass, feeling her muscles move her legs forward and back, her hips side to side.

They walk this way for a block and a half, and then she looks left, right, her hair twitching from shoulder to shoulder, and reaches back to brush his hand away.

Midnight

Mr. Billy and I are on the number 6 bus late on a Friday night, heading home after a play. Across from us, in the backward-facing seats, is a man and a woman. They're both wearing headphones.

She is looking out the window at the passing city. Her hair is pulled back in a bun. High, aristocratic eyebrows and composed mouth.

He looks vaguely in front of him. He's tall and loosely strung, large, freckled ears. One giant paw holds his iPod, the other holds his phone, each at the ready. In case. His mouth is open, like he'd been stunned by a bright light.

I'd assumed they were a couple, but as the bus trundles out of downtown and up Haight, I see they never once look at each other. I wonder if they know each other at all, if maybe, complete strangers on the bus, they are feeling the bare contact of thigh against thigh while looking away, denying the flirtation, their bodies exchanging lustful heat entirely against their will.

I look up at Mr. Billy, but when I look back, her head is on his shoulder. A couple, then. Still no words, no change in his expression or hers.

The bus is nearly empty, a lighted capsule in the speeding dark. We've passed the Masonic and Haight stop, where most of the passengers heave themselves from their seats and out to the street; our couple remains.

She's lifted her head from his shoulder and is looking out the window again. Not once have their eyes met, not once has one even tried to look at the other.

Suddenly she gets up from her seat, skirts neatly around the man's long legs, and is waiting near the door, her deep eyelids lowered as she gazes coolly at the floor.

He stays as he is, stunned face, devices held out in front of him like the reins of a horse, until the bus stops, and he's up and out on the sidewalk beside her, the bus rolling on; I'm unable to catch more than a glimmer of her legs beneath her pencil skirt in the dark, and then they're gone.

Fire, averted

Mr. Billy and I are indulging in crepes at our favorite local creperie on Haight. I'm considering making a pig of myself with a dessert crepe (chocolate and salty butter - nothing comes close), when Mr. Billy stands up and heads for the door. The counter girl is next to him, pointing at a black Mercedes parked in front of the shop. Something is leaking at an alarming rate from the back of the car.

Mr. Billy gets closer to investigate. He puts his hand in the stream then stands up. "Yep," he says, "Gasoline." The counter girl and I watch as the gallons pour out onto the street while Mr. Billy disappears into the bathroom to wash his hands.

"We should call the cops," I say. It occurs to all of us at the same time that anyone walking by with a cigarette could touch off a fire, a Very Bad Fire.

The counter girl picks up the phone. "Um, fire?" she says.

"How fast is it leaking?" she asks nobody in particular.

"About a gallon a minute," Mr. Billy says.

Another customer has come in, and he's shaking his head. "Think of how much money is just running out onto the street," he says.

The counter girl hangs up the phone. "They said don't let anyone get near it."

I order a cup of tea while we wait for the firemen. A guy wearing an orange vest with a cigarette hanging from his mouth is sweeping the street. He gets close to the Merc.

"Stay away from that car, it's leaking gas," I say. Three of us point at the stream, still going strong.

He nods and says thanks, and keeps sweeping in the gutter, right up to the car. I realize the cig isn't lit.

"Get away from it now," says Mr. Billy.

"No, I'm okay," the man says, but he moves away.

"Do you see that cigarette butt lying right under the car, ominously?" asks the cook. She had been about to take her smoke break when she noticed the smell.

We look at the butt, at the growing lake of gasoline, running down the gutter to the Ashbury corner. Then we hear a siren.

It's been less than five minutes, and here are the firemen. They inspect the car, ask if the owner is around.

"Nope. She parked and went off."

Two guys open the gas tank cover, while a couple of others pour kitty litter - or something like it - into the gutter.

"Gas cap wasn't screwed on tight."

The fireman tightens down the gas cap, and the leak stops. Just like that. The firemen soak up all the gas, get back in their truck, and disappear.

"The owner of the car - she may never know what happened," I say as we walk toward the bus. I look back down the street where no fire started today, and I take Mr. Billy's hand.

Gumby in lace

The bus is crowded this morning, but there is a loose, benign feeling. People are smiling. The woman whose toes I just avoid smashing holds back her gray hair with a girlish headband.

Rain was forecast today, but the sun shines.

I churn my way to the back, to a seat at last, and bury myself in my book. Near the end of the trip, I'm jolted by the appearance of two long skinny legs in lace tights just in front of me. The woman wears tiny black shorts - almost hot pants - and a vintage houndstooth jacket belted tightly at the waist. I glance up at her face: jewel stud in her sharp nose, lips crisply painted in fuschia.

It's cold this morning. I'm wearing enough layers to feel like the Michelin man, but she doesn't seem to feel it, although I can see her pale skin through the lace.

