Good days bad days

Good days and bad days. Today was both. Bladder infection I thought was gone came back; unsure about what is going to happen to my unemployment when I tell them I forgot to file for a week of work in November, and then there's this waitressing gig that I seem to have landed that I'm not sure if I want or whether it will mess things up for me more than better them. So it is with life - forever a challenge on many levels. I'm too tired now from the bike journey I took and the antibiotics to get into it. I've just spent the last two hours trying to recount the story of Luxor being destroyed to make way for tourists. An exercise in radio - finally an assignment from KPFA, to get the wheels moving and my mind off of my own life.

I biked out there to his folks house today with the same motive - to put the unemployment, the restaurant, and my problems behind me - out of the desire to have my legs be the things to take me there. wanting the sun on my back and him within reach. I learned that I barely take pictures anymore and he barely paints. But things are moving around in us. I learned it will be okay. I learned things will only get better.

looking up

After a mild freakout things are feeling better. Woke early today, 7am, and went to the cafe where Matt is finishing a plumbing job. I've taken notes and watched the process step-by-step and have a pretty good idea of how to fix a leaking ceiling, that is one that is caused by a leaking upstairs shower pipe. After reading for a few hours at the cafe and watching Matt finish up, I volunteered for the first time at a local garden run by a nonprofit called the People's Grocery, that supplies CSAs. Feels good to get back outside and my hands in the dirt, has a very cathartic effect on me, just chatting and asking questions and taking notes for my own garden which is soon to come to life in the backyard. Weeded a bed, airated the soil, and put down a cover crop to put Nitrogen back into the soil and prepare it for veggies in the spring. Today we'll be picking up some rich soil/compost mix for our own garden, and the chicken coop production should begin this weekend so things are finally beginning to take flight.

Feeling a lot more comfortable with unemployment as I have this opportunity to gain gardening, youth leading, wilderness, radio and video skills. Before the time was terrifying, the free time seemed to choke me everyday when I woke up without a defined task. Now I have a better idea of how I can make this time work for me and organize a schedule where I get my photography up in galleries in SF, learn to shoot and edit video, learn gardening skills, start writing radio shows for KPFA, and read. I have an interview next week for a waitressing job at a local cafe, which I wanted way back in September when I had no income and was desperate for any and all work. Since then I've interned at San Francisco Magazine, worked weekends at the farmer's market, gotten a DJ gig, a computer coding gig, and an Apprenticeship at KPFA radio, so you can't say I'm not keeping busy. Given this, I no longer feel so uncomfortable with being on unemployment. I admit, it's taken some time for me to get comfortable with it and come to terms with it, I would prefer a full-time job that pays my salary and is fullfilling but I haven't gotten there yet. I've applied to dozens of positions, but I don't always have the precise skill-set.

In other news, the photo editor at the Wall Street Journal responded to my email within minutes saying: "Hey sara - your work is really dope.. Thanks for reaching out.. We'll be in touch for sure. What's your favorite thing to shoot? What are you interested in shooting in SF? I see you're on bryan's site. They broke the mold when he popped out - love that dude. Talk soon." So I'm pretty happy about that. I hope they give me an assignment soon, although there are a lot of great shooters in the Bay Area right now, I'm sure they'll get to me eventually. It's just nice to have someone at a major publication be so human and warm, I've never really even gotten any kind of response from an editor at a major publication, the standard response is dead silence. So I'm very grateful for that.

every ten years

a celebration of life

i've got dreams

dreams. dreams to remember. 

