Saturday, March 7, 2020

"Such a boom of organized hostility to life"

"As a young girl at boarding school, I cartooned...to possess the unattainable....Today I realize I've got quite the opposite impulse, trying to nail down the normalized malaise that defines the downtown world. My once bohemian city is now pumped so full of tech cash that everyone walks around terrified: of failure, of not enough or the wrong kind of success, of being beat to market by someone with the same absurd idea. I've never witnessed such a boom of organized hostility to life. It's as though the whole city is standing on a shrinking ledge while pretending it's at the best party ever thrown. The twisted creatures flowing out of my finger onto the tablet screen are like the neck-treading demons lurking inside every comely young entrepreneur carting endless confidence and optimist to the streets. Out, out, all of you, into the cold light of day. Let us examine and document the true shape of you."

Jen Burke Anderson
Womankind #21
It has been so bizarre to see how my hometown of San Francisco has transformed in the past ten years. I felt grateful when I read these words from another longer-term resident of SF, for what they capture that I haven't been able to put into words myself.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Point & shoot photo album: February

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Ballet school Saturdays - vegan Valentine's Day tea service - first time making hash browns from scratch - airy warehouse district afternoons in suspiciously mild weather - a blood orange of shocking beauty, such that I cannot keep from exclaiming about it to my coworkers, or bringing it to my nose to smell - a blood orange of a more adorable mien - plum blossoms, everywhere in the East Bay - what was left after I bought three pounds of the teeniest variety of tangerines and offered some to everyone I saw for the next twenty-four hours.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

Escaping north, part three

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The first time in a while that the ocean has made me feel wary all the way up on dry land. Waves exploded so far up the cliffs' sides and tumbled so high and wildly ahead of the shore that I thought of what I've heard about sneaker waves, and when S. had me face her for a photo, I keep turning around to check on the water. A sign on the miniscule strip of beach said: No Overnight Parking / No Camping. Who would want to? I thought.

Part one here
Part two here