PERFECT FEAR

On land I tease Greta about her obvious perfectionist tendencies and she smiles in recognition, knowing she won’t be giving them up soon; they have served her well.  She is in her late 60’s and still wears body-hugging shifts that stop mid-thigh, with great effect.  One evening I said hello and because she didn’t have her contacts in, didn’t recognize me, and thought that some man was hitting on her.  She is used to getting hit on.   Out of the pool her short blonde hair is combed back and held with a touch of gel. Her jewelry is meant to be noticed, a fat diamond, a hunk of amber nestled on her tanned chest.   Her lipstick is bright red.

In the pool the perfectionism has its counterlife, a fear so strong she was unable to walk across the pool in waist-high water the first day of class. By the end of the fourth class she was putting her face in the water.  But she still couldn’t let go of the wall to float in the shallow.

It is easy to see the perfectionism came as compensation for the fear, but where did the fear come from?  Greta grew up in Minnesota, surrounded by lakes, and her widowed mother kept her away from water.  Bad enough, but not nearly so extreme as the student whose mother used to cut out the headlines about every drowning and show them to her daughter and say, See? That student was jumping into the deep by class six.  Greta also had a traumatic voyage across the Atlantic as a six-year old, her family economic refugees from post-war Germany.

At this stage the whys are, if not irrelevant, a distraction.

She says, viewing other students gliding around in the shallow, “If I could only do that I’d be happy.”

“Feel the water,” I tell her, “how it holds you up.”  She goes into a front float.  Her hands are clenched.  Even her elbows look tense.

“What is the voice in your head telling you to be afraid of” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, not here, not now.  Absolutely nothing.”

She goes into a front float, then stands, “That was better, wasn’t it?” she asks.

“It was perfect.”

SAME AS IT NEVER WAS

For many years I’ve worked Tuesday mornings at Daniel’s garden on Potrero Hill. Farley’s Café just down the hill has been a perfect spot for the midday caffeine fix, with its worn wooden floors and shelves of battered journals that customers fill with doodles and deep thoughts. Many times I’ve gotten a sandwich at Hazel’s Kitchen next door and eaten it at Farley’s.  I always thought it was remarkably generous of Farley to share the space, even providing a tub to collect the little plastic baskets that Hazel uses.

Recently Farley’s got a remodel and has become a factory for the techno-tribe, everyone busily tapping and digitizing, no free table in sight, and none in prospect. The first two times I went in after the remodel I didn’t really notice how radical the change was because, paradoxically, I was discombobulated by the displacement of the service area, now in the middle of counter a straight shot from the entrance, a chute where you feel one of a herd.  I got a coffee and left quickly.

Of course it will never happen to you, that you will turn into a crankypants grousing about the old days with the better music and the better values.  Didn’t you think that?  Well here I am, having gone down that road, and it’s a bumpy one to nowhere so I better enjoy the ride.  Humor me.  Who said they could turn Farley’s into a dead zone?  Farley?  I can’t begin to understand how he makes money off their one decaf nonfat latte per hour. And what if someone spilled something on a keyboard?  Call State Farm?

I know I know I know, I’m spitting into the wind.  Our neighboring hill, Bernal, is turning into the Illyria of the young and lavishly compensated.  What am I saying?  Is turning?  Has turned.  Past perfect.  There are redoubts of Ye Olde Ways but their days are numbered.  But then whose days aren’t.

Somebody’s working on that now, immortality, tap tap tap. And colonizing Mars.  This place is becoming a dump.

Hey there, if you’re reading this on your computer at Farley’s, hi.  I’m the guy right behind you in the black fleece jacket, waiting for a table.

 

CHASING MY TALE

I’m up to Chapter 43 of what is (at least) my seventh total rewrite of the novel I’ve been working on for several years.  There are now 82 chapters.  I keep starting over under the optimistic illusion that one of these times I’ll have enough momentum to barrel through the slippery patches of plot and arrive safely at my destination.  THE END.  The engine whines, the wheels spin, mud flies, I inch forward.  It does not help when helpful friends state the obvious, I should make an outline. IF I HAD AN OUTLINE I WOULDN’T GET STUCK IN THE FIRST PLACE.  No, this is not a case of the characters just taking over.  How often one reads of an author claiming this happened in his/her book.  Mine are more like those of a contrary author (can’t recall who) who said, my characters just want to sit on the couch and eat potato chips.  (Sorry beloved folk of my novel, you’re not that bad but still.)  Then there is the author who says, the story just wrote itself.  There should be some kind of punishment for that.

It’s not hopeless.  It’s getting closer, that thing wriggling just beyond my canines.

Not Hallucinating

I hear rain on the roof.  Not a minute too soon, lest faithful readers question my grasp on reality, given Faro’s latest (http://www.themonthly.com).  For the record: it was written in December.  I see in today’s paper the first quarter of 2013 has been the driest in recorded history.

O western wind, when wilt thou blow?
That the small rain down can rain?

FORGETFUL NATURE

It’s forgotten how to rain again.  It’s time for the shamans to climb the hills and rouse the drowsy rain goddesses.

