This made my day

I was supremely disappointed to realize after my visit to San Francisco last week that my favorite picture--the one I had been looking forward to posting the most--had not been saved to my camera. To realize that something so epic was gone...well, it was, quite simply, tragic.

However, by some resplendent twist of fate, I was Facebook-snooping (oh, admit it...you all do it, too) and what did I stumble across on a friend's profile but this:

So, thank you, friend of mine, for allowing this most serendipitous event to make its way into my life.

Please, just take a moment to enjoy the true, unadulterated hilarity that is the mannequin-eating dinosaur.

Burlingame Art & Jazz Festival

The festival is a pretty typical street fair, but nonetheless enjoyable. Good music and delectable food abound. In fact, two very old women were out-dancing a bunch of kids and couples a third their age. All I can say is that I hope I'm that cool when I'm old.

A few other highlights:

A street.
It's very...
streety?
Streetlic-
ious? Street-
astic? Take
your pick.







More
street








A funky little cafe.
Delicious coffee.




These were amazing.
They're made entirely
from silk thread--
no paint or
anything. It's hard to see all the detail in the picture, but they were really beautiful.


The sign on the
window says,
"Psychic on
site," but it kind
of looks like
"psychic on sale," which is funnier, so let's go with that one.



Alas, I was
too far
over the
four-foot
height limit
for the
kiddy rides.
Which was
entirely
disappoi-
nting, as I had very much hoped to ensconce myself within a giant blue dragon cocoon.

Saxophone man:












Overall, a fun day. I would recommend it. Burlingame is quite nice. I've never been there before, but downtown and surrounding areas were undeniably pleasant. Good times!

San Francisco!

I really, really like the city. I tried to take pictures but it was kind of an epic failure :( But I tried, so effort should at least count for something, eh?


A street of some
sort, apparently

More large buildings. They are
plentiful downtown:



This is an insanely cool building. The part
that you can't see is the Prada and the Coach
and the Gucci (Guchi? Alas, I fail at any and all fashion-isty things) and the Bloomingdale's that make up this place. There were many exorbitantly-priced clothing items. I guess I better get to writing The Next Great American Novel if I'm ever going to afford stuff like that, eh? Maybe I should just name my first book that...then no one can dispute what it really is.

The true tragedy of all this, though, is that I deleted my best (and really, the only good) picture on accident.

It was a mannequin-eating dinosaur.

Which was pretty awesome. You don't get much cooler than that. I'm not sure that I entirely understood its function in a very upscale clothing store, but why not, right? Perhaps the decor-designers of Bloomingdale's are making some kind of meta-comment about how fashion, while a lucrative business, can easily be destroyed by greater natural forces, like T-Rexes. Never mind the whole extinction thing.

Ah, S.F. Nothing quite like it.

Maplessness

"Lost a Planet, Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing."
-Yoda

Driving to Davis the other day, I met a detour on I-5 (due to construction). In order to get back on the freeway, I was forced through downtown Sacramento. Never having been that deep into the city, I was faced with one-way streets and confusing orange arrows. Eventually, of course, I found my way, but not without a few wrong turns.

See? It's a perfect metaphor for life! Cha-ching!

Alas, tidy parallels to our constant human waverings are really not my intention here.

My big epiphaphatic (not a word, is it?) moment came after I was back in the Bay Area (where I am staying for the summer) from my all-too-brief stop in Davis. I was telling my parents about my detour and my dad says, "I'm glad you made it ok. You don't really have enough experience being lost."

Apparently, my brain is some kind of quasi-waterproof fabric, like Lycra. It is resilient when it comes to water and sweat, but eventually, the liquid seeps. It's just the nature of the material.

So it took me a long while to realize the weight of my father's words, and how very true they are. I do not have enough experience being lost. He is right; I have only been lost for eighteen odd years. Nothing to his...well, I'll spare him his decades, but in my years, I have always been attempting to swat away the penumbra. I do have experience in that--in trying to dissipate fog thicker than Miss Teen South Carolina. It stubbornly persists, falling right back in to place, even after great disturbances.

I suppose that age brings with it a certain ease to navigating through the mostly uncertain fog. It offers the ability to trust in our own hearts and brains to lead us. Life lived breeds more confusion, but also more acceptance of the natural flow of all things. Heraclitus wrote that "a man cannot step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."

We can always search for the waters we once waded in, or even drowned in, but there is a continual ebb and flow, a very real and veritable cadence to our days and to our lives.

To be lost is a blessing in its own curious way. In being lost, we grope around for something to tame grief: an answer, a destination, the calming of a roiling soul. When we are lost, we are inevitably learning--evolving towards an eventual goal.

I am young; I do not have decades of experience in finding my way.

But I do know something. We can lose a planet or another person, perhaps we can lose sight of ourselves. But as far as we breathe and our bodies produce work and thought, there is a constant, decided possibility.

Obi-Wan eventually finds his "lost" planet, Kamino. I eventually found my way back home. We only touch briefly upon our destinations before plunging right back into the atmosphere, all too often without cartography to an answer.