2011 is just around the corner and i'm still not a river guide. that dream slipped away in the tide of living abroad i guess. in any case - i think i have a new years resolution. then again, this might take a couple years. eventually i'd like to get my ass to Grand Canyon every summer and get on that Colorado - the dream that was sparked for me in high school over a decade ago. baby steps.

which way

and the days drag on at the magazine. the hum of computer screens, the sickly flourescent lights annoint me with a feeling of scum. i must get out. the sadness penetrates today. the only cure: to go running in the rain.

all day it was my mind going back and forth between which path to take next. to abandon the officespace altogether and take to the outdoors. urban farming? working with youth in the creative arts? river run? or should i start shipping flyers to every publication in the city and keep trying my hand at picture-taking. 
an eternal  doublethink. it appears at nearly 28 i don't entirely know what i want, or whether i can hack doing what i want, but i suppose i'm edging closer.

my best friend tells me that whenever i come home to philly i'm always ready to jump on the next social situation that lies ahead. that she's been waiting years to point it out - that sometimes she worries that if there's a lull in the conversation, i'll grab my phone and start texting other people to make other plans. and that sometimes she takes it personally. it hurt to hear it but i am also so grateful that she shared it with me, so that i can be more mindful of this. so that we can be closer for it. so i can learn to be still and mindful and present.

i do hate this trait in me - forever interrupting other people, sometimes an inability to focus, to listen. i look at other people at the magazine - i admire the way they sit so comfortable in their own skin. their stillness, their sureness. focus. they know what they want i suppose, and they are rooted in this knowing.

but she says i should not wish that upon myself. that i should just attempt to harness what i take from my shiftiness. she says: "a lot can be gained even from inattention."

on a positive note, I got the apprenticeship at KPFA. I was very surprised. Last night was our first meeting and it feels good, the group of us, from all paths of life, all backgrounds, to sit together and share our thoughts. I have a lot to learn. A lot of work to do. But I think it will be a great opportunity to grow and gain practical skills and learn to put a story together. and to listen to theirs. 

breath of my breath

nearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting thy tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.

Querying greys between mouthed houses curl

thirstily.  Dead stars stink.  dawn.  Inane,

the poetic carcass of a girl

other half

"And oh god, to tell him of an amazing dream I'd had and to feel the weight of his arm around me felt like I was touching sacred land and drinking holy water."

it happens all at once

it happens all at once; Halloween (first in 4 years), the Giants won the World Series for the first time in half a century, the election, critical mass, and Day of the Dead. All of these things I do not participate in. For all of these things I was negligent, absent, tardy. I am sick again; some nebulous ailment which fills my head with fog, my body with fatigue, and separates me from the world. I make the hour plus commute on foot and train to San Francisco to arrive at work in North Beach, sweaty, pale. I announce "I feel like shit" and they tell me to go home. I go home. This being sick makes me a fully selfish person, unable to see out from my mind's eye, I am a citizen of my cave-mind, throbbing muscles and inflamed lymph nodes. It is a country of one and the borders are closed.

Last weekend I managed to DJ my first DJ set at a dive bar in Oakland (without headphones, forgot to bring an adaptor), interview for a radio apprenticeship, and work at the farmers market, after which I started to feel really ill. The radio apprenticeship was for KPFA, a public radio station that came into being as a venue to "promote cultural diversity and pluralistic community expression" and "contribute to a lasting understanding between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors." Coming into this interview I should have considered that more seriously and prepared myself better, but I learned from this mistake. I learned my lesson.

"What do you think about the statement that white women have benefited more from affirmative action than African Americans?" I sit before a panel of African American radio workers, at least one of which who lived through the civil rights movement and I am frozen. I repeat the question out loud, slowly, completely unaware as to how I will answer it. "Or how do you feel about affirmative action in general?" Now, sitting here, I know how I'd answer those questions. Then, I didn't. I could say - look at the criminal justice system in America - look at the disproportionate number of African Americans in prison, facing the death penalty, wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit, or look at the number of African Americans who have fallen victim - at the number who have died by police brutality. You do not have to look very far. Oscar Grant's rally was just last weekend. Certainly we have come a long way, but this country is far from perfect. Another question they threw out was "How can you be an ally to an African American?" Of course these are all the kinds of questions I should be able to answer if I'm going to work at a radio station like KPFA. I would have liked to answer honestly: "As a white person I can safely say that I will never understand what it feels like to be in your shoes. That's first and foremost. I will never know what it means to be black in America - that's how I approach it. I try to be an ally by getting as close as I can to understanding what that means, by keeping my eyes and ears open, by listening." And even that sounds trite. I hope that over the next year I can develop a good answer for both of those questions. Not just in words, but in my life. So that if I'm still in the Bay Area and I go back to interview for that apprenticeship I can answer them with confidence. I'm embarrassed at how I wasn't able to provide thorough answers. I never want to be stumped like that again.

