SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA

Between New York and Philadelphia. Between Philadelphia and DC. Between DC and Pittsburgh. Between Sandusky, Ohio and Elkhart, Indiana. Between Chicago and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Between Osceola and Omaha, Nebraska. Between Fort Morgan, Colorado and Green River, Utah. It’s hard to believe there’s a continuous system of tracks leading from Chicago all the way to California, but I’m a-ridin’ those rails right now and they’re taking me home.

Philadelphia 30th Street Station

As I write, I’m between Helper and Provo, headed for Salt Lake City. But in my mind, I’m between Brooklyn and San Francisco, as to the somewhere in America I want to live.

GOT OFF TO A ROCKY START

in the Rockies this morning, rockin’ and rollin, with fog obscuring the deep vistas. This is my third day and third night on one train or another, the Northeast Regional, the Capitol Limited, the California Zephyr.

IT ALL STARTED

Christmas Eve at Penn Station, New York and ended at Fox Chase Station, Philadelphia: that dreaded time of year known as the holidays at home with my family. “I hope this is the last ticket to 30th Street Station I ever buy!” I exclaim to my sister, though it is unlikely that I will never again flee Fox Chase on the SEPTA R8 commuter train to freedom.

Generally, in my case back east, one train leads to another and Fox Chase led to Philly led to Washington. “An informed pet is our best client,” says a sign in Rockville, Maryland, whatever that means. Potomac Valley Brick employs a scad of people here in this DC suburb. At 4:35 p.m. their parking lot is still full, and I speed past them on my way to Chicago. How dreary is the working life! What about all these people’s lives, driving hither and thither on the freeways and at the stoplights, how are their days and nights? Whither goest thou, America? Indeed.

Creeks and ponds are all frozen out here, the land and vegetation in winter hibernation. There’s the beautiful little station at Point of Rocks that the B and O architect Francis E. Baldwin designed. This is my third January in a row on this route and the markers are familiar and welcome as neighborhood landmarks.

TUNNEL!

Emerging onto frozen cliff-face, sheaths of ice hanging from ledges of rock. Someone just got a wrong number on his cell phone, the sing-songy ringtone sounding so out of place on a train. No more no-one-can-reach-me, no-one-can-touch-me about being “lost in America,” as I think of cross-country train travel, or anywhere, anymore. With GPS tracking, for instance, my mother can now follow a flight’s itinerary on the web and pinpoint my minute of landing. “Don’t bother to call me on the train!” I tell Ma, “I’m not taking calls!”

NIGHT TAKES HOLD

as we pull out of Harper’s Valley, West Virginia, home to the Harper’s Valley hypocrites. Thomas Jefferson called where the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers meet “perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature!” That was not apparent from my window on this train, but perhaps I could see it, like the man on the balcony, from the lovely inn on the hill, its welcoming yellow lights dotting the darkness and beckoning to me. But the train, as is its wont, moves on, and I with it.

In a swath of darkness, a single house with a Christmas display looks like it could be the real nativity scene, lit with a divine glow from the baby Jesus. A huge moon is hiding behind trees—as we move closer, I see that it reads “Burger King.” We’ve been slowly moving along through nowhere fields, stopping to accommodate freight trains, and are now inching towards civilization, if not slouching toward Bethlehem. There, anyway, are the Golden Arches. Awaken the Thrill, says the banner, “with the Big Mac AVATAR meal.” Yeah, I had lost all zest for life ‘til I had that $2 movie tie-in burger.

WHERE THE FREAK ARE WE?

At American Legion Post 13. At the Union Rescue Mission—“Doorway to Hope at the Gateway to the West.” Cumberland, Maryland, gateway to the west? Isn’t that the St. Louis arch? I wonder what lives might be under repair or reconstruction at the Mission. They might also find solace at the Progressive insurance office down the street, whose wall reads, “Here’s hope—Jesus cares for you.”

TAXES STINK!

a billboard complains. “Your tax preparer shouldn’t.” Nearly two hours late due to freight delays and I hope we keep to it because our Chicago arrival time of 8:45 is a little early for me to be packed and ready to go.

A scary ghostly snowman emerges out of the darkness.

I’ve resolved to make a tradition of taking the train home from the familial duty call back east. Four days of decompression and I reacquaint myself with my country. Stay in touch, America! Chugging through anonymous small towns, most houses dark by 10:00 p.m., I like being somewhere in America, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I think. We pass “Wilderness Voyagers” and I wonder what they have to offer. Look it up on the web. On second thought, fuck the web. It’s delightful to be without it. Like turning off a noisy TV in the background when you’re on the phone. Ya can’t think.

YIKES!

Almost fell out of bed on that last lurch. I understand the top bunk has a safety belt. Hm, I’ve never been strapped to a bed before. Intriguing…

We have achieved Connellsville, PA, a beautiful little berg. Gorgeous, generous old houses in Christmas garb. Someone’s got a red stuffed chair out on their frozen lawn, next to a lit Christmas tree. Someone else watches TV in their mellow yellow living room, a golden square of lamplight falling onto the snow below the window.

It’s snowing now, streetlamps reveal.

Cryo-Trans is out there “protecting today’s perishables for tomorrow.” I wish I were one of them. I don’t think cryo-anything is going to protect my perishability.

WELL, I GOT MY WISH.

8:45 Central Time and we should have been arriving in Chicago ‘bout now; instead I am stretching and yawning as I awaken to a snowy Tuesday morning in Waterloo, Indiana, and I get another hour on the train instead of in the waiting room.

“I’D RATHER BE ON A TRAIN

than in a train station waiting for one,” I tell my DC-based attendant Cliff, who is going back there tonight. He just wants off the train, period.

Here comes Chicago

And I am off the train and in Union Station Chicago, where, as usual, their WIFI in the Metropolitan Lounge is freakin’ forkin’ down, so no live-posting this column. If Virgin can provide it 33,000 feet in the air, and Sweden on its trains, why can’t Amtrak maintain an internet connection in a goddamn waiting room? I pack up and pay Corner Bakery $4.00 for coffee and rugelach only to find out their WIFI, too, is down. Ah, fuck the web. But I can’t check to see what’s at the Art Institute or if it’s open Tuesdays (NY MOMA is not, I discovered) and it’s freezing and flurrying out there. I am not braving that Adams Street wind off the river without a clear objective.

I see on the board that the Empire Builder to both Portland and Seattle has been cancelled. Wow, lucky me. I almost booked that train, but decided three weeks of travel was enough and I didn’t want to make two more stops on the way home. “Doc” Livingston, our Santa Claus of a conductor for the Zephyr, says it won’t be back on track for two or three days. Phew, glad I missed that one. Instead I’ve got Roomette 2, Car 531 and dinner in the diner awaiting me, Illinois out the window.

Doc Livingston, Conductor, California Zehyr

TEXAS EAGLE

now boarding. So glad I’m not going to Texas! Haven’t been on that train yet, but I am not so keen on riding trains for trains’ sake as I used to be. On my years-ago sojourn on the Sunset Limited, what I mostly remember about Texas is “greener than I thought it would be,” and “are we still in Texas?”

