Everything is free now

I've been to two new places since we last spoke.

Yesterday, I discovered an amazing place full of free books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, and even sheet music! And you can take it all home! Yes, the public library is no longer just a place to sleep off your crack high and urinate on yourself, it is also a place to rent books on gardening, which is what I did. I also got Eric a book on how to win at Blackjack, per his request.

Then this morning at 8am I went to another place that is no longer just for homeless drug addicts: the local free health clinic*. There is a program here called Healthy San Francisco that provices free or extremely discounted health services to people living at 300% or less of the federal poverty line who have been uninsured for more than 90 days**. The trick is that you have to be enrolled in the program and have a card***, and it is only valid within San Francisco. The non-bonus of living a block from "crack alley" (~6th & Mission) is that you get to go to the same free clinic as the guy screaming at his beer and telling it "you're fired". I am now officially enrolled and officially terrified of ever going back to the clinic.



*Upon closer inspection, it actually still is pretty much exclusively for homeless drug addicts.
**That's me!
***This isn't a health insurance program, so does that make it an uninsurance card?

And....go

I expect that when I am looking back on my life many years from now this chapter will be seen as a time of significant transition and transformation. It will be the time when I turned toward whatever it is that I actually do with my life. (Which will hopefully be something.)

At that future time it will be clear in what way the experiences I am having now shaped me and how my evolving worldview contributed to sending me down that path. Like a movie with good foreshadowing, I am sure that all the elements are here, brewing and germinating and being early in their development.

But from where I sit today, I can honestly say I have no idea what is going to happen next.

I am off-piste.

Lean in

Last night my improv teacher tried to make two people kiss. 

The suggestion provided to the two improvisers at the beginning of the scene was a relationship between two people - ex-spouses. The scene evolved that they were at a bus stop, where we discover that each had been taking the bus back and forth day after day hoping to run into the other. Turns out they still love each other. 

The dude improviser in the scene is a jokester type, always playing the ham. As they sit there at the bus stop, he is saying with words that he still loves her but his body language is still that of a circus MC. This inconsistency is irking the teacher who wants us to work on creating intimacy on stage and is very into coaching the scenes, sometimes line by line, movement by movement. (Earlier in the evening she had coached me to physically push another guy to show how frustrated I was.)

"The audience wants you to make the scary choice. In this scene, the audience wants to see you take that leap. You need to kiss." 

Their eyes get huge. Their faces read: This is not what I signed up for. 

"Take her hand lovingly," the teacher instructs. 

Dude takes her hand but in more of a buddy-buddy way and he's kind of swinging her arm around and looking goofy.

"No. Do it lovingly. Hold her hand still and caress it." 

He takes her hand and holds it in his, but looks away.

"Look at her. Don't look away. Hold her hand and tell her you still love her."

He looks at her. We in the audience are squirming in our seats. Every one of us is holding our breath. 

Then there is a moment where his face relaxes from his normal "I'm a funny guy" expression and he looks at her with striking tenderness. 

"OK lean in and kiss her. Closed mouth."

They sit there frozen, staring at each other. Neither moves. 

"Come on. Lean in. Closed mouth kiss."

Very very slowly they start to lean towards each other. They get closer...and closer....and closer...

And then dude snaps back into funny guy mode and breaks away, laughing nervously.  

"OK fine. End scene." The teacher releases them and we move on. But we are all a little bit changed. 

Slaughterhouse Boogies

In Hawaii, Eric and I discovered a beach that is referred to by the locals as Slaughterhouse Beach. It is a smallish beach at the end of what is effectively a small canyon, and it is on the north shore of the island which gets the big swells from the open ocean. The waves coming into this beach are terrifyingly large and violent, which is why we decided that of all the beaches in paradise, this is where we wanted to spend not one but two entire afternoons swimming and trying not to die.

There is a reason for this beach’s name and it is not that it is near an animal processing facility.

Our first afternoon there we just happened upon it while out for an exploratory drive around Maui. The humongous waves beckoned us with promises of outstanding body surfing, and there were a couple of other people in the water so we figured it was probably OK to swim. In we went!

Just trying to get past the break to where we could start bodysurfing, we got absolutely pummeled by wave after wave. I was repeatedly picked up and tossed around by the waves I was trying to catch, somersaulting involuntarily in the churning water, until it dumped me into the sandy bottom and I could come up gasping for air.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Once I learned how to duck dive the waves (go under them as they come towards you) rather than get savaged by them, it was actually pretty fun, though I still got worked over a bunch of times. We decided that the only way to make it more fun would be to get boogie boards to ride the waves. It was too late to do that on day one, so the next day we came back with our boogie boards ready to show the ocean a thing or two.

