Family: The unfamiliar is so familiar.
my daddy was a bankrobber
but he never hurt nobody
he just loved to live that way
and he loved to steal your money
Everyone has their own narrative about their family. The story a person tells about their family really tells you very little about their family, but it opens the book on them. The idiosyncrasies one chooses to emphasize, to hide. The funny tales everyone can relate to that thinly veil the truths no one wants to admit they all understand.
Family is fraught.
Family is familiar.
Family is beautiful in dysfunction.
Family is tragically supportive.
Family is dynamic – though we tell the tales in stasis.
There is safety in a familiar narrative but it belies reality. And reality simply waits for you to show up so it can remind you of all that exists beyond your story. My narrative has always had a penchant for the dramatic, some might even say melodrama. My narrative has always had a tendency to over-emphasize the fragility of others and forget that the people from which I come are strong, in every way, even weakness. My narrative has created an anxiety that has no place in my reality. My reality has always been underscored by a complicated but beautiful fabric of love.
When you jump into your narrative you remember things like this.
Yesterday, I jumped.
It is never as hard as I think it will be.
<3 and sushi.
And very merry Christmas.
Vacancy.
I flew home via Reno last Sunday and had a bit of a layover. Landing midday, I was shocked how deathly quiet the airport was; SeaTac had been bustling in the morning and I would have thought weekenders would have been coming and going from Reno as well. As I no longer suffer PTSD from The Biggest Little City, I headed downtown to walk around a bit. If I had thought the airport quiet I was certainly unprepared for the eerie emptiness and silence I found downtown.
“Wait… did we miss it?” Avoiding Fomo in Chicago.
Norah: Are you sad that we missed it?
Nick: We didn’t miss it. This *is* it.
Live music has a very special appeal to me. Always has. As such it is very hard for me to pass up opportunities to see it – even when I know there will be a lot of work involved or I would be better served to focus elsewhere or I should save the money or I am too tired or, or, or… But as of yet I have not been able to kick the habit. I have moved metaphorical mountains to attend shows: driven all night to and from shows, gone to work in states of mind suited only to deep sleep or asylums following shows, attended shows after shows that lasted all day, flown to shows, hiked to shows, biked to shows. I simply love going to shows.
My love of shows is not just about the music but the whole experience. The rock stars, the idea of being right there with them, the energy, the smells (totally show specific of course, and not all lovely as I will get to presently), the hope to hear a song, the hope that the whole show won’t be all about promoting a new album you’ve never heard, meeting people who love what you love – or hate what you hate… the rock stars. Always those rock stars. Singers = Swoon. It is funny though, I thought about all this the other night at The Vaccines/Arctic Monkeys show at The Independent and realized that when I was the appropriate age to snog rock stars I was watching bands that were too old for me, and now I keep finding myself watching bands full of kids who could have been in my Geography class. Weird.
But in spite of it all, I keep going to shows… because you never know… you might miss the next best thing.
The whole reason the Chicago trip was planned in the first place was around Lollapalooza. It was the 20th Anniversary year and since Lolla no longer functions as a travelling circus like it used to, it provided and awesome opportunity to see Chicago – a city I had only enjoyed via the airports. Plus D would be working her magic and we would get super special treatment. While at Coachella, D had said that the perks at Lolla were way impressive. It sounded amazing, and without being to a total spoiler, it was actually even better than it had sounded.
And so we went.
More from the [very nice and super clean] streets of Chi-Town
When I visit places I always like to try to imagine what it would be like to live in them. I have lived in lots of places, and so it is less of a question of whether I could live there than what it would feel like. I guess it is the geographer in me always trying to get that sense of place.
While I walked around Chicago a week or so ago, I was struck by a lot of things about the place but the prevailing sentiment was of a vague familiarity in a place that was simultaneously completely unusual. There were elements that felt cinematic, some that felt positively subtropical, some that were incredibly sophisticated and many that were [mostly] endearingly provincial, it felt definitively historical (most things do to us West Coasters) but also very modern. Some things about Chicago became really obvious to me once they were pointed out: “It is so clean!” A kept saying. And that was factual information. The city is freakishly clean (bearing in mind I never made it to the South Side and I did notice a particularly rank odor along certain stretches of the train tracks and there was definitely something unpleasant coming up from the deeps under Grant Park…) I heard plenty of people tell me they could not believe I was heading to Chicago in August – didn’t I know about the weather? Uh… yeah. I teach Geography, I am familiar with the humid continental climatic conditions, and I lived in Hong Kong for five years: I can take the heat. For real.
