slow glowing

some gentle people there

i just got back to portland (home sweet rainy green home) after a long weekend in the san francisco bay area visiting some friends and exploring and having a really lovely time. i took a series of “notes” about the trip and i’d like to share some of them here–and photos, of course!

* the woman in the coffeeshop on saturday night with purple scarf, purple sash around her hat, abundant white hair, huge mole above her upper lip, amazing exuberant aura

* climbing on the crazy dr suess metal structure in ohlone park–i’m up at the top touching the sun and elana tells me that during the fight for people’s park, a whole bunch of people gathered in ohlone park to make it a sort of new people’s park and lit a huge bonfire to keep warm and awake. it got so hot that they were able to bend metal piping and make the structure. i dunno if this is a 100% true story (the internet corroborates on some but not all details) but i like it

* thinking about people’s park and student movements and that a certain sense of “entitlement” for which liberal arts students are so often chastised is probably necessary for real change to occur–if we do not believe ourselves entitled to free happy lives (and a free happy community) why would we fight–or work or play or love if you prefer (i do)–for them?

* two (of probably more) parallels between this trip here and the one i took last january: the labyrinth outside of grace cathedral vs the one made of rocks overlooking the bay; the fake fig tree at ben’s lutheran church on sunday morning vs the “forgiveness and wishing tree” at the venue at which my aunt’s dance company performed a year ago

* the idea (from a placard about indonesian rod puppets in the asian art museum) that a theatrical event cannot be interrupted for fear that the real world, which is paralleled in the theatrical world, would be thrown into chaos, and how something to that effect would make a great “turn off your cell phones” pre-show announcement

* the young gay couple talking about love and sex and sitting on the low wall behind the labyrinth outside grace cathedral after dark while becca and i walked it

* how good it feels to walk so much

* how good it feels to sit in warm places with cups full of warm drink

* bought a book about portland at city lights bookstore

* elana ran into a woman she knows on the bart; the woman said she has lived in the city for 14 or 15 years and has finally reached the point where she runs into people she knows everywhere, “it feels like home now (but now i’ve conquered it and will probably get a teaching job elsewhere and move on)”

* ben’s argentinean relative pedro who’s traveling the states and staying with him right now, who asks us how quickly we make friends in america, is surprised that we only touch hands when we meet new people, tries to translate the spanish word–not “friends”–for two people who are tied together by a rope, only there is no rope

* me and becca in the same space, as she pointed out on the bart to berkeley on sunday night, was more of a high school reunion than our actual five-year reunion this past may, to which a grand total of one member of our graduating class (of 26) showed up

* bizarre sidewalk graffiti, including: “the robots do not respond when prodded for conversation,” “praise the lord and pass the lsd”

* thinking about: nonmonogamy, love as a verb/action and what it entails

* ben’s friend ben, improvising lyrics to pedro’s guitar jamming: “if love was the answer, we wouldn’t be asking all these questions”

* not enough sleep

* albany bulb is really really cool, full of tiny pathways and junk and art and mud; elana and ben and pedro and i lost hours there and walked back as the sun was setting

* spraypainted on some concrete there: “the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love”–no “and be loved in return,” ’cause that is not the greatest thing

* elana says there was a site-specific production of the tempest there a couple years ago, it would be perfect, so weirdly magical and scary and disorienting and beautiful

* missing caltrain by 10 seconds or so (seriously! damn ticket machines), next one not for an hour; my immediate and intense (though short-lived) frustration and anger took me by surprise… taiga drove to pick me up from the millbrae bart station instead

* the chocolatey milk foam rising up in the middle of a circle of whipped cream on top of the hot chocolate that taiga and i drank with long-stemmed spoons in menlo park

* the way our relationships change, friendships become harder and easier

* the sun above the clouds and the almost-empty plane this morning

* waiting for the 75 at the hollywood transit center on my way home from the airport, i watched a man run half a block to help an old woman with an inside-out umbrella turn it right-side-out–then he ran back again

* kepler purring on my chest and that crazy welling-up of things inside me that i feel when i think about “home” in terms of things like kepler purring on my chest