intellectual properties

carpe amor

everybody wants to know “the secret”.

but i don’t believe in unconditional anything and really all i can say is that if there is a secret on my part it’s that i don’t believe in tomorrow.

happy 14th anniversary to the one who puts up with this.  <3

water dragon so far

1.  it was cold and foggy today at 9:00am, and so few people out. my bike commute is so familiar to me now i have to remind myself to watch where i am going. ah, yes, more bicycle analogies for life.

2. today, i finished the kind-of-secret thing that has been consuming me. at the last minute, due to technical difficulties, it was printed and sealed and addressed and packaged and dropped in the box for overnight delivery. it’s due tomorrow. so i think? i can come out of my intellectual hole now. if i’ve somehow flaked on any of you…sorry. lmk. we’ll catch up.

so yes!  the biggest deadline i’ve faced in years has come and gone. i did what i could. i will try not to stress now over the next month+ until i hear back.

3. we got burning man tix in the lottery!

4. it’s also not dark at 5:00 anymore. much better. like.

so—end of January! yay!

happy year of the WATER DRAGON!  i’m a fire dragon, and so if you believe in chinese astrology, this should not be one of my luckiest years, as fire is opposite water. but i don’t really believe in astrology, and so far? i’d say yes. lucky.

You know her life was saved by rock and roll

things have been….interesting.

here is my bitch list:

–rainy season has begun. as a bike commuter, this makes my days way less fun.

–it took 9 days to get my smartphone replaced after NYE (long boring customer service story) and the new one keeps doing all kinds of weird things that i hate

–my fitbit broke. again. there is a warranty but i might as well upgrade.  so far fitbit is costing me $99/a year in replacement costs, but i’m addicted to it so i still recommend it.

–work things i can’t talk about publicly are at maximum stress

–life thing with a deadline i haven’t finished is suffering major procrastination and mind-blankage and ∴ stress

–stress is causing unfavorable physical conditions

–blahblahblah whole foods parking lot

don’t get me wrong. my life is wonderful and full of wonderful things, like redwood hikes and purring cats and good wine and yoga and amazing love.  that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. but yeah, #1stworldproblems and i do try to keep perspective but i can’t even tell what news isn’t real any more so it’s pretty hard.

ANYWAY, i was driving to work this morning cuz it’s raining and it’s friday and at home i’d been listening to this great DJ The Count on KALX who reminds me a lot of my friend Finnius and plays David Bowie but whatever he was playing when i first got in the car  was a bit too something for the rainy I-80 east moment and so i switched it over to  107.7, as um….7 times out of 10? they are playing some some rock and roll i really like. (I HATE VAN HALEN, ALL FORMS.) i didn’t know the song playing but it jammed on for 2 or 3 minutes (of my 7 minute drive) and i got really into it, and started thinking about how much better i suddenly felt.  like, rock and roll in the morning really does make me feel so much better. A LOT. AURAL MEDICINE.  and then i was like this is GOOD and seems like something i should know.  what song is this? and then the vocals kicked in and i realized it was Working Man (Rush, 1974, definitive). (i used to hate Rush almost as much as Van Halen but i’ve come around.) do they play that every Friday morning? because they should.

snippets

i finally opened my suitcase last night, filled with a mix of sandy bathing suits and smokey winter layers, because i figured i should find my own toothbrush and stop using jay’s. it was thursday. january 5th. taking bets on how long all that laundry sits there. this morning i also took a full shower with all the soaps and stuff for the first time this year.  and after i toweled off  i noticed that my skin was DRY.  like, it looks like i’m molting dry.  this is why i don’t like to shower unless necessary.  it’s not good for the hair and skin.

.::.

later i had a long chat with an old dear friend, and then took a walk through these slanted january sunrays. as i walked and thought of him i imagined having the power to conjure a certain subset of dearly beloved humans to appear around a campfire late one warm summer night with bottles of whiskey and wine, where slowly they would recognize their reflections in one another and melt like pools of multicolored wax into eachothers lives, and i would sit and bask in the warm glow of unbelievable good fortune and love.

