Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Notes/quotes, coworkers at an old job

I liked the people at this job. They were a fascinating mix.
From 2011.

I moved to San Francisco as soon as I turned eighteen.

I feel like our generation is the generation of SF fuck-ups. Like, the generation born between 1985 and 1989, well, 1990, I know some twenty-year-olds who are pretty crazy, but our generation, we're all so fucked up, but we have such a good time.

I need to raise $600 today [or I won't have enough from commission] to make rent. I might starve for a couple days.

Canvassers are confident almost to a fault. You have to get told "no" again and again for five hours a day.

I rode down from Seattle on my bike...I have a storage unit there and four panniers of stuff with me. I'm camping in Marin for now and coming over the bridge every day. I'm going to be here for a month to earn some money, then I'll be riding again. Working my way down to San Diego.

I mean, she and her wife are literally living in poverty, and if she loses this job, it's all they have.

It's kind of a thing for me, everything that's important to me, I always have with me in my backpack.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Gratitudes + things that are making me happy

Untitled

• trees full of blossoms

• spring air (I know it's only February, but this is the Bay Area)

• reading Letters to a Young Poet, and how comforting it is when I am lonely

• breathing and thinking

• the yummiest mocha and blueberry cornbread  at brunch this morning

• having an old favorite toy camera back in my possession

• yoga twice this week (I usually go once a month max)

• connecting better with a new coworker I didn't think I'd like

• biking under the full moon with my dear one

• the gift of a rainbow votive candle

• my roommate's rants and monologues and listening ear

• a feline houseguest

Monday, February 3, 2014

For sanity and staying inside my body

Fall 2013.

I went to a secondhand store
today looking for a pair of
jeans. The rules
for staying sane are gentle
and have not changed:

When the body grows
(smaller or larger),
keep feeding it what
it wants, keep moving how
it wants, find clothes
that in all ways feel good;
keep knowing
what knowledge (pounds,
calories, and the like)
is not valuable to you.

The project of the past few
years is listening instead
to the wordless shifting
constellations
that pass beneath and across
my skin. To the wise
if sometimes frightening
wants and body-thoughts,
the certainties and
contentments of this animal self,
as well as to the spaces where
I can hear
nothing yet, where long-learned silence
(quiet, quiet)
is not yet unlearned

For dogma,
I will have
only this, that
nothing the body does
or doesn't
do is wrong,
nothing the body
does is wrong,
in my terror and longing
and unbelief, I am reciting
to myself: how
nothing this body
does is wrong