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I questioned my actions through the context of my appearance in interactions with everyone else, who were all the same. there was a constant note of disregard; dismissal; a lack of eye contact; bodies shifting away instead of towards me; space intrusions; and I always asked, “was it me?” I am still trying to answer this.

#lowered

when coach taylor stepped onto the field for the first time at east dillon high in a frustrating move for both the dillon panthers and friday night lights fans #texasforever (at Laguna Gloria)

#texasforever

black friday deals (at Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve)

"All great cities have their slums and localities where filth, disease, crime and misery abound; but in the very best aspect which ‘Chinatown’ can be made to present, it must stand apart, conspicuous and beyond them all in the extreme degree of all these horrible attributes, the rankest outgrowth of human degradation that can be found upon this continent." -- San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 1885. nope. (at Chinese Historical Society of America)

48-quintara

last night was the first time I took the 48 home after 11pm from the mission. since moving back my faith in taking public transit after dark diminished greatly as a certain vigilance exponentially increased, with the expectation that any unsettling scenario at a bus stop or on a bus/train I created in my head would likely happen. unfortunately some of them weren’t unwarranted and I’ve witnessed grody things, reinforcing that hesitancy. but I’m becoming gratingly patient again with muni these days, not to mention with much less cash/willingness to hail a car.

but that night our driver struck conversations with anyone nearby like a dad who was bored and nosy, trying to pass his last circuit of the night as quickly as possible. to a man sitting in his immediate right: “I’ve seen you here before,” and the old man gamely replied, 'I’ve ridden this bus three times with you.' ‘where are you from?’ ‘ah, let’s not do that tonight,’ chuckling, but when the driver pressed him, he added, ‘do you know where swahili is spoken?’ ‘well, you got me.' 'parts of eastern africa, you know: the congo, uganda, kenya, mozambique, tanzania, malawi...’

earlier that evening I spent almost an hour at mission pool playground. nearing sunset, pickup soccer games are ending, a man in a headband is reading a book, a cotton candy vendor walks through the gate and rests on a bench with his rainbow tower balancing on the armrest, and parents are taking their kids into the park. one girl fidgets at the gate as her mom unlatches it, and she sprints toward the abstract-looking structures that will spin her and another fellow park-going girl at 5mph until they scream out of dizziness. an elderly woman comes in and programs herself into stretches and soft punches, reaching her toes far more deftly than I can, swiveling herself on one of another structure with an impassive face. some older youths occasionally race their bikes from one end to the other, a grandpa chasing a little boy away from their paths. amnesia’s doors are wide open and jazz wafts across the street to this side.

admittedly I’m trying to romanticize a place sanctioned from any and all that’s been written about the mission and/or the city at large. and yes, the oft-mentioned indicators of change and disparity we are very fluent about inevitably creep in: as the sun continues to disappear a couple guys walk in with a shopping cart and a bundle of wool blankets and garbage bags, respectively. just outside the park’s gates are tourists dangling SLRs, charter buses grinding along Valencia, more shopping carts strolling among my fellow twenty-somethings rushing (a lot of rushing) home from work, not daring to glance at the park. I knowingly write from a place of privilege because I can never be completely accurate of ongoing socio-economic and racial tensions of living in another very wealthy city. but hear me out.

in new york I would often feel so wrung out, stressed or especially defeated, but it would take a particular moment for me to come around and reset. it would happen at the rare times when I suddenly had the entire street to myself walking home late in uncleared streets while it snowed, or wagging eyebrows with an mta conductor for a split second before the train sped off, or being the only person sitting at the temple of dendur. a moment like that renewed reasons why I didn’t want to be anywhere else. and after more than a year back in san francisco, I’d finally found a series of those moments that evening, and I reset.

I was the last passenger left when we reached west portal. the driver asked, ‘are you okay getting home from here?’ and I replied, ‘yeah, it’s pretty quiet, but not in a bad way,’ and walked out. the fog turned into thick mist by then but the temperature hadn’t dropped; no cars or people shared the streets with me.

Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun. It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces, even your face at another age. Whatever’s lost there is needed by both of us— a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart, a key… Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence, this inarticulate life. I’m waiting for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water for once, and show me what I can do for you, who have often made the unnameable nameable for others, even for me.

IX, Adrienne Rich

#adrienne rich

émission dévouée

as ktsf has been shifting from multilingual to a mandarin-speaking tv station filled with pre-war dramas, I miss the days of my grandma and me catching cantonese shows whose storylines included (and weren't limited to):

-a family-owned casino/multinational company with a sickly, friendly patriarch and jealous step-mother/children vying for president -family sitcoms set in unrealistically large hong kong apartments with jealous step-mothers/children and a grumpy/wise shopkeeper/grandmother -two brothers once close until one of them pranks the other into a coma and takes over the family business (casino); the latter wakes up years later with a vengeance -a ragtag group of cops that runs through all the narrow alleyways after gang members on a regular basis; one gets shot going after the kingpin, but just in the leg -a ragtag group of prosecutors, one of which is stalked by an obsessed perp who couldn't be tried and got away scot-free -two siblings who became world-class gamblers but after a falling out/accident/jealous streak they throw down...using their cards as weapon of choice

#ktsf

I lived in san francisco in the sixties, used to go to parties with willie brown. --how was he back in the day? a lot of fun.

this song has repeated itself as loved ones are ever present in my mind.

#beirut

fyeahmm

morganzole

peggy has, and always will be, my inspiration

#madmen

first chance I get I'm gettin outta dodge--I mean, palo alto

#grimes

When I listen to the two latest Caribou albums I can immediately place myself where I was when I first heard them, in unfamiliar times or countries. Very few bands come close to transporting me to those moments.

how did we end up here? -- birdman

Usually around this time I start thinking about the summer, no matter where I am.

#glasscandy

today's fruit

There is a storm outside, and all day the wind has been relentless in bending anything out of shape. Inside, I wonder how Catherine Deneuve can catch all the guys in the world. She must be undoubtedly cool.

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