Adventure #18 -- A Gingerbread House for the Crazy

Adventure - Marty

Description: To truck our way down to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose and, well, walk around inside it.


(Marty's Report):

Heather and I were down in Fresno for the Cooper's Thanksgiving, saying a final goodbye to Gpa's house, although we all agreed that Gpa was utterly outofthere. Sometimes, after someone has died, you have a sense of their energy still hanging around. Not here. It was like the last bit of wax, and then the wick, got burned up and that's that.

Anyway, on the way back, I saw the billboard for the Winchester Mystery House--they are peppered around the Bay Area, and I've been seeing them for years, flashing on a few memories of when my father took Corey and I there, probably 30 years ago. This time, it stuck in my mind, and when Heather (thinking I'd draw a blank at her question) asked me what I'd planned for a weekend adventure...voila! The WMH!

Now, Heather being from the East Coast, sorta, maybe more accurately the South East Coast, banjo land, North Carolina de Hayseed, etc., she'd only vaguely heard of it. But she was game, so having hit the internet for info and directions (you know, I'm going to have to digress into an "Isn't that f-----g amazing!" digression: I can remember not that long ago, asking Dad to get all the U.S. maps that AAA had available, when I was too cheap or poor to sign up with their service. I had these bags of maps around, on the shelf, for years--not at all sure where they went to, come to think of it--and now that's all as obsolete as the orange sugar crust that they used to spread on the matrimonial sheets of newlyweds (I've read). Now you just go online and ask the magic Internet for directions and lo, all is revealed. That's just wild. Really.), and we were off!

But en route, we stopped off over at Casa de Smurf (nee the Sharp-Madson's house), and hung out with James, Benjamin and Ariana. James looked a bit bedraggled from his morning with kids (Robin was off teaching), and we arrived just before nap time, which meant we got to participate in the bedtime ritual. Benjamin hadn't seen us for a while, so he was a bit standoffish, though when we were upstairs and he saw Heather brushing my hair, well, he couldn't be left out and came over to brush mine, and then finally gave us big hugs as we left James to finalize the sleep process.

Then we headed down to San Jose, down the outrageously beautiful Hwy 280, across the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and into the heart of the SJ. There should be something horrible about the SJ, with its sprawling suburban ethos, but for whatever reason it doesn't. Hm. All the techies?

The Winchester Mystery House is just off the freeway, next to a mobile home park, a Cinedom theater, and across the street from an upscale mall. I don't think it was like that 30 years ago; I don't remember it reminding me of the Vatican as surrounded by Home Depots. It's obviously got a lot of money available; the place is manicured and seems like it was just painted. And it charges $26 a head, which is probably why it looks so good.

We got on a tour in the mid-afternoon, with a young man who Heather described as, to paraphrase, a "Cranked-up Jon Lovetz." He took us on the one mile sojourn through a very odd house, a structure built up over many years by a, well, crazy woman. She inherited a butt-load of cash from her husband, who cashed in on the American tendency for violence by making a lot of rifles. His wife apparently was a wacky Spiritualist who was told by a medium to keep building lest she be set upon by the spirits of those killed by the rifles. Logical. So she kept building on the house for her whole life, which is to say, she hired workers to work for her around the clock.

And the results are not bizarre so much as just lightly odd. It kind of makes sense for an eccentric arthritic old woman, but it's hard to hold a concept of the place, to make a mental map of the house. I felt disoriented by the end in a rather unpleasant way, not spooked out at all, but just lightly addled. Being inside an odd mind is...odd. If the place actually had people and current life in it, it might feel different. But with it's both empty and frozen in time quality, it's, well, odd.

On the way back, Heather suggested dinner in Half Moon Bay, on the water. So we headed over Hwy 90, past the various tree farms, previously pumpkin farms, where we'll be next week getting a tree with the Sharpe-Madsons. We found an odd little neighborhood, at Mavericks, where the famous big wave competition is held. We ate at the Brewery, overlooking the water, where the water was mostly glassy, and a solo wind surfer wobbled across the water under the antenae ball thingy on the peninsula. I must say, it was about the best raviolis I've ever had.


(Heather's Report):

I'd heard of the Winchester Mystery House. Well, not on the East Coast, but only once I moved out here. I mean... how could you NOT have heard of it with all the damned signs, billboards and bumper stickers screaming "Come see this extremely weird house thingie!!" I paraphrase. Greatly. I mean, really, bumper stickers for a whack house?

But speaking of whack houses, I love them. I love houses with little quirks and oddities. Although, I have to say, this was a bit... over the top, in that department.

Which leads to humans and their love of money no matter how one gets it. So this guy Winchester decided, as Marty put it, to cash in on extremely surface potential violence of human beings, especially that of the burgeoning America. You know, Winchester... you might have heard of him. Or at least his product. Guns. Specifically rifles. At the Whacky House of Winchester Widow, there was a small museum containing all sorts of forms of easy purveyance of death. The evolution of the projectile weapon, from small single hand held powder/ball type to quick loading, quick fire rifles. And we know that from the time of that invention, money has been invested to make more! And sell more! And yep, people buy more!

So, basically, Winchester made a shit ton of money. Which Whacky Winchester Window all got when he died. Maybe she didn't agree with Winchester's choice of money making avenues or maybe she was just crazy, but for some reason she decided to see a medium about it all and was told that she needed to keep building the house in order to appease the souls of all those killed by her husband's products. I mean, the money was basically blood money right?

But considering how the house was built, I wonder if she wasn't building just to build but to confuse. Like Marty said, it's very hard to orient oneself in this maze of hallways and interlinking rooms. Maybe she was hoping to confuse a few hundred thousand spirits set on revenge. I'd be pretty damn confused as a spirit bent on revenge too. Turn a corner to go up a set of stairs you think leads to Whacky Winchester Widow's bedroom in order to do her in and meet ceiling after half a flight.

In any case, our too energetic guide who really did look and speak like John Lovetz of Saturday Night Live, led us around the house, explaining in that "I'm such a bright and perky tour guide and I'm going to beat you into liking this tour no matter what you think!" voice, about the various quirks of the house and the woman and all that. At the end he said we'd walked a mile and I really believe it. Even though the house was only on a set space within a bit of a sprawling plot. Right in the middle of town. But still, a damn mile inside one house because of all the ups and downs and turn arounds and the way it was put together. And build on top of and within. A lot of parts weren't finished, as attentions got turned elsewhere or maybe Whacky Winchester Widow felt the ghosts were getting too close and started changing her mind about corridors and such. Whacky.

It was fun however, although it certainly didn't give me any quirky house ideas as there wasn't really anything that I wanted to replicate. Well, the stairs were pretty cool even if not designed for very tall peoploe. Apparently she was pretty short and designed these stairs for very short legs, not steep, somewhat wide, spiraling in a square fashion up and around. Easier on the legs I think than a real set of stairs. I'll take those. Or maybe a cool little chair lift. She didn't have any but I'd design one. Especially when I get older and more crazy.

Adventure #17 -- Something Smells Goaty (or, Not all goats are emmisaries of the Devil)

Adventure - Heather

Description: Wherein Heather and Marty take a tour of a small award winning working goat dairy in Pescadero, CA.


(Heather's Report):

I've been to Pescadero before. Well, I didn't remember that's what the "town" if you want to call it that, was but yes, I've been here before. I think Marty was looking for a spot to surf along the coast and was bored with Linda Mar, a small inlet in Pacifica where usually the newbies go. So we had driven down the coast and stopped by this little nowhere bit of a town and apparently, that was Pescadero. Okay.

So, somewhere along the line of trying to think of an adventure, and doing my usual obsessiveness with Facebook, there just happened to be an "ad" on the sidebar. You know the ones I'm talking about. "Obama wants working moms to go back to school!" and "Play this app and be a sorority girl, too!!" kind of stuff. But there happened to be one about Harley Goat Farms, a working goat diary.

It was my turn to set up an adventure so I did so, after checking out the site, Harley Farms Goat Dairy, and finding out they did tours of their small, working and apparently award winning goat farm/diary.

I was thinking a different town, not knowing that I'd been to Pescadero, CA, as previously stated. And I was rather expecting it to be out in a more lush area, mostly "alone", meaning out in the middle of nowhere (which I guess Pescadero is), but I was still thinking large goat farm and lush green fields. Only to find out that it was a rather small farm, at least in looks, they do have acreage but it doesn't look that large to the eye. And there are green fields with a moderate herd in both paddocks (not paddies, Marty, but close enough for farm work, I'm sure). With watch llamas. I almost laughed at that one. I'm used to male neutered goats (a "wether") being out in the pasture with horses but that's to calm down the high-strung equine types. I have never heard of a Watch Llama. But there they were and apparently quite effective.

We met our guide by a small pen with two rambunctious does within, butting heads and playing the dominance game. One was obviously Alpha Goat but wasn't letting up at the obvious submission of the other. But fortunately, goats are pretty resilient and the submissive just gave a puny butt back and got out of the way each time. I remember the kid goats playing at Father's and they were so cute, rearing up and being all playful and suddenly, WHAM!!!, while you were watching, slam headfirst into each other with an audible crack. And then keep playing and then butting again. I tried that ONCE with a kid, sort of by accident and it put me on my ass seeing stars. Very hard heads, those goats. And for all our bone to protect our puny brains, our skulls ain't got nothing on a goat's.

