In honor of Mark Twain

Summer hangs sweet in the air like honey.

Or it would, if San Francisco had a regular summer like the rest of the world.

Summer in San Francisco has its own alchemy: instead of relying on vitamin d and long outdoor hours, the city lives off social electricity, music festivals and taquerias and cafes and the rare sunny day at Dolores Park. This year the fog doesn't depress me; rather it is the one constant during a time of personal change. I'm finishing my last few weeks as an International Student Advisor at an international school downtown and will begin an M.F.A. program at San Francisco State in late August. I have three weeks between my last day at work and my first day at school, two of which I plan to spend in Chile with my best friend Laurel. I finally got full-size sheets on my first full-size bed. My mother is retiring, most of my friends split their time between grad school, full-time employment, and traveling the world, and we have a fabulous president for the first time since I was twelve years old.

Life is good.

Except Ahmadinejad won (allegedly) the presidential election in Iran. Except for that, and the murder of a Holocaust Memorial guard in D.C., and the rising prices of education, life is damn good. Summer is the best time of year, even when the MUNI lines light up in the damp evening fog, and bikinis are reserved for the rare trip inland. I feel the need to dig deep for the stories that, soon enough, I'll be required to produce, and yet my mind needs tilling. It's time to turn over the sod that two years of admin does to your head.

Last week, we had to say goodbye to a group of thirty students who had completed our longest-offered program, the Academic Year. I've met hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students since I started my job in spring 2008, and there are always a few students in every group that stand out. This particular group, however, were not just students--they were peers. I felt that our school matured with them, as we perfected our customer service and fine-tuned our academics. Many of these students began their English studies in our lowest level, and progressed through the cycles to our more advanced classes. Many of them were in my own classes. One of them was our intern. They were a group of men and women from Japan, Russia, France, China, Korea, and Germany. Both individually and as a group, they made an impression on me, and reminded me that being good at any job, even if it is not your dream job, has its rewards, and they can be overpowering.

In the tradition of all things exciting, the transition from full-time worker to full-time student is a bit daunting. Am I really a writer? I keep asking myself. Is this the right investment? What will I get from this? To be fair, these are all questions I've asked of my current job, and previous ones as well. What is the best way to be professional in this world? Does it even matter?

It helps that, for the first time in many months, I find myself gravitating toward a relationship I hadn't expected. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to learn the little intimate details of another person, the small things that he might not reveal to just anyone, and how all the bullshit tends to fall by the wayside. In many ways, I feel like things are fuller, rounder, and more complete, and those things that are beyond our control are just that -- beyond.

Job ending. Students leaving. Travel planned. Boys with glasses. Sounds like summer.

the coldest winter in my life was a summer in San Francisco -- Mark Twain

What independence feels like, again

I moved to a different apartment last weekend, and perhaps my favorite thing about it is my fire escape. Fire escape. That just might be the most poetic combination of English words I can imagine. Fire. Passion. Power. Energy. Escape. Freedom. Possibility. Potential. And the two together: the best possible place to sit in the evening, watching the buses as they pass, listening to the pops and whirs of the Chinese restaurant just downstairs, admiring the moon as it rises.

I forgot how much I like the quiet. How nice the evenings are in early spring. How green Glen Park is, and how promising it is to be alone, but not lonely.

Passover starts this week. Passover has always been one of my favorite holidays because it requires its observers to worship storytelling itself. Everything we eat and everything we do is a symbol of something mythical, something legendary, something worthy of retelling. Perhaps my most recent interpretation of religion can be summed up in the way I eat: matzoh ball soup with a side of applewood bacon, green salad and oranges. And yet everything I eat has a story behind it: the butcher's shop down the block with its retro decor, the avocadoes that remind me of my Haitian friends in Spain.

My life right now is that awkward moment between decisions. Do I go to grad school this year? Do I wait it out? Do I work? Do I travel? Is it possible to do all of the above? Waiting is hard for me, and yet I find peace in indecision. It's a bit like waiting for a flower to open. I'm still stuck as a bud.