But in terms of the aesthetic the city offered an eyeful. (more…)
And then I went to Chicago [Hot Child in the City Version]
It turns out I really like cities. I’ve sort of always known this, I mean, I was the kid who liked Athens when everyone was like, “No way! Go to Corfu!” Hmm… the birthplace of Western Civ… or getting plates smashed on my head while consuming copious amounts of ouzo. Let’s see. Athens FTW. But this was not a new phenomenon. San Francisco always fascinated my little Sonoma County self. I loved the sprawling craziness of Mexican municipalities. Then there was New York… Vancouver… London… Beijing… Sydney, and of course the amazing 852. Cities. And my love of what is urban brought me back to San Francisco when given the choice of where to alight from my trans-Pacific relocation.
Scholars have long claimed that the primary characteristics of a “civilized” people – of civilization as it were – include advanced cities, specialized workers, complex institutions, record keeping and advanced technology. Declaring what is and is not civilized is a bit touchy. I find focusing on the etymology safer, even though the five characteristics have expanded a bit, it is still dicey territory. Regardless, cities are always listed as the first sign of a settled people with potential. And it is true – what do we always look back upon with awe and wonder: Cities. Atlantis, the Cretan cities of the Minoans, ancient Sumer, Alexandria, Athens, Pompeii (yes, and Rome…)
The word ‘city’ comes from the Latin civitatem (nominative is civitas) meaning citizenship or community of citizens.” We use cities as our primary judgement of people, places, and entire nations; a default marker for better or worse. Is something cleaner than Stockholm, safer than Saigon, dirtier than Delhi, more diverse than New York, bigger than Beijing, more misleading than Mandalay… on and on. Cities are collections of patterns that would make M.C. Escher envious. I could wax on forever about the unique ways cities have developed and the crystalline-like patterns of growth and the controversial genius of all the models used to explain the phenomenon of cities: Christaller, Burgess, Hoyt, Harris and Ullman… But I might lose all but three of my faithful readers, so I will not. [Though I will comment that Old Walter's model, by design, could work only on a featureless landscape - and no offense to the Midwest, but you all lack some major features out there. I never realized how much I depend on the ocean and mountains for my orientation...]
And I have to admit, a lot of my knowledge of Chicago outside of sports teams and stockyards really comes from the OPI Chicago collection. It is how I learned about Mrs. O’Leary and her oops-”barbeque”, Lincoln Park (“After Dark” – and now “After Midnight”), the Magnificent Mile (being “Marooned” or otherwise), how I always remember which of the Great Lakes Chi Town sits on (“Skinny dippin’ in Lake Michigan”), and all that “Razz”y jazz, the “El” (of a color) and “Blues” (for red). So, it is with this all of this urban fascination and personal national naiveté that I headed to Chicago last week to meet up with the leader of the A-Team and D for Lollapalooza and some quality city time. Being a tourist in your own country is great fun and something I’ve not done for ages. And there was the added bonus of being totally generously hosted by The Shazams for the first half of the trip. Win, win, win.
And so Chicago. Gimme what you got one time.
I finally finished the book: 365 photos, 366 days later.
One (long and very interesting) year after I completed this photo project, I have completed the book of the photos. It is for sale via the Blurb website for the cost of the book – a total non-profit enterprise, as I imagine all feats of the ego should be.
I hope you take a moment to look, and thank you for following the blog, the photos, the process.
xoxo
a
ps: If you don’t want the book, you can still visit the blog…
“All we have known…”
It is so easy to get caught up in the minutia. In the seemingly infinite world of Me. Or for you, of You. I work in high schools, the breeding ground of Me. I do not discount the importance of this stage in human development – it is crucial to discovering who we might be, You and Me. I love watching the students I work with cultivate and develop and mutate and invent and destroy and enhance and dilute and clarify and identify this sense of themselves. And if they can see that everyone else is really just trying to do the same thing in the end, somehow, as a race, I believe we have been successful. The balance of understanding and gaining perspective without turning to futility may be the true right of passage.
