A Breakaway from Red October

September 23 – October 3

HOW TO CELEBRATE THE COMING OF FALL AS ORCHESTRATED BY ME:

• roll in the fog
• buy new mocasin-like flats
• find an excuse to grab a PSL. Like. Every. Minute.
• Throw on a scarf
• Buy a new scarf
• Light candles, even if they’re summer-scented
• Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie.
• A weekend getaway via train to Oregon

The fall never disappoints. But as I’ve noted before, it’s a season not without shortcomings. From summer to fall, there is an instant change in the air– and fairly put, change can be bad. It means moving on, and saying goodbye– if you’re ready for it.

I’ve realized that I truly get weird about goodbyes. I’m pretty awkward as is, so let alone farewells are in themselves painful. Even if I see someone the next day or they leave the apartment earlier than me; sure I’ll see them later tonight depending on what day of the week it is. But as fate would have it, it’s been an even more trying two weeks of that gut feeling. Not that far from the Mean Reds. Holly Golightly nailed it when she said that it was a fear, afraid but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. That Portland weekend did it, especially for seeing a very dear friend outside of a world that we’ve ever known together and an aunt just weeks before a much-needed surgery– you can’t help then that since they’re so far away, you constantly keep in your head that perhaps that might have been the last time you’ll see them… and so you keep a tally in your head of what better ways your farewells could have been.

Just feeling that sudden loss in a matter of a second seemed more prominent to me since then. In a string of events that involved a bunch of goodbyes. The going away dinner for a coworker at The Local Edition. A fulfilling day at the San Francisco Zoo with my cousins and aunt and uncle. All resulted the same, in swift adieus.

But were they memorable enough?

Those moments in this week might seem to anyone else fulfilling and sentimental. But for me, I oddly dread looking back, reflecting back on those tender last minutes. I can’t really decide on whether or not my weird goodbyes stem from a bad or good time– or just not enough of it.

I said before that the fall never disappoints. It does. But maybe because the inevitable change that happens with falls hasn’t really happened in your life. You see it everywhere, but can you really feel it? People move forward, and you sometimes just retreat back to your apartment, your stagnant life and job and singledom that’s been what your last seven months have been. But I fear not; there is always time to change things around. It’s only the first week of October, and the world has just transitioned into a magical time of the year (if December isn’t for you).

Who knows what magical things are coming my way with this weird sense of loss. As my childhood heroine said it best,

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

The past is there to set things straight for the future. And no better place to feel better and assured than childhood books and reminders that yes, you’ll see everyone again.

The Bedazzling

August 10 – August 16

Here in this apartment we can’t damage the walls, meaning I’m surrounded by awkward blank spaces. Luckily, I’ve found I have an eye for creating budding little table displays– credit to the constant seasonal arrangements done when working at Paper Source. All the furniture here was included–  and the empty tops of each Lack and Klingsbo (you’ve NEVER shopped at IKEA?) would be made anew with my finishing touches. Mostly books. Tin antique candy or music boxes. Some candles or seashells and fake flowers, too. Now the newest addition to the place come in the little gems of raw crystals that give a subtle sparkle like a cherry on top.

I haven’t always been into rocks nor do I have a broad knowledge of healing Chakra powers that they may possess. However, they can give instant life to your decor without looking at all out of place. I mean, they are a part of the Earth, so in a strange way, they pair with everything in this land/apartment/style-scape. The ones I have, their colors do strike me. It’s a rose quartz and creamy green calcite finished off with a fiery pyrite chunk; their flushed pastel tones beautifully offset the light, earthy colors of the studio that I live in. They’re the best way to brighten up this space in being lovely by their own existence.

