Unconventionality

The other day I was walking up a hill and checking the time on my cell phone. It was 8:56pm. But for some reason the minute refused to change. That minute, 8:56, lasted a long, long time. My close observation, and perhaps the fact that I was moving at the time, made the minute seem so long.

I don't really know how that fits in to what I wanted to express today.

Last night I slept very well. After having walked around the city, stopping by Zeitgeist for a pitcher of Mt. Tam Pale Ale, and talking about all kinds of funny stuff with Slaven and Claire, my dreams were long, strange, and varied. I won't restate them here though....

I am very relaxed right now. And a little sleepy.

What I wanted to express was that I have found the key to good living: that key involves something that some European cultures (Spain, Italy, France) seem to have - a healthy, hearty respect for daily life that rejects the notion that the "productive day" is the only worthy kind of day. In other words, prestige, wealth, and class are not necessities for the good life. Friendship, awareness, the basics of life (food, shelter, clothing), and perhaps most importantly—time—are the more important elements of the good life. The basics, of course, are fundamental. But time is perhaps even more so.

This is not to say that being a productive, hard worker is a bad thing. Nor that one should be lazy all the time.

. . . . . . .

A man on Van Ness asked me for food money today. He was a Vietnam War vet. He told me his story when I asked him. He said that his time behind the gun gave him 30 years of grief - in fact, he could not even begin to confront that grief until 30 years after the fact. He described how he shot two children (who had been armed with AK47s, or so I understood). He told me his name is Michael Bray.

I keep my ears open in this city. It is an education just to live in a place like this, to encounter the people, the places, the history, the nature, and the complexities.