notes from the field: SFO international airport BART station

8:23 pm
signs that i'm back in san francisco:
1. lots of guys wearing skinny jeans, often brightly colored (ah, the land of the hipster)
2. when the people in front of me at the BART turnstile were confused about how to use their BART cards, i just stood and waited. after a couple seconds, ppl behind me started to push at me. this is when i realized i wasn't in abq anymore, where ppl wait for you to figure out stuff without yelling at you to hurry up. i'm in sf now, so i also pushed around the confused ppl and went on my way through the turnstile.
3. that lovely musty damp cloth BART smell

voyeurs paradise

anybody happen to be in miami this weekend? tomorrow miami-dade international airport is holding an auction for unclaimed items that travelers left behind. as expected, there are a gazillion cell phones and laptops, but what puzzles me more are objects like bikes and one piñata. how do you forget your piñata at the airport? and how do you explain your lack of piñata to the eagerly waiting person at your destination? 

another intriguing element to this auction: you can bid on unclaimed sealed boxes- no one knows what's inside these puppies! most likely what is actually inside is not as exciting as imagining what's inside (an easter basket! a garden gnome! a jellybean sculpture of the Philly Phanatic, official mascot of the Phillies!).

sidewalk art

got roped into a walk in abq old town today. it's a collection of adobe buildings built in the 1700's that now house cafes, art galleries, and touristy tchotchke shops. tourists aside, it's a beautiful place, and i saw lots of art that delighted my eyes, like this sidewalk art:

these guys i found on someone's roof:

here's a doorway i liked:

here's a virgin (virgen de guadalupe? virgin mary?) stuck in a tree trunk. the story is that someone carved it into this dying cottonwood tree, and then it miraculously stopped dying. though the city of abq recently hacked off the top of the tree, so now it's just a tall stump- way to waste a miracle, people.

and lastly, my patron saint, the cactus plant:

the truth is

the truth is there were not that many "good ol' days"
i remember mostly bad days,
sometimes terrifying days
do you remember sitting in your parked car, darked garage, tears dripping on the steering wheel?
do you remember the night we had to stay in a hotel?
no cell phones back then- no one could find us unless we told them where we were-
so freeing
but then we went back
if i'm the only one who remembers, 
did it really happen?


the truth is i owe you everything
but knowing that truth doesn't make it less difficult for me to be with you

the truth is i grieve for you
life should not have been so painful for you, you who did everything right
but you stayed
and we stayed


the truth is there were not that many "good ol' days"
the fact that what came after was so much more horrifying than anything we'd ever expected
does not make the bad old days better

move on

this morning i woke up in an unfamiliar place. sun poured in across the bed, making me uncomfortably warm. large-sounding dogs cussed each other out up and down the street, setting each other off w/overlapping, escalating barks. feet pounded across a wooden floor somewhere; someone else yelled an indistinguishable question. mariachi swelled out of a radio next door, accompanied by the zzzing of an electric saw. 


for a moment, i thought i was in a foreign country- the morning sounds reminded me of both mexico and taiwan. then brain memory kicked in: this is where you live now. yesterday we moved out of one apartment into another. the new place is just two blocks away from our old apt, but everything smells and sounds different. it's the largest apt i've ever lived in; i felt like a marble in a giant cardboard box as i shuffled through the rooms. then i sat down and just sat, unsure of what to do next, slightly hungry and thirsty, but not getting up to do anything about it. 


since i was a kid, the morning after a big event (a birthday, christmas, the last day of school, a funeral) has always unsettled me. after much anticipation + build-up + work, the event arrives, the event happens, the event passes- then what? it has always felt jarring that life around me flows on as usual, regardless of what important occasion has happened to me. i guess that egocentric childlike thinking hasn't left me entirely.