You could then see by such little treasures that in fact, San Francisco and the Bay Area shine brightly in its most natural and unusual ways. I don’t mean the people or things like food trucks or crafted beer pop ups funded by a block of FiDi startups. The gems of this city aren’t far from the ones there on my nightstand– the best of the city is set in stone, sometimes in the waters. Take Chinatown, North Beach, or the Mission. Ancient, deep enclaves carved from the early days of the 19th century into stern hills and winding structures that grew over time to still be what they were in the beginning, never really changing. You may think Chinatown is a downright, gritty, narrow little section of this town overrun with dim sum and penny junk stores in its corners– but have a decent look around you  so that you can see that honest, hard-working people have capitalized on their  distinctive, dirty dynasty-esque tenements to turn out what is the city’s most popular attraction. There are no gimmicks here in this neighborhood, only sincerity of appreciation for one’s roots that brings in spectators. The spare ribs and erhu street performers and the side-swept Fortune Cookie factory— even fooling you into buying a bag of adult/ X-rated fortunes in poorly-translated sayings– are just natural occurrences for the people who call it home.

Some nights the gems shine brightest in the dark. I’ll meet with a friend for a walk around a block of where we live in Lower Pacific Heights so that she may smoke a cigarette or two, on days when she gets really stressed. As she enjoys that I find myself enjoying a look around, looking up to the dark outlines of quiet Victorians and into the dim parlors of hidden hotels like the Queen Anne. But it’s weird, how the trees seem taller, and even in a hazy blackness everything can still be traced in detail. These are things I’ve found that won’t change, especially in the night, always here a part of the landscape that sings of lovely, perpetual darkness.

Then was the Golden Gate itself, just intertwined with the thick marine layer setting over the emerald waters and the rust that sits atop the Alcatraz Island that my ferry was passing. These treasures go beyond the city, the bigger jewels jutting out form the foundations of the Bay and they can’t really help themselves– nor are they apologetic about how they star-struck us. Thinking back on it now, I’m still in a daze.

I live in a gold mine, rich in history and unchanged wonders that– no matter the year or decade or who lives here– one thing is certain. A driving force. Something that shines in every rickety old Victorian and overbearing skyscraper and charging local who’ll never leave for being convinced that their city isn’t like any others. They’re right. There’s just something that really does sing “Eureka!” about San Francisco and the Bay– and that’s what brings others in. Come and go as you please, but here is a place that’s driven by the very jewels it sows: its dreamers.

As for the dream I’ve always envisioned for myself in this present moment? It’s one that’s nothing big, nothing glamorous; and I sit and look down on the new, shining treasures to this place and think Eureka isn’t just a saying. I really have “found it,” too.

Invincibles

July 27- August 2nd

A new weekly post on the blog just about the odds and ends and magical thoughts of life as it happens.

PT. 1 INVINCIBLES

It takes approximately the whole duration of Saint Motel’s “Daydream/Wetdream/Nightmare” to leave the Franklin and Sacramento stop on my bus, get off at Gough, and walk down to the front entrance of my apartment building. It’s not bad, and especially as you listen to Saint Motel, you practically dance the whole way.

It’s a love/hate with the buses of San Francisco. Muni is the patron mobile saint for all and any; with a sound mind or less-than-fortunate hygiene and even if you just want to catch some shut eye on one of its smeared matte brown plastic seats, its arms are open to you! So long as you can prove payment of fare for a paper receipt given at $2.50 a pop. I’ve been riding Muni all the years I’ve set foot in San Francisco, and I’m proud at how savvy I’ve grown in navigating the lines and twists and turns– if they gave medals for bus surfing, I’d have a fair shot on the podium (especially for someone who can do it in stilettos). When i say that I know the bus, it’s not just by the book and maps, too, but the streets. There’s certain lines you shouldn’t ride alone on at night and other where they’ll routinely surprise riders with Muni officers checking to see if you paid the fare. There’s the bus that doesn’t phase you with the gum wrappers or spit and buffalo chicken wing bones on the floor. And I know all too well that sexual harassment can happen– at any given moment, even on what’s considered the safest of the Muni lines.

But there is the wondrous saving grace of this wasteland on wheels: seeing the city in new ways, and its people. More so fascinating– you are one of them.