Stay tuned...

Mills College!

I got in!

To Mills!

College!

For writing!

I am using this space to indicate a level of excitement that supercedes my need to write properly.

My mom bought me these Shepherd-Ferry-Obama-"Change" earrings back in October. I think finally that message has seeped into my personal life, and that, my friends, is long-awaited.

:)

The joys of Engrish

I am helping produce an ESL newsletter for our school. Every Wednesday I teach a study club for an hour and a half, where I perch on tables in our fifth-floor lunch room with a cluster of would-be journalists to talk about writing. Each month we produce one issue for the following month.

The longer I work with international students, the bigger kick I get out of the way we all (not just ESL learners) communicate. Here's a sampling of our current headlines and stories:

DUSTIN: MMM, HIS STUDENTS, AND JUICY
(an "in-depth" interview with a teacher about March Mustache Madness, with a reference to a Dating Game play we performed a few weeks ago, in which a fellow male coworker dressed in drag as a girl named 'Juicy')
RUSSIA: WELCOME TO OUR 11 TIME ZONES
THE ART OF CORALINE
DR. NICK & HIS NURSE
(this is our version of "Dear Abby," as written by a Chinese kid who wants to be a psychologist, and his sarcastic Brazilian friend)

and, one of my personal favorites, a student comic which depicts a group of pigeons trying to speak English.

I forgot how much of a better human being I am when I get to do creative things. Our newsletter has been a big success, and I have learned so much by the sheer force of student enthusiasm. Not only that, but in between registering students in classes, grading level tests, organizing orientation materials, and answering the phone, I can also devote a healthy amount of time to a group project that actually students together, in English.

Writing has always been my indoor bird, the fierce and forgotten passion that keeps banging itself against the window. Maybe one day it will open. I want to write and be inspired and offer creative ideas. It's taken me a little while to realize that banging my head against my own windows--comparing myself to others, worrying about the rent, failing to find the time to write and read--is the act of creative expression itself. I'm so grateful to recognize that there's a window there in the first place.

In the meantime, I inadvertently pick up ESL grammatical mistakes, and get to show students exactly how expressive they are, and can be.

2.10.01

Every year it's a bit different.

The first year, it was tragic. Every detail of February 10 was etched so clearly in my mind: the hard calluses on my palms from rowing competitions, the uncanny thirst in the back of my throat, that sinking feeling that I'd be doomed to adolescence forever. There were details that I'd attributed as somehow significant: the tulip painting on the hospital wall, the blue lights of the Tower Theatre mirroring the scene from the Sacramento River, the haunting chords of a Dave Matthews song. Everything is epic at 16 years old. What boys think is important. What teachers say could influence career choices. And what a body feels like--there are few things that dictate puberty more than the clash of control and instinct.

The second year, the memory was no less vivid. The illusion of control followed me to a more adult life--my freshman year of college. I circled the Lagoon that day, watching the gulls hem the coastline, realizing with a sudden finality that growing up meant taking ownership over imperfect organs.

Every year it changes. Those first three years, February seemed so mournful. I wrote poems to cells. I was still angry. I explained everything all the time to anyone who so much as blinked in my direction.

The fourth year I was abroad. That was the year I decided an anniversary didn't have to be sad. We landed on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, at midnight, and the minute it was February 10, I felt something new: defiance, in the form of optimism. And then I got dressed for Carnaval and learned how to relax in Spanish.

This eighth year, February 10 means something entirely different. February 10 is pancreas day, Julia day, adulthood day. I feel extraordinarily lucky. Not everyone can pinpoint the loss of idealism to one specific day. There are so few moments of perfect drama in our lives--of actual, novel-worthy frustration, unembellished, random crises of faith. For so many people, personal tragedy is not something so easily calculated: how does one quantify depression? Or the injustice of homophobia? Of lost opportunity to some invisible, imperfect law of human nature?