She had a very good hair jewelry thingie (our guide, not the goat), and a drinking bottle in a sling, made of ceramic, which seemed awfully impractical to me but looked very cool. She chatted about the goats, explained the workings of the farm itself, how the goats get to retire and the workings of the milking set up. I gamely step up to milk, and it all sort of comes back to you, like riding a bike or... milking a goat.

Then off to see how the cheese is made in the small but quite functional dairy and then the second best part, the tasting of the cheese! I have to say, of all cheeses, goat cheese, especially the chevre, soft, salty and creamy, is likely my favorite cheese. Yeah, probably even above my other favorite, Frommage D'Affinois.

Oh, and the first best part was seeing the goats themselves. I don't mind, and actually like, that goaty or farm smell. Even the bucks (not castrated male goats!), who can get quite ripe, don't bother me. Never mind the smell or the hard work it would take to keep even a couple of goats... I recall my father, getting up extremely early to milk the two does he had when they had kids.... Oh, was it 4:30am or 5:30am... I can't remember. Hauling the hay around, bringing down water and feed and making sure the fencing was in good repair (they like to rub up against all sorts of things), making sure they are safe from dogs with electric wire, bottle feeding the kids, cleaning the goat house and laying new hay, etc, etc. Yeah, hard work.

But, boy, I sure do love me some goats.

(Marty's Report):

Heather had me block out this Saturday, something we have to do these days. In the dim past, when I was young and callow, I used to work part time in a vaguely socialist used book store, and could schedule outings with about, oh, a couple hours notice. Sigh.

So on said designated Saturday, we headed down to Pescadero, a tiny little burg about a mile or two off the south coast, an hour south of San Francisco. It's known for, well, I'm not sure, maybe the funky little bar-diner place that has too much meat for me to eat, uh, in. And the general store has an odd spacious quality, with a brick oven, and there's a lawn next door with bands. Or at least there was one there when we arrived. Well, a duo with a single family out front. It reminds me of a time when I played naked at a naked pool party. No one really watched us either. Well. I was the drummer, so I was behind the equipment, you know? The guitar player has less of an excuse, seems to me...

But backing up a bit, we drove down the beautiful Hwy 1 route, which is so gorgeous all the way down, but with the scrubby bushes and volcanic rock in that area, it's just an amazing stretch. So we drove around the back way and as we pulled up in front of a little farm area, Heather said, "We're going to tour a prize winning goat cheese farm!" Well, maybe without the exclamation mark.

Now, I had been thinking, halfway in the back of my head, that we were going to ride camels. Which is not to say I don't like goats, because I like goats. Ever since running around with kid goats at a goat milk farm close to my father-in-law's house. But with images of camels in my head (we're going to Egypt next year), I gave the inappropriate husband response: "Oh? Oh... ok." This was not the response Heather wanted to hear, but she gave it a noble effort to not either attack me or cry. Poor girl.

But we went into "town" and wandered around the crystal-and-tile shops till it was Goat Time.

The farm itself is 6 acres, which sounds like more of a back yard than a farm, but whatchagonnado? We got to hang out with the greeter goats, one of which was apparently the alpha over the other, and kept butting its nemesis when we paid it too much attention. I started warming up to the idea of being at a goat farm, but I really appreciated Heather setting up the day.

We got the tour from a squat, sweet woman who apparently worked with the developmentally disabled when not leading city people through the goat paddies. (Is it called a paddy?) Heather noticed her jewelry and I noticed her impractical ceramic Renaissance Faire water pot. Is that a gender thing?

It was a beautiful little farm, very conscious. I particularly liked that once the goats were finished with their milk careers, they were sent across the road to live out the rest of their lives (another 4 years or so, after 12 years of cheese making efforts).

There were about 70 or so goats in two, uh, corrals, with a guard llama in the other pen, and a billy goat in both, uh, paddocks. They are such sweet creatures, friendly and grounded, unlike horses, which are mean and spacey. Stupid horses. But the goats will rub up against you and look at you with those sweet Saturnine eyes--well, they're a little creepy, but in the context of the goat, it somehow works for them.

We got the full run of the place, from goat to milking site (we got to milk a friendly goat, Dana or somesuch name), to milk dripping room, to milk cheesing table with the edible flowers, then upstairs to the beautiful converted loft space where we ate bread and cheese with our co-goaters. A very sweet day.

(And in the evening, we went to dinner with Gieve at Chevy's and then watched the movie Zombieland. Which made it a very full day.)

Adventure #16 -- Green Gulch (or, "It's not like I hurt anyone with my ass!")

Adventure - Heather

Description: Spontaneously and extemporaneously created adventure, in which we ended up sauntering through Green Gulch Zen Farm

(Marty's Report):

I must say, it's been a bit since we had this adventure. Well, a quiet adventure. A Zen adventure. In which Heather bared her ass. But more on that later.

Heather was doing a class on finding her purpose in life, and was jazzed up upon returning to the city to leave the city again, or at least to go for a drive. I don't remember what I was doing earlier in the day, but the offer was well received, and off we went across the bridge.

Now, I hate the town of Mill Valley. To me, it's like one of those Bible Belt river towns in which the industry has abandoned the four generations of workers in favor of a third world country where the current President was an army colonel shortly before being being promoted to Commandant by the man he subsequently beheaded, leaving the remaining towns folk in a state of gritty depression that is tracking a spate of missing persons reports. Except with a lot of money and cafes. If I had a choice between hanging out with people who unpredictably, in the middle of a conversation about mid-century Italian pottery, jab bamboo shoots into your various orifices, and having a nice meal with the denizens of Mill Valley...well, it's like the Marin County version of a Yanni flute solo...in hell, going on forever and ever.

We did not stop in Mill Valley, but took the exit towards Stinson Beach. There was a certain sucking feeling as we passed by, but our car, Zippy, is fierce.

The area is heavy with Eucalyptus, a beautiful tree that snuck into the country before the strict post-9/11 immigration laws, and the turn off to Green Gulch is among these Eucalyptus groves. We drove carefully down the driveway, a one-and-a-quarter lane road. A retreat or sitting apparently was just finishing, so we had to creep past a lot of dour Zen students, while Heather waved jauntily. I know non-dour Zensters, so I'm not sure what was going on here. Maybe Zippy was intimidating their Priora (plural of Prius...look it up); he's an intimidating hunk of decade-old Subaru.

So, the place was pretty empty, the Subaru-afeared having fled, so we walked down the main road, back along the marriage route. We both had our respective memories of that foggy, rainy morning, when we arrived to get hitched. I had bought an armful of umbrellas on Clement, thinking we'd be in the garden. But they took pity on us and let us into the Zendo, a beautiful converted old barn. So we reminisced as we walked past the hall (I never noticed how short the buildings are there--apparently building codes or some such), and headed down the length of the land, a ravine or gulch that heads West towards the ocean. It's beautiful, strong land, with all the monastic buildings, and then the acres of gardens that provide produce for Greens in the city.

At the end of the property, you go through a high gate and there's the horse corral. We turned there and headed back.

And that's when it happened. Passing through this hallowed land, with her Theravadan-trained Buddhist husband, my sorta-Pagan wife commences to demonstrate some measure of pique by dropping her drawers and doing what in conventional society is known as "mooning." It doesn't seem to have a correlate in traditional monastic culture.

I was mortified. What if the Abbot had come out from the spinach sorting hut just then? Or some innocent new Buddhist convert, dew eyed with the Dharma, should rise from her tree-shaded cushion to see...well, it's a nice sight to me, but in context, a bit shocking.

However, as Heather, maybe a bit self-servingly, but correctly, pointed out, "This too is Spirit." So I allowed my vulgarian to give me an important lesson about attachment to the golden chains of decorum.


(Heather's Report):

Many people have said to us that our wedding was one of the most beautiful and touching ceremonies they have ever experienced and I say with some pride that's because Marty and I are uber. But I probably would more point to where we got married, at this amazing and sacred place called Green Gulch Farm, otherwise known as Green Dragon Temple, a Buddhist zendo and spiritual meditation retreat under the Soto Zen tradition (and part of the San Francisco Zen Center). Also, bonusly located in the absolutely stunning, painfully beautiful valley by Stinson Beach and lower Mount Tam.

You can't go wrong with having a wedding in the beautiful, lush, green (and organic) gardens of Green Gulch, except that it ended up pouring rain, albeit this turning the area soft with fog and that sort of lovely rainy day I remember at the monastery of Dai Bosatsu with great affection (to the left). No newts though and that was disappointing. But the upside was that the Buddhists took pity upon us and allowed us to have the wedding in the zendo itself (generally only set aside for the practitioners of Soto Zen, my husband being... Captain Vipassana and my father, performing the ceremony, being of the Rinzai tradition). But that was amazing and worked out perfectly. I think all of our guests could feel the specialness of the place and in the ten minutes of silence/sitting meditation we had planned, there came the feeling among the space Quakers call a "joined meeting", when the energy of all involved seems to synch together in a most palpable way. It was pretty cool.

