Monday, October 27, 2003

Might as well kiss the essay off at this point.

I pulled another double shift this weekend, to my utter joy. This would be good, if I didn't pull it on the day before my last shift of the week, therefore getting my last shift on, and getting a grand smacking one hour overtime for working sixteen hours. Wait, that's seventeen, since I got to work one hour twice due to Daylight Savings Time.
I do worry if I really will have enough money for this move. The U-Haul rental alone will run me 800 smackers. But at this point, I'm totally commited. I gave my work three weeks notice, and I submitted my thirty-day notice at the management company that owns my apartment. So whatever the case, I've put the tuchis right over the bunsen burner, and either I run or I get out the kosher marshmellows.

Monday, October 20, 2003

I had an old friend from San Bernardino call me yesterday afternoon. She was telling me she was trying to decide how to describe me to her friends who don't know me. She usually fell back on "That gay Jew from Texas." (In the Inland Empire, many don't know my name, but apparently when they are told, "He's that gay Jew from Texas," they know exactly who I am. I am a quasi-legend in my own time.) But now she told someone that "He's that gay Jew from Texas who is moving to Washington state to live in with a commune full of pagans." And that someone replied, "You have to be kidding me."
Such a life. Such a life.

Keep watching this space for the essay.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Oh yeah. I am going to post the start of my blog essay soon. I swear. Really. May I die and be reborn as a slug, or a ultraconservative Republican, or some other lower lifeform.

"Be the master of your will, and the slave of your conscience." - Hasidic Saying
A strange and miraculous day, indeed. Firstly, or lastly actually, my relief officer not only showed up for her Saturday night shift for the first time in three weeks, but she showed up ON TIME. I think that beats the whole bread and fishes miracle hands down. Secondly, I had the most fascinating unconventional with some kid who was high on some hallucinogenic when he mooched a cigarette off me. I saw his leg bend in ways not meant by the master anatomical plan. Now, the third strange and miraculous experience is a longer story, and cost me 18 dollars.
I was out at the side of the building I so diligently guard over, having a slow cigarette break, watching the pedestrian traffic filter through the alley walkway from Market to Mission. A short and clean man, dressed reasonably well, stood there as I sighed about taking my last cigarette from a pack. I thought he like countless others, had wanted to bum a smoke off me, but instead he offered to go to the store and buy me a pack. Being the terminally nice guy I am, I politely turned him down. I held up a marble wall as he came closer and began conversing with me about the cynical and rude tendencies found in San Francisco denizens. I agreed, since many Bay Area folk spend much time trying to cultivate a jaded urbaneness. Then he asked me if he could take me into his confidence, being as he had picked me especially for how much nicer and open than the others he had propositioned conversation from.
Thus began what was either a dramatic trip into this fellow's personal reality, or a total Snow Job. Or a combo of both. Or it could have been true. I lean toward the middle choice, with willingness to mull the possibility of the last choice. Have to admit, he really was dressed well. Decent black leather shoes, a fresh sweater, and little diamond (or cubic zirconia for all I know) studs in his ears. But his skin was like leather that had been wet and left in the sun too long, and he was missing every other tooth. He set down his Starbucks coffee and Williams-Sonoma shopping bag and held up the marble wall with me.
He told me he was.. Ah, sorry, if I write publicly who he is, the deal he offered would be off.. He was the son of someone somewhat famous, and had spent years wandering the country giving away the billions he inherited from his grandfather. His grandfather owned a chunk of real estate on the Las Vegas Strip, and learning that somehow segued into a talk about what property owned in Las Vegas. Then he got all emotional.. and kept saying stuff like "the last time we talked" or "did I ever tell you this story?" And we'd never talked before, and he'd seen me around but hell if I remember this snaggle-toothed mystery philanthropist before. Then he had said that if creative and compassionate people are consider crazy in this society, he was just about the craziest person out there.
I humored him, because truth or not, it was getting interesting to just hear him weave this narrative foreshadowing some enigmatic offer. He asked if I was open-minded. That I am. Selectively gullible is what I should have said. I knew I was most likely being conned, but we weaved his tale with drama and detail that kept me wanting more. He had been in four major accidents in his life, which put him in comas that totaled four years of his life. He had worked in Vegas with Frank Sinatra Jr. He had only been in San Francisco for seven years. And he kept qualifying each thing he said with, "Should I go on?"
Then came the hook. Although he had given away so much money to charity, he wanted to make good things happen to good people. And he was quite convinced I was good people. If I did him a favor, he would do good that would make my dreams come true. Ten million bucks would be given to me in a cashier's check from Chase Manhattan Bank if I did him this one favor, something that was a test to check the resoluteness of my open compassion.
And that was that he needed sixteen dollars. I started out giving him eight. I told him the truth, that I was probably getting conned here, but meeting him was worth losing money over. He got a bit indignant. He wasn't saying all this from his heart for my amusement. I told him another truth. I was ready to lose money for the experience of meeting him, and writing about him. Long as I didn't mention his name, of course.
I ended up giving eighteen dollars. Everything in my wallet, minus a dollar. He sang me a song he had written. He really did have a great voice. He asked me if I had ever been to Miami. I told him for Passover, many many years ago. Then it became Jew to Jew time. I was doing him a Mitzvah. And as I finally walked away, because I had to get back to work, he sang me off with "Havah Negilah."
So, I'm out eighteen dollars, but I had one last seminal San Francisco experience. But hell.. maybe he will show up on Wednesday and pay me back my eighteen dollars. Plus ten million more. You really do never know.