She's tall and thin as a rubber band - miles between the hem of her shorts and the tops of her boots. I think of Gumby, with his bright cartoon face. I picture again her painted lips and think her hair must be crimson, but I steal another look at her face and see I was wrong: it's brown - maybe auburn - and hanging to her shoulders.

The guy next to me shakes with laughter, his face hidden by his hoodie - the hood of his hoodie - I think, the words rolling around in my head. He's watching a cartoon on his iPhone.

To my left a high school girl tries to tell her friend a story, choking on her own laughter, the words coming out mangled and crushed.

I can't look away from the skinny girl in her lace tights. I compare my own legs in their boots and patterned tights. I'm short, and my legs haven't been that skinny since I was twelve and asked my mother why my calves were changing shape, maybe something was wrong. She smiled and told me I was becoming a woman, and I was terrified and thrilled, lifting my skirt to see the slight curve of my legs in the mirror.

I can see between the girl's legs to the people standing behind her. I slip a glance once more at her face - morning-sharp and vulnerable - and something in me recognizes her.

I step off the bus with her face ringing in my head, her legs and jeweled nose keep pace with me as I walk to the office, the sun disappearing behind gathering clouds.

Shared Sacrifice

I've been a bad blogger lately, an unreliable blogger, an occasional blogger. But that isn't because I've stopped writing.

If you're jonesing for some Chemical goodness, check out the new online journal Shared Sacrifice. I'm not posting there every week, but I hope to be able to contribute on a regular basis. Today I'm hard at work on a new story for the next issue (with a short break for this plug), and you can read more of my work in the current issue and archives.

The journal is an outgrowth of the online radio program of the same name. Worth checking out.

If you'd like to contribute, they're still looking for writers and artists...

Divine nonchalance

I hadn't realized just how many dangers lurked on my morning walk to work, until I started to read the signs along the way...

Hallelujah

Night starts too early and lasts deep into morning, waking up dull and heavy, the dark weighing on my chest. I want to burrow under the covers like my cat, nose first into warmth, the fingers of dreams lacing in and through my waking mind.

I stand in the kitchen staring at an empty pan and wonder at its meaning.

I have an appointment downtown, the city desperately decked in holiday cheer and screaming SALE SALE, bell-ringing Salvationeers and brass bands and shopping bags knocking against knees, shoppers looking nonplussed to find only one bag in hand, last year it was twenty, but even Santa's cinching the belt another notch.

I'm cranky and late and hungry, no time to dodge my way through the crowds to the library, just hope for a train soon and home to lunch.

Down in the Powell Street station a stringy guy in reindeer antlers sings "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" with his guitar case open and he's good, the song pulls at me, but I have a train to catch and deeper in the station now another busker, this one a girl.

She looks unlikely, all pudge and colorless hair, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the station, guitar in her lap, but I get closer and now I can hear her voice, breaking free of the station and soaring up above the street, people are standing where they are to listen. She's singing "Hallelujah" and that's it, that's almost all I can take. I'm going to break into tears right here in the station. She finishes the song and I dig around in my purse to find all the quarters I can to drop in her case. Someone else is whispering his awe to her and she just says thanks and turns the page in her music.

A night later and already it's full dark at five. I'm in a coffee shop before strolling to a party, enough time to work on rewrites and I hear the familiar opening, it's John Cale's version, Hallelujah, and this time I think, yeah. Maybe the universe is speaking. We're on the edge of solstice, the earth turns and - miraculously - the weight shifts. Sun begins to rise a little earlier and hang in the sky a little longer.

Just hold on another week and watch. Hallelujah.



Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah


Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby, I've been here before.
I know this room, I've walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.

I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
But love is not a victory march,
No it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below,
Ah but now you never show it to me, do you?

Remember, yeah when I moved in you,
And the holy dove was moving too,
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above,
All I ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.

But it's not a cry that you hear at night,
It's not somebody who's seen the light
No it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch.
I've told the truth, I didn't come all this way to fool you.

Yeah even though it all went wrong
I'll stand right here before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Weight

On the bus tonight, a young white woman in neat sweats is getting off at my stop. Her hair is in a bun. She stands at the top of the stairs as the light above the door turns green. She bends at the waist, pushing at the doors without treading on the stairs.

She pushes with thumb and finger on the handle, then folds her arm back against her chest, then reaches out to push again. You need to step on the stairs to open the doors, but she doesn't know this, leaning gingerly over the gap to push against the doors one more time.

I make my way around the other passengers, and step heavily on the stair. The doors spring open. The woman launches out and over the stairs without touching them. She lands on one foot, darting up and across the street before the bus can close its doors and release the brakes.

I watch her sprint away, shouldering my bags and lagging by nearly half a block already. She pauses once to look behind her as the bus pulls around the corner, then turns back, her tidy bun gleaming in the dark.

A failure of imagination

The movement of the historical moment beneath my feet has shut me up lately. I chose early on to make this a literary blog, not a political blog, but every time I begin a post, all I can think about is politics. So let me get this out of the way.