Mine is an unfairness I can chart, plot, and review. Mine is a plague of minimal pain. Mine is never a solitary journey. Mine is the confusion that actual life plots for all of us--the rearrangement of meals, the reminder that nobody is invincible, that there are consequences to every decision. Diabetes has always been a lesson in opportunity cost and effect, and while I never really appreciated my high school economics class, these things are more easily understood when one measures them in the form of a finger prick.

Eight years later, I no longer wonder who I'd be without diabetes. I'd be someone else, with some other Trojan horse, accomplishing other things. It doesn't matter. I am who I am just as a tree is just a tree, and a dog is just a dog. There is comfort to be found in identifying as something or someone. I am a diabetic, but I am also a woman, and a professional, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a person with opinions and aspirations. And, at times, catapulting blood sugar.

February 10. I look forward to the year that there are even more important anniversaries than this one.

Poem I Like

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

two thousand nine

There's a certain ring to it, isn't there? As a child, I always preferred odd numbers. I love the fact that numbers can be imperfect, like the universe. This will be a good year.

I wish I had something prophetic to say. I wish I were wise. My body has more wisdom than my brain does, and it's rare that the two communicate. I can say that there is a looming momentum to this particular year, with the promise of a new administration.

Here's what I hope to see in 2009:

1. More, not less, jobs. I'd love to join the forces of Obama's version of the New Deal--if he's reading this, I'll up and move to Tennessee if that means I can get a job recording oral histories of our first Work Progress Administration.

2. Mobilization, on both the grass-roots and corporate levels, for guaranteed civil liberties. For once, I'd like to see the government pass amendments that grant rights, not deny them.

3. I want a continuous blood glucose monitoring system--yet another piece of diabetic hardware that could help pinpoint the times of day when my body flips over inside.

Here's my open invitation to the new year:

1. 2009, I'm offering you my open palms, blossoming confidence, my willingness to work, unadulterated opinion and indiscreet expression, and a damn fine promise to avoid skepticism.

I'll try. You try too. Maybe everyone will. Maybe this will be the year global warming doesn't accelerate quite so fast, that the world sees the United States as just that -- an entity of diverse opinions. Maybe we'll all get ponies. I don't really want a pony. I just want an incentive, a carrot at the end of my stick.

two thousand nine. Good things will happen. Let's see.

Thoughtlets

I am transcribing journals from my year spent teaching in Spain. There are three bulky ones, the day-to-day ones, and four slim pocket-size libretas, the ones for expressions and new vocabulary words. Transcription is a tiring process, but rewriting--that's a process I really enjoy. Many times, when rereading old journal entries, I'll find these little tidbits, thoughtlets, really, that could easily replace pages of foreign-correspondent-description. Here's one I just found tonight:


When I left I split your mirror in half
I keep my half in my pocket
And when I look down to see you
There I am, reflected back
Across an ocean, a year, a novel, a song.

I might have been thinking about a boy I left behind in California. It could have been Santa Barbara, or university life in general, or even my country as a whole. The truth is, I still feel that way, about most anyone and anything that has ever meant anything to me.

In a way, so much of our lives are defined by cleaving things into pieces. Cells divide. People meet, fall in love, drift apart. Decisions are made, cities change, things grow and die. What do we actually remember, and stays remembered inside us?

Thanks for the Legs, Dad

The day started at 6:30 am.

In a fun, adult role-reversal, I had my parents over last night so I could finagle my father into a 10k run in Golden Gate Park today. The three of us slept in my V-shaped attic room and crashed down the stairs early to make chicken-apple sausages before the race. I wasn't expecting it to be such a clear day--it hardly feels like winter.

We got to 8th and Lincoln by 8:10. The race started adjacent to the recently renovated Academy of Sciences. Dad and I jogged straight to the starting line just as the announcer was winding down. We were told to line up according to our approximate mile splits.

"We can do 8:30," Dad said.