For now, though. I have only one battle. This sickness. I will kill it with sleep, tea, honey. I will not go to work this week. I will try to find a free clinic - there's one in the Mission I will call tomorrow. I will see if I can get signed onto Medicare. If I have to I will pay the big bucks and see an expensive dr. I will get this taken care of. Then I will go back to those big questions. And the other big questions - like - why am I here? What do I really want to be doing with myself? Because I think maybe the answers have shifted into working with an NGO or doing something to help people - provide for the homeless or people that have no health insurance, or kids in the foster system, or farmers providing organic food. I want to do something meaningful, and if I can't pull that off with my camera, then I want to do it in some other way.

i love you, ma

Meditations of the Unemployed

these are my darker thoughts all thrown into one. these are not all of my thoughts.

9/10/10

Go to café and shoot shit and eat food until my landlord Razh B. Gosh gets me a copy of my key. $6 My keys are missing as of last night.. Get key from Razh. Bring bike wheel into shop for new tube – go to wrong entirely wrong side of town in effort to get a lock so that I can ride my bike to the grocery store and drop off a resume. Key for bike lock is lost with keys. Two hours wasted. Finally find bike store – don’t like the selection. They say – try the locksmith, maybe they can make you a new key. Go to locksmith – locksmith cannot make a key for the old lock. Leave. Go back – you forgot – go back and make two copies of your house key so you never have to repeat this. $4. Go to 2nd locksmith – they send you to a 3rd locksmith. 3rd locksmith says no dice. But you can buy a brand new lock. I have one left. Fine. $40. Walk to Trader Joe’s across the street. Finally I can do what I intended to do when I left my house today – finally I can apply for a job. Trader Joe’s floor clerk points me to the “office” area. Not hiring, says the man behind the desk. In fact, when they were hiring they got over a thousand applicants and hired 55. About the other Trader Joe stores, the man at the office says “we’re all in the same boat”. And so it is on America. A thousand people apply to work at a grocery store. 945 go away empty handed. I am one of them.

I remember the nice lady at the Sweet Adeline café “Ahhh….” She said smiling at my resume. “A graduate of Reed – a highly educated barista!” It’s true. My mama used Boeing money and her business savings to put me through a college that cost somewhere around 35 grand a year and now I can’t get hired at a grocery store.

But right when my blood sugar & hopes had plunged to record lows – there’s Chris Edley on the phone – "my folks want to meet you tomorrow." A glimmer of hope. There was also the extremely nice Mexican girl at Common Grounds who immediately pounced on me. Might be able to set up a blog for them. Shoot some pictures of the space – offer to manage it – maybe make a little cash. She also wanted me to hang work – just unsure if I can drop the funds. I guess it would just be a couple hundred bucks and then I could hang them again in another space. Do some actual PR. Get my name out there.

Sitting on the rush hour train – everyone around me has that light airy, bubbly employed color – everyone knows where their rent and mortgage payment is coming from, where tonight’s supper is coming from. They talk on their cell phones and complain about how their internet service is down or what swimming club they go to. Round trip Bart ride $7. I write with a pen I stole from a cell phone company in a book I made with my mother and wonder with all the sincerity in the world how I’m going to make it in America and what path I should be pursuing.

9/13/10

Everyday. Everyday is the same. Everyday is begun with a feverish, hopeful beginning. I made a good breakfast with the lines running through my head: “Today I’m going to make it happen. Today is the day my bad luck ends.“ All the faith in the world. I get on my bike and ride to the café, order a latte, and immediately start applying to jobs, filling out the same forms, answering the same questions a hundred times over. Please list your employers for the last 5 years, 3 references, your skills. I must have filled this out a thousand times. A thousand and one. All the blank fields stare back at me, mocking me with their blankness.