So needless to say, we were happy to remember such an auspicious day and I hope sets the tone for how special this sacred space is. THAT BEING SAID... No one was hurt by the exposure of my ghoulishly white ass cheeks. The Abbot did not see my ass. The Roshi did not see my ass. No silly dew-eyed dharma creature, human or animal alike, saw my ass. You know why? Because I checked before performing said act. I looked around before dropping my trousers.

I don't even remember what I was irritated at my husband for, but I'm sure he deserved such a sacred mooning.

Adventure #15 -- The Long March to Dinner (with guest adventurer Kasha!)

Adventure - Heather, Kasha, Marty

Description: To take a walk through the park and down Clement St. to collect dinner makings, and then the making of said dinner, thereof.


(Marty's Report):

Well, adventures aren't always easy to come up with. Inspiration, like the breath, comes and goes. And sometimes you have to take your adventure where you find it...like today.

It's not, though, like we didn't try. We sat down after breakfast, with the magic of the Internet at our fingertips, and found nothing happening this weekend more interesting than the Cardboard Tube Fighting Tournament...which was Sunday. Our huge and culturally sophisticated city failed us. Took us up to the heights of expectation, and then dropped us through the clouds of potentiality (read: Internet events postings) to fall flat on the hard empty ground of disappointment. So we defaulted to a walk in the park and shopping.

Now, this is not just any park. This is the Golden GATE Park! Where a zillion tourists from half a zillion countries, various exercise enthusiasts, some roller skaters and Tai Chi practitioners, a group of swing dancers on Sunday, museum goers, and homeless campers go to, well, do what their descriptions describe. Making us, Walkers. And Gabbers. We walked and gabbed, from our house through museum district (where many were going for the triumphant return of the Kind Tut exhibit) and up the hill to Stowe Lake. We rested there, watching the ducks and gulls and Other Walkers. At one point, I took my leave of Heather and Kasha to sit by the pond-side and let them talk about body image girl stuff. Having successfully done that, we commenced walking.

Kasha's just back from 2 1/2 months in Asia, so she's still getting over the fatigue and jet lag. We stopped a couple times to convalesce, though for some reason, Heather was the peppier of the three of us. We had looked at one of cookbooks that have gone neglected for years on the cookbook shelf in the kitchen, and found four recipes to make, apparently in some spastic foodie splurge. Potatoes, bell pepper cheese appetizers, a foot-long green bean stir fry, and rainbow chard salad. Usually my days consist of a mix of banana smoothies, salads, and veggie burgers, all of which take about 2 minutes at most to prepare. So this, I think, counts as a culinary adventure of the first magnitude.

Down from the leafy and rose-encrusted heights of Stowe Lake, we descended to Clement St., passing by my office. Kasha had never seen it, so we stepped in. This picture shows the two of them from my therapist perspective. Heather is apparently mulling over the rich and complex interpretation I just made, and Kasha, having trouble digesting the profundity, distracts herself with the Van Gogh poster. Or perhaps the lint in the air vent.

We rested here a bit, then continued to the new 9th Ave. library, where I picked up a Kem Nunn book (who co-authored John From Cincinnati) and was again amazed at how anti-capitalist this institution is, judging itself by how freely it can give away stuff.

As I said, Heater was full steam ahead at the Chinese markets, while Kasha and I began to droop, as evidenced by the dim gaze and slack facial muscles. A stop at Heather's favorite dim sum place revived us a bit, but we were dragging again by the time we hit home. Heather went off for more supplies at Safeway, and Kasha rested while I did some computer work.

Then the cooking. As I said, I don't usually cook. Not because I don't like prepared food so much as I eat 5-6 times a day usually, and don't want to give it that much time. But it's fun to cook with friends, so we spent the next several hours in a complex improv kitchen ballet, set to the music of Heather's Ipod hip-hop mix. As we cooked, we danced. Heather well, Kasha good, and me, goofy. You can see our end result below (of food, not dancing).

Then we ate. Which always is a bit of a let down, and probably is another reason I don't cook food much. You spend all that time making, and hardly any time eating. A peasant at heart regarding food, the subtleties are largely lost on me. There's a stone floor to my culinary appreciation; "deep cooking" kind of squashes and bottoms out in my house.

Last adventurous thing for the day was Kasha agreeing to watch a "comedy" with me, June Bug, about a man and his new wife going to visit his family in North Carolina. It turned out to be a hard slog through a modern riff on Tennessee Williams territory. We both felt wind-burned by the end of it, and earned our slumbers.


(Kasha's Report):

This is my first guest log with Marty and Heather and I am filled with a buffet of images and senses. The excitement runs through my fingers as I recall the day that began with mist and by the time we sauntered out of the door, the sunlight had chased the silver coldness and gifted us with an aquamarine sky and a brilliance that permeated our steps towards the Golden Gate Park. With the ease born of having known each other over the years, we strolled towards Stow Lake passing the museum complexes bustling with curious onlookers. The plant world and the earth beneath were soothing to me, having had just arrived from the tropics that week. The water was reassuring, reminding the fluids in my body of its likeness.

As we sat on the bench by the lake, I remembered that this was the place were Marty and Heather proposed their intention for marriage to each other and my heart softened even more. In some way, I was being invited into their sacred place. A tender joy danced in me to have this privilege of deep friendship with them, an enfolding into the fabric of their lives, an enfolding of our lives together with all the seasons that maturing brings.

There was a light lamentation that we didn’t bring food for the birds and ducks that reside there. But there were many people who joyfully and dutifully tossed breadcrumbs to the fowl that were only too eager to satisfy their hunger. Many turtles were sunning themselves, emerging from the depths of the lake. How many did we count?

On our way out of the park, we were fascinated by the bobbing of a rodent in and out of its home underground. We couldn’t decide if it was a squirrel, mouse, ground hog or something else? Nonetheless, we played musical steps to find just the right place so we can witness this creature without being in its peripheral vision. Apparently, a couple showed interest as well and the man couldn’t help himself but pass on some oblique commentaries on the medical and mental health system.

Heather was in a shopping mood and had been since yesterday as she cajoled Marty and I to go to Clement Street. This is also known as Asia street as you can find all kinds of Asian restaurants and grocery stores with Asian vegetables and foodstuff. She was full of excitement as we entered one store after another searching for duck eggs, long string beans, shitake mushrooms and other ingredients. Earlier we had chosen several recipes that decadently popped out of the cookbook. As we entered a hole in the wall eatery, we voted to sit down and refuel with egg rolls, lotus bean cakes and other Chinese snacks. With a few more stops along the way, we finally dropped our bags of fresh ingredients in the kitchen and rested before we tackled the recipes that await us. With much gusto, we were transformed into chefs and marveled at the colors of paprika bell peppers stuffed with cheeses and avocado and the sautéed garlic that permeated the air to the freshness of the salad greens. We were satiated with the fullness of food created with much love. We partook of the fullness of each other.


(Heather's Report):

Errr.... we cooked.

Oh, and saw a small gopher type critter (apparently called a "pocket gopher", as I later looked up), which I sat and watched in a fascinated fashion while Marty and Kasha went to the bathroom. Once they came back, we had to, as Kasha said, maneuver around a little bit to hide so that he would stick his head out. He was very cute and I've always wondered how they manage to stay so sleek of fur and... well, clean when doing such dirty jobs as excavating a den. Which is what this little guy was doing, nosing up all that freshly dug dirt onto the grass. I'm imagining this might have been his emergency exit that he was digging but it seemed a little less than smart to be creating it so close to a sidewalk. But in any case, he was cute and came out long enough for Marty to snap a little shot of him.

I don't know why I was so full steam ahead, I'm usually the laggy, complainy one, so I really don't know what was going on there, but off I went, poking and prodding at the others to hurry it up! And I just kept going like the energizer bunny, going out to Safeway for more stuff when they sagged at home. Bah. Lazies!!!

I very much enjoy cooking as a community sort of thing. I mean, a dinner party is one thing, to come together and eat but usually the host is doing all the work. Not only does the cooking get help but it's just fun to cook as a group. As evidenced by the dancing and such. And it's terribly domestic in a commune kind of way. Which I have never experienced. Living in a commune, I mean. But what I imagine it might be. Well, probably idealistically.

And don't listen to Marty about food. Because our efforts were pretty good. He's a complete peasant when it comes to food; give him beans and rice and he'd be happy. Except, if you really only gave him beans and rice, he'd start wanting ice cream and such. So, not COMPLETELY a peasant. But enough that "fanciful" food doesn't usually do anything for him. Whereas, in my family, especially for my father and mother, food, and really good food, is a big deal. I didn't grow up a complete food snob, I'm not a hugely experienced gourmand but I did grow up with some food snobishness in my blood. So I like really good food.

(And so does Marty, he just won't admit it).

Our final result!!!