I’d say 90% of the people in this sleeper’s lounge are retirees. I’ve always felt like the young one among old people, but it was clear at my writing workshop in Oaxaca that I am the old one among young people. There was a young-gals-loose-in Mexico clique and the older gals set, me among them.

2:11 ON THE ZEPHYR.

NOW I can relax; I don’t have to schlep baggage again until Thursday night back in SF. Luxury of all luxuries, tomorrow is the greatest of all great days because tomorrow belongs to the train. I wake up on the Zephyr, go to sleep on the Zephyr. This is the heart of the trip, the Colorado Rockies on into Utah.

The Village of Brookfield has whales on their water tower because Illinois is known for its thriving whaling industry. Flying down the Chicago suburban commuter line, whisking past Whitney Springs, Highland, Clarendon Hills—how would one choose amongst them to live? Like the Philly Swarthmore line, neat little towns all in a row, with their quaint main street of little shops in their Christmas finery. Cars are lined up at the Burlington Ave. train station, waiting to be driven to their garages and snowy driveways.

Downer’s Grove—there’s a cheery name for a town. You can go bowling at the Tivoli lanes, knock down a few pins and make some noise. Does someone find it a downer not having made it out of Downer’s Grove? Or Boring, Oregon? But some people like to keep their worlds small, familiar, on a first-name basis. I wish I were one of them, so I didn’t have to pay for the privilege of SF or NY—just hightail it out of there like friend Jerry and buy a nice roomy house somewheres quiet. But if I’m more than a bus ride away from a Big Ten orchestra, I won’t live there.

HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE ME

to lose my mind here, do you think? I asked friend John of his town of Delsbo, Sweden. I think he guessed less than a week. There’s something to be said for having a forest in back of your house where you run your dogs and pick chanterelles for that night’s dinner. And I saw someone on his street, Kalv Stigen, pulling a flatbed of logs by horse. How many ways there are to live! No one should ever feel stuck in one of them. Every time I do, I find a way to pry myself loose, even if it takes a while, perhaps years.

A sign boasts that someone is a “leader in the Sandwich community.” Damn, you can make a community out of anything, even love of hoagies. How cold must that guy’s hands be, taking his galvanized trash cans out to the curb with no gloves. Down the street, someone burns cardboard in an oil drum. Odd to see fire amidst snow.

Catch someone’s eye at a railroad crossing. I lean against the window, pen in hand, as he waits for the train to pass. I feel privileged to be the one on the train. Being here means I am free. Of employment, home ownership, emotional entanglements. My chief responsibility is the welfare of three cats. (This is how you know I’m not a “cat lady.” They don’t stop me from traveling.)

JUST GOT FOOLED

by a fake deer on someone’s lawn, just like John Turturo in “Box of Moonlight.” Oh looky here, the holidays are over and the planes are back at work spreading chemtrails. A herd of black bulls look like velvet against the snow, which stretches as far as this eye can see, dotted here and there with ranch homes, barns and silos, each with its own stand of trees. None too close to any other. And the feed store is right handy.

Princeton, Illinois used to be called “City of Elms” until a blight killed them all off. Sad. “Princeton” was supposedly picked out of a hat. And now coming upon Kewanee, Hog Capital of the World. I wonder how wild things can get at the Labor Day Hog Days Festival? What with the parade, flea market and carnival. Knifings? Drunken scenes like with Roz Russell and William Holden in “Picnic”? I imagine a life in which someone might be a carny at the Kewanee Hog Days event, perhaps touring around to state fairs and such. I see the VFW is having a chicken fry on the 9th. I’m going to put that on my calendar so I can think of them and wonder how it went, wonder how all the stories across America are unfolding. I’m sure the VFW and its constituents are a big part of someone’s life.

“Hey, Homer! See you at the fry?”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Jeb.”

THE KARMA GODS WILL SMILE UPON YOU

if you return the sunglasses you stole to their rightful owner, comes the announcement. In this little rolling village, close quarters, open doors and rooms empty of people but full of their stuff, require trusting a lot of strangers on a train. I’ve encountered only one unsociable sort, a fellow next to me at dinner who didn’t say a single word to the three of us at his table over the course of an hour. I remarked upon it after he left. “Oh, I assumed he was your husband,” said NASA instructor Victor. “No,” I told him, “I travel alone.” “It’s better that way sometimes, isn’t it,” said he (divorced). “It’s better for me that way all the time.”

I love the look of a snow-covered cemetery. The sun has dropped to the horizon and the white field is orange, headstones glowing in the soft light. There’s a shop named “Odd Couple’s Printers.” I wonder what constitutes an odd couple here in Galva, Illinois? The usual? They suck dick?

PLEASE DON’T LEAVE THE PLATFORM

if you go out for a smoke stop in Galesburg, Illinois. “We don’t want to leave anyone behind.” “But we will,” someone says just as I am thinking it. “If you miss this train, we’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

I closed my eyes for a bit and when I looked up we were crossing the Mississippi into Iowa. Had I known that Steve’s Place (The Place to BE!) was here, I might have gotten off at Burlington. I guess I’ll have dinner tonight. Was too worn out yesterday to tell my story to a bunch of strangers. I’m coming from visiting family in Philly, heading home to San Francisco. That’s my story. The whole truth and nothing but it.

WHERE R U NOW?

my sister texts. Between Granby and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Slept through Denver, whence I had promised to mail postcards. Sleep on a train is always by fits and starts, although you don’t miss much passing through Nebraska at night. The few times I looked up I thought, “talk about flat.”

I woke up looking like I’d been raped by Hypnos.

Stepped out for some fresh, cold unrecirculated, undisenfected Colorado air, and to mail the cards in Grand Junction; now Utah bound. Rocked out in the Rockies. Literally, I’m rocked out, my eyes have tired of those craggy brown rockfaces.

“Winter Gets Serious in USA,” says today’s USA Today front page. It’s amazing how much of this country is at the mercy of winter, how paralyzing are its effects. How much harder it is to accomplish things while in its grip, even just walking. The infrastructure, staff and equipment required of New York to manage snow is intense, just keeping streets clear. Out here? Criminy, snow rules. Rents are high in SF, but at least I’m not filling a fuel tank with heating oil every few months like I did in Portland. I didn’t even use my heat, five years on Page St.

I LOVE TRAINING

through Utah. So much raw earth on display. Geology 101 on wheels. I love this magnificent country of mine, I’m talking about the land mass and variety of topography, not some nationalistic zeal. I love the Zephyr route. “Named for the Greek God of the West Wind,” says a postcard, “the Zephyr blows you away with unique views of the American West.” I was proud, chatting with German exchange students over lunch, of the awesome scenery.

Pete has come to turn my bed down and I dart into the bathroom. I’d been feeling a bit of motion sickness from looking at the monitor, which appears to sway in a zig-zag effect when you look away from the moving scenery, and when I get a whiff of the standard issue Amtrak disinfectant, I throw up on the spot, in the football-sized sink. Pete is sorry to hear that; he tells me it’s air freshener coming through the vents. Ugh! Air freshener? Air sickener! I have always loved their almond-scented hand soap, however. Excellent shower this morning moving through Colorado. Plenty of hot water, decent water pressure, clean, rough towels. On a four-day trip, the first class shower alone is worth the price of admission.

