Fuck It I'm 50

I am sorry I didn’t post last night. I knew that might happen, and I even went out first thing yesterday morning and took pictures right outside my front door. I had the good intentions of posting these little shots and then using it as a trigger for writing earlier in the day. But the day became a trickster, a sprite, a joker and a chameleon.

I even rushed back after falling off my bike in front of Safeway and started a post, here it is:

10/24/09

Kindness

Today was a day that snuck up on me and now has slunk away.

I am about to go out to Kathleen’s film…

And that’s as far as I got. I went to the film, I got in a disturbing misunderstanding with one of my closest friends, I reconnected with some old friends after that, one of whom I have some other stuff to work out with, I wished Larnie Happy 54^th at his birthday party, and I got home at around midnight.

See, leaving the desk is full of hazards.

I went to bed last night only to get up in the morning to sit on a panel in the same cavernous room, aka the Clay theater on Fillmore Street, I had celebrated Kathleen’s film in last night. Hence no blog, no pictures, and oddly I have felt guilty all day and had wildly uncomfortable dreams last night, (end of the world turns into being injected/ejected in to parallel universe where either you had the implant or not, those in power did, but they were the bad, boring, lazy, lying, usurious, self satisfied people, and the ones who resisted were the ones with integrity and vision, but had to run a gauntlet of barriers filled with the potential of delivering electric shocks and were being treated like second class citizens even though they, as a class of people, were smarter, more educated and talented and better people all around. I was being forced to make a choice which side to join in this parallel universe, and I was struggling with it mightily in my dream, weighing the pros and cons, when I woke to my swollen knee from my bike accident and knowing I had to go sit on this panel….which side am I on boys, which side am I on?)

Back to yesterday.

We had finally finished lesson planning on the dreaded class that is the thing that sucked up and obliterated yesterday. Simone and I sat at Sugar Lump, our backs hunkered to the door, and other activity of the Café, as we worked on this insane class that is probably paying us about $15 an hour at this point, madly reviewing student work, emailing back and forth as we sit next to one another, and revamping the syllabus. Again. It was good, and I’m glad it’s done, and all of a sudden it was 3:45.

I had been working on this motherfucker since 9am.

And I had been wearing my gym clothes for two days. So even though I was getting picked up to go see Kathleen’s film at the festival at 5:30, I forced myself to bike over to the gym.

Feeling awkward and sweaty I hauled the computer, the textbook and folders to the gym, locked my bike, went in and thought “oh no, this is a stupid idea” just as my phone started to ring. I was searching like mad for my ringing phone, stuck in the foyer of the gym. It was all wrong. I finally found the phone and it was Virginia and we realized that we were not going to see each other on her trip here. It all felt grim and sweaty. I almost packed it in.

But I searched in my bottomless shoulder bag once again and fished out my wallet. Just then this tall, good-looking late 30s something black guy walks in and says “Hi”. I think I may have looked over my shoulder looking for who he was talking to. He addresses me again, “Don’t you remember me from Safeway?” maybe I do, but I don’t think so, and I say as much.

Here’s some great logic at work: now that I have been seen trying to get my shit together to actually go work out, I am compelled go work out.

I start to work out in the weight room and the guy from the front desk is conspicuously near. Sure enough he comes up while I am doing a series of crunches, and tells me I have good form. While I agree with him, I told him he was a flatterer and moved on, not wanting this really to go any further, but recognizing that someone had given me a very nice compliment and feeling good about it. Later on, he ends up asking for my number, I was evasive, kind and left. I needed to leave anyway, but I came away feeling his kindness in giving me a compliment and his flattery. I needed it.

And now I was really running late, but I needed to pick up a few essentials from Safeway. So I zoomed up, locked my bike and flew in. It was only when I went to find my wallet that I realized it wasn’t in the cavernous sack called my shoulder bag.

Last time I had seen it was in the foyer at the gym. I excused myself from the friendly Safeway staff person and ran back to the gym-no one had turned in a wallet at the front desk, I scooted to the locker room and locker 100 where I had stashed my stuff, and it was not there. I searched my dense bag once again, no. I said “Shit” out loud. I was mad. And I also instantly felt bad that I had smeared my bad mood and misfortune across the locker room.

I took a breath and took stock. There was the familiar Latino staff woman talking to the even more familiar older Latina who is at the gym a lot. She must be in her early 60s, and while she is not super buff, her work out is steady and she is in good shape. I have admired her for quite awhile. My blood pressure goes down as I go up to them.

“Have you seen a…”

The older woman who works out a lot brings up her left hand, in which is my funky wallet with my funky punk rock business cards. I am so relieved I call her an angle and envelop her in a hug. She accepts the hug and pulls back and gives me the wallet and wants me to look inside, I say there is no need, but can I give her a cash reward …it all gets a little muddled here with a conversation about what the right thing to do is and how many people don’t’ do it, and how I have in fact have had things stolen in this gym, and again and again what a good person she is, and what an angle she is.

And then I trot-run back up to Safeway to pay for the things I left, and once again have the goodness of people conversation with the woman of mixed race, maybe Italian and South American, maybe Eastern European…I only mention it as I am framing all of these encounters by gender and race, at the check out stand, and then hurriedly back my overstuffed backpack with more items to bike back up the hill to my house just in the nick of time.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I have forgotten to mention that on my first entrance to Safeway I was locking my bike to the bike rack just outside the front doors as I pretty grimy middle aged white guy who looked homeless, and if not homeless close to it, was locking his bike next to mine. I was conscious of halfway holding my breathe as we locked our bikes just in case he was stinky. We finished locking our bikes at the same time and I followed him into Safeway through the EXIT door, feeling cool to follow a rebel who was taking a tiny shortcut through life, and also happy that we wasn’t there to do anything but shop at Safeway, just like any normal person, (I know all of this is shot through with value judgments, but I am not going to editorialize myself right now).

Fast forward to my rushing out of Safeway with my hastily paid for goods while Mr. Homeless exits Safeway at the same time, through the same EXIT door. I am unlocking my bike just before him and jostle his bike and apologize, he graciously says thanks. I notice he has bought a 12 pack of sodas and is now balancing grocery bags of food on his handle bars as I weave my stupidly over laden back rack and shoulder bag out towards the parking lot, assiduously avoiding the legalize pot guy once again.

And then it happens, in all this avoidance and haste I try to mount my ill balanced bike with my ill balanced body and I am suddenly crashing to the ground, my right knee taking the impact.

Ow, ow, ow, shit it hurts. And there is Mr. Homeless, his broad, dirty, callused hand reaching out to help me up. I don’t even notice where his bike is, he is fully there to help me. Along with a young couple who has run up to help. I am so appreciative of the help with my right knee and right singing a little song of sharp shrill pain that I don’t even have time to be embarrassed. For a split second I think, “I can’t touch this man,” and then I am fully and thankfully, taking his hand to get me off the ground and to relive the pain in my knee, knowing I need to walk and bike it off to get up the hill to get ready.

This is all to say that I was really feeling the kindness of others yesterday. And that even thought I am still having a hard time and spending way too much slapping demons away, I am lucky and my life is full.

After the odd panel at the Clay theater this morning I went to a little park in the neighborhood with Laura and Simone, (what is that Yuppie neighborhood called?) and took some nice pictures of a nice park on a nice day. It made me sad that I don’t spend more time like this… an echo of last week?

And Laurie made a lovely meal tonight and I am ready for class tomorrow.

An