The waves were smaller on day two, but still big enough for some good fun. The most important discovery of day two is that I suck at boogie boarding. A newborn deer would be a better boogie boarder than I am. And it is really hard to duck dive with a floating barn door leashed to your wrist, so I got ravaged by more than a few waves just trying to get past the break. I am still amazed that nothing truly terrible happened to me.

Here’s a really short video of a wave from day two. Note that the waves here are smaller than day one.

Back at the hotel, I was a little disappointed in myself.

“I suck at making boogies,” I whined to Eric.

He couldn't disagree. Luckily, we both agreed it probably didn't change my overall worth as a person. Much.

Minor redemption came this past weekend skiing, or "making snow boogies" as we now call it. I am waaaaaay better at making snow boogies than I am at making water boogies. As for my prowess at making land boogies, I'll let you know after our salsa lesson tomorrow night.

Chain, Dechain, Rechain

I don't think it stopped snowing the entire time we were in Tahoe this past weekend. Someone turned on the snow machine and refused to turn it off. Great for skiing; not ideal for driving a timid white '94 Honda Accord named Roy.

We had chains for the tires with us because we're no fools. Had either of us ever actually used chains before? Yeah, not so much.

We made it into Tahoe on Friday night without having to face the mystery of snow chains, but on the drive out to Kirkwood Saturday morning they had the chain patrol out making sure people put them on. So we pulled over to the turnout and strapped the chains around the front tires, rushing to fasten the hooks before our fingers became too numb from the cold to function. Chains: on!

We pulled out onto the road and immediately heard a slapping noise with each rotation of the wheel on the right. It was a bad sound. We pulled back over.

I went and fussed with it and we tried again.

Slapping sound - worse this time. By the time we stopped half the chain was wrapped around the axel and it was all looking extremely wrong. I untangled it and fastened it carefully again, and then held my breath as we drove away: sweet silence. We made it to the mountain and back on Saturday without further incident. Chains: no problem!

Then, Sunday morning, driving back out to the mountain (it is 30 miles of windy snowy mountain road, max speed 25 mph with chains on) we (read = Eric) got a little impatient and went faster than the chains can really go. One of the cross-pieces of the chain, the part that provides the traction to the tires, snapped and start flapping wildly around, hitting the car and making a very unsettling noise. We immediately pull over as far to the side of the small road as we can get, but unfortunately for everyone behind us it isn't an actual turnout. I didn't count how many people gave us the finger but it was at least several.

After examining the broken chain we decide that one chained tire is probably worse than none, so we throw caution to the wind and remove both chains. Off we go.

Until we get to the next chain patrol. They insist we put our chains back on.

Out once again come the chains: one intact, one with a bad hangnail that is threatening to do a lot of damage to the tire and the car. We have no tools with us but - lo - we do have: duct tape (aka duck tape). We taped the loose piece to the side of the chain, said a small non-deity-specific prayer, restrapped on the chains, and off we went.

I'm pretty sure we were the only people out there that day with duct tape holding our chains together. Resourceful? Definitely. Did we ski a full day? We sure did. Was it foolish or brilliant: you decide.

I wish Phil Hartman could have lived to see it

I heard on the radio this morning that one of the proposals currently being floated is for the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay to be moved to Alcatraz. Though probably just a nasty poke at Nancy Pelosi (Alcatraz is within her district), I think this is a brilliant idea.

First of all, I think that the prisoners will probably really enjoy the boat ride over there. Especially if it is a nice day and not too windy. Sure, it's a step down in terms of climate from being in the Caribbean, but what with global climate change and all the weather here has been a lot nicer than it used to be so it might not be too difficult an adjustment. Plus, prisoners who had been planning a swimming escape will just need to make a few minor changes to their plans rather than starting a whole new escape plan from scratch.

One thing that some of them may appreciate is that the name Alcatraz comes from the Spanish for Pelican, and the Spanish word actually comes from the Arabic word "al-qatras" or "sea eagle." I'm not sure if the audio tour is available in Arabic, Farsi, and other terrorist languages so they may need to have it translated for the prisoners to fully appreciate the rich history of their new digs.