A LITTLE GIRL’S SILHOUETTE

fills a window frame as the silver snake of the Zephyr Superliner passes her house. There’s got to be a mystique about a long-distance train that goes by your house every day. Born in Utah, what might she know of Chicago or San Francisco? Does she dream of the day she, too, will ride this train?

Salt Lake City. There’s some police action in an alley across the way, blue and red blinking lights, two cops talking to some poor schnook standing in snow. The cops go into the car, the schnook stays standing on the sidewalk for a good five minutes. What the hell? When I look up again, he is gone, but I didn’t see him get into the car. Someone’s Salt Lake City story. Glad it’s not mine.

THE HAPPIEST HAPPINESS OF ALL

is lying on my back on a train chugging through the dark, as, par for the course, my guardian angel Orion peers in my window. Good to see you, old chum.

For the past two years, my favorite stop on the route to get off and start a new life was Provo, Utah. This year the surprise winner is Connellsville, PA.

Hey, there’s a strip of casinos out here, in the middle of Mormon land. Or are we in Nevada already? The states come, the states go, I pass them all by. But everyone whose life I imagined from my snug seat is right where they were, no doubt; the Fox Chase ticket agent, the clients of the Cumberland Rescue Mission, the printing odd couple, the suburban commuters of Chicago, the Sandwich community, the gal at the Grand Junction gift shop, the Utah girl watching the train pass, Steve of Steve’s Place, the Kewanee carny, the VFW fry chef. What is it that anchors one to a life? Because I don’t seem to have one of those, an anchor. Is that a bad thing? All I  have is my desire to be in the city of my choice.

THE UGLINESS OF RENO

seems somehow sadly gay…the glory that was Rome, is of another day. I’ve been terribly alone, and forgotten in Manhattan…I’m going home, to my city by the bay…

Last day of my marvelous 2010 excursion. I like starting the year out on the road. But boy do I feel a flop coming on. I am ready to hit that couch with those cats. Feeling a bit flu-ish (funny, I don’t look flu-ish). January 1st I joined the ranks of unemployed uninsured Americans; my COBRA coverage ran out and with it my prescription coverage, $20 doctor visits and psychopharmacological oversight of Dr. S. Because of my preexisting condition, I am out of luck with Big Pharma, since health care insurance companies are not in the business of caring for health, or for anything but the bottom line. Luckily, I live in San Francisco, which has a Health Access Plan for schnooks like me (just wanted to use the word “schnook” again).

BACK IN CALIFORNIA

and breathing a sigh of relief. Winter is for the birds, and the smart ones fly south. The Sierras feel like my backyard. By the time we near Colfax, the snow is gone and all is green again, the windows are warm to the touch, this trip has been long enough, and so has this column. As I get off the AMTRAK shuttle from Emeryville at the Ferry Building, I say to Lars, the German student, “Welcome to the best city in America.”

WHERE AM I NOW?

Home.

Home is where the cats are

AWOKE TO MORE SNOW,

in Philadelphia. Now 32°, exactly freezing. At 7:00 p.m. EST, five hours of the 00’s to go. This is my last Ax File, and yours, of the decade. I have other things in store for the 10’s, but at the moment I don’t know exactly what all they are. There are two ways I figure things out, writing and riding trains. Come Monday I’ll have three nights, four days to do both, while I cross 2600 miles back to San Francisco.

DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER,

but the question is: Do I stay or do I go now? After I left for Philly, my friend Jon looked at an apartment in Brooklyn for me, at the location, location, location of St. John’s Place at 7th Ave. Classic brownstone, tree-lined street, pretty church. It was a good deal and if Jon had said to me, “You can’t let this one slip away,” I would have gone back to NY, put money down on it, gone home to SF and packed up. But it was just another apartment, and the train trip becomes a 2600-mile meditation on where to put myself.

I HAVE NO JOB,

I have no property, I have no partner. I’m an unemployed writer, and I can go anywhere in the world right now and still be one. I have a few close, treasured friends, a score of acquaintances, and a love for San Francisco, the city I made my home. I love the sort of people who are drawn here. Apart from the cost of living, it’s an easy place to be. The weather is a powerful plus factor. The Noir Festival at the Castro is coming up in January. I have tickets for the Black Eyed Peas in San Jose this April. But…

BUT WHAT?

The usual. I’ve been in San Francisco since 2003, California since 1996. I’m bored.

My readers say:

“Sounds like you have made up your mind and are outta SF!”

“I could tell how good that was for you to be somewhere different…I think a move to NY or some place else entirely new and exciting might be a great new adventure and provide lots of new people, places and things to discover. Which of course you know, makes for great writing…They say happiness is having something to look forward to…Go be crazy. 55 is the new 35. Load up those cats and go for it.”

“New York is the place for you.”

LOAD UP THOSE CATS

It will cost me about $500 to ship all three cats via Pet Air. I’d rather drive across with them but that might prove more traumatic and chaotic (for me, much less them) than a one-day air journey. The cats will provide the cross-country continuity. As long as I can cuddle up with a familiar feline, it will feel like home.

Well, it does sound like I’ve made up my mind. Will, will, will, I said above, not would, would, would. But I haven’t decided anything. I am of two minds, like Janus, the namesake of January, one facing backwards, one forward, “frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as marriages, births and other beginnings. He was representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilization, rural country and urban cities, and youth and adulthood.”

I HAD AN ODD DREAM

that I was at a guy’s house–a very talented and imaginative guy who has a fascinating life but is personally hard to approach. I was at his house, and started kissing his neck, and drawing his arms around me, and he exclaims, “What are you doing? I don’t want to touch your *****, I want to touch your vision!”

Perhaps that is the crux. I need a vision adjustment. I can’t see what I’m doing. Perhaps I won’t see it until Janus draws the curtain on the new year and decade. It’s something to look forward to. Ready or not, here it comes!

San Francisco is this-a-way, New York that-a-way. The light is falling on New York…

IT’S A WINTER SOLSTICE BLIZZARD SNOWSTORM IN NEW YORK!

The ornamental roof spire across the street stands out in relief against the spooky gauzy outline of the church steeple hulking behind it. The windows are splattered with windblown snow; the sills have four-inch drifts piled on them. Christmas lights at a house across from us provide the only color in the streetscape. The bare branches of the trees are fleshed out with a thick padding of snow. Icicles hang from either side of a streetlight like a Fu Manchu mustache. There’s a holy silence to the night, no cars passing, no hum of distant traffic. Way far away I detect the muffled banshee cry of a siren.

Jon’s railing

THE STREETS WERE CLEAR

at 11:00 when I left friend Jon’s place for Tea Lounge this morning in Brooklyn. When I walked home at 1:00, the snow was spitting in my face. When we went to Christine’s Christmas party at 2:00, I was a-slippin’ and a-slidin’. Moving on to a theater performance at 4:00, I got salt stains on my black boots. Coming out of the show at 6:00 I opened my umbrella but the snow was flying sideways at my face anyway. On the way back to Christine’s party after dinner at Cubana Café, my boots were sinking in the accumulation.

The man from Munich, shoveling his stoop with a dustpan

“WHOA!”

