Category Archives: a propos of nothing

a propos of nothing, politics

shout-out to 1968

I recently learned that some of my parents’ friends* from the glorious decade of the 1960s are reading my blog. Far be it from me to name-check – we here at SOS never drop anything, especially not names – but I strongly suggest that, in celebration of these folks and their groundbreaking era of struggle for civil rights in this country, without which** we would not have the political landscape that made possible the candidacy and the victory of our wonderful President-elect Obama, we all go to YouTube and watch Tim Armstrong and Skye Sweetnam singing “Into Action.” Not only does the song celebrate the general premise of Getting Stuff Done, it shouts out to the NorCal Bay Area, from whence these, er, mavericks came, where the ebullient dreamscape of my heart resides, where I will live again one day if I have to boil my cowboy boots and make a soup to do it. Well, maybe not my Portland cowboy boots. But you know what I mean.

*If any of these legendary folks are reading, they should comment. That’d be so cool. Davis, baby! Davis!

**I’m not saying that my parents’ friends, or the Sixties, are in any way directly responsible for Obama’s election. I’m just saying that the movement for change has a history and that that decade is part of that history, and I want to celebrate that history, this month, while we celebrate his election too. I spent many years feeling like we, my generation, had lost the spirit of the Sixties.
Now I know we never did.

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a propos of nothing, quotes

If all else fails, if by all else you mean all this –

More of the unexpected from Chicago strangers. Yesterday, I took a taxi home along Division, with my arms full of discount linens from the Roosevelt Target. I talked to the driver about the high cost of living, the low cost of the Midwest, and being a playwright. He suggested that I should, perhaps, look into driving a taxi. At the end of the ride, he told me I was giving him too big of a tip because “you don’t have a job,” and tried to give it back. It was nice, but I made him keep it.

I’ve gotta get my s*** together
‘Cause I can’t live like this forever
You know I’ve come too far
And I don’t want to fail
I got a new computer
And a bright future in sales…
– Fountains of Wayne, BRIGHT FUTURE IN SALES

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a propos of nothing

None of your trusted wireless networks can be found. Would you like to join the open wireless network called “Buy more coffee!!”?

A: What do you want to drink?
B: I don’t know. This is my first time here. Something expensive and ridiculous. With coffee and sugar.
A: Do you like chocolate?
B: Yeah.

[A makes a drink.]

B: Oh, that’s cool. That looks really cool. What is it?
A: I get bored with doing regular rosettas – it’s one rosetta and then you twist it and from the side you do another rosetta and then there’s a heart, too.
B: (who needs new glasses) Omigod, there is a heart! I totally didn’t even see that. That’s awesome!
A: Thanks.
B: But I meant what’s the drink?
A: Oh. A mocha.

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a propos of nothing, quotes

wholesome discipline

Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit: thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm; which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally.

– Charlotte Bronte, JANE EYRE

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a propos of nothing, travel

leaving los angeles: t minus 2

Last day. Shipping boxes. Visiting the Valley. Driving over the 134 and the mountains. I’m glad X and I are going through the mountains on our way back to SF – I need to say goodbye to the California ranges.

My father reminds me how happy I was to be back on the West Coast earlier in June, how I called them from Seattle ravenously happy about the light and the ocean. He’s right, of course, I do feel more at home here. But this is a new adventure, and adventures aren’t about feeling at home. They’re about taking risks.

Replenishing the house-sitting staples: coffee, soap, toilet paper. Vacuuming dog hair. Tying up loose ends on the computer and in the brain.

Reading a vintage guidebook with ink drawings of important architectural sites in Chicago, and dreaming of Illinois.

Tomorrow we road-trip to Vegas and plunge into the Nevada desert.

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a propos of nothing, quotes, travel

in every port

“It’s always been a battle between a kind of Wild West frontier sex industry and the Puritan church industry. At one point there was a saying that you couldn’t throw a stone in Portland without hitting a brothel. There were more brothels than churches, and there were a lot of churches. It’s hard to find a bar that doesn’t have nude dancers in Portland. People just end up going there by default to have a hamburger and there just happens to be strippers. Strippers are as ubiquitous as pinball machines, or video poker.”

“No, you’re doing it wrong. It’s like sex, if it hurts and it’s painful you’re doing it wrong.”
(On whether writing should be painful. )

– Palahniuk on Portland, on writing, and his new book, SNUFF. Reminds me of McMurtry getting the “couple of whores from Portland” to take the guys from the asylum out in the boat, in CUCKOO’S NEST. And it makes me miss the Pearl.

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a propos of nothing, travel

on leaving los angeles (t minus 7)

I tell a three-year-old that I’m moving to Chicago, which is why I won’t be coming to play with her again for awhile. I look around for a map to show her where Illinois is, and can’t find one. She understands, and takes me to her window.

“Look,” she says.

I look out, over the city I have to leave again. I squint through the light at the houses, the apartment buildings, the red tile roofs and fire escapes, the palm trees, oak trees, dead trees and living trees, the hills and the sky. The view is faded, like a photograph left in the sun.

She points to the highest of the peaks and shows me a house on its edge. The home of some rich person in the hills, perhaps, or some hippie in the canyons. It’s very far away, and the light catches its roof. I can barely see it.

“That’s your house there. You go live there, up on the mountain,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, and give her a hug. She sounds like she means business.

As I walk out the door, she adds, “If you go there and it’s not your house, then you can come back.”

I thank her and go to buy my plane ticket.

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