[Brian Smith] Berkeley Celtic music Comice

My pal Brian, the editor of another blog I sometimes contribute to, sent me this photo he snapped in Berkeley. Presumably, they're on their way to a Celtic Music Festival.

The title is Brian's. I looked up Comice:
Co·mice /kəˈmis/ (noun) a large, juicy variety of pear.
Yeah, the girl's cute, and so are you, Brian.

Break-up Reasons Provided

Wanna break up but can't explain why? Here are a list of possible reasons from which you can choose... compiled from life experience, friends' experiences and bad television.

Check all that apply:
• It’s not you, it’s me. I’m all messed up right now.
• It’s not me, it’s you. I just don’t like you that much.
• I’m just not feeling it.
• I’m still in love with my ex(es).
• I want to be with someone who (doesn't) smoke(s) pot.
• I want to be with someone with whom I have more in common culturally (i.e. shoots guns, smokes, is into material possessions, loves to shop, has experience in the sex industry (circle as appropriate or add item(s) here ___________________________________________).
• It was moving too fast. I got scared.
• I never want to get married and have a family (with you).
• I’m just not that into you.
• You did X (i.e. took your ex-boyfriends call when he rang….describe in detail here _______________________________________), and it really pissed me off.
• I can’t stand the way you X (i.e., I can’t stand the smell of your hand lotion…describe in detail here _________________________________________________)
• You’re too good for me. You’ll leave me when you realize that, and I can’t handle the stress of waiting for that to happen.
• I don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone right now.
• I want to be with someone who has a less interesting life (i.e., worse job, fewer or no friends or hobbies) so that they are available to hang out with me all the time.
• I met someone else.

Dear Readers: Did I miss something? Please add it in the comments below.

how to be happy (vs. money)

NYT: "If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year."

Thanks, Cheryl.

Why we need to dream

Sleep is my religion, and I'm always looking for more evidence to support this belief system.

Why We Need to Dream

Cute

Hyperbole: Cake vs. Pie

LA Journal, part 1... I hope....

My plane left at 8:45, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable hour when I booked the ticket. I arrived in LA at 10, Santa Monica by 11. On the bus from LAX I met a couple foreign boys studying business in Malibu who kindly gave me directions. They also observed that hamburgers are available on every street corner in the US.
What did you expect? I asked.
Steak, maybe, he replied.
The Pole told me of his obsession with Taco Bell, to which I shook my head. Why not try to get real Mexican food? He wasn’t convinced.
He also talked about Bay Watch, but the German instructed him never to talk to women about that show. (He said they’d seen it being filmed. It was a highlight.)

Without knowing where I wanted to go, they instructed me on where to get off the bus. I had to trek back a few blocks to the Santa Monica Pier where I planned to rent a bike. It was a fun detour since I got pulled into a market research study about chocolate covered almonds on the way. It began with a few simple questions about my eating habits. It’s always fun to be asked questions I know the answer to like that. Then I was instructed to taste 2 different kinds of almonds and rank my preference based on appearance and flavor, and describe why. Finally, for an additional $5 (the first part earned me a Starbucks card), I did an oral interview about my perception of different brands of almonds. Almonds aren’t that much different than buses; it was almost like work!

So, I rented a turquoise lady’s beach cruiser, and my bag was terribly heavy still despite all plans to pack light. I asked for “a bike, a helmet, a basket and a lock.” And the guy said “so, the works, hu?” With the map, he gave me directions along the beach bike path, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I had no plans to bike along it but that I was going straight into the city.

By now it was after noon, and I wanted lunch. Under the direction of Yelp, I had selected an Bay Cities Italian Deli and Bakery which Yelp called “an institution”. It was more like an Italian deli and grocery shop with beautiful assortments of capers, sea salt, lemons in jars, peppers in jars, cookies, etc. I got out of there with “The Godmother” sandwich, a little Greek salad, and a box of mini cantalones. The place was mobbed, and procuring lunch took about an hour.
Overheard: now I know why this place is only for special occasions.
I ate at a table in the parking lot with sun-hat and –glasses. A mother and daughter (about 12), also celebrating something, joined me; I eyed the daughter’s meatball sandwich.

From there, I biked up Broadway, the closest adjacent street with a bike lane, to the Santa Monica Art Museum and the Bergamot Station which is filled with art galleries. The one exhibit that I found really interesting was in the far corner and involved acrylic cubes that formed 3D shapes such as a monkey and human scull, male and female human bodies with the internal organs, and a number of trees. If you looked at them from the side all you saw was clear acrylic.

Walking into one gallery, I greeted the person behind the desk as usual. He replied “Why are you so happy?” – I didn’t know I was “so happy” but I’ll take it. He spoke slowly and took a long time to get the point. I asked if the paintings were, more or less, done from photographs (most were of lovely blond young girls in surreal settings). And somehow we got into an impassioned (for him) conversation about artists over-pricing their art. Eventually, I pretended to get a phone call (something I almost never do) and snuck away to the restroom.

The Museum showed a movie of Jerusalem: the devout Jews blocking off the roadways to their neighborhoods for the Sabbath presenting a separation between two ways of life and thought in Israel.

Looking at art is exhausting, but I lasted as long as I could. I went from there to the Co-Opportunity Grocery Store, possibly LA’s only hippy-dippy co-op grocery store (?). I got some wine for Linda and Roger, Carolyn’s parents, who had kindly agreed to host me.

Classy Nails, found through yelp, was my next destination, and spending a hour getting pampered and having my nails tended was just what the doctor ordered. It wasn’t easy to find a color that matched the red of my dress for all of their 15+ available shades of red, but I think I did OK.

Then back to the beach to return the bike before meeting Rachel for dinner.