I couldn’t help yelling as I navigated with baby steps the slippery slopes of Park Slope. Losing my footing on ice or wet leaves inspires a twinge of mortality, a dread of life slipping away without notice. By the time we made it back home, snow stinging my face like needles, the geology of my black felt hat, which resembles a pastry bag rosette rising to a peak, was one of snow-covered hills and dales.

Currier and Ives, Central Park style

The refrigerator compressor clicks on, disturbing the room. Hey! I want to kick it, not tonight! It’s been snowing and blowing for more than twelve hours now. The last time I saw snow was January ‘09 on my jaunt between Chicago and San Francisco, on the frozen fields of Illinois and Iowa, the haunted barren ranchlands and buttes of Utah, rocky crags of Colorado and evergreens of the Sierras—all from the cozy comfort of my climate-controlled cocoon on the California Zephyr.

Christmas on Union St.

I don’t remember how long ago I last walked in snow—and I am overjoyed, exhilarated, choking with excitement. In my thirteen years in California, I’ve felt like a cheat, escaping the ravages of the real weather I experienced during my 26 years in Philadelphia. In San Francisco the weather is never a factor as to whether I will do something or not, I don’t give it a thought.

Snow snow snow snow snow!

I was lucky to have booked my flight from SF for Friday the 18th. A day later, I might have been stranded. A snowplow thunders by scraping down Union St. At 4:00 a.m. neighbor comes out to wield his shovel. I am tempted to go out for a walk in the winter wonderland, but I am finally winding down. The snow will still be there tomorrow, after all. It’s not going anywhere, and now, neither am I, except to sleep.

SOME FUCKIN’ BLIZZARD

What was all the hype about? Yes, there was substantial accumulation, but I was expecting this city to SHUT DOWN! I was expecting another Saturday on Sunday. But on Sunday, the sun came out. Boo! Milder temperatures plus snow = slush. That we don’t like.

Oh well. Beautiful day for walking in New York, coat hanging open, and I still sank into snow up to my knees, fell on my butt on 5th Avenue, yelled whoa about a billion times. Thrilled to find the fabulous Robert Frank exhibit The Americans I saw at SFMOMA this summer now at the Met. Mind-blowing Tim Burton retrospective at MOMA, William Blake as you have never seen him at Pierpont Morgan Library. The truth is, I don’t want to leave New York. There’s too much to do. If there were an apartment set up for me here I could have my cats shipped to, I’d leave all my crap behind and begin a new decade in a new city. I’ve got a coffee hang, a corner bar, a best friend, my family a 90-minute train ride away, New York at my disposal. It sounds like a good idea at the time. Let’s see what it feels like as I cross the miles back to the other coast.

The author in her glory on her butt on 5th Ave.

WROTE FORMER TIMES COLUMNIST JAMES RESTON,

quoted by Anna Quindlen in her final “Life in the 30s” column, in December 1988, and again by Judith Warner in her final “Domestic Disturbances” column in December 2009.“Why do you not participate more in class discussions?” asked an English professor who admired my papers. Because writing is how I think about things. I don’t do so well on my feet. One idea does not follow another in any logical manner. I can’t arrange my thoughts quickly and coherently enough to talk about them without babbling and tongue-tripping.

IN WRITING

I give myself all the time I need to consider and express things, and don’t have to write in sequence—just whatever’s on my mind at any given time. Then I take all the time I need to arrange the thoughts in some kind of order that makes sense to me. Word processing was made for a mind like mine. My typed and handwritten notes were a jungle of tangled vines, arrows criss-crossing each other pointing to other paragraphs, other pages. I also remember back to the days when architectural offices would literally cut and paste specifications. I’m glad those days are over, even if the charm and mystique of priceless “manuscripts” are now a thing of the past.

UP IN THE CLOUDS,

I read Warner’s column on my way back east for Christmas. Virgin/Google are making a holiday gift of free WIFI through January 15th. Too bad Amtrak trains don’t offer WIFI (Swedish ones do)–I’ll be days without. And by the way, I’m not answering my cell phone on the train 1/4 to 1/7/10. I prefer to be “lost” in America.

VIRGIN FLIGHT 406 SF TO LA

Early a.m. at SFO

Dawn at SFO

Morning has broken at SFO

Leaving San Francisco

Between SF and LA

Approaching LA

Los Angeles

EVER WONDER

why you don’t feel the speed of an airplane like you do a car?

According to fire4511 on answers.yahoo.com, “You do not feel the movement because your points of reference are the plane and the ground. Everything in the plane is moving as the same speed as you are, so there is no sensation of movement there. If you look out the window at the ground, you are so high up that your normal points of reference look so small as to be unusable. You are going 350 mph, the room around you is going 350 MPH…You feel ’speed’ based on physical clues.”

VIRGIN FLIGHT 406, LA to NY

I’m 33,122 feet up in the air at the moment, between Los Angeles and New York; it’s -62 degrees F out there; we’re going 551 mph; and I’ve 2017 miles to go before I sleep, which I have not since Wednesday night. Lorrie’s airport van picked me up at 4:15 a.m. Friday—was up till then packing and cleaning for my cat sitter and I’m still wide awake after a Starbuck’s Peppermint Mocha at LAX. I thought it would be cool to post and distribute a column from high in the sky, but ‘snot going to happen. My pictures are not uploading, saving the file is a crapshoot, and I’m at 24% and falling battery power.

BROOKLYN

After nearly 36 spaced-out hours without sleep, I succumb around midnight, anticipating the Big Blizzard of ’09, awaking every so often to see if it was snowing yet (no) and I now await the storm at my Brooklyn hang, Tea Lounge on Union St. If I’d flown today I’d have been fucked.

I DON’T KNOW HOW, WHY OR WHEN

but I feel I will be moving to New York. It’s creeping up on me. You have to be in a certain frame of mind to make a cross-country move, which frame I am not in, because the timing’s not right. Unfinished business with the city by the bay, but I foresee a day I won’t mind leaving it behind. Perhaps I won’t know what I think until I read what I write about it?

As I pack up to leave, a dandruff-sized sprinkling of snow has begun to fall…Happy Solstice Blizzard, y’all.

The author misses her kidz!

BUT I DON’T.

Want to. Yeah, I know, life’s a bitch and then you die. Still, I won’t cry. I hit the double nickel this coming year and enter a new demographic. You know like when you click on a pull-down menu to pick the year of your birth and it takes like six seconds to scroll there. Born in ’55 and will be 55. I guess it’s time to reread Henry James’s The Ambassadors, a book I found intolerable in college but promised myself I’d read again “when I’m old,” thinking I’d understand this Strether guy better. Perhaps I should follow him to Paris to read it! Now there’s an idea.

It does feature one of my favorite lines in literature, however: “Live all you can—it’s a mistake not to.” Which in my novel my young heroine turns into “O, love all you can! It’s a mistake not to!”

“IT DOESN’T SO MUCH MATTER

what you do in particular,” it goes on, “so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?” Indeed.

And as Jenny Fields says in “The World According to Garp,” “You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life.”

SO I WILL NOT CRY.