I’m at the peak of myself being a confident, self-assured little lady now since being in the city. Honest. Sorry not sorry. After a year and a half working retail and odd jobs with bad writing and losing old friends that made you feel like a terrible human being and student loans, as well as gaining new opportunities like a chance to live in SF– just as losing as who you believed to be the love of your life– damn right you’re going to come out of it all as a queen. And this great and terrible tirade of Paris the Invincible is only allowed to go uphill from here. Tonight I’ve started reading Amy Poehler’s Yes Please and it is a hoot and I want to get on the level of Ms. Poehler. It’s her strong voice and humor that’s easy to grasp and then a few minutes later, I put the book down and take up my notebook and pen. I want to write again all of a sudden– I know I am happiest when spilling out words.

I am also happiest spilling out words when sitting beneath a warm sun, sand spilling over you from all angles in the light breeze that skims through a beach on a Saturday afternoon. It’s been two years since I last came to Santa Cruz. It might be the most ridiculous thing to even attempt writing at the beach because of petty hindrances of poor back support and wasting ten dollars on a chevron blue beach towel you’ll only ever use once. There might be flies, there might be too much seaweed, and the bag of curly fries will surely stain your favorite notebook with grease. And those factors may be a bitch to anyone– but I’m not anyone. I simply am a young girl grateful for a day to finally do something she likes and to get away from a city she loves for uncertain adventures. San Francisco, I sure love you, but summer is also the time for Santa Cruz. And given this terrible and long past week where you just needed to treat yourself to some cotton candy and deep fried everything, Santa Cruz had my back.

PT. 2 THEY’RE ALL MAD HERE

Maybe it’s just being invincible that makes all of us here in the Bay Area insane. In heading down to Santa Cruz for the day, the nights were left to explore the night with a good friend from college and her roommate around San Jose. And seriously, the balls these people have– old age won’t stop you from turning it up on the dance floor of Rosie McCann’s, nor will a croaking voice discourage you from singing karaoke in the most lively dive bar I’ve ever drank at. The place was Woodham’s and the songs were whatever people thought they could sing best– and here’s something you can learn from people who sing karaoke: they really give a shit. Not about the quality of singing, but the passion put into your performance. I was a silly bopping songstress with absolutely no game in my performance, but I smiled and jazz handed, and in a duet with my friend, soloed on an air guitar. Yeahhhh, just don’t stand there and look miserable– don’t give into your voice! It’s pure entertainment for laughs and to commiserate with strangers over the tunes chosen, breaking down the weird barrier of creepiness and drunken stupor that usually plagues anyone in a place like that– but not for Brandon who climaxed during his rendition of “Careless Whisper” as an inside joke to the bouncer, for John who gave good advice on picking songs that really showcase you, and surely not Reese, who went solo in the night singing “Feeling Good” and Dionne Warwick because her 15-year-old daughter obviously could not accompany her to the bar. The true spotlight went to Allison behind the bar– constantly taking orders and mixing drinks with the mic tucked between her neck and shoulder as she belted out beautifully Lorde and Metallica.

San Jose didn’t feel like a real place. It’s a city that some would see as an extension of San Francisco, or a capitalist-driven bore that thrives off all the techies planted here in Silicon Valley. To me, it’s a wonderland of sorts; not what I expected of its sights and sounds and people. In a place where the sun drenches over 3,5000 rose bushes and redwoods only blocks away from a piece of the Nile at the Rosicrucian Eygyptian Museum whilst sipping on a Mocha Borgia that is simply a Terry’s Orange in a cup– you’d be happily mad here too.

From all that occurred this weekend, I must sound mad. Maybe I am, or maybe I just enjoyed too much of a good thing for only a few days and I’ve not adequately expressed how it all made me feel. Well, I feel good. And with passing weekend, it can only get better too. Just be bold, and don’t expect anything. The moment you start planning it only means that you’re limiting yourself, and if you’re an invincible, it just seems like a silly thing to limit one’s self, doesn’t it?