2011 was / 2012 is

it’s hard for me to even think back so far as last january, as 2011 was a long year full of movement.  as much as the foundation of my external life stays the same (same city same job same LTR), internally it feels like constant change. i do not stay idle for long; i cannot bide time.

i am currently too exhausted, sitting here in JFK waiting for my flight back to SFO, to put that more precisely into words. it’s the 2nd day of 2012 and i’ve been up at dawn for both. i’m sleepless, restless, eager to see the world turn.

january 2011 started out a little rough when i declared unemployment but kept my job (complicated). however, once accepting this i felt opened up to other opportunities. i began seeking.

jay and i celebrated our 13 year anniversary on feb 1. then we unexpectedly lost our cat Piggles on Feb 7 which sent us into a bit of a depression for a few weeks.  i did lov3sick 4 on valentine’s day, heartbroken.

march was full of a lot of rain and movies and introspection. i went to michigan to visit my family.

april brought spring, and in may we enjoyed some wonderful weddings and started warming up for summer. global politics got heavy. they weighed.

in june we spent a few days floating on a houseboat in the sacramento delta @Ephemerisle and that marked the official beginning of the Summer of Doing Everything I Want To. plus i was reading The Dice Man and was easily influenced to start daylighting my minority selves.

july got off to its usual start with the 6th annual Priceless, and then in late July i headed to NYC for a 10 day whirlwind of hot yes.

august – camping + phish in tahoe, and then burning man for the 7th time.  the last time?

september – #occupy hit the streets and i was at once excited and overwhelmed. my brain was swamped. confliction, evaluation, determining where you stand and the slightly uncomfortable realization that we are not all on the same page, even amongst ourselves. more reading on subjects that i know little about than i have done since college.

october – i turned 35 and mom came to visit. slightly disconcerting wrt feelings of arrested development. what’s next? #occupy continued, things at OccupyOakland got tense as hell, and i read more email in one month than i think i ever have.

november – 3 weeks of sobriety, blogging every day for NaBloPoMo (lots of great QOTDs and a guestpost on Offbeat Home), and then the holidays began.

december – SFO to NYC to Puerto Rico and back. i surfed and swam and danced and explored. we rang in NYE in rock star style and ended the year exhausted with possibilities.

.::.

i’m sure i’m forgetting things, but in short: i did not work very much. i rode my bike a lot of miles.  i did a lot of yoga. i got my chronic pain under control but in the process became a gym rat. i wandered a lot of streets and a lot of trails.  i loved a lot of people and felt loved.  i drank a lot of coffee and wine and champagne. i didn’t dance enough. i did not write enough but also learned that maybe i do not want to “be a writer” — i just write. i slept a lot sometimes and not nearly enough at others. i asked a lot of questions. i got some answers, but usually just more questions. i hoped and dreamed and ached and while this world is full of signs i wished for many more.

i desired austerity, focus and grace for 2011.  i got the austerity. i don’t think i achieved focus or grace. in fact, i think i lost them completely.

.::.

so, 2012. where are we? who are we? where are we going?

i honestly have no idea.

BQN-JFK (december vacation part 2)/end of 2011

(…cont.)

Wednesday, my last full day in PR, in the morning Reagan and i went horseback riding on the beach, where i learned i’m not as scared of horses as i thought it was. in fact, i’d maybe like to learn to ride one FAST.

after lunch, we went back down to the beach and went surfing. i was not nearly as successful as the first time (trying too hard then, i suppose) and tired myself out quite a bit paddling, falling, paddling, falling. the waves started to get bigger and one came up and reagan said watch out this one’s breaking! but it turned out that i was at just the right spot and it just lifted me up and off i went. as soon as i realized i’d caught it/it caught me, i stood up. woo! after that, my shoulder was really starting to hurt from all the paddling and so i called it a day. later we went back to the beach again and watched the sunset and had some last evening cocktails.

Thursday morning we got up early and went to have 8am breakfast at this charming english B&B on top of a hill overlooking the ocean before i had to go to the airport. it was really gorgeous, but i was *so exhausted* i could barely think. this doesn’t happen to me much – usually once i’m up i’m up, even if i haven’t slept, but i just couldn’t wake up for a couple of hours. so tired from all the frolicking in the sun the day before.

then off to the airport, but by then i was awake and no sleep on the plane. jay, who had been in NY since Tuesday, was so sweet and came to meet me at JFK. we got back to brooklyn late afternoon, settled ourselves, and then met up with peoples for dinner at a delicious veg restaurant Angelica Kitchen (where the waiter recognized me as he also works at another vegan restaurant i’d been to last week. tour de vegan restaurants NYC!) and then drinks and then late night endless bantering until 3am and finally crashed.

i tried to sleep in Friday but it didn’t work and i was up first at 8 and then at 10. Jay, Chris and I got up, had breakfast, and headed to the New Museum, which was underwhelming. i love participatory art, but the place was jammed, being a Friday and a holiday weekend, and so we weren’t able to really do all the things in the time we had. but even if we could….some of the things were broken/not available, and some were just…..? i don’t find tunnels made out of blank white styrofoam very impressive conceptually or aesthetically. i think Burning Man has ruined me ever enjoying that kind of art in such a sterile environment ever again.  don’t touch! stand in line! sign this waiver! oh and it doesn’t *really* work! anyway, there was also an exhibit about conflicts surrounding censorship of Lebanese art that was much more interesting.

