Dear Chicago

I don't know why I let myself look at blogs. I don't have a husband to rave about or perfect craft creations to promote-----enough. No more looking at blogs. (No offense. And I don't mean I don't have things to write about because of course I do, everyone breathing has things to write about, but I'm tired of blogs that make me think me and my life of breathing are not enough. George Banks is saying no.)

Once upon a time before I was disillusioned, I attended the BYU hunger banquet (this was also before the hunger banquet became the super sized and morally uncomfortable production that it is now) and purchased a small braided bracelet for a small sum from barefoot girls with pity full eyes. As I slipped the bracelet on my wrist, I thought of the phrase, "The poor are always with us" (name the movie and I'll give you the bracelet). The brewing cynic within hollered over my intentions to remind me that poverty is not a trinket you remove when you wash your hands, nor can I purchase an understanding of it.

Oakland is another story, another voice in the city scheme, and with a timbre unfamiliar to my ears. Today: I saw a man's bare bottom as he rooted through a trash can next to the bus stop. I heard a teacher scream her voice away as she supported an injured child down the hallway to the office. I saw students come to school three days after one of their classmates was shot to death by another of their classmates. I saw The Soloist at the movie theater and recognized Robert Downey Jr's arrogance as my own (clearly the solution is to bring my lifestyle to as many people as possible--integrate them into my reality, rather than integrate their reality into me)...

And I resent myself, even as I write this, because it's still just a bracelet on my wrist. I feel slightly proud of my "inner-city" experiences and the way my eyes are opening to the "harsh real world" outside of "the bubble." Please. I'm as far from the man sleeping on my curb as I've ever been. I like to say that the distance is mostly fear and lack of resources, but I'm afraid it's not.

This topic is depressing me, so I'm gonna throw in some pictures of the mortuary I visited on recommendation (thanks Bob!). This was my first mortuary visit--if you've never been, it's kind of like strolling through a giant library of old books. Only the books are full of human ashes. (I don't mean any disrespect. That's as accurate a way as I can think to describe the place.) I both smile and cringe at the notion of a literal human library. I used to think that my family members weren't cremated because of the resurrection, but it doesn't seem right that millions of people won't get their bodies back because they didn't know they were supposed to keep them in human form, not to mention decay and deformity. That is the craziest miracle I can imagine, thousands of books of ash converting into people.

suggestions?

I need summer jams 2009. what are you listening to?

Suspending Disbelief

When I think of suspending disbelief, I picture Muggles floating eerily over flocks of Death Eaters...muggles=beliefs, Death Eaters=...me? Bad analogy.

I love movies that are completely unrealistic. Examples:
1. The Emperor's New Groove (how did we get here before them? by all accounts, it doesn't add up.)
2. Stardust (falling stars, men turning into goats and vice-versa, captain shakespeare who catches lightning)
3. Up (can't tell you anything, don't want to give it away--GO SEE IT.)
4. Gilmore Girls.

I know Gilmore Girls is not a movie (why didn't they ever do that? SJP and her crew did it, Hannah Montana did it, the Lorelai's could definitely do it), but it does involve suspending belief for a few reasons. a) No one is that clever. No one I know is that clever. I hope no one is that clever, because relatively that would make me very unclever. b) No one can love junk food that much and be that skinny. They act like they eat doughnuts and french fries and danishes. PLEASE. c) No one is like Kirk. If you know someone like Kirk, introduce me.

I would like to finish this post with a few tips for fellow unemployedees.
- send out billions of applications so that you lose track of how many jobs you never heard back from.
- when you email your resume to potential employers, make sure you erase the data fields so that your name shows up instead of ADDRESS FIELD.

- when they ask you, at a summer camp, what your "weaknesses" are, don't mention being shy and possibly cranky in the morning. In other words, don't be honest. Follow your competition and make stuff up like My biggest weakness is a desire to overachieve. or I am just TOO passionate.
- try not to be spacey on the phone. or in interviews. or in emails. (aka stop daydreaming about gilmore girls.)
It beats me why my type suddenly switched to italics. Try not to mention lack of computer savviness either, especially when your resume has a little bit about computer savviness and yet has ADDRESS FIELD at the top instead of your name.
The first picture is a simulation of me being spacey while I daydream. Consider it an opportunity to suspend belief. The lower two pictures are some that I just saw in my photo booth after a long time apart--love these photos. David's nose looks like a mix between Prince John on the Disney Robin Hood, and that part in the snowman movie where they look in the ornaments.

Riding the 72

I picked it up in downtown Oakland. Sat next to a man with a gray beard who didn't look at me. She got on at fortieth, a strange incarnation of the woman who got off under the overpass this morning (the slight woman with purple socks who carried two bulging black garbage bags over her shoulders like she was carting water), but this woman wore a flat-billed cheap cap and pulled her cart of bulging bags behind her. Both moved slowly and shuffling. The woman in the cap had hardly made it down the aisle when the bus started again and with the lurch, she skipped forward a few steps and made the smallest squeal. I made the smallest motion to catch her, so small even I didn't see it, but she didn't fall. She rode it out. I don't know where she got off or what she carts or who normally catches her. I do know that two others got off with me, a boy and an old man, who both seem to be my neighbors and who don't walk in crosswalks. I seem to be the only one who walks in crosswalks round here. I wonder if anyone on the bus liked Bob Dylan and how many of them are also trying to find a job.

I am one of the unemployed. This morning, I went to the training for my first position through the temp agency. My table swapped stories of hardship (one girl has applied for 86 jobs in the past 2 months!) and I tried to mimic the jaded veteran faces I saw. I think people secretly like being in the fray, being part of something, even if that something is the disillusioned masses scrolling through pages of craigslist postings and pretending that the person next to them at the temp agency isn't competition. Reading the mags lately, it seems that economic CRISIS is giving my generation some authenticity, substance, battle wounds. But all it takes (for me) is a trip into downtown San Francisco to see that the middle class is still the middle class, the poor are still poorer than crisis will make me, and Diesel still employs a full-time DJ to entertain the one customer per hour who enters its store.

I sat next to a guy with the watch the size of the moon, lined with rhinestones and Obama's face as the background. His time reads half past left ear, aka time for CHANGE. I try to resist my over-symbolizing the world, but I kind of like this one...Obama as the ticking clock, the measure of the passage of time--he asked for it, right?

I can't take pictures of woman who got on at fortieth or man with Obama watch. I did snap one of the canada geese that live on the high school playing field next to my house, and I got one of the moon. I'll put some up, but you've all seen SF before.

The City by the Bay

Okay, so I haven't really seen anything like this yet, though there was a fullish moon last night.

I have been considering what I would write about, and I've been putting it off until this moment, when a very loud gospel choir began singing, complete with cheering and the motivational speaker in between choruses, and as far as I can tell, they've congregated in a parking garage. And I'm pretty sure it's a recording. But why? And who is listening? Other people sitting at their computers next to open windows? Now it sounds like they are rehearsing...I'm perplexed.

For those of you not in the know, I moved to California for the summer. I'm currently jobless, but optimistic. And when I lose optimism, I go shopping. I haven't bought anything yet except an ice cream sandwich.

Just a few things I'd like to do before I leave:
-Yodel as a street performer or in a BART station (thanks Marie)
-See a great variety of performances (saw the San Fran ballet last night)
-visit Coit tower, the Japanese tea garden, the seals, etc. etc. etc.

What ideas do you have for me for the bay area?