Yes, I am older now, friends and family around me are aging, declining, decaying, dying, Life’s a fuckin’ miserable bitch. My knees get stiff when I bunch myself up on the couch. Unfolding my legs is like prying open a rusty aluminum stepladder. That’s the last time I will ever mention it.

Will someone please tell me how to escape the prison of my mind?

A few months ago, on the 124th birthday of D.H. Lawrence, September 11th, I started a column out by quoting him: “Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.”

Then I realized, “be still” was speaking to me. I had nothing to say. So you didn’t hear from me for a while. Was I just in a rut? as suggested to Sandra Bullock (in alcohol rehab) in “28 Days”: “You’re just in a rut, it happens to everyone.” “There is an entire world of people out there,” she claims, “who do everything right—they live right, they don’t drink, they don’t do drugs and they’re happy.”

“THAT’S A CROCK OF SHIT!”

her boyfriend retaliates. “They’re not happy, no adult human being is happy. People are born, they have a limited amount of time going around thinking life is dandy but then it happens to be tragedy strikes and they realize, life equals loss. The whole point of the game is to minimize the pain caused by that equation. Now some people do it by having kids, by making money or taking up coin collecting, and others do it by getting wasted. Having that little switch in the head, turn the hot light off and the cool light on…everybody hurts everybody, it’s the human condition!”

FUCK THE HUMAN CONDITION

Still, having a life, that is the real adventure.

After all, I’ve not yet had any of the “selected illnesses” or “difficulties in daily living” that the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project reveals have been experienced by those from age 57-85.

I just heard something from out of my childhood on my little Mission Dolores street—the scraping of a woman’s high heels on the sidewalk. I used to hear my mother’s heels approaching the house, when coming home from work, and associated that sound with adulthood—the someday that I would be wearing heels (to work). Actually, at work my mother tripped on some loose carpet, broke about a billion bones in her foot and could never wear heels again.

I’ve worn heels, and I’ve worked, but I never really attained the status of feeling like a grown-up. Maybe in my next demographic. In the meantime, all I need is a train ride. Email me your address and I’ll send you a postcard from the Denver Railroad Museum. For real.

LOSE TRACK OF TIME

is their motto. That’s the (train) ticket!

If you like, the author can also raid the Depot General Store for a Galloping Goose coffee cup. This smart, gray mug features the famous “Running Goose” with the Colorado Railroad Museum logo. Perfect for hot and cold beverages alike!

TODAY IS TUESDAY.

I attend a writing workshop on Saturdays, which I very much look forward to as it provides the only structure to this writer’s life that I bought with my Lower Haight flat. It also provides company I can talk to, because though I live with three roommates I couldn’t love more than I do, they have never said a single word to me in three years. Zazu brings gravitas to the table. Zzyzzy brings innocence. Zahra brings joy to the table—the table, that is, where my three cats sit zazen, occasionally twitching an ear, licking a paw, or turning my way when I kiss the air to see if they’re paying attention. I’m unemployed and live a frugal life, so I spend a lot of time with the three Z’s. Saturdays are the only scheduled break.

BUT TODAY IS TUESDAY.

Cary will not be leading the workshop this Saturday and I’d intended to do the Tuesday night class instead because I like what he brings to the table (not the same table). Two scheduled activities make for a busy week. But it’s 3:00 p.m. and I’m in my loose hot-flash shift dress and I’d still have to shower, change the cat litter, eat dinner.

Do I really want to go out to the Sunset? An hour to get there on the rush-hour sardine train, not home till late, and the usual raft of excuses masking my laziness—but really, what would I be doing otherwise? Apart from avoiding and delaying writing projects, which I find time for every day, realistically, I would probably be watching So You Think You Can Dance. I enjoy seeing beautiful young bodies in motion; it reminds me of when I had one.

But I hung up my dancing shoes in my thirties and have spent much of my time since on my ever-broadening butt on the couch with my laptop and cats. Aside from fresh air, going to the class means meeting new writers, hearing new ideas, writing something I would not otherwise have written. It means life, and living it.

SO NOW IT’S TUESDAY EVENING,

the ocean wind plays with my scarf and the half-moon wears an orange halo. I decided to take my own advice, for as I have often written, “When in doubt, leave the house.” Otherwise it’s just another night at the house with the cats. You never know what you’ll encounter out there, even if it’s only Tuesday’s moon.

The author’s mentor at Café Bohème

YOU’RE STANDING IN FRONT OF YOUR APARTMENT BUILDING.

You had been to a reading by Antero Alli, at Field’s metaphysical bookstore on Polk, of his new book, The Eight-Circuit Brain, featuring illustrations by your friend Beau Caughlin. You never heard of the guy, but since Beau led you to him, you figure he’s got something to say you need to hear. Afterwards, a bunch of you go back to Beau’s house. You ask him to pull off your new boots, which are killing you. He thinks they’re cool. A mellow glass of Trader Joe’s red later, friend Tina, driving back to her home in San Jose, offers you a ride to your place. You gratefully accept.

NOW YOU’RE STANDING

in front of your apartment building, and as her car retreats, you realize that your bag with your house keys, your wallet, and your cell phone is on its way to San Jose. So what are you going to do? You can’t call her, she has your phone and you don’t know her number anyway. No one’s lights are on to let you into the building. The fire escape is too high to jump onto and crawl through your open window, and the one thing you will not do is call your landlord with two kids at midnight and expect him to run to your rescue.

SO WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS?

You could call the locksmith, whose number is posted on the door, but, actually, no, you can’t. No phone, no money. You could get some money from the ATM. No, you can’t. No ATM card. You could go back to Beau’s house, except no, you can’t, because no bus fare, and it’s too far to walk wearing your punishing new boots. Maybe the bus transfer the driver gave you earlier was an all-nighter. Doesn’t matter. It’s in the bag in the car on its way to San Jose.

IT’S A MILD ENOUGH NIGHT.

You could spend it in Dolores Park. If anyone wanted to rob you, you have no money. If anyone wanted to accost you, hell hath no fury like you when your boundaries are crossed. But it’s early, too early. The long yawning night looms in front of you. You could go to a bar till 2:00. No, you can’t. No money. Safeway’s open all night, and they have free WI-FI. So what? Your laptop’s upstairs. You could read the two Alli books you acquired. No, your reading glasses are in the bag as well. You could help yourself to a paper bag, bum a pencil, write all night. But the Starbucks stand is closed. You certainly look sane and solvent, even hip, but if you can’t buy anything, can you sit at a table till dawn without being moved along? How much of a threat can you pose? You are clean, coherent and color-coordinated.

WHAT DO PEOPLE DO

with few or no resources and nowhere at all that they’re welcome? What are they going to eat that day, how will they make it through the night? No, this is no Adventure in Homelessness. You have friends and family behind you and a bank account, like in that bogus movie The Amazing Adventure with Cary Grant as a bored millionaire who swears he’ll live for a year on his own wits. You can’t pretend you don’t have backup options when you do. You can’t fake desperation. You are blessed.