He's a seasoned runner, and my favorite running partner. We did the Bay to Breakers this year (my longest race, and my first B2B), plus a number of 10ks and a few Turkey Trots back in my hometown. This is the man who woke up with me four days a week to jog around the village green when I was an insecure eighth-grader, the same one who followed our racing shells after regattas to make sure my rowing team and I made it in okay off the Sacramento River. He's got a ponytail and usually runs in board shorts.

"Let's start at 9," I suggested. "We can always up it as we go."

The start was anticlimactic, as every race start is, requiring us to jog in place for a few minutes until the elite runners (I've always hated that word) left a clear spot for us to follow. The sunlight was clear, yellow; autumn light. We circled the 7th and Lincoln baseball field, the one where I've taken Kaplan Aspect soccer clubs, and looped out MLK drive all the way to the Panhandle.

Here's the reason I like to run with my father: because we are built the same, mostly legs and arms with long-twitch muscles that don't make us particularly fast, but do make us goddamn stubborn. Many times when we run together, there's no time or distance goal, but rather a personal challenge, usually involving an unknown fellow runner.

"See the guy with the obnoxious red-white-and-blue shirt? Yeah, the one about 100 yards ahead? We're gonna pass him. Now."

My dad is strong and powerful, and he had to take a brief hiatus from running this summer because of some particularly unruly vertebrae in his back. I signed us both up for the 10k a few weeks ago, somehow forgetting the 8 weeks this summer he spent off the track. And yet, today he was just as strong and determined--if not more so--than ever.

The real reason I am writing about running tonight is because it mirrors what I am thankful for. Quiet mornings with my family. Being outside. Functioning limbs. That sensation after exercise when one feels absolutely able-bodied. Whatever chemistry it is that brings friends together inside and outside, at all times of the year.

Dad and I both completed the 10k in good time, after cruising up above the Conservatory of Flowers and around Stow Lake. Mom was waiting for us at the finish line with our border collie Taj, and there was music, water, and goodies waiting for us between the de Young and the Academy of Science.

We weren't the fastest runners, nor were we the slowest. But we were the most goddamned stubborn. And thank goodness for that.

Fashionable?!



Last weekend I was stopped by a photographer as I was leaving the Bicycle Valet parking at the San Francisco Green Festival. These things generally don't happen to me. It was a hot day for mid-November, and I was attempting to bike in a miniskirt and pink Converse sneakers. And then this woman approached me.

"Do you mind if I take your photo?" she asked.

"What's it for?"

"Oh, I take pictures of fashionable women on bicycles for my blog."

I wasn't sure which part of this statement surprised me more--that she has a blog devoted to fashionable bicyclists, or that I somehow fit that description. I'm the kind of girl who tends to accidentally mismatch everything, usually because I'm more loyal to a favorite shirt than I am to an overall "outfit." My mother can attest to this--hers are the eyebrows that raise, hers is the voice that quivers when I leave the house. "You really want to wear that?"

I obliged her, and lo and behold, a week later, I stumble across her website.

I think I am an official San Franciscan now.

On Morality, of Sorts

On Saturday, November 15, my roommates and I biked down to the San Francisco City Hall to Join the Impact against Proposition 8. We arrived around noon, two hours after the rally had begun in 80 cities around the United States, and the lawn before the Civic Center was crowded with thousands of protesters. We wove through recently-married gay couples wearing wedding dresses and allies waving "another straight against h8te." There was nowhere to stand, so we wandered over to the Slow Food Victory Garden and perched atop hay bales. The sun beat down an almost impenetrable ray of civic justice, and yet the only speaker I could actually hear was a Baptist preacher. His voice had that hearty, scratchy pitch of someone who is accustomed to raising it high enough to be heard. He referenced the beginning of his education in civil rights at the death of Emmett Till, and argued that Christian fundamentalists and Evangelicals do not understand the hypocrisy of their "moral" argument.

My adolescence was highlighted by the infamous decisions of unfortunate politicians, whether it was George Bush Sr. throwing up in Japan, Clinton getting impeached for an immaturity not worthy of the Oval Office, or the various embarrassments and tragedies that have been the Dubya administration. And now, finally, the change I am witnessing has the potential to make our lives better.