I was moved and exhilarated at the election of Barack Obama a few weeks ago. The next day, however, that joy was tempered as it became clear that Proposition 8 was going to pass here in California. This particular issue was deeply personal for me.

I was raised LDS, and I am still officially a member of that church, although I have been inactive for many years. My family and many of my friends are active members in good standing. Watching the church of my birth and my family put so much energy into the passage of this proposition has been painful.

Maybe it is a failure of imagination on my part, but despite my best efforts, I cannot see the compelling reason to strip away the right of gay people to marry.

A comment on a friend's website asked, "Why do they want the word marriage so much?"

This focused it all down to a single point for me. To me the question is, "Why do you want to be married? Why do you want the word marriage?"

"They" are not so different from you. Gay people want the same things straight people want (and have the same wide spectrum of wants as well). Did you grow up dreaming of being married? Did you imagine what your wedding dress would look like? Did you pick out your colors and flowers before you ever met your intended?

Now imagine all of that is true. You are still you, having the same dreams you have always had. And you meet and fall in love with the person you want to spend your life with, the person that all those fantasies centered around. But the person you love is someone the world around you says is someone you can't marry. Maybe there are a large number of churches (though not all) who believe it is a sin for you to love that person.

Does any of that change your wishes? Do you choose to be untrue to yourself and your love, and try to love someone the world approves of?

Do you foist a false marriage on someone you don't love, you can't love, in order to gain the approval of the world? (And what, then, have you done to the innocent other in this false marriage?) In order to obtain full citizenship in your society? Or do you quietly remain single and humbly take what crumbs the adults will allow to fall from the table?

Why is marriage important? Because marriage is the only way we have to choose and build our own family. We are born into a family, or we may be adopted into one, but when we marry someone, each party is freely choosing the other. A marriage makes the person you love legally your kin. No other civil contract can do this.

For those who believe in the words of Jesus Christ, it can be said simply: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

How would you react if a large group of people put vast amounts of money and energy into forbidding you to marry? Whatever else they may say, how loving would that seem to you?

Maybe my imagination has failed if I am unable to place myself in the position of the people who vigorously campaigned to make unlawful the marriages of many of my close friends, but if so, mine is not the only failure.

The ability to truly empathize is, I think, essential in a just society.

And here is where I see the problem of bringing politics in, because I can't end with just one issue. The prop 8 issue hit me close to where I live, but this should hit everyone:

5 at Guantanamo Ordered Released
Five men have been imprisoned and tortured by our government, and thus by all of us, for no reason at all. That we have allowed this to happen tells me that we have so very far to go. That we can, collectively, say that these people "deserved" this - that anyone "deserves" torture and no hope of justice - tells me that we have managed to convince ourselves that they are not people at all.

I'll go back to the way I usually write here. I can't write well or coherently about politics directly, but I hope that, at the bottom of every post, every little encounter I record, someone can see the fundamental reason I write: every human being is an individual with a soul. If your heart can beat for a moment with someone I see on the bus, maybe it can also beat with a man in a cell who has never seen his daughter, with a boy who dreams of being married one day, with a woman who wants to hold the hand of her wife in the hospital.

Update: I want to make absolutely clear that what I am talking about, what Prop 8 was about, is civil marriage. Religions are - and should remain - free to define what marriage means to them. Andrew Sullivan again puts it very well.

President Obama

I am in tears. Soon, I'll be dancing in the street!

I think we've done a good thing.

Indian Summer

So sorry for the long silence! I'm back now and seem to have my feet under me again...

Walking to the main library on an autumn evening, the sun casting long shadows on the ground. I see two men in vigorous conversation, arms waving. As I get closer, I see they're speaking sign language. It is an argument. One man's gestures get larger and faster, like he wants to scoop the whole street into his arms. In sign language, this counts as shouting.

The other man gestures back, quietly. The first man drops his arms to his sides. They look at each other, and the first man opens his arms. The second man steps into his embrace. The sun outlines them as they hold each other, then slowly separate, their hands on each other's shoulders. The first man lifts one hand, touching his fingertips to his chin, then moves the hand out toward the other man.

This means "Thank you."

On the train home later that evening; it's dark outside, but a breath of gentle air washes in when the doors open. A punk gets on the train. Four-inch double mohawk, pierced eyebrow, lip, ears. Studded collar and tattoos covering his arms and neck. Leather wristbands.

He's talking on his cell phone.

"I know, I know. She took it with her, and I don't begrudge her that, you know? It's just, I miss her."

His eyes fill with tears. He looks down at his hands, listening to the voice at the other end.

"I don't want to lose her," he says, his voice going hoarse.

My skirt blows around my legs as the doors open, and I step out into the night.

Why I haven't been blogging

I'm volunteer coordinator for this:



If you're in San Francisco, check it out.