Friday, October 17, 2003

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
- H.L. Mencken

I've been toiling at this damn essay to respond to the recall and its ramifications on my personal political beliefs since two days after Arnold of the Many White Teeth was elected by a considerable majority. I have come to the conclusion that there in no way on Odin's Green Midgard, that I will be able to finish it in one entry. So, I will be entering portions as I sculpt my words, and then when I am done, I will probably assemble it into one document that I will polish into a full essay.

I've set the date for my move, I am a half week and one month away. I feel ideas and attitudes that I have bundled away in fear of losing my paternal patronage emerging and I haven't even left town yet. Half my books are gone, with a small percentage sold to stores and to a good friend, and the rest now have a good home at the Haight branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Strange days are coming. As Jim the Elder said, quoting the old Chinese curse(blessing,) "May you live in interesting times."

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

The morning after. I would have written my comments on the recall election last night, but after I saw the results, I had a great desire to get greatly drunk. The voice of the people have spoken, and that voice has said, "How much worse could an unexperienced actor screw this state up than a passionless moneygrubber?" When I thought of the answer to that, I poured myself the first drink. Camejo didn't even break 3 % on a ticket where Gary Coleman came in sixth. Another score of Alan's General Theory of History. Least the voters shot down both the no racial data and the infrastructure propsitions. But it's little comfort when I see Arnold's smile. He's probably spent more on those teeth, than some families in this state spent on a half-year's food budget. If anything is good enough to make an Anarchist out of me, it's this one, for sure. Great, now I want to get drunk again. I'll just take a shower.

Monday, October 06, 2003

Surreal but somehow silent weekend. First, I attributed it to a sense of citywide sense of melancholy on Saturday, maybe caused by pre-recall election media saturation burnout in a city soaked in politics, the failure of the local golden boys of baseball to deliver playoff victory, or simply climatic shock as this two season town shifts from Not-Winter to Somewhat-Like-Winter. Added in were these unsympathetic vibrations that hum away from the downtown buildings on weekends, like a rendering plant waiting for livestock to pour out the chutes on Monday morning. Yet, I wondered if it was more that my inner harmonics were more attuned than usual. Was I mistaking outward moroseness for a growing inner quietude? The one month mark for the move to Seattle is nearly upon me and I'm experiencing the expected doubt, which will only grow and creep around inside my skull. Somehow, I'm holding out against the doubt with the mantra that if I'm a total idiot for what I am about to do, least I am a total idiot, doing what I am about to do, of my own free will. I believe, because I hope. I know this hope well. It's the hope that keep me sane.. well, saner.. when my schoolbooks would vanish from my locker and end up under temporary buildings, when I spent whole classes under aerial barrage of erasers and paperwads, when nothing I did seemed to work out right. And I thought, as a Jew, boy, do I understand hope. That is when I checked the calendar and I realized that Sunday sunset marked the opening of Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. When a Jew goes before God and clear the books before the universe, at least for one more year. You know, I've come to believe that syncronicity is the punishment we pay for quixotic crimes against the Self. So tomorrow, after I drop off my uniform for dry cleaning, I'm heading somewhere green to clear the books. I think the true legacy of Judaism for me is I far as I run away from the ritual, I still value the meaning. I still need the meaning.
"Tragedy is if I cut my finger. Comedy is if you walk into an open manhole and die." - Mel Brooks