after the museum, Chris took off and Wiley joined us for happy hour, and then we headed up to Central Park to go ice skating. upon arrival, however, it was obvious that ice skating among the crowds would not be pleasurable. so we wandered through the park in the dark instead, came out on the other side and found ourselves some cappuccino.

at this point in the evening, it would have been smart to go back to bklyn and take a nap, as we had 2 events to attend Friday night. however, the travel and logistics were such that it would be much easier if we just went to the first one directly, and so we opted to have dinner out instead at superfine and then head to the party. but at some point during dinner i started to crash in an irritable way. i drank a 5-hour energy but basically once we got to the first party i went directly to the couch and stayed there, eyes closed (but enjoying the eclectic live music) until we left at midnight.

at midnight we went back over to the Lower East Side to see friends Stuart Bogie and Colin Stetson (of Transmission fame – you know, that band from ann arbor ->SF that we saw triple-digit times in 2000-2003?) play in a newer band formation, Superhuman Happiness at the Cake Shop on Ludlow. now, when Stuart told me about it, he said it was a Phish afterparty. generally, despite the fact that we were avid fans/phans of both during the exact same years (early 2000s), the worlds of Transmission jazz and Phish have i think never really intersected for us and so i wondered how this mashup of scenes was going to be. but i trust their musical judgement completely, and so we went. through the pre-NYE wasted crowds into a hot crowded basement we went, just as they were about to go on.

(historical aside:  in May 2001, we came to NYC and a phishhead friend told us to go see Antibalas, which was playing in a basement of a jewish cultural center somewhere.  we arrived, and just after the band started playing, Stuart Bogie walked out and joined them. it was very……serendipitous.  so going to see him play again, in some dark basement somewhere in NYC, 10+ years later, was just kind of awesome.)

and when it started….it became very obvious that this was indeed a Phish afterparty. lots of phisheads, still with their glow bracelets and rolling eyes were packed inside. the music was definitely more indie-jam than jazz, with lots of melodic singing mixed with funked beats, which i can totally appreciate, especially watching them play so physically, so ecstatically, but i was so exhausted i just found myself a spot standing on a bench up against the wall, my head almost hitting the ceiling, observant. i wanted to make it to the end of the set to get to hang out, but just couldn’t. it was a sauna in there, i was wearing 2 layers of clothes, and the energy was so the opposite of where i needed to be. so in the middle of a cover of Sledgehammer (covers? did not expect that), we exited into the cold night and finally headed to bed at 3am, totally exhausted.

i was also not successful sleeping in more today, and right now as i’m typing this i should be trying to take a nap before heading out for NYE, but NYC makes me manic.  and plus, it’s the LAST DAY OF 2011 and i get to see many of our beautiful friends tonight!  how could i not be excited? we have 2+ parties on the list and we’ll see how far we get.

.::.

i’m looking forward to seeing the sun come up on 2012, as 2011 – full of personal and global/internal and external revolutions, experiments and changes – has been a one hell of a good year.  keep up the good, everyone. we’re moving forward.

Filed in autobiographical, music, travel | Tagged with igottawearshades, jazz, NYC, puerto rico, reagan, surfing | Comment (0)

SFO-NYC-BQN (part 1)

yes, i have been on vacation for 9 days and i have not blogged a thing about it.  isn’t that what vacation is for? not doing what you don’t feel like?

first i was in new york for 4.5 days, and while i had intentions of sitting in coffee shops on snowy afternoons working on things that need to be worked on (sorry to be opaque but they aren’t quite public yet), instead the weather was quite nice and so there was a lot of wandering around with days progressing from a search for good coffee to a search for good cocktails to a search for good late night company/activities,  lather rinse repeat with an increasingly foggier state of mind – something like this.

besides wandering, i did see our friend Martin Dockery’s new monologue  The Holy Land Experience, and also visited the Lady Gaga installation at Barney’s on Madison Ave, which was highly underwhelming, but Bill Cunningham (famous NY fashion photographer, not the Fox News dude) was outside taking photos of people going in and out and i said hello to him as I had just watched the amazing Bill Cunningham New York documentary again just the night before.  i said “hello Mr. Cunningham!  I just watched your documentary again last night!” and he said “Why would you do that?” and then went on clicking. and then it’s possible that he took a photo of me that if so i’m sure will end up on the cutting room floor and not in the NYT but still made my day.

and then i came to Puerto Rico, where my friend Reagan’s surfer family has a house on the very west end in Rincón, near Aguadilla, to a surfing town that is so not-foreign it feels like i’m in Florida. i mean, it’s part of the U.S. but i didn’t realize that it would still feel like the U.S. once arrived, I also intended to do work, but i am in a house that shares wireless with the surfer hostel next door, and for the first two days it didn’t work. when we asked why it wasn’t working, dude seriously said “i dunno….wind?”.  it was mentioned that turning it off and on again might work. and wouldn’t you know, we got home and hey!  it worked.