Most importantly, though, I think that they should keep Alcatraz open as a tourist destination once the prisoners are moved there. Imagine how much easier it will be to picture Alcatraz as a scary, outside-the-law kind of place with illegally held, tortured prisoners actually in the cells. This opens up a number a great new marketing opportunities and in this tough economy, I'm sure the Alcatraz tour operators will appreciate all the help they can get.

Greener than thou

I used the word "meamble" in a rhyming contest with Eric yesterday. These happen a lot, especially when we're hiking for a really long time and have completely run out of things to say to each other. We'll be trotting along and one of us will say something inane, you know, just making conversation. When the other person has no intelligent response, this can unintentionally spark a rhyming contest where that person just says a word that rhymes with whatever was just said. This then continues, the loser being the person who can no longer come up with a rhyming word.

Ellie: We'll have to see about traffic. I think it is kind of a gamble.

Eric: Bramble.

Ellie: Scramble.

Eric: Preamble.

Ellie: [silence]

Eric: Ha!

Ellie: No wait! Uhh...meamble.

Eric: No way.

Ellie: Yes! It is a combination of meander and amble. It's one of those new energy efficient hybrid words.

Eric: Does it run on corn?

Ellie: No. It lowers my carbon emissions from speaking because I get more meaning into each exhale.

Eric: Does that make the deaf the biggest environmentalists?

Ellie: Hmm.

Eric: And people who use a lot of contractions and acronyms. And innuendo. They're the lowest carbon emitters.

Ellie: Yes. OMG. They're the real heroes.

Eric: So does exercising increase our carbon footprint?

Ellie: Yeah, I guess it would have to.

Eric: I'm being green by sitting on the couch instead of going to the gym.

Ellie: Nice. Does that mean we should fine people who spend too much time at the gym? Should there be a cap and trade system for professional athletes' carbon exhalations?

Eric: Now you're just being ridiculous.

Subject: Favor

Actual email sent to Stanford Postdoc email list:

Dear postdocs,

I have a favor to ask of you. You see, my brother is getting married. He and his fiancee are putting me to the task of arranging a wedding for them here in the Bay Area (this is an Indian tradition, that the eldest sibling organizes the wedding).

As this is an auspicious occasion for my brother and his fiancee, and they would like to respect our parents wishes of a traditional Indian wedding, I would like to hire an elephant for the wedding. Basically, this should be an elephant that is about 3.5 meters in height. If it is a bit difficult to find an adult elephant, a baby elephant will suffice (perhaps 2 meters in height). My brother will sit on the elephant and there will be a procession accompanying him, as he goes to greet his wife-to-be. We plan to have the wedding in Mountain View, as there is a street close to where I live that is quite wide and long enough to accommodate a sizable crowd and an elephant.

I would much appreciate it if you tell me where I can hire an elephant, or if you know someone at the SF zoo who can lend me an elephant for a day, I would be so grateful! I promise you, your assistance will be rewarded!

Regards,
(doesn't seem quite right to publish his name but I assure you, this is real)

Obamarama

This morning at 8am I joined a large crowd of bleary-eyed San Franciscans to watch Obama's inauguration on a jumbotron in front of City Hall. It was a beautiful, warm and sunny morning; perfect for ushering in a new era of responsibility, humility, purpose and courage.

I experienced as much relief as exhilaration at the election of Barack Obama 11 weeks ago. Listening to his victory speech on election night felt to me like coming home after being away in a foreign land. I understood the language. I felt a sense of cultural inclusion and shared values that I have ached for. It felt nourishing, like familiar food. And I don't think I had even realized how hungry I was.

I think it was the first time in eight years that I didn't cringe with disgust and alienation at hearing our leader speak.

Obama's speech this morning was a stirring call to action. It was grave, and yet uplifting. One piece that particularly resonated with me was the promise of a re-conception of what government is and does. In yoga, we strive to constantly let go of that which no longer serves us, to release what we no longer need. Obama is not talking about winning the battles that have been waged for years, but rather choosing to focus on what really matters right now, making those old entrenched fights irrelevant. This is reframing at its best, and coupled with the impressive coordination, discipline and persistence characteristic of Obama's management style so far, it may actually allow us to transcend our way into a truly new era of American leadership.

I feel hopeful and excited about the future. There is no doubt that it will be difficult but it may be the very pain of the current crisis which catalyzes the creativity and the emotional stamina we need to redefine our future.

The work we are beginning now, tackling enormous challenges in the US and around the world (and universe...??), is the work of my generation. This is our work. My work. I think Obama said it perfectly this morning when he asserted that "there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

And I say - yes we can.