Adventure #14 -- Harbor Seals Are Not the Brightest Worms on the Beach

Adventure - Heather

Description: Wherein we set out to fulfill Heather's training in seal counting, at Drake's Estero.


(Marty's Report):

Now, I wouldn't normally go play voyeur to seals, but my Wife Unit has taken up volunteer work with the park service that watches over the seal populations. Apparently, seals, because they are near the top of the food chain (they are predated on by sharks and the occasional orca, and coyotes will go after the pups), the health of their groups indicates the health of the ecosystem. So the park folk need people to go keep an eye on them, which means schlepping out to relatively remote spots on the Marin coast, and doing the schlep work of environmentalism: counting them.

We got up early--well, historically 7am is early for Heather, but with recent morning shifts with Baker Places, she no longer thinks the crack of dawn smells like ass. We got our morning coffees from Javaholics on Balboa, our neighborhood joint where we are recognized by the regular barristers, and where we've spent many Sunday mornings. Heather, who used to be so snooty about the imbibing of the "blood of the bean" ("battery acid" in her pre-fallen vernacular), now has surrendered to the dark lure of a caffeinated life. And since I've fallen off the wagon after a period of righteous abstinence, we sin together.

So fortified, with me in Zippy's driver seat (see here for a full account of our meeting and naming of our current vehicle), we headed up through the morning fog, over the Golden Gate, and into the Green and Verdant Lands of Marin. I don't remember if the fog and overcast continued for the whole drive, but it certainly was there at the coast, as we drove across the rather bleak lands to the north of Pt. Reyes. This the route I'd driven once before with James, out to the Pt. Reyes lighthouse. But we went to the parking lot at Drake's Estero, a long empty beach next to bluffs, that lead to a sizable inlet about a mile south of the parking lot.

We arrived at the same time as Heather's mentor. To do this volunteer work, you have to go with an experienced counter to each site, and in the case of this site, twice. Heather had made it out once, but hadn't been able to find anyone to take her out again. I counseled her to email the mentors and offer to take someone out for dinner if they'd go with her to the site. I don't know if she did that, but she emailed and Ruth responded.

So when we pulled up, Ruth and her cousin Bruce had just arrived in the empty parking lot, the colors of the ocean, beach, and scrubby hills washed out into different shadings of gray. They greeted us warmly and functionally, which was a nice tone for the whole outing, everyone there to do a job, and therefore not much reason to be very chummy. We got the gear together, consisting of lunch and some binoculars and, um, unioculars, and started down the totally empty beach. I was reminded unpleasantly of the 6 hour whale watching tour Heather and I did, through a world of gun metal and sweatshirt grays, sans whales. And vomiting and nausea only second to skydiving. I averted my eyes and walked on.

Then we cut up and started what seemed to me to bushwhack through the tall grass, but Ruth seemed to be seeing a path. Either way, we ended up cresting a bluff and heading down to the observation point, about a quarter mile away from the sand spit where the seal colony had "hauled out" (I'm learning all this new seal terminology). Meaning, the place where they like to squirm their unarticulated worm bodies up onto the beach and plop down for a good nap.

While Heather and Ruth and Bruce busied about with the setting up of tripods and scopes, and then the first round of counting (which Heather can describe in detail--basically it's a clicker and trying not to count), I dug out a novel written by Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel Laurette for Literature from the 80's (I think he's deceased). Heading off to Egypt next year, I've been wanting to go prepared, so I got a random novel of his from the library and started it up on a cold-ass hill next to a gray ocean, with a lot of sand. So not much difference, perhaps.

It's a strange book so far, reminding me of Marquez' and Allende's books, allegories about suffering which strike me as at least tedious, if not self-indulgent. I'll keep plugging away at it, if nothing else than for anthropological reasons, but as a personal experience it's not doing much so far. (When I got home I returned to reading my delightfully trashy Elizabeth Peter's novel about Egypt, written by a modern British woman. Telling, I suppose. I've not found yet a way to relate to such novels. It almost feels like I'm having to translate developmental levels, which is a strange process.)

Then I napped, finding a relatively unbumpy 6 foot stretch of grass, until Heather stood over me and accused me of not be adventurous enough. I got up and ate while they clicked away, and then checked out the environs and seals through the scopes. Initially the contraptions confounded me, till I saw how they are focused, at which point the experience of watching the seals took on an amazing quality. The clarity of the image was so great that I felt almost that I was hovering above the critters.

And what strange critters they are. Heather says they are schizoid, meaning they don't really have much use for each other, not even touching like the seals at Pier 39 do. Watching from afar, it seems like just a group of vaguely distinguished dark shapes, but "up close," they're squirming and worming around the sand, including one who was, for no known reason, flopping around in a circle like a dog chasing its tail, but more befuddled about why. Not that a dog knows why, it just pretends it does for the audience.

My adventurousness, however, was drawn at actually counting the critters, despite Heather's seeming idea that it would be fun. There were maybe 700 of them at several "haul out" sites, I was told. OK, good for the frisky buggers.

From there, more bushwhacking, and a walk down along the beach, where we saw cormorant babies up in the Cyprus trees, and a little golden finch in a beachside meadow. Oh, and a mangled headless seal corpse.

When we got back to the parking lot, I got a cup-o-joe at the 12 dollar hamburger joint on the beach, we said goodbyes to the mentor and cousin, and headed back off through Petaluma, stopping at the cheese shop that probably everyone who's gone along the Petaluma-Pt. Reyes Station route has stopped at. I say, I do like cheese.


(Heather's Report):

Poor seals. Either popular and cute or called silly worm-like creatures.

But Marty is correct. They are the best population to count (since it's rather hard to have regular volunteers to count sharks or such) to find out what might be happening in the ecosystems "below" them. Bad fish year, the seals will be affected. Bad plankton year, the fish will be affected, thus affecting the seals... you get the idea. Including human impact, even hikers, oyster farming, possible environmental pollution, etc.

Since I've been toying with this whole environmentalism idea, I had decided to volunteer somewhere to get a taste. Unfortunately, my taste was like a tiny appetizer since it's just been a rather crazy time considering right when I signed up to volunteer is about when I got hired at Baker Places for relief work. And out the window went my time and many possibilities to finish out my mentorship/training. Bah.

But I love being out there, the few times I made it. Drakes Estero is apparently a very hard site to count, huge and with several "sub-sites" that are difficult to see even with the scopes. It is a heavy pupping site as well and pups can be hard to differentiate from the other seals when they get a little older, which is very quickly. 700 at this site is, from what I've heard, low. I take it there can be over a thousand at this site.

So how do you count a thousand seals, let alone 700? You don't. Well, you don't actually count them. We have little clickers for counting. So you learn to take in groups of seals at a time visually and as you (try) to look at each seal in the grouping, you don't attach a number, you just click your clicker which keeps count for you. It was very hard in the beginning for me. Plus having to recount to double check and being so slow at it and then losing your current "grouping" and having to start all over again.

This time, I was a bit more swift and able to hold the groupings in my head more consistently. My counts were similar to my mentors which was a bit gratifying. My first time out I was usually off by a hundred and there were only 350 or so last visit.

But all that aside, Drake's Estero is an extremely gorgeous area, to me anyway. It's quite wind swept and scrub bushy, see out across the hills and ocean. Quiet. I like quiet. I like that sort of quiet that's more quiet in the back of your brain not just in your ears. There's no city buzz in the background. There is only the wind, nature sounds, the seals (they make the occasional snortling (that's half snort, half chortle) and mewing sounds from the pups). There's something calming to me about being there.

I don't know if I'll get to go out again this season, considering the craziness of my work schedule and the fact that the season is winding down but I'm hoping to continue the work in some form or another (maybe raptors next year!!) and possibly looking into classes on conservation.

Adventure #13 -- The Fillmore Jazz and Meat Festival

Adventure - Marty

Description: To go to the Fillmore Jazz Festival on Saturday, perhaps dance, maybe jazz, and try not to get trampled by wild emu.


(Marty's Report):

As you might guess by just the fact of me writing this, we did survive the emu. Barely. But life is full of these near misses, so I won't bore you with the details.

What we did, you see, was to attend the Jazz Festival held outdoors on Fillmore, something that's been staged for the last 24 years. Eight blocks, from about Geary north to Jackson or so, is full of performance stages and meat stands and craft stands. And thousands of people, sweating under the mid-day sun, eating meat and waffle cones, but mostly drinking beer.

There was a LOT of grilling meat, of various species. Well, I suppose meat isn't a species. It's what happens when a species is, well, simplified to its basic muscular structure, usually to eat. I've heard of meat artists, but there were none at the Fair. And even the cooks would have been hard pressed to call themselves artists of meat. They were more like culinary undertakers: not really washing or giving meaningful rites to the deceased, only taking their carcasses and conveying them with a modicum of decorum into the waiting holes of their patrons.

Now, I'm usually a pretty tolerant vegetarian, accepting the choices and of my fellows with sometimes respect, often tolerance, only occasionally scorn and derision these days, usually when someone plays "taunt the vegetarian." But when Heather got a meat-object-on-a-stick, I had to tell her to stand downwind, lest I, as the kids say, hurl.