our friends Justin (who always seems to be in the same part of the world i am, even when we dont plan it (see: Prague 2009, Chile 2010, and now PR 2011) and Amanda were on the island visiting family and we had quite a Christmas eve that involved surfing (catching my first wave evar!) and then some epic bar dancing where we made complete asses of ourselves and included justin catching me from hitting the floor in a badly calculated dance move involving multiple bar stools. you know: christmas.

since then Reagan and i have gone surfing, went to morning yoga on the beach, hiked a 5 mile loop, and ingested numerous rum-filled coconuts in between. i’m here for 2 more days, now the internet works, and maybe i’ll get some work done, although we tried surfing again today but the waves were too small and so obvi we have to go back tomorrow .  then it’s back to NYC, where Jay is now wandering the streets on his own time and we will meet up, and then NYE weekend, which, if i can count on my friends, will be full bore until the sun comes up on new year’s day.

…read part 2…

optimism in late 2011

the other night as we were falling asleep, jay asked: “what inspires you”. and i mumbled into the pillow: “optimists….”

.::.

when i said that, i was thinking mostly about the ongoing efforts and moving reports out of of Occupy Wall Street/occupy everywhere. but then yesterday we went to a baby shower that included (at least) 3 other pregnant friends besides the mom being showered. and during the part where people all gather as a group and speak their blessings for the parents-to-be, i looked around the room and thought about how incredibly optimistic you have to be to bring a child into this world we’re in right now, where most of the media is constantly negative, economies are in turmoil, practically everything our bodies touch and mouths eat is toxic, and is there any country on this planet that thinks their leaders are representing their best interests? and i thought about how hard it is for me to push aside all of the darkness, to focus on the good that is and can be created. and i was, in fact, inspired by the fact that so many of my friends believe in a beautiful future despite all this.

to mary and stephen: <3

(a little on the flip side:  Hopelessness and hope. How can we love it all?)

.::.

later that evening, we went to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) 25-year celebration art and music ball. and there also, i was inspired. a crowd of people who believe not only in magic of human consciousness, but in actively fighting systems that try to oppress vehicles to greater health and knowledge in favor of corporate interests.

that and the psychedelic-influenced fashion, whimsically silly with a “i got dressed while high in the kostume kult tent at burning man” mix of sequins and yoga wear that states “i don’t give a fuck about societal norms” was entertaining, and yes, i dare say also inspiring. you might look kind of silly, but at least you look fun.  maybe i’ve lived in northern california for too long, but weird in the face of normal is not only defiant, but also an expression of optimism.

.::.

i have my last 5 days of work this week before i take off for New York/Puerto Rico for the rest of the year. maintaining optimism is something i am continuing to work on as we ramp up to 2012.  everyone: keep up the good.

wknd in the slanted light

friday night was oakland art murmur = happy hour and galleries and street bands and food trucks and a mini uptown bar crawl, followed by a jaunt to alameda to chillax until the midnight hour.

yesterday was a 7.5 hour photo/video shoot for AvB‘s LoveSick V (see me in the 2010 trailer [0:11-15]) in a windowless room on a perfectly warm and sunny day somewhere in Vallejo in which i danced in lingerie, got dream-sequence married, smacked a man across the face repeatedly, drank fake blood, collapsed to death, and was committed.

today was sleeping in and then walking across a warm autumn San Francisco from Civic Center to Ocean Beach, arriving just in time to watch the sun sink below the horizon, dinner at the Beach Chalet, where they have a very excellent house-made veggie burger and a brewery on-site, and then walking halfway back across the city along Fulton Street until Masonic, where we hopped on the 5 Fulton back to market st.   25,422 steps = 11.22 miles.

tomorrow is the first full week of December, and the days are getting remarkably shorter.

with a little

we had 2 thanksgiving dinners with friends and their families, we did see the muppets movie friday night (fun!), a couple few nice walks, several more good meals with friends, good weather and 14.2 miles on the bike today. that is pretty much all the news there is to report at the end of this long weekend.  we did not go very far or do very much, which i know for some homebodies is a picture perfect weekend, but  i am easily bored and get stir crazy and keeping myself amused for 4 days while trying not to spend any money is a bit difficult (#firstworldproblems).

i otherwise spent a lot of the weekend reading updates and commentaries on all the various Occupy activities and occupations, and between that and all the horrid and shameful Black Friday news/social commentary coming out i felt a bit too mentally exhausted to do any of the personal/writing things i should have.

however, i am very thankful and grateful that we do have wonderful friends and as the saying goes, we got by.