…

My first night here, I pulled off the shelf a book called “getting the love you want” a guide for couples. Saturday morning, Roger was trying to leave for Idaho and missing his book, it turned out the same one. (He called it a “convergence” that of all the books on their shelves, that’s the one I selected to read before sleep.) As a consolation prize, he suggested I look at “Lives in Progress” (Robert W. White).

More to follow… hopefully….

This is adorable.

young me now me

Thanks, L.

my HS classmate, Reuben Margolin

Totally Rad.

What do I remember about Reuben? Nice and smart (which didn't happen together that often at BHS), he gave people (me) the benefit of the doubt... and was totally cute. He was a leader in the unicycle club.

thoughts on growing up in Berkeley

Sometimes being me is a little lonely. For example, someone on my chat list had a string on nonsense words as their status update ("I wanna pop pop pop. I wanna shasta"). I asked about it. He replied "Don't you remember the commercial from when we were kids?"

My reply? "I wasn't allowed to watch television."

Yeah, I wanna deeply connect with other people. And that's challenging because I grew up in the People's Republic of Berkeley. I learned last week that NBC launched a tv series called Parenthood which is supposed to take place in Berkeley but actually appears nothing like it.

At least my plight is getting some attention. Facebook has been a wonderful opportunity to stay connected with friends from my youth. My little sister and I often observe how easy it is talk to each other compared with a lot of other people in the world. My childhood friends understand things, without explanation, I can never assume that others do. Ages ago, I joined the facebook group Your Mom is So Berkeley where we share one-liners. A NYT article reminded of to check it today: I laughed, I cried, I felt I wasn't alone any more.

Video clips

I'm going to watch this later.

Bicycle Music Festival

I'm finally getting around to editing my photos from last summer's bicycle music festival. I'll probably hold them off from release until shortly before the 2010 event, but I wanted to share this one with you now as I love it particularly.

Doesn't she look great? Features not to miss: her yellow striped socks, the reflection in her helmet, and that lovely blue color on her skirt. Thanks, mystery lady. You made my day.

Do you recognise this woman?

You shouldn't since she isn't real. She does appear to be a composite including myself and many women I know. None of us, however, "fuck on the first date." I, for example, shoot for the fifth. That said, I live in the Mission, my boobs (if you want to call them that) are real, I've never owned a car, and my phone is from 2004 (so ha! Out-done is pretend woman!).

Happy Birthday, little sister!

(Doesn't she look like a movie star?) Her birthday was yesterday.

dapper gentleman, TS Eliot, and decaf

Sometimes on my work-from-home days, I take a break to visit Philz Coffee on 24th Street. I love their cream goodness, not to mention that it's one of the only coffee shops I know that offers an organic decaf option. "I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" to avoid my bike spokes and only be able to drink decaf coffee because my heart is delicate. Yeah, I'm not happy about it, but I'm not arguing with reality.

On this day, I admired this dapper gentleman waiting for the light to change.

Having been recently scolded for shooting photos without permission, I asked. He snipped back that if I could catch his image before the light changed, I was welcome to it. The really cute part was when he waited for me. I asked him to ride away because I always love to provide a closing shot of my lovely cyclists breezing away.

Happiness in 5 steps

5 things that will make you happier
They are:
1) gratitude
2) optimism
3) counting your blessings (a lot like gratitude...hmm)
4) using your strengths
5) kindness

You are beautiful. You are perfect.

Last month, I talked about the possibility of human perfection. While it does not compute in my mind, seeing youself as flawed is equally destructive. On Sunday a few weeks back I found these gentlemen on Valencia sharing the love.


I love San Francisco.

in defense of napping

I love these findings that napping makes us learn faster and be smarter. (Thanks, K, for bringing this article to my attention.) What gives me pause is this comparison of the human brain to a computer system. I guess it's possible that computers are simplified versions of our brains, but it's also possible that our brains are much much more complicated than any computer could ever be. I believe in the human-ness of us that transcends electronics.

t-shirt words I like

"talk nerdy to me" has really grown on me since I first saw it. The more I watch my reaction to things and people, the more it resonates. I also recently saw one that said "I only like New York as a friend" -- you know, instead of a heart for love. That was hilarious.

Negotiation and road forks

I was just listening to Forum on the radio. The topic was Bargaining with the Devil: when to negotiate and when to fight. Examples included Mandela negotiating from prison and the US not negotiating with Hitler. I listened with keen interest, but only harvested a few precious nuggets instructive on life.

For one thing, you can't always negotiate with people you trust. You've heard people say they will only negotiate with people they trust, but sometimes that's not a luxury available to you. Many people you can't trust. In fact, I want to do some thinking on what trust is at all.

Also, negotiation only works when you have a Plan B in case the negotiation doesn't work out. You know I'm a huge fan of backup plans. (In fact, I've been fascinated to find that sometimes my Plan B becomes better than my Plan A the more I think about it.) Someone recently asked me to describe the most significant fork in the road I've encountered. In 1997-98, I ended my most important relationship to date (still), quit my job, and went back to graduate school. I guess I wasn't ready to grow up. Am I ready now? (K asks). I hope so. I wonder if our lives become, over time, the multidimensional things including everything we are and everything we could have been, every life we've lived and every life we could have lived. I guess all possible outcomes include sweet and sour flavors.

Mazatlan, January 2009

I'm not going to lie to you. 2009 was one of my least favorite years to date. Relationship drama, friend drama, health drama, you-name-it drama all decorated the otherwise structurally-powerful tree of the year. My vacations were wonderful: Alaska rocks the house, and France was beautiful though emotionally-intense due to M's cancer treatment.

Early in the year, I went to Mexico for a week to make art. I've been procrastinating editing those photos all year bc I didn't want to deal with the feelings I associate with adjacent times. But now that I have, they're stunning. Check them out.