YOU THINK OF THE STORY

Alli told, of driving from LA to some remote outpost for some psychedelic soul-searching, and running out of gas in the desert just as he and his friend are peaking on orange sunshine. They’re out on the road when two giggling young men run towards them and inform them with glee they have just ripped off a warehouse and the cops are after them. They keep running, and the two of them are now standing there with the cops on the way. They decide to hide in a ditch and watch as the officers scan the dirt with their flashlights. They escape being detected, but somewhere in the hustle-bustle Alli loses his wallet. So they now have no gas and no money and are screaming high. All they can think to do is go door-to-door until someone is trusting enough to offer them some work—scrubbing mud off of bricks—for a pancake breakfast and gas money back to LA. Alli’s take’s on this experience is that no matter what situation arises, he is a survivor, and is going to make it through.

SO THIS IS HARDLY

a “survival” scenario but you do have to put yourself somewhere. You would simply “walk the earth” all night if your feet didn’t hurt so much. You’re in the Mission and it’s late but 16th St. is still hopping and Adobe Books is open. You tell your sob story to the nice guy with the long grey beard and tapestry hat who lets you use the phone. You can’t reach Beau because his cell number is in your cell phone which is in the car. So who is the closest good friend you can impose on? You call her, Saand, tell her your sob story, and explain you need a place to stay for the night. You know she would love to accommodate you, but her apartment is under renovation, dirty and dusty, and she has no couch. What she will do for you is lend you her credit card to rent a room in the nearby Days Inn in Hayes Valley. Although the Adobe’s couch is looking mighty good to you, you tell your friend it will take you about a half-hour to walk there on your crippled feet.

SAAND IS WAITING

on her steps for you. She admires your boots. You walk around to Days but there’s no vacancy; then you try the pricier charming B and B where friends from out of town stay, but they are not answering the bell you repeatedly ring. They assume you’re some homeless person, and at the moment, they are right. That’s why you’re ringing the bell. You don’t want your friend to walk too far from her place at that hour, and there’re your aching feet, which just want to stop walking. On your way to the Travelodge on Market, you pass by the Albion House and give it a try. At this hour you have to check with the restaurant staff at Sauce, which shares the building.

YOU POLISH YOUR SOB STORY

and appeal to the handsome bartender, “Is there any room at the inn?” He smiles, puzzled. “Seriously,” you say, “I need a place to stay tonight. I lost my keys, my money, my cell phone, everything.” “How were you going to pay?” “A friend is charging the room to her credit card.” He’s sympathetic, makes a phone call, and leads you up to the Embarcadero Suite, facing Gough St. and its traffic which will keep you up all night. He processes the paperwork and also remarks on your boots. His name is Rial, and he will be here till 2:00 a.m. if there’s anything else you need. Your friend lends you $10, and you immediately think about using it to sit at Rial’s bar for a nightcap. Rial is damn cute.

BUT “ACTUALLY,”

you tell him, you need a paper and pen. You’re a writer and you can’t be sitting in some room for hours without writing about it. He goes through a lot of drawers till he finds something suitable. Saand has brought you a nightshirt and a banana for breakfast. She is an angel. You ask for one more favor before she takes off. “Will you please pull these fucking boots off for me?”

THE NEXT MORNING

you are grateful for the banana. You dread having to walk around in the killer boots to break the ten so you can make phone calls and have carfare, much less find a public phone. But you go to the great room for the energy bars they have on the counter and someone is in there typing on a laptop. You get out the sob story, and luckily, she has a cell phone you can use to call your landlord. You stare at it for a minute before you’re willing to admit you can’t see the buttons without your reading glasses you left in the car. You have her dial your friend, to get your landlord’s number, then dial your landlord to leave a message on his voice mail telling him you’ll have to call him back because he can’t call you back, but he does, on the person’s phone, a few minutes later.

IT’S AROUND 11:00 A.M. NOW,

and he can’t meet you till 3:00. No big deal, except you need to feed your cats. You figure you survived the night and they’ll survive missing breakfast. Anyway, you have your writer’s group meeting at Café Bohème in an hour.

YOU HAVE SPENT $2.00

on grape juice to break the ten. You’re at Gough and Market and notice an exterminator’s truck marked “Dr. Kilzum.” Is that you, you ask the driver. “Yep!” he smiles. “All my patients die!”

THE EASIEST THING

to do is hobble to Mission St. to get the bus. On the way you pass a homeless person lying face down on the street, his shopping cart filled with the dirty, dreary miscellany that comprises his mobile home. You remind yourself your biggest problem is your aching feet. You once slipped a $5 bill inside the paperback a sleeping woman on a bench held to her chest, and wish you could help him too. But you spend two more dollars on the 14 bus to 24th St. You’re late for the group but you write, with Rial’s pen and paper, about falling off the continental shelf into the Mariana Trench and then about Silencio, who has the hots for his supposed father Playboy.

BEN LETS YOU USE HIS LAPTOP

to email Beau and offers to buy you lunch. But you still have six of your ten, and use $4.00 of it on a bagel and coffee because you have to patronize the café. You have two bonus dollars left. You pick a “prompt” sentence from Casy’s hat to take home with you. It is, “If you leave a house in Malibu, the people from the hills will come down to barbeque their dogs in your fireplace.” That’s another way to survive, you guess.

YOU USE YOUR TRANSFER

to take the 14 back to 16th and Mission and, walking home, pass two well-worn young travelers on the street asking for food or money. Sob story, etc., and you can’t help right now. But as you walk off, you reflect you don’t expect you’ll be going anywhere that night, and turn back to give them the remaining $2 you’d reserved for carfare. Every step along the way, someone was there to help you out, and now it was your turn to pay it forward. And it wasn’t even your two dollars.

YOU REACH HOME

and you’re sitting in front of your apartment building, writing with Rial’s pen and paper, until your landlord drives up. You remark on the climb upstairs that your friend helped you spend the night in a hotel rather than call him at midnight, knowing he’ll insist, next time, that you do. You resolve there will never be one, because this was a $142 lesson in absentmindedness. Home sweet home was never so sweet. First you feed the cats. Then you yank your cursed boots off and toss them across the room. And never are you happier than while watching the rerun of “Project Runway” you missed the night before. Beau has emailed he’ll return your bag on Sunday. You get a great night’s sleep in your own bed.

NEXT DAY

is your writing workshop. You consider skipping it so you can watch the last half-hour of “Must Love Dogs” with John Cusack. But you scrounge up sixteen laundry quarters for the four bucks to take the N Judah there and back.

YOU ARRIVE AN HOUR EARLY,

and it’s too cold to walk along the beach. You count the handful of loose change you find at the bottom of your book bag and wow, you can just afford a cup of ginger peach tea for $1.43 at the Java Beach Café at Judah and La Playa. In line, you drop a dime at a gentleman’s feet. His shoe is in the way. “Excuse me,” you say, stooping, feeling stupid, but you need the dime. You’re embarrassed to drop the remaining seven cents in the tip jar, but it’s all you can do. You love the Java Beach. It feels like a different San Francisco, a corner window on the Pacific Ocean culture of the Sunset. Heavy sweaters mix with long shorts and flip flops.

YOU WALK AGAINST THE WIND

on the Great Highway, sipping your tea, to Cary’s house. And now here you are, and the assignment is: arrival, trouble and resolution. You write:

IT’S 11:30 P.M.

You’re standing in front of your apartment house.

The author’s boots are now broken in.