WHAT I REMEMBER

It was beginning to sprinkle.  For 6 weeks I’ve been longing for rain and there I was grousing about getting wet.  Matthew and I had found a perfect perch on the Embarcadero, or what would have been perfect if the wind wasn’t so chilly, to witness the inauguration of the LED light show on the Bay Bridge, a $12 million artwork.  Hmm, better be good.

The sprinkles became real rain just like that.  A downpour. Were Matthew and I the only ones who thought a little ironic that the show was late getting started? Turn on the switch, Siri.

The lights finally came on.  Five minutes later we, part of a damp herd, headed to the bus stop.  The 14 Mission.  The electronic sign promised arrivals in  7 & 17 minutes.  Could be worse.

Succeeding alterations of the sign: 7&13.  7&17.  7&12. 6&9.  6&7. 3&7.  3&4. 1&3. 1&2.  1&2.  1&2.  ARRIVING & 2.  ARRIVING &1.  ARRIVING &1.  (No bus.) 9&10.  9&10.

When a bus at last came, the driver waved us off, saying he’s “ going only as far as 5^th Street.”  “That’s 5 blocks,” Matthew cried incredulously.

In the Times this week there was an article about a device that tracks your eyes and scrolls a page automatically, and another invention that allows you to change screens with the wave of a hand.  Do you sometimes wonder if this is the best exercise of creative ingenuity?  Personally I would applaud someone who could figure out why it’s impossible to space buses every 10 minutes on Mission Street.  Is it because people actually use this bus?  Somewhat ungentrified people but people nonetheless.

Never mind.  I have a good idea: have the fleet who write traffic tickets take over the bus operation, and vice-versa.  Every bus would be on time to the minute and the city’s economy would teeter on collapse.

A bus eventually came. It made its herky-jerky way out Mission Street.

“Another memorable occasion,” Matthew said.

NEXT WEEK AT GRANDMA’S

“On Tuesday we’ll be going to Grandma’s and you’ll get to stay with her for a whole week and won’t that be fun,” the young dad on Church Street said and it was easy to guess who it would be more fun for.  He spoke in the fake-child voice that people use with their five-year olds or their deaf pets. His little girl was whining about something. I’d seen the flipside of this tableau moments earlier on my street; one of the handsome dads pulling his little daughter on a four-wheeled scooter, the smile on his face the product of a goofy joy.  Their verbal exchange seemed no less at dual purposes, but that was its charm, that it would not be tarnished by an agenda or a power play.

My morning had an agenda: Art experience.   To be at the de Young by 10:45 to meet E for a viewing of Dutch masters.  Come see my etchings.

Walking, walking, on the sunny side of the street.  Oh Sunday morning feeling on a Saturday; what could be better, most everybody but the daddies indoors, maybe sleeping in.  Humdrum has lost its electorate. Not that I’m a misanthrope, please understand but in this ethereal, art-sensitive orbit, human association is an asteroid that causes dangerous wobble, creating disharmony in the spheres, a hurtling object which might even crash into you, as the Medusa in the jeep did turning left onto Cesar Chavez.  People do it all the time, make that anticipatory turn, but then they stop and let the biped in the crosswalk cross, but not her; she barreled through and I had to dodge the feral bumper.  I was so startled that the extremely dirty look I would have given her was only a smudge of what it might have been, but she wasn’t looking at me anyway.  She stared ahead, if not Medusa, one of her stone-faced victims.

The J-Church was 14 minutes from arriving, which meant I could have walked all the way to Dolores Park, but I didn’t, I waited at 24^th, contemplating the pigeon-splattered awning of Happy Donuts wondering wherein arises the essential happiness of the donut.  Is it its circularity, or it inner hollowness? There was a guy on the corner, talking to himself in what has become the new normal.  Girl with Peal Earring, meet Man with Blue Tooth.  Huh?   Given how lousy my hearing is, it says something that I easily could follow his side of the conversation which, appropriately, was about dental matters, cavities, amalgams, drilling. “Unbelievable,” was the word he hung in every third pause like tinsel.  The streetcar’s arrival was not a signal to cut off the conversation, which had evolved into a discussion of cigarettes at 99 cents a pack in the carton, and the chairs he’d sell to his auditor at the price he got them originally.  He was not out to make money.  Next week, I said to him as he yakked his way past me onto the streetcar, you’re going to Grandma’s.  He didn’t hear me.

The wait for the N-Judah (12 minutes) provided the second Art experience of the journey.  (Dad pulling scooter was number one.)  Here on the corner of Duboce, embedded into the sidewalk and spraypainted a dull gold are 5 chairs of distinctive personalities, each knowable by the glutei maximi.  I lift my metaphorical glass to the witty artist.  In a city where so many bed outdoors, why not a comfortable chair or two?  I noticed that nobody else availed themselves of these comforts, preferring the meager slab at the bus shelter. The guy pushing the grocery cart behind my throne was not talking on a Blue Tooth.  His monologue unraveled in a respectful, indecipherable mumble.  The cart cut a wide swath of stale beer smell through the air.

People looked at me, a bit suspiciously.  If I am sitting in this chair, am I an Art experience?  I thought so.  #3.

All I needed was a donut and I could have died happy on that chair, waiting for the N-Judah.