Thus, the pots and pans of November 4, 2008.

And yet, the civil rights movement is not over, nor will it ever be. The perception of homosexuality and all non-heterosexual communities has evolved at an almost incredible rate during my lifetime. I will never forget how the word "gay" was such an accepted insult when I was in junior high, or how risky it felt to join a Gay-Straight Alliance in high school. I'm straight, and yet I still feel the intensity of that association as a teenager.

Eight years later, it feels almost criminal not to be an ally. Being human is being human, regardless of where we're from, what we look like, or who we love. I live in one of the "gayest" cities in the world, and instead of feeling threatened by the non-traditional or the unexpected, I'm more comfortable because of it.

Yesterday was a full day. After the protest, I met up with Laurel at the Green Festival downtown, an indoor sustainability fair with a seemingly endless supply of free samples. In the evening, we headed down to the Box Theatre in Potrero Hill to see a dance performance that benefited the Darfur Women's Center. I forgot how effective nonverbal communication can be sometimes. It was an evening of expression, and the movements of last night, combined with the images of the protest and the festival, have slid through the microfilm of my mind all day. Politics and art have been chewing away at my brain these days, and for the first time in a long time, they are a source of inspiration.

Thank goodness.

O. Bama.

Tonight I ran the streets of San Francisco banging pots and pans, drinking champagne and yelling joyfully into open cafes and bars. Tonight I felt proud, actually, honestly proud, to be from the United States, for the first time since I was in elementary school.

It started after work, when I ran home to pea soup and NPR, and I heard the commentator noting that "many of those contested red states are turning a shade of blue." And then Ohio. Oh, Ohio. Obama and his campaign took Ohio. And then Pennsylvania. And Virginia. And so many more, until at long last, it was eight o'clock and the projections were suddenly not so projected. Obama: 323. McCain: 144. No hanging chads could destroy that landslide.

I was sitting in a friend's living room in the Mission, surrounded by twenty young progressives with open laptops and powerful lungs. The milisecond we knew, the minute it was true, the room was humid with tears. It was a reaction I didn't realize politics could provoke, transforming a group of high-energy, highly expectant voters into a quiet, weeping mass.

McCain folded like a stack of cards. He was dignified enough, putting his arms up above his head in that universally-recognized symbol of almost Democratic surrender. And then, after he seceded, and Palin waved her Miss Congeniality wave from the side of the stage, it all became so much more real.

Obama took over Chicago with three words: Yes we can. His rhetoric is impossible to beat, and his delivery is perfect. Even the tone of his voice is sympathetic, measured. The following phrase is what broke me down completely, gave me over to a new form of optimistic patriotism:

"Our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

And thus we took to the streets, feeling an almost Biblical pull, like Miriam with her tambourine. We shouted and screamed "O - BA - MA!" and kept pinching each other and running into cafes with our arms up high, surrounded by smiles and fellow chanters. The world feels new suddenly. Faith is palpable. Authority welcomes debate. Humanity is recognizable. American dignity is not an oxymoron.

I won't rattle off Obama's policy promises, although they are attractive (yes to health care for those of us with pre-existing conditions! and pro-choice education! and a quicker retreat from Iraq!), but perhaps more than anything is this injection of renewal that you can feel in the very earth. The days seem clearer suddenly. Grad school seems a little bit more attainable. Small, measurable gains seem possible.

And besides, who cannot love a president who says things like this:

"Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House."

Finally, a leader who's funny on purpose.

A Thorn in the Midst

I'm in my Halloween costume already--suspenders, straw hat, plaid and jeans as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Just spent the past hour trouncing around the house with a trail of little straw flakes billowing out behind me. It's been a joyful kind of week, month really, with the upcoming election and the brilliance of San Francisco autumn.