Whole Foods - Apply online. Trader Joe’s - apply online even though you went to the store and the man behind the desk said they received 1,000 applications and hired 50 people and were no longer hiring. Chat with your previous boss from Russia on Skype about resuming translation work from the US. Inquire about training program at the local radio station; email the contact you met at dinner the other night, trying to get a job babysitting your friend’s younger siblings. Find out all the addresses of all the restaurants and cafes that are hiring according to Craig’s list and jot down all the addresses to ride to later and drop off an application. Jupiter, new cafe you never heard about, movie theater, book store x2, record store, art supply store. (When you finally get there hours later they will tell you they are not hiring or tell you that you don’t want to work there). Make ads on Craig’s list for babysitter, housecleaner, photographer, search for openings, apprenticeships, internships. Everyday on my bike I ride to approximately 15 different institutions all of which give me the same response: we are not hiring at the moment but we always accept resumes. They take my piece of paper, the man or woman behind the counter, and the piece of paper is tucked away into a dark void and I understand as they slip the paper into that void that my opportunity of employment is again lost forever. At the last bar, while standing there, waiting for the tank-top adorned bartender to catch my attention, I realize that no one is going to hire me. A storm cloud has now gathered over my head. I see the world in black and white, a world made up of one word “NO”. “NO.” The sound of the word “NO” echoes throughout my brain. My eyes are dark and shining. I realize I must leave the bar and come back at another time when I don't feel like this. Indeed, come six pm I don’t think I can take it anymore. I go home and I prepare a huge delicious dinner to make up for my lackluster day of rejection, my lackluster month of rejection. I made a huge delicious dinner to which no one comes home to. I want to cry into my dinner.

America. America you pose quite a challenge. I will be rounding up to 30 years of age soon. A perfectly capable human being, America, and you deny me the right to bag groceries. I have the drive and determination of a thousand college-bound Asian students. I have the guile and the concentration of a hundred Russian gymnasts. One woman told me I should work for the CIA. The other asked me if I aspire to work at Trader Joe’s – if that is my career goal. America – I am confident I will break in. But you do make me wonder – what about all the others, how the hell are they making it, America, you cut me no breaks.

But the Iraqi man at the corner store. He understands. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he says. “Everyone is losing their jobs.”

finders keepers

List of things we rescued from the studio next door where the artist woman passed away

Two fake palm trees
A fire pit
A barbecue grill
Several fancy ass plants in huge pots
Enormous ancient shells
A strange bird-like sculpture made of various materials
A bull skull with horns
Several silver pitchers/pouring devices
A kerosene lamp
Several bird houses
Etc

SF

san francisco, you are good to me.
i don't care if i'm homeless, jobless,
burning through my savings. it doesn't matter.
you are fine in my book.

happy birthday

it's been years

the middle chapters

mexicans at the laundromat in tall hats
holding guitars
hipsters man the coffee shops and the
sweet scent of weed sticks to the dewy air
a thick white fog crawls over the hill
and i would love the chance to be where you are

how many years can the flesh ache
a dull rapping on the heartbox
i keep waiting for someone to throw a blanket
over the whole room
to put out the light and scoop my heart off
the stained carpet
but my future is all bareboned empty rooms
an occasional visitor helps me forget that
there is nothing to hang on the walls

these are the middle chapters
every night it gets harder to give up

The City That Knows How

I arrived in San Francisco. one week ago.

One of the great things about living here is I can call a friend up on the phone and say "hey I can't figure out this guitar tab, why don't you come over, we'll drink some whiskey and play some music." 10 minutes later my friend is here, drinks in hand. I haven't really been able to do that for four years. I cannot emphasize enough what a privilege that is.

I've gone for my first run. I found myself kind of running in weird zig-zag patterns around the Mission due to the prominence of 45 degree angled hills in every direction.