*I'd like to get credit for not saying "game changer" or "paradigm shift" or even thinking seriously about saying it.

We'd like to inform you that you are enjoying this

One of Eric's birthday presents was a Grow Your Own Pirate Adventure. This is a small package containing "everything you need for the perfect Pirate Adventure," which turns out to be three grow toys that can grow to up to 600% of their original size. There's a Pirate, a Ship, and a Treasure Chest.

We started with the Pirate because he looked extremely rascally and we wanted to see how large a scallywag he could become. He was just about two inches tall when we dropped him into a large vase full of water about a week ago and here's how he looks today on the eve of Obama's inauguration. I think he's probably as ready to pillage and plunder as he's going to get. We're taunting him with grapefruits, as you can see.

The first thing the Pirate did sitting in the water for a day or two was get extremely slimy and disgusting and his pegleg got really swollen but the rest of him stayed the same shape. You might think the toy was clearly malfunctioning, but you'd be wrong. The fine print would tell you so when on day four you were so grossed out you finally read it.

"As your toy grows, it may distort in shape. This is part of the fun and will correct when fully grown. The slimy, icky texture is normal and harmless."

I like that the toy directions are telling me that the awkward uneven growth isn't a drawback, it's part of the fun. I think that pharmaceutical companies should use this same "reframing" to help people appreciate and enjoy the side effects of different medications. Dizziness isn't an unintended consequence, it's a recreational bonus effect of the drug, as well as normal and harmless. Upset stomach and vomiting? That's included to help support your weight loss goals. It's like two drugs in one! What a deal.

Sign me up

I, along with the rest of the world, have been amazed and moved by the plane crash on the Hudson. It is so extraordinary when disaster is averted and a situation brings out the best in everyone.

Eric's response has been slightly different: he is now jealous of all the people who were in the plane crash.

"Man, I would love to be in a plane crash like that. Where you have an amazing experience and everyone survives? Heck yeah. Sign me up."

Is Eric a market of one or is this potentially a new business opportunity?

Is your refridgerator running?

I was biking down the Embarcadero yesterday afternoon, minding my own business, when a car full of aggressive women started yelling at me. The woman riding shotgun leaned almost her entire body out of the front window as she yelled:

"Hey! Hey! Your wheels are rolling! Your wheels are rolling!"

She looked sort of alarmed and was so insistent that even though I was fairly sure my bike was not malfunctioning, I glanced down at my front wheel.

The whole car busted up laughing, gripping their sides and nearly running the car off the road with their guffaws.

For love or money

Interviewing for jobs is a lot like dating.

You check each other out, try to impress each other and see if there is good chemistry. You want to put your best foot forward while still being yourself. And it can be hard to know how much cleavage is too much.

You imagine what life together would look like. Intense? Lots of travel? Challenging? Comfortable? Might you get bored? Does it require a new wardrobe?

Even when you know you don’t like them, you still want them to like you. And a string of bad meetings can leave you exhausted and wondering what the hell is wrong with you (and what the hell is wrong with all of them). Are all the good ones already taken?

People who are no longer on the market have forgotten the painful uncertainty of being uncommitted and feel compelled to tell you to enjoy the time because you will miss it when it is over. Play while you still can, they advise wistfully.

And now it is time for me to get ready for my hot date this afternoon.

A freedom film

In Improv class last night we pretended that we were in an actual acting class and worked on giving our on-stage emotions more depth by portraying them in natural pairs of opposites. The idea is that we almost never feel just one emotion at a time, but rather we feel the tension between opposed states of feeling.

The exercise was to sit on a chair facing the class and recite a nursery rhyme while vacillating between the extremes of two emotions. The teacher demonstrated using fear and excitement in a dramatic reading of Mary Had A Little Lamb, and then each of us took our turn working on pairings like rage & restraint, joy & sadness and lust & innocence.

One woman was tasked with horror & intrigue, which she executed so compellingly that the teacher literally leapt from her seat to tell us about how she had had that exact experience just the other night. She was watching a movie with her husband and he had fallen asleep. The movie, "A Very Young Girl," includes a scene where the entire screen is focused on a woman's vagina and a man has an earthworm and the teacher just had to wake her husband up because what she was seeing was so horrifying and fascinating.

"So you were watching porn?" a classmate ventured.

"No! It wasn't porn, it was French," explained the teacher.

The guy sitting next to me, who is a sketch comedy writer, took out his iphone and made of note of it.

"I like that," he mused. "Not porn, just French."