It's funny how the starkest of realities bring us back down to earth just as we are the most oblivious. I get frustrated when my blood sugar wakes me up in the early morning, or when the copier breaks down at work, and then I learn about frighteningly real tragedies like the death of my former classmate Jake Thorn.

I met Jake as a sophomore at UCSB--2004, shortly before the last presidential election. The campus was full of a palpable electricity: students were mobilizing, registering voters and protesting the ongoing war in Iraq. We wanted Bush out. My second week back at school, I joined the Campus Democrats club. Immediately we were put to work: flyering freshman dorms with voter registration information, canvassing for the local supervisor race (I had a John Buttny sticker on my bike basket for the duration of the election, until he lost to the beer-brewing, father-of-"The-Bachelor" Firestone), tabling on the quad. Jake was one of the first fellow volunteers I met.

Jake epitomized the kind of friend you never quite have the time for, but always admired and wanted to actually know. He was thin, and smiley, with reddish hair, and a penchant for Amnesty International and equal-opportunity education. He wrote well. I remember him editing the club newsletter (it had a "donkey" theme) with a girl who later became my housemate here in San Francisco. He was one of those community members who you could count on to have an editorial in the paper at least once a week.

Throughout my time at UCSB, Jake's interests and passions often criss-crossed my own, whether it be voter registration, a local nonprofit we tried to start called Free Skool, the underground belly that was co-op culture and independent music.

All of these characteristics and memories slide into view now, two years later, when all I know of him are a list of hobbies and interests from his Facebook profile and a half dozen digital photographs from community events. I can't claim to have known him intimately or even well; he was one of many classmates who accomplished great things and had plans to accomplish even more.

I heard from him for the first time since graduation when he posted a note online about his May 2008 lymphoma diagnosis, a startling and fast-moving disease. Suddenly he was bald, suddenly he was excited about popsicles and writing songs about doomed youth. It wasn't until today, the day he passed away, that I noticed a small link on his webpage advertising his music:

http://www.purevolume.com/jakethorn/

There are few things more chilling than hearing someone's recorded voice shortly after they have died. I can only imagine what this must mean to his family and close friends, and the people who mattered the most to him. His voice sounds fragile at first, but then I recognize the quality of sound not as a weakness, but rather an informed complacency. He knows what is happening to his body, just as he knows which politicians are screwing up the country, and which animals are being mistreated. He knows, he knew, he always will know.

Perhaps the greatest pity in all this is how much he wanted to see next week's election. I remember the fervency with which he followed politics, and the idealistic hunger that pushed him forward. What's more tragic, I wonder: that so few people can maintain this intellectual idealism, or that those who do are often prevented from creating change?

Yet another reason to vote--vote for progressive change, and you'll be voting for Jake Thorn.

May 11, 1985--October 30, 2008

Two Takes on Global Warming--Commercial Vs. Public Service Announcement

The broadcasting class that I am taking at the City College of San Francisco requires that I consume and evaluate news of different mediums every week. Last week's theme was the commercial. The following ad is from the League of Conservation Voters and promotes an idea rather than a product:



A refreshing view on the neverending 2008 presidential eleciton? Perhaps. Both the sound ("It Ain't Easy Being Green") and the images (photographs of candidates from the past year slowly turning green) work well to carry the overall message. The ad only fails in that it doesn't provide any real solution--just food for thought. It functions better as a PSA than as a commercial.


Speaking of--this week we are focusing one was the public service announcement. I got this one on global warming at www.hulu.com:

--


--

This PSA relies on two things: the celebrity status of actor Kiefer Sutherland, and the appropriate urgency of his aptly named show, "24." He appeals to viewers as an everyman, saying that we must all monitor our "carbon footprint," and mentions enough scientific-sounding jargon to make the announcement seem legitimate. He almost had me until he referenced his own network as a valid resource for global warming information. At that point the PSA became less public, and more corporate.

Given this choice, I'd say the first ad appealed to me more as a young working woman. The information was better delivered through a variety of mediums, rather than relying solely on the popularity of an actor on a specific, conservative network. Thumbs up to the League of Conservation Voters.

anniversaries of sorts

The sunset was godly tonight.