Saturday, October 04, 2003

I'm really a lousy security guard... Oops, I mean a lousy security officer. Tonight, some homeless guy with apparent mental issues starting rifling through the restaurant trash bins in front of the building's loading dock. Policy says I should so whatever I can to stop him and get him to remove himself from the premises. I asked him once, and in the end I even gave him a dollar. He was just a hungry man looking for scraps to eat. And he did the one thing I asked him to do, not to make a mess. Jim the Younger would tell me that I am a wuss. It's probably true. The worst thing must be that I don't feel too bad about, just generally mystified. I'd like to think it's compassion, and start preening myself about how good a person I am. But, it's what the Dalai Lama would call "relative compassion," compassion rooted in negative sources. Guilt, in my case. I understand I've led a selfish life. I've taken a lot from this world, but I've given back very little. The only comfort is I have a lot of company. But then, to choose to seek even relative compassion, or so the Dalai Lama says, if the first step. We all start out from the self. Or I could just be a really big wuss. Feh.

Friday, October 03, 2003

4 days to the special California recall election. Arnold Schwarzenegger is acting like he's already won it. The polls contradict each other, and say one one clear thing, that no-one knows how this will turn out. Personally, even though I am voting No on the Recall, and Yes for the Green Party's candidate, Peter Camejo, I'm pretty sure it will end up with Davis recalled and the no-experience Austrian bodybuilder in Sacramento. That would be the damn silliest thing that could happen, and little so far has contradicted my basic theory of history, that being when humans are faced with choices that may change history, they pick the damn silliest thing. Still, I hope that I will be disappointed and this will all end with the Republicans blowing a crapload of money on a total political washout. It will come down much to the suburban vote, and the average suburbanite seems to be afraid of anything that rocks the boat. In the October 13th In These Times an article explores a recent psychological study, that finds conservative voters are motivated to believe in anything that will reduce fear and anxiety of a changing world. But then, I believe that politics in general is humans trying to get other humans to make them feel less afraid. Democrats vote for wishywashy centrist candidates because they they fear voting more radical will help keep Republicans in power. Progressives vote because they are afraid that the two major parties will just keep screwing up. And just about everyone is afraid of the Anarchists.
Meshuggeneh Velt. Crazy World.
Then again I'm voting for a guy who doesn't have a chance, because I fear not voting with my conscience.
On Monday, I'm going to load up the big red metal shopping cart that Jim the Elder gave me with novels (after calling to make sure the store is buying) and sell as many of them as I can to the speciality bookstore where I shop. I know there a lot of things I could be doing first to contribute to the move, but I think this one is important to reinforce my commitment not just to the physical move, but the emotional and spiritual ramifications of the move.

Thursday, October 02, 2003

This week has proven more productive than the last one. But, I still have two weeks until my last month before the move begins, and then my dramatic stress cycle will kick in. I am nothing if not a creature of cyclical neurosis. But if that's what it takes to get my tush in motion, so be it.

I was reflecting at work. I seem to reflect a lot at work, since a trained chimp could do my work, but the chimp would be higher maintenance. I perceived truth in the command given by these three words: Rinse. Lather. Repeat.