He did spend the last four years living in the UK

I met with a fellow yesterday who works for a small sustainability consulting firm that isn't hiring right now. I responded to an open position that they had posted on their website and the message back from them was "we're not actually hiring right now but we'd love to meet you anyway." Unfortunately, this is not uncommon: there may be as many sham job postings right now as there are married people on match.com.

But I figured it couldn't hurt to meet the guy and learn a little more about his business, so I joined him for a coffee and a chat at the Ferry building yesterday. That was when I discovered that even in this modern day and age, it is possible for someone who is well educated, has plenty of money, a respectable job and seemingly normal personal grooming habits to have distractingly hideous teeth.

Better late than never

"Getting into yoga" is an excellent, and popular, new year's resolution. Many of the members of the gym where I teach yoga have made this one of their goals for 2009. What they have not resolved to do, as far as I can tell, is be on time to class. For some reason, people coming to my yoga class for the first time always come in late. Maybe they waffle up until the very last moment about whether to come or not; they may even stand outside the door shifting uneasily from one foot to the other for several minutes, trying to will themselves into the room. I don't know. All I know is that, inevitably, the more inexperienced they are, the more likely they are to come in at least 10 minutes late when it is most difficult for me to help them have a good experience.

I had one woman last week come in 40 min late to an hour long class, take what looked like some sort of seat cushion from near the pile of yoga mats*, plop down on it and join in with the class, trying very hard to blend in and look as though she had been there the whole time. As if perhaps I simply hadn't noticed her there before.

This morning was no exception. At 7:03am when I started class it was all** my regular students, so I launched into our typical medium-advanced level class set to a playful Cirque de Soleil soundtrack. Sure enough, at 7:11am in slinks a new student. She sets up over by the wall on the far side and starts trying to join in with the flow but it is immediately obvious that she has never in her life been to a yoga class before.

As the teacher, this creates something of a challenge: you need to keep the flow going for the rest of the class, but you also need to help the new person flailing around near the wall to keep her from having a really bad experience and even potentially hurting herself. So I give more detailed instructions than I normally would for just my regulars, I offer all the beginner options to help her get oriented and find her way, and I walk over and help her as often as I can without letting the rest of the class grind to a halt.

I try to be graceful in my incorporation of different options for the newcomers because I really want them to feel good about their experience in the class, but sometimes it still sounds like I am pointedly singling them out. For example, I might take the class to a pretty basic pose and then say "some of you may stay right here. Those looking for a more advanced option might try balancing on your right leg and lifting your left." In a small class with only a few students, this feels painfully euphemistic. I might as well say "new girl stay right where you are until you collapse in a heap which seems to be imminent, people who actually know what you are doing, transition into artachandrasana."

*I have no idea where she even found it and in what universe someone would confuse this item of garden furniture for a yoga mat
**"all" = 3. But doesn't saying "all" make it sound like a lot?

Enormous cat feet

Starting a little after 4am this morning, two ogres held an intense farting contest just outside my window. It was quite a duel! They were very well matched and the competition went on and on...

When I finally got out of bed a little after 7am, it became clear what all that butt belllowing was about: I could barely make out the building across the street through the thick creamy white fog.

You might think that living near the water in a city known for its fog would mean that a) excessive foghorn activity would not be a surprise and b) it would have lost all of its novelty by now.

Aha! Not so. We get plenty of fog but for some reason this level of foghorn activity is totally unprecedented, at least based on the experience of the last six months.

I suppose it is possible that it isn't foghorns at all but some punks with airhorns down on Clementina. As soon as I can see the street I'll let you know.

Maybe this is why I'm not working

I can do a lot of things. Some of them even well. But I have an embarrassing gap in my repertoire of skills: I never learned to whistle.

This sort of feels like admitting that I can't tie my shoe or put on my own pants, but I'm afraid it is nonetheless true.

So, one of my new year's resolutions is to make right this pathetic wrong that has been allowed to continue for far too long. I'm gonna learn to whistle, dammit. And I'm not going to let anyone stop me.

In the eight days that I've been focused on this lofty goal, I've reached the point where I can somewhat consistently make a single feeble tone. Yet all this progress has come at a price. Perhaps it is because I have a cold and am pretty congested, but I can't practice whistling for more than a few minutes before I start to get really light-headed. I've had to stop practicing while driving for fear or suddenly passing out behind the wheel.

If things don't improve a lot and quickly, I might have to modify my new year's resolution to mastering the kazoo instead. It's better to set goals one can actually achieve.