East Bay

A Week by the Bay: Making Ends of this City Meet

July 19-July 26th

A new weekly post on the blog just about the odds and ends and magical thoughts of life as it happens.

Last Sunday started off in Noe Valley on a blazing hot afternoon. This is the sort of place that makes you not miss New York. I’ll start off saying that and work my way into the heart that makes this neighborhood southwest of Market Street so thrilling.  And to understand this few blocks of gourmet shopping and dining, know that this was a strange love affair between a person and a place that made life in such an unforgiving city worth it.

You can peep into the life that passes through Hayes Valley once you exit from the 101 towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Some grass, a big steel web of red and blue for the kids to climb about, and palms shading over a green building and above a flushed pink sign where the Miette Patisserie Shop is open for business. I didn’t know this was Hayes Valley then– only a curve in the road that drove me up the University of San Francisco. It teased me with every time we passed on the road and it always seemed to have a glow about it come rain or shine or fog. And now it’s always there for me, the lovely end of the line for the 21 bus that too passed USF. In college this was the perfect spot to just get away and study and become inspired for the crazy stories I would write for my classes; now it’s a tame but youthful neighborhood always bursting with colorful characters and colors in the business and buildings themselves. If you’re seeking a spot to dine in an alley with your best friend to some serious Chili Fries and hefty salads or enjoy a pint of Saint Archer with a tattered copy of Love in the Time of Cholera as across Patricia’s Green ladies line up in a back alley to get fitted at the new Corsetry boutique, then come join me at Hayes.

Fast forward to this Sunday, and I’ve not gone anywhere today– not any further than my kitchen table. That’s another thing. Apartments. If you got one– let alone in this city– cherish it TO THE MAX. It’s not every time you live in a big town and luck on on decent accommodation and with roommates (or none) that you can actually get along with. I feel like I always hear about friends and acquaintances constantly having new people moving into their places of switching out roomies and I just think, shit. The nights where I can come back home to my place and it’s just my sis already sprawled out in front of the space heater in sweatpants watching TV with a glass of wine  is just one of the more worse things I put up with when sharing a studio. Most days, like now, she’s not here. It’s almost perfectly like I’ve found a place all to myself, where only God can judge me for blasting ABBA and clean at 11 at night like I’m at a disco from this city’s hey-days.

When I first moved to San Francisco it seemed like the thing to do was be out on the streets all the time, and an apartment was just a warm place to sleep at at night. But the months drag on and I choose now to have days like this where I never want to leave. Just a place you can just have all to yourself and that’s there for you whenever just being out and about the city overwhelms you. For example, this past week I devoted solely to making it a wonderful birthday week for my sister turning 26. In stringing up crepe paper in Frozen-themed blues and delicious photos of her favorite actors up on the wall with lit candles and a surplus of Chardonnay– I realized it didn’t take much to make a celebration feel grand. Forget fancy dinners or bar hopping and blowing $$$ on a karaoke booth somewhere. When it was all finished it hit me how lucky we were just to be living here, to have a place to finally pull something off like this. It may not be the biggest and best and most beautifully decorated apartment in the city but it’s what you make of it– always make something magical of it. That’s where your time here counts– the home really is where the heart is.

So yes to all of this. Yes to being lazy today as opposed to last Sunday, yes to being hungover in part to my sister’s birthday out bowling last night, and yes to not giving any cares about trying to meet up with people. A place like this can make you a flake. But that’s okay, it just depends on the city you’re in where that’s not such a bad thing, because they’ll always be here. In fact, San Francisco is perfectly (or inconveniently) small where you’ll always run into a familiar face. At a population of only 800,000 people, that’s an easy feat.