The crafts were about on par with the "food": overprice, under loved, and ill thought out. Nothing really struck me. I've seen some pretty amazing craft shows, but this was not one of them. Which was curious, given where we live. It felt more like K St. Mall in Sacramento: a place where artisans display their wares for the farmers and tractor salesmen to come on weekend.

The jazz, which I'd expected to maybe look like the Blues Festival in Sacramento--i.e., a lot of choices strewn around interesting venues--turned out to be about 4 bands for the 8 blocks, one of which was a reggae-roots band with Marley-esque political songs, and the others were jazz bands formed of youngsters without a lot of pizazz. We watched for a while a 9 piece band where only two members could have been over 30. The leader of the band, the pianist and songwriter, was no more than 28.

I've always thought of jazz as a seasoned person's music, whereas rock-n-roll was fully compatible with the needs of adolescents. And you could feel the youngness in these young men's playing. Not technically bad at all, just unseasoned.

We stayed maybe two hours, at the end of which we had one of those strange street meetings, in this case of two co-workers and their friends. Not much to say to each other, just conveying some friendliness and then moving on. Which was good as two hours in such conditions starts making me melt on the insides.

One nice discovery was a little cafe run by Arabic speaking folk, who made us coffee and gave perhaps a pre-glimpse into coming experiences in Cairo. There was a very nice feeling to the place, friendly but not saccharine as with some shops.

Last stop before going home was a quick trip to Guitar Center, where we picked up some heavy picks for the bass.


(Heather's Report):

My husband lies.

No, really.

I have to put up with his crazy vegetarian talk all the time. The whole "oh, eating some desiccating slab of dead carcass, are you?". Respect for his fellows? Really. Show me!! He's full of snark, don't believe his nattering about being a tolerant vegetarian. For the most part.

Besides, isn't he murdering hapless fruits and vegetables all the time?

I wasn't so enamored of the festival myself. It seemed an opportunity in which many humans seem to love to take advantage of: drinking and cavorting in the streets. Mostly the drinking part. I don't mind people drinking, it's just the behaving part that comes later. Especially the later after several beers.

Plus for some reason, with all that swilling of said beverage, you can smell it in the air. If Marty has issues with my Meat-On-A-Stick, I have issues with the lingering smell of poor quality beer floating about on the wind, plus that stale smell of alcohol inside someone's body and pouring out through evil exhalations. Yuck.

Okay, now I'm taking on Marty's Snark Fest Role. Where Pride, including alcohol (and very likely other substances) is completely tolerable in this realm, because it's more about the wonderful, crazy, fabulous energy that's going on, these sorts of street fairs are not so much. There didn't seem to be a lot behind this one other than the alcohol and meat.

Well, I did enjoy the meat. I had a big ole slab 'o dead animal on a stick with some sort of tasty sauce and I got all messy. I got to roll my eyes at my husband at his flailing anti-meat antics. That's always fun.

Adventure #12 -- Now That's SO Gay

Adventure - The Universe Planned This One

Description: Our Adhoc Adventure, wherein the Universe conspires to Inspire. And lead us about our fair city in an adventurous fashion.


(Marty's Report):

We didn't plan an adventure today. Well. Okay. I didn't plan an adventure for today. I was feeling a bought of relationship grumpiness, and so wasn't feeling very giving. But after a somewhat raucous conversation yesterday, Heather got us eating strawberries and whipped cream--a traditional making-up food--and so today we were prepped for some together time.

Starting with an appointment with the optometrist. To use the last of the eye plan, Heather got in under the wire for a doctor I've seen before over in the Inner Richmond, down the hill from my old hood, and she invited me over to get breakfast. I hung out in a cafe for a while, finishing off a novel I'd been reading, "Tapping the Source," which was written by a collaborator of David Milch's HBO show, "John from Cincinnati." It has been described as "Surf Noir," and as far as I can tell, the author, Kem Nunn, is the only author in the genre. Sub-genre. Mixed sub-sub genre? Anyway, it was an enjoyable read, despite a pretty conventional noir turn about how the rich are really predatory man-eaters, and the sunny world is really just that which projects shadows. Noir is fun, I find, because it expresses within the strictures of its genre the human experience of meaninglessness, or emptiness not as Spirit but as void. Nunn seems to find at least the potential of God in the shadows, but most of the novel is about life in the absence.

Heather picked out her new glasses and then we were off to Tasty Curry, our favorite Indian restaurant, next to the divey offices of Craigslist. We got there just after it opened and it was only us and the waiter, and then the owner who we've known for the 5 or so years we've been going there. I had a surprise 40th birthday party there, and long before that my Moraga house used to have its house meetings there.

The owner, Shahid, showed us a project he'd been working on, a dvd of him as the Bollywood Curryman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laPg8ncebsk) showing how to make Indian meals. He's such a nice dude, which is a big reason why we've gone back all these years, and it was fun hanging out with him and his sidekick for the morning. The place, it's sort of an Indian Cheers for us.

I suggested the next chapter of our day's adventure, a ride out to Baker Beach, at the end Golden Gate Park. Heather was making noises about going back to the house for shoes--she's the Princess and the Pea when it comes to sand--but I talked her into a straight trip out there. So we took the bike and walked about the whole length of the beach, to the cove below the Cliff House (which has a name I can't remember) and back. A lot of couples and families were out taking in the sun and sand, the uncharacteristically nice day. I focused on the dogs, of course, and the surfers. We stopped at that cove and Heather checked out the trio of horses, and I watched the knot of surfers getting some good waves. It may look somewhat easy or doable from the shore, but it's a different world out on the water. So having had a little experience with it now, I can have some real appreciation for the different parts of the process, and seeing someone ride the crest of a wave after I've barely been able to stand up--well, it gives you a sense of scale and proportion.

Riding back from the beach, there was that clean and open sense that I get sometimes, well, actually often when I'm out there. So that getting home, the bird cage project that we'd agreed to make one of the two tangible goals (the other being a list of tasks for Egypt) didn't seem to be so onerous.

The birds--well, as Bill Jacks from "John from Cincinatti" said, they're crap factories. But we've worked out an agreement to do the cages together, which makes the cleaning go quicker and more enjoyable. So Heather got Phoenix's cage--of the three, he's like the petroleum refinery compared to Chi Bird and William's local beer distilleries. It took maybe an hour or hour and a half to finish the whole business, the changing papers, scrubbing cages, keeping Chi Bird from eating William or attacking Heather, vacuuming and reassembling. We listened to a random assortment of Cat Stevens, Leonard Cohen, and Stuart Davis on the computer, not exactly driving work music, but workable.

Then we hung out a bit around the house, and somehow decided to go find wall maps of Egypt at a travel book store on Market St. We headed off on the bike (one of the most helpful things to own in a city like this, where parking for anything larger than a Harley is controlled by capricious and punitive Gods) and found the little bookstore on the corner of Pearl St., a little alley that I always use to cut over from Rainbow Grocery to Octavia, and poked around till we found maps for all of Egypt as well as a detailed map of Cairo. We also got a couple other things; a quote at Time Tested Books, my work site many years ago in Sacramento, read, "A man is nowhere more vulnerable than in a bookstore." Such was the case.

Now, we knew this was the weekend of the Gay Pride Parade, but what we didn't realize was that this was Pink Saturday, the party before the parade (or what Heather later alliteratively referred to as the Pretty Popular Powerful Pre-Pride Parade Party). And since we were hungry again, we wandered down through the closed off streets of Market St. and found our way to the Squat and Gobble, a crepe place near Castro. We sat out front and watched the early arrivals, including some oddly conspicuous and seemingly un-gay security people, cops up on the roof across the way, and a Styrofoam penis walking around educating about the rise of syphilis cases in S.F. It felt like one of those traveling days in a foreign city, nothing to do but watch the world go by.

We did the rounds and I got a coffee at Heather's favorite chocolate smack house. She usually gets the super intense chocolate drink, but abstained, wisely. Then we wandered back to the 16th street intersection and parked ourselves on the median to watch the folk. Quite a range of people, and I found the sub-sub cultures really interesting. I didn't know there were the 'hood styling queers--the "ghetto gay"--nor the Hispanic gay set--the "cholo gay." The former were particularly odd because they were all the gay, and still seemed to carry the shoulder chip and aggressive attitude of a stereotypical gangsta type. That seemed a little contradictory, as I've always experienced gay culture as very pro-social, whereas the whole gangsta chic seems propped up on its self-conscious anti-social attitude. Odd.

Then there was the very drunk young women dry humping random young (gay) men, who came over to us because, I presume, we looked like the token straights, and said it was alright to be just who we were, and gave us cheek kisses. And the fellow who Heather jumped up to talk with, who we'd seen several times walking about in a fabulous leather and buckles outfit. A sweet guy from Orange County, which apparently is more repressive than North Carolina (Heather's old hood).

At about the three hour mark we both ran out of steam, and I was wanting something perhaps a little more organized to happen. So we headed home, a bit pooped, put our Egypt maps on the wall, which somehow makes the trip that much more real.