By the 3rd day of running my legs are lead-heavy. I can barely make it through 3 miles. A slow heavy pony gallop. Jesse takes me down to the water where the boats sit like candy soldiers. I am so grateful for this new-found friendship. These old friendships that are now rekindled in the city where the air is crisp with wintery fog and the old heart-pangs have vanished. Re-born into this bi-lingual playground of a city. I think I will make it a home for a while. I've already met some characters and laughed some laughs.

Pushkin hangover

ЭЛЕГИЯ

Безумных лет угасшее веселье
Мне тяжело, как смутное похмелье.
Но, как вино - печаль минувших дней
В моей душе чем старе, тем сильней.
Мой путь уныл. Сулит мне труд и горе
Грядущего волнуемое море.

Но не хочу, о други, умирать;
Я жить хочу, чтоб мыслить и страдать;
И ведаю, мне будут наслажденья
Меж горестей, забот и треволненья:
Порой опять гармонией упьюсь,
Над вымыслом слезами обольюсь,
И может быть - на мой закат печальный
Блеснёт любовь улыбкою прощальной.

this is it

the door to your soul is off the hinges again

Yo Mama

Introduction back to America. Day 3. [draft]

Jaime picked me up from the airport. We then proceeded to the liquor store. He bought nine bottles of fine wine for Dana and guests. One half liter of Absolute Vodka and a case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a Summerpack. $200. Then we went to the beer store where we bought three wine-size bottles of beer. One of them was $30. Lunch at the Frisco Grill. Steak Fajita Sandwich with goat cheese and fries for Jaime. Two chicken tacos for me. Four original beers. Northcoast Prankster. Evolution Lot #3 on firkin. Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversay Fritz and Ken. And one white marsh blueberry on cask. $40. Everyone at the bar knows Jaime’s name. He keeps a book. Every time he goes to the bar he drinks three original beers and writes them down in his book. That means he never has the same beer twice. These last four beers puts him at 680 unique beers at that particular bar, which he frequents twice a week – Wednesday and Friday 2-4. Happy hour. Next stop – the beer brewer store. Maryland homebrew. It smells like malt in here. Kind of makes me feel ill, but he gets a high off of it. We buy 3 pounds of malted wheat, a pound of crystal 40 and a pound of crystal 60 and an ounce of hallertau hops. A bucket of sanitizer. $30. Someone is grinding malt and the air fills with little malt sugar dust particles. BJ’s. I am in a daze. The stacks of everything pile high to the ceilings of this warehouse. They have perfectly good black stretchy jeans for $15. Huge quart-size bottles of Listerine – 2 for $10. You could buy this thing and not run out of Listerine for two years. T-shirts for 8 bucks. I want to buy clothes. Jaime buys a 28 pack of 20oz waters. 3 bottles of lemonade. A bag of pinenuts and pistachios. An economy size pack of Bratwersts. One variety case of Izzy sparkling fruit juice. 3 different flavors. 72 rolls of toilet paper. “Gotta whipe my butt!” exclaims Jaime in the car on the way home. “Couldn’t find the whipey things,” he reminds me. Spending the day with my brother in suburban America: priceless.

I lay in bed at my brother’s house and there are no arms wrapped around me. No hands to hold. No one to scratch my back. No one to tell me what to do next or comfort me and remind me that I will figure this thing out. I take my first nap alone. It is 5pm. I don’t wake up until 1am. I decide to go back to sleep. I sleep until 7am.

no taxation without representation

(an email from my friend Jon 7/4/10)

life is truly weird and very airborne. kind of like a virus. kind of like juggled chainsaws. i don't know how to feel about it and it gets me so lost in thought i started to feel at home there, in thought. i built a house there and wasn't lost anymore, and i don't get up but to use the thoughtouthouse and pour thoughts all over folks like yourself. life is up in the air. even if the jugglers drop the ball, and even if it shatters, atleast the clean up effort will have a strange humpty dumpty beauty to it. up in the air is the best way to be. easier to find out if you can fly or not up there. not as dirty as down in the ground, nor as claustrophobic.

good times to you! fuck the british! independence!
jawndice