OK, you boot-lovin’ ladies–they’re from ModCloth.com and they’re having a Thanksgiving Thank-a-thon-blog contest. What a perfect opportunity to thank Beau, Tina, Adobe Books Guy, Rial, lady with cell phone, Ben, my landlord Evan and most especially, my friend Saand!

AND I DIDN’T.

“September 1st is the most hopeful day of the year.” To my own self, that is one of the most memorable sentences I’ve ever written, in a journal as a teenager. September 1st resolutions far outweigh New Year’s. In September everything starts up again, including, for one who grew up with the punishing summers of Philadelphia, the will to live.

“SEPTEMBER IS THE MONDAY OF MONTHS,”

says filmmaker and painter Jeff Scher. “It’s back to school, back to work and back to the city.”

But that’s what I like about it. New starts, new people, new concert seasons. As a kid, I loved going back to school. Of course I was the studious type, not the social butterfly. I was in my element shopping for back-to-school supplies, going to the five-and-ten on Broad St., walking amongst the marbled notebooks and Pee Chee folders, protractors, Eberhard Pink Pearl erasers, rulers, plastic cases of colored stars, Elmer’s glue, poster board, everything clean and unused, kind of like the school year ahead, still unmarked by the year’s boredom, bullies, exhaustion, humiliations, failures and disappointments, teacher and student abuse and torture.  Those were the days!

THAT IS WHY,

when I walked into the Office Depot at the Potrero Center on 16th St., and was confronted with a tempting display of one of my favorite items on the planet, I couldn’t resist, and didn’t, buying a brand new 24-pack of “The World’s Best Pencil” [according to them], The Dixon Ticonderoga HB #2. What is it about wood and graphite that smells like hope? Is it the untold, unwritten stories a pencil contains? The mathematical formulae, the doodles and drawings, all the unpredictable markings we will make with them?

The DT has been around since 1913, when the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company wanted a “fine American name for a fine American pencil,” and they named it after Fort Ticonderoga in New York. Ticonderogas are made from “Non-Rainforest Sustained Yeild [sic] Wood,” says the package, but I am dismayed to learn this fine American pencil is also made in China. Had I seen that first, I believe I could have resisted them.

Too bad the quintessentially (native) American pencil, made by the Blackfeet Indian tribe to benefit the Blackfeet Indian tribe, ceased production in the late 1990’s. I picked some up on my way through Montana in the 80’s, and they are now a bit of a collector’s item. In fact I just collected a boxed dozen off of EBay for $9.99. You can get 144 new Ticonderogas for that price. I also snapped up a 1920’s original box of Dixon Typhonite Eldorados. Whatever turns you on, right?

DID YOU KNOW THOREAU

was an inventor and sometimes signed his name with “Civil Engineer”? He made several improvements to the pencils in his father’s pencil-making business, John Thoreau and Co. In their day graphite was called plumbago, from the Latin plumbum for “lead” (the plant plumbago is also called leadwort). It’s actually one of three forms of naturally occurring carbon (along with coal and diamonds). “Graphite” derives from German Grafit from Greek graphein (to write).

Pencils were once made from filling a grooved cedar form manually, mixing the plumbago with materials like wax, sulphur, even whale sperm, and gluing the other half of the wood case to it. Like the Europeans who dominated the fine pencil market, Thoreau perfected mixing the plumbago with clay, in varying amounts, to make pencils of various hardness and softness, invented a plumbago grinding machine to further refine the raw materials, and came up with a way to insert the graphite cylinder into a hollowed-out pencil. The company adopted a numbered scale of 1 to 4 to mark the hardness of the pencil, as opposed to the H (Hard) and B (Black) scale still in use by much of the world: 2B, B, HB, F, H, H2.  A #2 pencil is equivalent to the HB pencil. The harder the pencil (H, 2H, 3H etc.), the lighter the mark it makes (more clay); the softer the pencil (B, 2B, 3B etc.) the darker the mark (more graphite). The HB is approximately 67% graphite, 28% clay and 5% wax.

YOU PROBABLY KNOW

H.D. took his Walden laundry home to mom on weekends. But did you know that this great naturalist accidentally started a forest fire during a fishing trip in 1844, one year before he built his Walden cabin, burning 300 acres in the Concord woods, leading Concordians to call him “woodsburner”? He was also actually christened David Henry Thoreau, but was called Henry.

You can see an original Thoreau pencil at the New York Public Library. Thoreau scholar Robert Sullivan held the pencil, but refrained from using it, assuming it would be against the Library rules anyway, but admitted, “It was fun to imagine what the sentence for writing a sentence might be.”

PICK UP A PACK OF PENCILS

I invite you to rediscover the pencil. Write a sentence with one. This modest, common article of everyday life was named by Forbes as the 4th most important tool of all time (beat out by the knife, the abacus and the compass).  According to www.pencils.com, the pencil is “the most useful yet least appreciated lightweight invention that can draw a line 35 miles long, write an average of 45,000 words, absorb 17 sharpenings and delete its own errors.”

And September is the perfect month for new pencils. Don’t resist!

The author’s new stash of TD 2’s. Ah! Smells like freedom!

I’M WRITING ABOUT TWITTER.

Earlier this evening I had Twitter open and was trying to think of something to do. So I posted, “What am I doing? Trying to think of something to do.”

YOU CAN HAVE NOTHING TO DO,

but you can’t be doing nothing. At the very least, you are living, breathing, digesting food, picking your nose. So I realized I actually was doing something—trying to think of something to do.

So I added, “But wait. Trying. That’s what I’m doing. So I’m doing something after all.”

But while posting that, I had stopped trying and was now posting. So I posted, “Now what I’m doing is posting what I’m doing (posting, that is) and now there’s no more need to think.”

BECAUSE I’D SUCCEEDED

at trying and thinking and was now posting, I no longer needed to try or think of something to do.

All this struck me a very strange circumstance, because now that I had succeeded at posting, I was back to trying, this time to think of what to do next. So what I thought of to do, was to sort it all out by writing about it. And now what I’m doing is writing about trying to think of something to do, succeeding in trying, thinking and in doing that thing I’d thought of doing (posting), and returning to the original dilemma of trying to think of what to do, I did that thing (write), and now I’m writing about writing about trying to think of something to do.

SO LIKE I SAID

there’s no more need to think.

And to think—all this time that I’ve been trying, thinking, posting, writing and writing about writing about trying to think of something to do, I’ve been simultaneously living, breathing, digesting food, and picking my nose.

NOW WHAT SHOULD DO?

Meh. I’ll think of something.

The author’s hero–and they both like to pick their noses!

I NEVER WEAR PANTS

around the house, just leggings, because if I curl on the couch with my feet tucked in, my knobby knees leave pouches in the knees of my pants. But tonight I am lying on the couch in my birthday suit, because at “this time of my life,” as I described it to District 6 Supervisorial candidate Debra Walker outside Courtroom 608 at the California Superior Court, I am turning my 8” retro Restoration Hardware “hot flash fan” on and off with my big toe and “index” toe, every few minutes. I can’t wear street clothes at home. I can’t dress appropriately, indoors or outdoors—whatever the weather, the room temperature, whatever my outfit, I am out of sync. “Dress in layers,” she advised me. I’m not into HRT—hormone replacement therapy—so I just put up with the bipolar mood swings of my body, i.e., I’m roasting, I’m freezing, I’m roasting, I’m freezing. So what else is new. I’ve always run hot and cold.

