Year: 2018

California dreaming. Or something…

The funny thing is that after almost thirteen years away, I still feel a very strong connection to California and the Bay Area, though Los Angeles (where I never lived) is the place I miss most. But after all those years, my affection and nostalgia for San Francisco (where I actually did live) has never really returned. The connection I feel to California — and in some ways, it still feels like home — does not extend to the place that actually was home. I don’t fully understand this, and sometimes it makes me a little sad.

When I lived in San Francisco. It was very common for my fellow residents not to think of themselves as Californians. They identified almost exclusively as San Franciscans, whether they’d lived there more than six weeks or not. While the earlier version of me was pretty obsessive about the place is well, I always saw myself as a resident of California first and of San Francisco second. I didn’t fall into the trap of believing that all civilization ended when you left the sacred 49 square miles, and I grew to love the state as a whole.

And I still love it. I’m generally ready to visit on a moment’s notice. If economics were not a factor, there are places I would still consider living in California. It’s still very much a part of me, and I think in a lot of ways I became so fluent in the culture that I still often think in “Californian.”

I know I have this annoying tendency to think of cities in much the same way most people think of lovers, and I’m self-aware enough to realize that part of the problem I have with San Francisco is the same problem one has with just about any ex. It’s hard to think about San Francisco without remembering how much I really despised it by the time I left. I dwell on the bad ending without thinking so much about the good times that preceded it. But I still regularly consume material about the history of the city, and I still have memories of good times there, but they don’t leave me with a particularly warm and squishy feeling.

The last time I was in SF, for a conference in Oakland in 2015, I found my visit to the city to be so off-putting that I’m still not sure I’ll ever return for even a quick visit. That was sort of hard for me to cope with; when I wrote about the rest of the trip, I never got around to finishing that last section where I would have talked about being in San Francisco. I couldn’t quite express my feelings, and I still can’t. I don’t believe, though, that all my antipathy toward the city was based on past experience . I really do think it is a very different place now, and it’s not a place that I particularly like. In fact, I don’t think I’d particularly like it now even if I had no history or background and were visiting for the first time.

Part of this is probably also related to the fact that I’m much more inclined to live in the present and the future these days, which is a good and healthy thing. I’m glad that I’m not “pining away” for my old life in San Francisco, but it would be nice to be able to muster up at least a little nostalgia for something other than an imagined historical past I never really experienced in person anyway.

I guess the tl;dr here is that I have a complicated relationship with San Francisco, but I still feel very connected to California, and that I don’t really know how to write about all of this…and probably should no longer even try. But a Twitter conversation this evening about this article reminded me that I’ve been meaning to do it anyway, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I don’t think I succeeded, but it killed a few minutes before bedtime.

When I’m (considerably more than) 64…

On the way to my car after dinner tonight, I saw an older couple, both of whom were using walkers. I hesitated for a minute before offering to help the gentleman load them into the back seat after he got his wife settled in (my dad always hated it when people offered him help.) This gentleman just pleasantly and politely declined, and I went on my way.

As I drove off, though, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy that even with their advanced age and mobility issues, they both found the motivation to head out into the cold for a Friday night dinner date. It reminded me of watching my dad dance with my mom one night shortly after he had his hip replacement, holding his cane in one hand and her hand in the other.

I hope I’m that fucking hardcore when I’m their age.

Indiana, Indiana

   

I hadn’t been to Indianapolis in more than eleven years, and hadn’t spent any appreciable time there in almost twenty, though I had recently updated its profile on that other site. This was a work trip, though, and I saw more of the hotel and the meeting room I was in than anything else, particularly since I had no car.

That said, I did manage to:

Sadly, I did not manage to:

  • See my friend Bob, on whom I still blame the wonder that was the 1997 Planet SOMA U.S. Tour.
  • Indulge in anything of a pork tenderloin nature.
  • Do any actual research.

An extra bonus was the fact that I was able to avoid snow and ice in the South by travelling to the Midwest. Irony is fun. Maybe the biggest thing, though, was the end of the series of overnight delays that has plagued every single work trip I’ve taken by plane in the past four years. The only glitches were the two-hour delay waiting for a replacement plane in Charlotte and my first encounter with the notorious Gate 35X at DCA.

Off to Durham for another work trip tomorrow. I may not leave the house this weekend.

Bullies

It’s interesting how so many on the right have suddenly recognized that bullying is a problem now that it’s their primary means of excusing school gun violence rather than just the “innocent teasing” that LGBTQ students and other “snowflakes” were supposed to ignore.

And by “interesting” I mean “typical.”

Torture at 3AM…

Torture: When you really need to take a piss, but you can’t because you’re dreaming that you’re having a conversation with someone who won’t shut the fuck up long enough for you to excuse yourself.

I’ve been having very vivid dreams lately. I seem to be sleeping really well in general, only waking up once a night (which qualifies as “really well” for me.) I’m not sure if the dreams are a result of all the allergy medications or just of my anxiety about the fact that the country is, you know, falling apart at the hands of a mentally ill cartoon villain.

But the dreams keep coming.

And they’re exhausting.

A running theme in my dreams seems to be that I find myself endlessly walking around large cities, apparently looking for something. I’m usually not alone; I tend to be either with a colleague from work, an old friend I haven’t talked to in years, or an ex. Sometimes my companion turns into someone else over the course of the dream. But we’re always walking.

After several years of observing wandering behavior in dementia patients while visiting my mom, I’ve started wondering about whether there might be a connection. Does my future involve wandering around the nursing home thinking I’m in Manhattan looking for some mysterious something?

I think I need a nap now…