PLACES YOU RUN INTO FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCES, AND HOOKUPS:

An Etsy Craft Expo. at the Embarcadero

 Polk Street, Harper & Rye

 Polk Street on the street

The 1 bus line (the last people you want to see, particularly)

 The 21 bus line (for your best friends heading to get their glasses repaired at Warby Parker after breaking them in a benefit walk in Golden Gate Park)

The 31 bus line (strictly USF grads)

Hayes Valley

Sansome Street heading to work, either direction

Westfield Shopping Mall

So trust me, stay in. The faces will always be there.

A Souvenir from the Monterey Coast

There really is just something beautifully strange here about the row. That may be a generalized statement, but nonetheless it’s true. It’s nearing an hour in the late afternoon proclaimed to be a magical one as observed by the founder of this place in the fictional mind– and it is him who keeps drawing me back to this sleepy and much overlooked peninsula of Monterey Bay.

Cannery Row, Monterey

Even before I knew anything about John Steinbeck or classic literature, the mystical adventures of the sea had lured me in with promises of seashells scattered like gold and perhaps the glimpse of a mermaid. Why the ocean? As a kid I couldn’t tell you, in the way that I still can’t. You can’t give a rational explanation for a feeling that creeps up on you like the tides of these Pacific shores. But traveling to this place isn’t like the coasts down south in California; there’s a certain ruggedness to your soul that finds itself here unwillingly for a redeeming quality you’ve yet to find here yourself. Swap the glamour for honesty, the max of promises in the lights of Hollywood and Silicon Valley for the miniscule pleasures of the little that surrounds your senses. And in those pleasures, you get things like the rickety brown little Marine Biological Center that still stands in the majestic gray shadow of the Intercontinental Hotel, the back pathway where rented surreys cruise by permanent train cars and the movie theater that once housed a grand carousel. It’s the absurd rush of making enough of a salary where you don’t feel guilty on buying Dippin’ Dots in the ice cream shop. Sometimes it creeps from behind and from the past itself in still seeing in the windows blue-haired plastic dolls with their legs tightly tucked into iridescent pouches made to look like a fish tail– there was nothing I wanted more so badly from this place at age seven.

Nothing excites this writer like her favorite author. Trying to mimic the photo I saw in the local Starbucks of John.

For anyone else that’s here, it’s none of these things that excite them and with so many visitors in one spot you must fall victim to the generic splendor of the al fresco dining and eclectic wares you won’t find anywhere else in the world besides these converted Canneries and the fairy-tale cottages in the south– you blend in in order to get along. But people come to the Peninsula for a reason– to feel the finer things in life for so little. And the man that made this possible, well, I don’t think anyone comes here for him. But I love how Steinbeck truly is everywhere. Signs, plaques, statues, plazas– and even though I could not validate this claim and am sure it was just my dad’s humor, “Wow, they really are cashing in on that guy; he’s everywhere, even in the men’s bathroom!”

Old postcards or nothing!

I like to think he’s made his presence well known for opening the locals — the people that mattered most and served as muses for his early works– up in the humble delight that sometimes home can be enough. The man didn’t have to travel far. He knew what he wanted out of the human experience and he looked no further than the truths of his own land. Not everyone has to travel halfway around the globe for the holy spirit to hit– it’s what you can make of the existing wasteland around you to turn into Paradise, and that’s the simplest answer to your doubts of writing anything.

And on the last, late night here drinking in the sour wine that tastes so sweetly now in the memory, it was a glorious little hour atop a corner balcony overlooking the mist and streetlamps that lit the way for wary sightseers trudging in from the calls of the sea lions out on the Old Fisherman’s Wharf, imagining that here in the glow of this little hacienda-like facade where everyone slept except me, maybe that’s why I come back, in my own sense of this trip. John Steinbeck, the man forever I’m in service to for taking on this path of scribbling notes about a little-known coast of California and beyond its waters, for discovering his works of brutal love and honesty on the most unlikely tales for modern American literature– was the best man I ever knew and never met. He knew what he wanted out of this place– so what about for me?