Launched on September 5, 1977, when I had just started the second grade, Voyager 1 is now somewhere called the Heliosheath, at the end of the Heliosphere, at this second about 17,434,002,760 km from Earth. In 1990, when it was a mere 6.4 billion kilometers away, Carl Sagan suggested that NASA turn the spacecraft’s camera back to show the Earth’s “true circumstance and condition.” On Valentine’s Day of that year, Voyager 1 captured the now famous image of our planet, the Pale Blue Dot. In the image, the planet fills 0.12 pixel.
Mr. Sagan understood perspective. All the highs and lows, all we have known – everything… finding a place on that single Pale Blue Dot.
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)
Kitty in the City.
Toto, I don't think we're on Lamma anymore. Just sayin'.
Through the eyes of another…
Lately I have been immersed in discussions about how the views of others help to inform us of our own perspectives and understandings of people, places and things. My freshman are reading Catcher in the Rye and my seniors, Heart of Darkness, and in both the images and understandings we glean or create about the characters come from the reflections of said characters in the eyes of others.
What an interesting vantage point: through the eyes of others.
Frenchie spent last week with me in San Francisco and it is certainly no secret that while we have far less in common than we share, we still manage to get along quite well. I think this is because we appreciate seeing things through the others eyes. [Admitedly sometimes when I do this I feel like I am wearing the drunk goggles from Driver's Ed simply because her view seems so distorted - but it is not. It is just different and has always been interesting.] I am not sure she is always aware of my appreciation, but it is there none the less.
Looking through Frenchie’s photos and seeing how she saw the City I call home was fascinating. It looked so same-same-but-different. It was fabulous. Illuminating. And a terrific reminder of how it is through these myriad perspectives that true vision can be achieved.
My foray into the San Francisco International Film Festival (or, I met Ewan McGregor and that is all that really matters.)
Last night the SF International Film Festival opened with a screening of Beginners at the historic Castro Theater and an after party at the Terra Gallery. And I got to meet Ewan McGregor. The End.
Not really. But sort of. I have never attended the SFIFF before and was fortunate to be invited by a dear friend as a VIP, which as you know, always makes me smile. Knowing that Mr. McGregor was going to be there was pretty much the icing on my silly-girl cake though. On top of this I was feeling like quite the hostess; pretty nice to be able to bring your French friend from Hong Kong to the “International” Film Festival.
Frenchie and I arrived after a lovely happy hour at Beretta and found our friends in the balcony. I love these old theaters and the Castro always reminds me of the glory days of the movies, a delicious time in our entertainment history. Though there is not enough leg room for people of my size.
The festival opened with remarks from the organizers and the director Mike Mills. Ewan was supposed to be there. He was not there. Something about a plane and a fuel leak and Paris. Then the movie began. It is a really wonderful movie and a very moving story. I cried. A lot. Loved it.
Following the film was a Q&A session and I was starting to feel like a pro at these because earlier in the day I had taken my senior AP Literature class to the A.C.T. to see a production of Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit, after which we had Q&A. Frenchie came too, how many of you can say that you get to be a high school chaperone on your vacation, huh? [The production was incredibly interesting - highly recommended.] Still, Mr. McGregor was not there, but then in similar fashion to the new arrivals condemned to l’hotel Hell in Sartre’s work, he came sprinting down the aisle. Oh. My. God.
There he was.
The answers were much more entertaining than the questions, but I was thinking about the after party – and getting up close and personal with Ewan.
We got to Terra Gallery in perfect time, one slight glitch as I was unaware that Frenchie does not carry i.d. with her (the freedom of foreign life), but a quick reminder that we were not the droids they were looking for and we were in. The gallery space is huge and there were several bars, music set-ups and lots of people. And amazing food. Seriously awesome. And all free. –> Smiles. But… where was Ewan?
In and up to the VIP lounge and I was getting a cocktail. Walking back from the bar I see Frenchie gesticulating wildly. I rarely know what she means because Frenchie and I speak a different body language as well as about every other kind of language. [Hey, opposites and all, right?] but she was being vehement. When I got to here she said, “You and your eyes!”
“Huh?”
“You cannot see anything! You walked right by Ewan McGregor! He was right in front of you!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Shit!”
“Oui!”
“Hold my drink!”
“Okay!”