A FABULOUS adventure!


(Heather's Report):

Crap, Marty always writes up these great reports and I'm kind of like "what he said". Plus I've been bad about keeping up with writing my part of the reports. Spank me!

So, I had a fun time at the Pretty Popular Powerful Pre-Pride Parade Party. Maybe I should make that the "Pretty Popular Powerful Pre-Pride Pink Parade Party". You can't see it very well, but the Pink Triangle is up on the hill of Twin Peaks. I think it was a large piece of cloth, not painted, because apparently later it got set on fire as an act of arson (it wasn't a planned thing to burn it, and it appeared that it was a possible hate crime). People are dumb that way sometimes.

Oh, I apologize for my stupid phone. I dropped it recently and the camera hasn't been the same since, so these photos are bollocks.

I love this city. The great festivals and opportunities for expression abounds. I very much enjoyed just sitting and watching it all swirling by, reveling in the crazy and wonderful energy of it all.

I mean, where does one find huge Styrofoam penises and fabulous drag queens on the street at the same time?? San Francisco's Gay Pride that's where!!! I'm guessing that might be a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and apparently, there are different ethnic penises for the syphilis campaign and that would be Pedro Penis. Who knew.

This photo is only of Castro Street starting to ramp up during the day, it was much more hopping at night although there were still quite a few people out on the streets in the day time. I love that they shut the streets down to car traffic and the craziness that goes on when people can swarm the streets. Or not, as you can see folks hanging out on their... roofs? Window edges? What exactly might this particular architecture bit be called? Note the grouping of boys in their fabulous afros.

Of course, I'm a total idiot and didn't take a photo of the sweet boy we met from Orange County. We had been wandering around the Castro, down the main street you saw above with the Castro theatre (and below, at night), towards my fav chocolate and coffee cafe (Castro and 18th) and I'd seen him around at least twice before we had settled onto the median to watch the crowds go by and thus seen him go by again. And how do you recognize that you've seen the same person three times in a such a big crowd of crazy costumes? Why, his absolutely fabulous outfit, of course!! I'm not one for clothes really, but I saw his outfit and was in love. He was cute, too, I'll say, with lovely feathered eyelashes (that had to take a lot of glue!!) and sparklies that showed up really well on his chocolate skin. But he was wearing (as I was to find out later) a modified straight jacket and these really cool pants that reminded me of the pants the gang was wearing from "A Clockwork Orange" with awesome ties that buckled and looped from one leg to the other, with crazy cool buckles over the entire tunic and pants and I think some cool high jack boots. Wow.

I'm usually the type of person to watch all the outfits go by and admire from afar, but after seeing him pass by that last time (knowing we would probably head out soon and not see him again), and with a little prodding from Marty, I leapt up to run over to him to compliment him on his style. He thanked me very sweetly and did what I always forget to do, introduced himself and asked my name and then starting talking with me, asking me if this (Marty) was my friend (I tend to forget my social graces quite often) and I finally introduced my husband and we all chatted together in a friendly fashion about his fashion and where he was from. He was very sweet and I was completely charmed by the whole experience. A good reminder to just bust out and say hi and I like your shirt. Oh, and introduce yourself. Right. Must remember those sorts of things.

Once darkness fell, the streets got more crowded but we had had such a full day thus far, we were tired. And we both don't do too well with the craziness that is drunk people, so off we went home, me feeling completely satisfied with the city I live in. Rock on, San Francisco!!!!!

Adventure #11 -- Detatives!! A Failed Adventure.

Adventure - Heather

Description: Wherein Marty and Heather become detectives to find a new cafe to hang out in since their old one in Sausalito, CA became defunct; and to describe the nefarious goings on of said new cafe.


(Marty's Report):

OK, we made a go of this one, as described above, a good attempt to squeeze adventure out of what was essentially a task of replacing our old, beloved, and now defunct cafe in Sausalito. We headed out across the bridge and toodled around Sausalito, but Heather wasn't feeling the spirit in that little bay-side town. So we went off that winding road that hugs the shore line, out into the foreign lands of Tiburon. I don't think I've ever seen houses that have filled me with such bourgeois cravings as Tiburon. And the "downtown" area seems to be more there as a place for the ferries to drop their daytrippers for lunch. But it did have a cafe where you could sit and work on your laptop, as opposed to the bars and restaurants where burgers cost $12.

Maybe the failure of our adventure had, now that I think about it and try to write about it, has more to do with the sleepy, money-choked quality of the burg than perhaps our deficient souls. Because we went to Cafe Acri and got too much sugar and caffeine in us, after not enough sleep, and then puttered around the Internet rather than write our take on the nefarious doings of that cafe. I tried. I put down notes on how a hardboiled detective might see this town and the cafe, and it just petered out like one of those sad, wrinkly, half inflated balloons. Not dramatic, just deflating.

We conceded defeat, but instead of driving back down the winding road with our tails between our legs, we headed up the road, north, where neither of us had gone before. More winding road, and we felt more and more lost, which wasn't actually possible as there's only one coastline. It turns out we were driving through what apparently was Tiburon, but the scruffy-but-still-rich backside, up Paradise Drive. We came out high up on Hwy 101, and limped back home.

(Heather's Report):

(Hey Heather: describe what "detatives"means...) Well, as Marty reminded me, this is what "detatives" are. Detectives. Yes. It's that simple. Okay, here's how the story goes. Apparently, after watching some detective show on PBS or some such when living at my father's house in Springfield, VA, I put up on my door "The Detative Is: IN/OUT". I was probably about 8 or 9 years old. Then, as most of these words go, it became vernacular in the household. So, detectives are now detatives forever more in the Ussery household.

I'm a sad panda now because Marty didn't even mention my very cool hats. I made little signs that said "Detective Hat" and pinned them to our regular hats in order to make us more official of course. As you can see below, our uber officialness with our hats:
























Then off we went to find a new cafe. We stopped by our old one, just to see if some new cafe or establishment had taken over the building but alas our hopes were dashed, it was still quite empty. Still for rent. Bah.

So, I nixed the Triesta cafe down the street, it's just never felt homey to me. Of course, not a lot of cafes are going to have the great open and comfortable space of Northpoint Cafe. Then suggested going over to Tiburon, although it would be a bit out of the way for a regular cafe location. But hey, we're detectives, right! We must do anything for our craft. So off we went.

We wandered a bit, finding nothing of great interest until coming upon Cafe Acri which seemed to offer roomy space, a few couches up against the windows and apparently had free wifi (always an absolute must at a cafe, of course). There was a small problem of power as plugins were a little far and wide but we made due. Down we sat, ordered coffee, of course, to detect if they had good coffee or not. Food, as well, since that is also important. Both were okay.

And then we attempted to detect the strange goings on at this particular cafe. Such as the obviously Jewish Gay Spies sitting and conversing on their lunch hour, as you can see here. We had to very surreptitiously photograph them, me snapping quick shots as if I were just checking my phone screen. But it's not like spies would have given us permission.

There were other likely suspects around the cafe but Marty's right, it was hard to summon anything up about the whole thing. But we did have a fun time "Stumbling" on the Internet for quite a bit. I find the browser application Stumble to be quite addictive. I can do it for hours. I've found so many cool sites, like the hero creation site where you can make your own graphic hero, as you can see above, with Marty's Detective Hero. Or the odd site archiving all the strange deaths throughout history, such as the person who was killed when a fire hydrant landed on them because someone in a car swerved, hit it, it went flying and, well, landed on someone's head. How bizarre and totally random is that. You're just walking down the street and pow, you're dead. Like having a poodle falling out a window 40 stories up hit you in the head or some such.

While I don't consider this a failed adventure, it wasn't a very successful one, to be sure. Alas. And no cafe even to show for our troubles. Bah.

Adventure #10 -- The Downtown Movie Shoot

Adventure - Marty

Description: To follow the following rules towards producing a short film:

1) Make use of one camera.
2) Do not think about content of movie before shooting.
3) Arrive downtown at 9am. Finish no later than 11am
4) Shoot only in sequence. Multiple takes of one shot ok. Final editing can only be to remove shots or to tighten the fit between shots. No rearrangement is allowed.
5) Anything found downtown--people, places, objects--can be used in the shoot.
6) Audio can be manipulated in final editing. Not required to stick to found audio.
7) One title is allowed at opening, to be determined as the first act of the adventured, and cannot be changed in the process of shooting.
8) One end title is required, consisting of a quote to be determined as the final act of the adventure, after all editing is finished, but is not to be thought about till the project is fully finished.
9) The project is to be engaged in with a conscious and intentional spirit of creativity and commitment.


(Marty's Report):

This was my adventure week, as Heather made clear in no uncertain terms, and with no compromising overtures. I was flummoxed for most of the week, and then, I think in the runup to showing my Integral project at our class on Thursday, the idea of shooting something impromptu came to mind. That's how The Norwegian Draftsman (for those unfamiliar with this classic, click here) came about with James, and I like the idea of projects and assignments, probably because it feels like a game with both creative room and guiding structure.