Our house was quiet all evening. It was my night to cook, and for the first time in weeks I had the entire kitchen to myself. My brain was as full as the sky. There is an imperceptible calm that covers the world every night, and yet we are rarely paying enough attention to even notice.

It is October. Octobers are always red to me, pomegranate season. I've lived in San Francisco exactly a year this week. Two years ago this week I moved to Spain. Three years ago this week I broke up with my college boyfriend. Four years ago this week I was in love for the first time. Five years ago...five years ago, Santa Barbara was covered in smoke and fire and I felt guilty for thinking the sunset was prettier after all the smog had cleared.

How calculable is change?

Is it something that politicians can actually bring? Is the change we seek the same as the change we need? Do we notice good change as much as bad?

I try to. When the workmen finish on our block, I notice the smooth, slick asphalt. When a student at our school finally understands the difference between "he" and "she," we point it out. When the office staff adopted compost and recycling, we put up green and blue reminders all over the walls. When my blood sugar is normal, I give myself a golf clap.

When we have a new, progressive president, I'll stop holding my breath for health care reform, an economy with potential, and a set of ideals that might just be that--ideas.

Rosh Hashana

I got lost on the K MUNI tonight. I was on my way to meet Shauna for a Rosh Hashana service at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park, and the sun was just a wink on the horizon. A number of synapses were misfiring in my brain like fireworks. I was listening to Joan the Policewoman sing about failed relationships and thinking about a Brooklyn boy for whom I've developed an uncanny affection. Then a telemarketer called just as I was arriving at West Portal station, and for the irony of it was I actually wanted to answer her questions, but there was no reception in the tunnel. And then suddenly I was at Forest Hill station, by the Laguna Hospital, and it was dark, and I was late, and I wondered again why I had left the house.

I was thirty minutes late for the service, which we had found on Craigslist, and were drawn primarily because we didn't have to register for it ahead of time (as is the case for most High Holy Day services), and was advertised as "experimental and friendly." Those two adjectives can be quite the wild cards in this city. And yet it was a relief to know that the New Year was entirely capable of starting without me. Religion, particularly Judaism, has always left an almost backward impression on me--that is, the less I technically practice, or the less orthodox my prayer, the more I am struck by the sheer grandiosity of the universe.

And there's nowhere more unorthodox than a half-full room at the San Francisco County Fair Building in late September, sliding glass door open just enough to muffle the sounds of cars whipping by on Lincoln Avenue. The man on my right had a full beard, fuller than Moses', and he repeated every gesture the rabbi made, gesture for gesture. As with many Reform and/or post-Reform services, most of the songs were a series of voices competing for rhythm and pitch. And then something really spectacular happened: we sang the Sh'ma.

The Sh'ma is the most important prayer in Judaism because it carries its most basic truth: that there is one god. The prayer must be sung while standing, and most Jews bend their heads and bow at regular intervals. It is easy to remember, even for us non-Hebrew-speakers who grew up reading the transliterations, because it is only about four or five words. Now, I consider myself an agnostic at best, and even then, I'm not the best agnostic. The very fact that I don't believe 100% in one god cancels out my identification as a Jew in many circles, but that's another story. What happened tonight had less to do with my belief (or lack thereof) in any kind of god, and more to do with the sheer will to believe that filled that crappy little room.

What was different was the way the congregation sang the prayer. Instead of singing it as a whole phrase, or singing each word quietly in a full breath, we all sang each word fully, loudly, in a bizarre kind of harmony that wasn't melodic so much as absolutely willed.

shema


yisrael


adonai


eloheynu


adonai


echad

Each note was so full, it was if an entire season was blossoming within it.

The curtains whipped at the open slider doors, and the man next to me bobbed his head on his full belly. And I was glad to be there, glad to have gotten lost on the K line, glad to be an experimental and friendly Jew.