Monterey Bay

“The 405”

In this place so hellbent on sunkissed appearances at 9 cents a follower, the flaw in the system is that spread out shamelessly here among the twilight is damnation itself– for all vulnerabilities lay in the lights.

Photo by Myan Soffia on Etsy

 

Behind the Card: “Golden State of Mind”

The original text of this particular card was meant to be written on the back of a postcard I bought in Huntington Beach. It’s a lovely little vintage piece with deep blue and all the sunniness that nostalgic California should sing about!

With my writing, California is definitely a big part of my identity. All the ideals of this “21st Century Land,” as I like to think of the West Coast, really sings to me; there is just such a widespread misconception that California is a Neverland, an Eden or the crack in the glass ceiling. Heading out West means starting new and making your dreams come true. It’s a calming effect to being out here as well, as San Franciscan transplants I’ve heard talk of their relocation as refreshing. But is this place really as refreshing as outsiders make it to be?

Of course not. I live here– born and raised and more than aware of the downsides to being in this state. First off, it’s expensive being out here. And there is a sense of snobbish entitlement borne from the awes and resentment that living in California creates for people outside of here. But California is for the most part no separate place from the global and political issues that claim the rest of the nation– and living in the center of a changing urban scene as San Francisco’s makes all too familiar with issues like the homeless and marginalized ethnic groups with deep roots to the city. But I’m an idealist. Just because reality kicks in doesn’t mean change can happen, that luck may find its way around.

And that’s where “Golden State of Mind” comes from. The disillusionment of the American Dream as set in place by the idealistic offerings of California is always fixated on my mind and makes for a stark contrast of inspiration from such a postcard. But taking down the California image is not my agenda with writing. In fact, it’s my motivation to seek change or discover the hope in whatever struggles I face while living out here. People do get that about California. That being that there is wonder, there is beauty, and there is the dream– dreams live on if you keep thinking about them, simple as that.

This card always recalls a brief conversation I had with a friend who lived in California for two years after graduating from the University of Oregon and has since moved back to Portland. They left Oregon in the first place because it was necessary to get outside their norm to truly see who they are. In coming to California, they discovered that being back in Oregon made sense as the way of living in California was unbecoming. People weren’t nice. And maybe I don’t know better because I’ve pretty much been here my whole life. But in the traveling I did this past year, I could really see what they meant. People have no expectations elsewhere in America. They’re humble and genuinely warm and always in awe when I said I came from California. It’s a bit disappointing to see that the hospitality that does arise from here is out of a sense of distorted duty to the tired illusion, to keep on proving to outsiders that inside here the grass is really greener. In stepping out from the state I saw how insane it is to be living here. The perfect, cool life is in fact a hot mess.

But in my case, it is home.

Complete with the hand drawn and watercolored orange fruit and blossoms, I hope these words open the door to some sort of actualization about this place. California isn’t any of those things the books and movies make it out to be– and then again it is. You can’t just arrive here and expect the troubles to go away. Like any person working for a goal, making dreams come true, such fancies aren’t without putting in your own share of hardships and muscle. Let the fruit of your labors bloom golden and full because in coming to the Golden State, you’ve earned it. You’ve earned yourself this imperfect paradise.

See the printed card now at my shop here, and have yourself a little bit of California!

Last Sunday

I AM ALONE.

And that seems to be the theme nowadays.

Sitting here in the sun on this cool afternoon and surrounded by Ray Banned couples in all their happiness is reaffirming this truth at the highest. But I ignore the facts. I’m too concerned with the flat rooftops and dull rolling hills I see beyond the shaggy palms at the edge of Lafayette Square. Cool and hazy. And everyone is smiling. Everyone including me– we sit and get high and enwrap ourselves in the sun and wind mixing with the smoke to create a haze that further obscures our awareness of East Coast vortexes, big men visiting from tempestuous lands, stranded manatees, and that in the chaos out there beyond here– is him.

So maybe here, we’re in the clouds.