So, bright and early yesterday, I prompted Heather to rise and shine, which she did with a modicum of morning grumpiness, but was able to redirect herself and actually speed up her ablutions to meet the schedule. Go Heather!

I had thought of heading to the vacant and melancholic Saturday downtown, around the Transamerican building, but she had a better idea of shooting around the Ferry Building, at the end of Market. So we took the scooter (parking being atrocious in that area) and, after parking on a side street, stood facing each other with a "now what" kind of mood.

"I see something rather melancholic, although I'm not feeling melancholic myself." "Oh, well I see something about a rampaging vegetable throughout the streets of San Francisco." This was just down the street from the farmer's market, hence the inspiration. We compromised on shooting images of me walking around with a bell pepper (although, once it came to shooting and Heather had to deal with me micro-managing of the direction and cinematography, she relented to being the actress, as you'll see below). After a second caffeination at Noah's, we wandered through what turned out to be crafts booths, and then across to the Ferry Building where the farmers stalls were actually located. We hadn't been in there together ever, and not by myself for a long time. I was surprised at how busy and lively it was, and how much I was enjoying just being with the peeps in an area of town I don't usually frequent.

We found the right object in an indoors stall, a luminously red bell pepper to stand out against all the whites and greys of that part of town. Heather filled up on a fru-fru crepe, and then we headed outside to see what sets, actors, and scenarios the world wanted to present to us.

First up was an old African-American saxophone player sitting on a bench, with a picture of, presumably, a Hindu saint, with a quote about not recognizing holy people unless they look crazy. I wanted Heather to stand there with her vegetable out, watching him play, but they got into a discussion about Boston, stimulated by her pullover (which I'd bought in Boston years before). Then we got that shot and, tipping the guy, moved on with what became a story of Heather's monastic wanderings with vegetable throughout the area.

One notable encounter was in the subway (I still find it odd that San Francisco has a subway), where, when we wanted to shoot down on the platform, a young punk kid told us we could just go to the attendant and ask to go down to film. We thanked him and gave him some baksheesh, then were told by the attendant that we needed a filming permit, and could be hassled by the cops for "Homeland security reasons." Lesson: don't listen to punk kids, and do what you want first without letting the authorities have time to get their feathers ruffled. (It would have been a capper to our adventure if we'd either been arrested as potential terrorist suspects, or had to run to escape The Man.)

We rushed home (after a quick stop at the dance store on Mission to see if I could find a unitard for my Bay To Breakers costume), and headed up the hill to babysit Benjamin, as James had a client meeting. I felt SO good having spent that morning this way. Then we had a great time with the B-Dude out at the zoo, our first outing solo with the boy, and he was just great, mellow and not fussy. Then we returned home and did some editing, but still need to finish up the movie.

Doing these sort of projects, on my own and with Heather, is so nurturing, to work both these overt acts of creativity and these implicitly creative adventures into our regular routine. I'm finding it more sustaining and rich than I had expected.


(Heather's Report):

This isn't quite what I expected for an adventure but okay, I can go with it. I know Marty keeps mentioning my morning aggro radius being quite high but I guess since it's kind of true, I can't really argue with it. But once getting down to downtown and after getting some coffee, I was mostly okay.

As usual, Marty describes the process of the event the best so I won't go into as much of the regular detail. I was all for the rampaging vegetable throughout the streets of the city. And so we started off with our vegetable but then it became more of a "meditations on pepper" sort of thing with my monkly hood. It was rather silly at first but then became rather meditative in its own way.

The only thing was getting over my "stage" fright. I mean, walking through the busy streets of Embarcadero San Francisco holding a bright red pepper, and then with a hood on? Yeah, that person is crazy. But I guess since it's a big, well "big", city, it might be second nature to see crazy people with peppers wandering around the farmer's market area. Uhm, yeah... But eventually I just started ignoring everyone around me although I had to work to keep a straight face at first and I know I was trying not to look at people out of the corner of my eye.

And funnily enough, in the footage, not many people even give me a second glance much less a first one. A couple of people do look curiously at me a few times but really, less than you'd think. I remember Marty remembering about going into a grocery store to buy something and was dressed in a cow suit complete with rubber udder placed conveniently at crotch level. It may have been around Halloween and I know he and I went to eat at a crepe restaurant in his cow suit (and spaghetti strap polka dot dress one year) after Bay To Breakers, but still no one batted an eye. Of course, this is San Francisco afterall and sometimes, well, people can be creative. Especially around Halloween and Bay To Breakers, of course. But Marty did report seeing a man (supposedly a man) in a large hot dog outfit walking down our "high" street and stopping to mail some letters. This was in the Avenues (the more "home" oriented neighborhoods) and on no particular day or event in the city. Quite random.

It was quite interesting to me how it did become, in a way, a meditative process. I think it arose out of having to keep that straight face. I had to focus so much on the pepper and block everything else out or else I would start laughing and have to start over again. Eventually it was quite easy to sink into the pepper and nothing else, just to BE the pepper. Yeah, existential vegetables!!

So, here we are:
(Well, we're having issues with upload on this video, we'll keep trying. However, if you live in the area and want to arrange a viewing, great! We can also send a DVD of our little short.)

Adventure #9 -- Sometimes I Worry About Zombies

Adventure - Heather

Description: To immerse ourselves in zombie culture, and then do interpretive art in response.


(Marty's Report):

So, I was tasked with the adventure for this week, but I'd had an adventurous week already. I called in sick Wednesday (more of a preemptive strike on some lurking bug than a response to an ongoing siege), which gave me almost four unscheduled days, an extreme rarity in my life.

I've been musing on creativity in life, not just making stuff, but on living life creatively at all levels of scale. So, with that in mind, I had an inspiration to make a short film for my Wilber class that I do twice a month over in Albany. Which I did, and was very satisfied with. It's really getting obvious that creativity and creative living are not optional activities, not little weekend excursions from the left brain to the right. But maybe my new focus got a bit tapped out by the 10 hours or so I spent on the film, so by Saturday morning, I was drawing a blank on ideas for a relationship adventure. My original thought was something like sunrise at the beach, which was nixed by the grey skies and drizzle.

But at the gym, Heather picked up a calendar of dance events; S.F. hosts a yearly week of dance, of all kinds and stripes. She found an hour of dancing to Egyptian pop music, which sounded like a ready-made adventure until she saw that they were doing belly dance. Both of us frowned and that was that.

However, Heather, with the fertile mind that she's got, thought that we should have a zombie fest. She's been reading "World War Z," and now, "The Zombie Survival Guide," (both by Max Brooks, and highly recommended by us both), and since zombies more than any other form of undead are her bugaboo, she thought this might be a good way of expunging their influence from her spongy mind. I added the "followed by interpretive art" part.

So before a shop at Rainbow (where she bought a remarkably good smoothie made with quinoa), we bought a zombie video game at Best Buy, and picked up the 2004 remake of George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead." With a quick lunch to fortify us for our fearsome foray, we loaded up "Left 4 Dead," and each of us taking the role of a foursome of survivors, commenced to play through some levels of this Xbox 360 game.

There is much to say about video games, that prevalent, important, and slummy part of modern culture. Also, a part of my life since I was a kid with my brother, saving up quarters to go to the video arcade in Birdcage Mall (that's the pre-yuppified Birdcage, mind you, when it was still a ring of semi-vibrant shops on the perimeter of the huge complex, and a rotting core of nick-nack shops on the interior, neglected because of the poor design of the place). Since then, video games have developed light years; Pac Man is now a super-retro experience and Pong is something of an atavistic freak. The distance between those groundbreaking games and something like "Bioshock" is difficult to calculate, both in terms of technical achievement and psychological sophistication.

"Left 4 Dead," however, is very high on the technical achievement, but falls about midlin' on the sophistication of mind dimension. Basically, you're tasked with surviving waves of zombie hordes, protecting your teammates, and getting from point a to point b. The pleasure of it is both the vicarious karma-free murder (is it murder if they're already dead, and digital to boot?) and the spookiness of the setup, where you're often in dim light situations with just a flashlight that suddenly illuminates the rotten face of an on-rushing zombie. And I mean "rushing," because of the various factors in the zombie equation, speed of movement is one, and L4D chooses the "human fast" option. Meaning the damn things are FAST! But you don't have to shoot them in the head--another factor in the zombie mythos--which makes the fifty or so creatures coming at you actually survivable.

So we played that for an hour or so, and then Heather had had enough. Also, we reached the hospital where we were to be extracted by a military helicopter. I wonder what happens next?

Then we made dinner, had a little spat about nothing, made up quickly (we are getting SO much better in keeping our punches above the belt, and then applying balms pretty soon thereafter), and ate dinner at the table together, which given our work schedules and eating patterns, is a pretty rare event. Dishes cleared, we steeled ourselves for the movie.