And I went back. (more…)
Be careful, your Coachealousy is showing…
This past week was the 12th Annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio California. It was hot and loud and colorful and a lot of fun. From April 15th through the 17th (or 14th – if you did the smart thing and came in a night early for camping – through the 18th – if you stayed to see all of Kanye’s 90 minute Sunday night closing set… or did something more fun in the wee hours of Sunday) the Empire Polo Fields in Indio played host to some 90,000 people (including security and staff) a day for a noon to midnight daily musical melange.
The festival sold out in 124 hours (I guess that sounds more impressive than saying ‘just over 5 days’), which was a record in the twelve-year history of the event. Daily temperatures were in the high nineties. [Most of the attendees seemed to be in the low twenties.] There were 178 acts on six stages. (Organizers like to point out that this translates to your ticket price being 1.50 per act. While I can appreciate the logic, I have to say that is a bogus statistic even for a person like me who loves statistics because the idea that you could actually *see* all the acts is laughable.) Speaking of statistics, the attendance demographics were also interesting. 50.5% of all the tickets were sold in California. I am not sure if that means TO Californians, but the event certainly has a California feel. (85.5% of the total tickets sold were in the US and a single ticket was sold in Kuwait, Peru, Poland and Venezuela, which I find cool for whatever reason.)
Our trip to Coachella began with a rather unfortunate turn of events. Or maybe it wasn’t, I am not really sure, but I am sure it was a Mulligan. Driving from San Diego, A & I had planned on heading out at 2 so we were on the road by 3:30. (We had to get our nails done and stuff – I mean, this is a SoCal event.) The drive is around three hours (exclusive of traffic) and hits about four freeways. Cruising along the second freeway, about an hour and a half in, I took out my ticket. I wanted to look at these bracelets that we had been sent with their computer chip and re-read all these crazy security warnings: No one would be let in without a bracelet. You would be scanned in and out every time you entered and left the venue. Car campers (us) had to be sure the sticker was on the car and all people in the car had bracelets. It was going to be intensely controlled. I was looking at the way the bracelet fastened when A looked over at me.
-Oh my god. I forgot my ticket. -
A morning in the Mission
If I had billions of dollars I would buy all of the old theaters in the Mission and refurbish them. I think about this every time I walk down Mission Street.
San Francisco gets a Vitamin D injection
A day in the City at the Park, the Academy of Science, the de Young and the Bridge.
[This one's for you Driss.]
life in a day
The old man said to me
Said don’t always take life so seriously
Play the flute
And dance and sing your song
July 24 was the day selected for a very interesting project spearheaded by Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald. The premise being that people all over the world – anyone from anywhere – would take to the streets in a common 24-hour period and film… anything. Then, people submit the videos and Scott and MacDonald are going to use the footage they deem worthy in what they are calling an “experimental documentary film” that will debut at Sundance next year. I love shit like this. This may be because I am an inherently nosy person, but I am okay with that.
In addition, MacDonald had four questions that I guess he is using as his guiding questions for the project and so if you wished you could film a video that also answered/addressed them. The questions were:
- What do you love?
- What do you fear?
- What makes you laugh?
- What’s in your pockets and what’s the story there?
I really wish I were more adept at video because I would have loved to have done it. I thought about it a lot. But I did not do it. [On principle that sort of behavior really bothers me, because the more I think about it the more I realize: I could have done this.] If I would have done it I would have used the varied clips of footage from the day to create a montage that addressed the questions…. all of which I am contemplating about in response to another cool project/concept I am thinking about that asks us to consider: “Why do you do what you do?”
I spent the day in San Francisco and as I headed home I thought about all the people I had interacted with and how I would have endeavored to capture their presence on video. And I thought about those questions. (more…)
Far West Flower Fest…
Walking at Point Reyes National Seashore near Inverness with Ron on a grey Monday.
Some things I know I’m going to miss about Hong Kong
Cheap utilities including phone service – remember that year we all got our electricity subsidized? That was cool. [Seems fair anyhow since our little island provides HK with ALL its power.]
Everywhere you might want to travel seems to be 2.5 hours away by air.
Anna introducing me as “Amanda, my friend from Hong Kong”.
In-town Check-in/Airport Express/Cathay Pacific.
Tirumala Septentrionis Butterflies.
Getting your drink on in the street.
The Inland Revenue Department.
Public transportation.
The Rugby Sevens.
My yoga teacher.
My amigas.
My view.
Norman.
Amanda