I remember a TV movie, “Normal,” in which the aging Jessica Lange tells her lover who asks her what kind of birth control she uses, “Menopause.”

AH, YOUTH.

I remember it well. A man cannot imagine the happiness (or perhaps he has his own), especially when you have never wanted children, of no more menses. Miss you!—NOT! I estimate that since my teens I’ve had 500 periods, for what now amounts to no reason. No reason except to live as a woman. The threat of pregnancy was something to dread, but you can never tell, it was a blessing as well. It must be amazing to grow and give birth to a child, but my challenges and glories lay elsewhere.

I BOUGHT A SQUEEZE-BOTTLE BEAR

of Wine Country Wildflower honey (from the vineyards, hills and valleys of Sonoma County) at the Civic Center farmer’s market, on the lunch break from jury selection. Disappointed to not make it into the Top 12. I love being on a jury. It might be the only time in your life, the judge told us, you get to be a judge, to decide what justice is in a given situation. I would gladly have taken the place of someone who finds it an imposition or inconvenience to serve. Jury service is a fascinating interlude in one’s everyday life, and I’m due for a fascinating interlude.

The honey bear wears a bib that reads, “Hug Me, Squeeze Me, Try Me, Buy Me” in a red heart.  Yum. It really tastes like flowers. I alternate between sucking the honey nipple and quaffing fruit of the vine from a Warthog bottleneck. New wine with honey’d milk I bring!

NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, STUD SERVICE

“What’s on your mind?” asks Facebook, and I admit, “Jon Hamm in a suit jacket and no shirt on a fire escape. That could well be on my mind all night.” If I used God’s do-it-yourself kit, I couldn’t construct a man more to my liking than the tall, dark, handsome, handsome, handsome Jon Hamm of “Mad Men.” He inspired a female commentator on an awards show to use an old-fashioned term: “I’m taken with him, just taken with him.” I’d rather be taken by him. I’d like him to hug me, squeeze me, try me and buy me a trip to Paris with his $2500 bonus.

Come to think of it, I did construct a man entirely to my liking, a geologist named Dan in a dangerous story of mine. He is a sexy bundle tied too tight for most women, but not for our heroine. She loosens him up, sure enough, and they go riding the cosmic train together.

OH MY GOD, MY GOD, MY GOD!

Speaking of beautiful men, damn, have you seen Adam Lambert’s Skingraft pal Cassidy Haley? Sex it up, buddy! Red hot CD sexology even before Adam’s debut. Maybe Adam should get with Krista Benson for his first video, she could do justice to him, I think. Lambert tweeted the link to Haley’s video, and just like that the web went sproing! and 42,000+ clicks later, he’s a hit.  What can’t you do with these wild internets?

THE WEB OF MANY WONDERS

While researching the history of Aqua Velva for a story, I found this odd little tidbit by someone calling himself “finisterle,” buried in the scent-centric website, www.basenotes.net: “It’s refreshing and unpretentious. It’s a train station in the morning. It’s a pilot going through a check list. It’s a baker or construction worker who are too busy being the salt of the earth to have time for bizaar [sic] hobbies. It is real. It smells ‘Monday’ in a way that makes Rive Gauche look like a drag queen on stilettos. It can walk up to any frag and say ‘and how are you contributing exactly?’ I just bought a bottle again and keep splashing it on, totally ignoring everything else on my shelf.”

The web is the world’s largest gold mine. Wherever you dig, chances are you’ll find a nugget.

SOMEONE HAS THAT JOB

said Clementine Kruczynski in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” referring to coming up with the odd names given to paint colors. I once asked my friend Stefan (Stefan Stefanicus (bot.), pointing at something, what would you call this color? “Calypso,” said he.

Benjamin Moore offers a range of colors in the following “moods” or “styles”: Appetizing, Bold and Adventurous, Calming, Comfort, Contemporary, Home Theater, Masculine, Modern Chic, Retro, Romantic, Sleepy, and Warm Sunshine. It sounds like the menu at Cafe Gratitude.  Under Romantic Colors, we find: Hamster Cuddles, Soft Innocence, Gentle Kisses, Candle Glow Rose, Victoria Falls Mist, Silent Arabian Nights, and a spectrum ranging from Soft Romance to Tender Romance to Deep Romance, climaxing in Pure Desire. (Clitoral Pink and Vulval Violet are out of stock due to popular demand.)

HAMSTER CUDDLES?!

Let’s see what the Masculine palette has to offer: Leopard Tan, Starlit Granite, Light Gray Flannel, Everglades Dawn, Dry African Mud, Himalayan Gray, Old Sheepskin, Deep Ocean, Battleship Steel, and Blue Chalkboard. Hm, I don’t like any of those colors, but it gives me the idea to finish a room in actual dry African mud and old sheepskins.

IF IT WERE MY JOB

to create such names, I might suggest a psychopathological “mood” palette: Borderline Blue, Bipolar Bliss, Senile Sunset, Desperate Dawn, Manic Mauve, Neurotic Neuron, Ganglionic Green, Misfiring Synapse, Passive-Aggressive Papaya, Limbic Rage Red, Narcissistic Neon, Fab Fugue State, Schizoid Scarlet, Dusty Rose Delusions, Tranquilizer Tea Rose, Paranoid Pink, and Padded Room (complements Faux Quilting).

YAR!

It was also someone’s job to name the fragrances Old Spice has offered over the years, in their nostalgic buoy-shaped white bottle with the sailboat on it, in addition to the original “Classic” scent. High Endurance Old Spice came in: Pure Sport, Fresh, Arctic Force, White Water, Mountain Rush, Pacific Surge, Game Day, and Smooth Blast. Red Zone Old Spice came in After Hours, Showtime, Aqua Reef, Swagger, Glacial Falls, Hydrowash, Vitality, Live Wire and Double Impact.  Swagger on over here, you pure sport, and give me the fresh, arctic force of your white-water mountain rush, a high-endurance smooth blast of your Pacific surge on game day.   Then after hours, we’ll sidle into the red zone and you’ll back me against the aqua reef of your glacial falls while you hydrowash me with the vitality of your double-impact live wire.

IF IT WERE MY JOB

and the boss told me Monday morning, we’re putting out a new Old Spice six-pack, come up with the names, I’d go with: Anger Mismanagement, Bravado Brawn, Viagra Falls, Sandblast Stubble, Testicular Toner, and Pectoral Punch.

Fisterle would handle the Aqua Velva: Train Station Morning, Pilot Checklist, Busy Baker, Salt of the Earth (tagline: You Too Can Smell Like a Construction Worker), Bizarre Hobbies, Smell of Monday, Drag Queen Stiletto.

I just saw a movie in which Steven Weber was killed with a stiletto to the forehead. There’s no end to the damage a woman can do, with hell’s fury, good aim and the right 4-inch shoe.

Burma Shave.

The author says pick someone you adore

Photo: Fidencio Enriquez http://www.flickr.com/photos/fenriquez/3743745605/