Now, I'd seen the original "Dawn of the Dead" way back when I was kid, I loved it partially because of the snarky social commentary. The setup is that for some reason (zombie lit seems to be leaning towards bio-explanations of zombiehood, though earlier versions stressed the religious or maybe-religious, or just who-the-fuck-knows reasons) the dead begin to rise as very flesh-hungry critters, and a band of survivors take refuge in a suburban shopping mall. They go through their travails and then a few of the survivors of the survivors fly away in a helicopter. One of my favorite bits of snark is when there is an image of a bunch of zombies scratching and moaning at the glass entrance doors to the mall, trying to get in, and the voice over from the survivors is, "But why do they come here?" "Well, they seem to come back to the place that was most important in their lives." To my bitchy adolescent self feeling cramped in the suburbs, that was manna.

The 1978 film is a classic, low-budget if not low-rent, but cut through with both a love for the genre and a fairly modernist eye towards overt social commentary and allegory. The 2004 remake that we watched was a competent display of the genre conventions, but skimped on the commentary. It went more for the splatter effects then for the spookiness, and its psychology was pretty thin, though the characters were engaging enough, especially the entertaining prick Steve. Still, the casting, which I imagine was more a product of a B-movie budget, was of mostly unknowns, which gave the film a retro feel. Overall, an entertaining exercise. The ending, where they escape Milwaukee and head out on a boat to an island which--whodathunkit?--is infested with zombies who eat our heroes as a video camera watches. I thought that was a bit gratuitously downbeat, though as Heather reminds me, that's pretty in keeping with the genre. Still, we were glad to see in the extras, that there was a "post" to the catastrophe, in the form of survivors finding the video diary of the gun store owner who was across the street from the mall. I guess in the end, we'll mourn individual deaths, but really don't want the big curtain to fall across the whole species.

So, saturated with zombie lore and the neurological stimulation of two zombie experiences--movie and game--we set to art. I brought in a plastic drop cloth to Heather's room, as if I were planning a surgery, and set about my paper mache project. For some reason, in the last week I've been wanting to do this goopy hands-on art, and this was my chance. I felt like I was drawing on genetic memory, going back to art projects with my father when I was a young kid. I remember in particular making a paper mache pig out of a balloon, and it being painted a bright primary green with bits of felt on it.

This came out a bit differently, as you can see above (mostly, it was hard to get the contrast right for this image). It's actually a rather eerie thing, apparently a head and skinless spine strapped town to a table, rather reminiscent of a 1980's heavy metal album cover. I hadn't planned it, and actually thought I was going to do some upright shambling mass. But this popped out, and I was delighted not so much by the product as by the fluidity of the process and by my not second guessing myself very much in letting my right brain have a say.

I think I'm getting that, in the act of creativity, you are trying to manipulate or seduce your audience into a reaction towards the art and towards you; you're trying to serve some larger or deeper impulse or need, that impulse to grow and expand which is in the field that holds both you and your audience; and you have little control over what response you will receive, and tend to fail in as much as you overemphasize securing a particular response. It seems that the success of an artist, and act of art, has a lot to do with knowing your audience without pandering, and accepting the inevitable failures without flinch or gaminess, either in terms of your desire to be loved and powerful, or in your hurt in not getting that response. Just staying put with these realities, and the contradictions implicit in the act of creating, seem to be essential in actually maintaining an artistic. creative life. As with so much of life, it seems to come round, again and again, to surrender without going to sleep.

Now, Heather's post-zombie production she can describe and maybe post the drawing, but what I noticed was how disturbed she was afterward. I called her out to the back porch, as the rain had stopped but the air was still thick and humid. We talked about fears, and I realized that movies don't really scare me, and I wasn't scared by this zombie excursion because, I think, the internal hooks aren't really there. I see them as a pretty limited archetype, expressing a basic fear of us humans, but not very profound in light of the spiritual depths that we can experience and that's expressed by our saints. But, what does disturb me in art is expressions of real living humans who are expressing what Arendt called "the banality of evil." World War 2 movies sometimes do this to me, the more they stress the verisimilitude of the situation (a recent example being "Defiance"). It's humans who are acting with the emotional range of zombies, and wrecking damage all around them, that's what disturbs me. Partially there's the personal fear of these people and what happens if they get control, partially the fear of that tendency in myself, and partially a deep disappointment in the waste of potential that such human corruption or diminishment expresses. That's much more unnerving than zombies, for me.


(Heather's Report):

So I've been on this Zombie/Apocalypse kick lately. It may have started with Marty's positive lauding of Max Brooks' "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" and him being so impressed with it (which is a hard thing to do media-wise, to impress Marty), that I picked it up after he finished reading it.

I've never read or even heard of Studs Terkel's work or really experienced an "oral history" in literature but I was completely charmed by this book, and also very impressed with how well done it was. At points, I had to remind myself this was indeed fiction and not some ancient history that we now have rebuilt ourselves from far in the future from that point. Then it was off to the "Zombie Survival Guide" also by Brooks (his first book) and then "Earth Abides" (plague kills off most of mankind and then was sort of a thought experiment about what would happen to "civilization" and the earth after humans).

So I suggested zombie movies after shooting down the belly dancing gig and looked online to see if there were zombie movie review sites. Which, of course, there are many. Although we found a lot unfinished or just lame. Maybe the reviewers got eaten. But in due course we decided on the newer version of "Dawn of the Dead" (which I had seen parts of, even the ending, but wasn't sure at the time of choosing). When going shopping at Rainbow, I also suggested getting a zombie game to play, to add to the immersive experience of Zombie... culture, as Marty put it. We bought "Left 4 Dead" and then went off to our expensive and healthy shopping at Rainbow Grocery, our local co-op. It was insanely busy since the previous day was International Workers' Day, a holiday I don't really know much about but I know Marty would.

"Left 4 Dead" was your usual shoot 'em up fare, which we played co-op, taking the roles of two of the four "survivors" presented in the beginning of the "story". There's a lot of confusion, especially on the split screen. And especially when you only have a flash light to give you a measly circle of tunnel vision or being vomited on by a "boomer" which makes you blind and attracts the swarming hordes of zombies to come eat you. Fortunately, you can kill these zombies by just shooting them, you don't particularly seem to need a headshot. Nor does being splattered while wounded infect you.

And I've certainly learned a lot about killing zombies and routes of infection from the Survival Guide. I was like, don't set them on fire, not good. Or, that particular weapon is better than that one. I'm all set if the world goes to hell in a Zombie Handbasket.

Then we watched the movie. I won't really get into the content of the movie, since really, a lot of zombie movies follow a similar pattern: widespread infection, widespread panic, zombies shambling (or running) in mass hordes after a few desperate survivors, and often ends.... poorly. While watching the movie, I was fine. Well, mostly fine. I think I may have already had some zombie freak-on during the game. And maybe as the movie continued I started fidgeting and getting more restless. But for the most part, sort of disconnected from the whole immersion into Zombie-World.

But afterward, I felt quite disturbed. The game didn't get me as much as the movie did although I think I dreamt of it later. Well, I know I dreamt of the movie later, or at least the gnashing of putrid teeth, snapping at me. I remember sitting around with some friends talking about Hell. Marty and I are not Christians nor even religious so we don't believe in Heaven or Hell as such. But we gamely discussed what our own personal hells might be. Mine has always been being chased by hordes of zombies who are trying to bite me. Not to eat me, but to turn me into one of them. Oh and with the sound of non-stop crying babies all around. *Shudder, horrors!!* I don't realy have "nightmares", or at least what other folks might call nightmares. I've had a lot of "horrible" dreams but usually, they aren't very scarey, to me anyway. But occasionally I have a dream that chills me upon waking or actually wakes me up in a cold sweat. And often zombies figure into these dreams.

Because of this strange zombie/post-apocalypse jag I've been on, I've been immersing myself in a lot of zombie and "after the world ends" type of stuff and subsequently have been discussing it in therapy. For me, zombies represent a deadened unconscious. Alive but unaware, stuck in a completely singular space. Maybe even with a tiny spark of awareness that one is in that space but can't do anything about it. Like being in a coma, completely paralyzed and can't do anything about it. Well, in this case, running around gnoshing on people but a tiny bit of oneself alive and aware in the back of the mind. Yuck. I have a terror of being that. So, zombies. Yeah, I don't like 'em.

However, the post-apocalyptic stuff is a different matter. I've always had a fascination since my younger years, probably pre-teen and on, with what I've termed (with different phrases) Disaster Psychology. What is the psychology of a global-wide disaster before, during and after? How do people deal with an impending disaster, how do they react as it is happening and what do they do afterwards? So I've always liked watching post-apocalyptic movies although I've always noticed that I feel they are lacking afterwards. Usually you just get the "this is what happened after the event" type stuff and not the lead up and the event itself. Or you get the lead up and the event without the afterwards. I want it all. And it's a rather hard psychology to study since we haven't really had a catastrophe that has led to some sort of post-apocalyptic state. But it always gets me thinking. What would happen? Movies, be it zombies or not, sort of poke around in thought experiments but I start asking questions. What would really happen?? Would we (humanity) fall apart and become bandits, would we rally in a progressive, communal way? Etc.

So I could ramble on about this for hours but I realize I'm getting away from our adventure.

This is my art I did, a simple picture, expressing what I was feeling in the moment, after playing the game and watching the movie.