Too stupid to die…

While the rest of North America burns, here in other-minded San Francisco we shiver through unending days of fog. Here’s the fogbank – reportedly 2400 feet thick out over the ocean – pouring over Twin Peaks into Noe Valley. And this is just July; August is our coldest month. Everybody’s moaning about the weather here, though most of us are just grateful we’re not on the East Coast.

Highs predicted for July 31 in…

Nome, Alaska              70
Whitehorse, Yukon     73
San Francisco             61

…its because the relentless demon “Progress” forced me into updating the software. As with most things, the  ”new and improved” just swaps out problems old for new and I’m dealing with the consequences now. When I’m done its back to the posts and pics.

Meanwhile here’s a picture from the best veterans memorial I’ve ever seen,  the Living Memorial Sculpture Garden just north of Mount Shasta in Northern California. A series of sculptures depict the soldiers, the POWs, the nurses, and more. This one, part of the centerpiece, is simply called Why?

Why? indeed.

Not dead here, or even hospitalized (for the last couple months anyway), just busy busy helping a group save San Francisco’s McLaren Park from the predators of disc golf. A new post is coming shortly. Meanwhile, here are a couple of flower pics, both enhanced slightly (ok, a lot) in Photoshop.

Columbine from my back yard, above,
and nasturtiums, growing everywhere.

Lots of 19th century “innovations” are gone for good reason: horse-drawn wagons, the Saturday bath, walking across continents, surgery without anesthesia… novelties like these are lamented by no one except history buffs and masochists.

But one 19th century institution missing from our world is a true loss: the health retreat. Back in the day they were called sanatoriums: resorts set up for the “improvement or maintenance of health, especially for convalescents.” Today the  idea of withdrawing from life to recover a bit health is so odd that most people, hearing the word “sanatorium” translate it as “nut house.”

My oh-so-slow recovery from my latest medical travail makes me long for this old tradition.

I ache to check out of my life for a time and into another, one where meals are prepared and laundry is done and my duties consist of napping, reading, and taking long walks through woods and meadows. Read the rest of this entry »

The Golden Gate, north and south.

Above: Point Bonita, Marin Headlands.
This is the north side of the Golden Gate; the bridge is behind the camera.

Below: The south side of the Golden Gate,
aka: San Francisco.

It is a universally accepted truism that we medically complicated folks “have enough on our hands” and mustn’t be troubled with your problems. No matter how much we ask, how much we insist, however close we are, you are always “fine”, your life is always uncomplicated and all is going exactly as you planned.

Bull-crap-ola.

How many of you have told me when I’ve felt guilty about relying on you yet again for some necessary kindness that it’s not only not a bother to help but is even a distraction for you from your own day-to-day problems? Lots of you. Did you say that just to shut me up? Over concern for my health? Please. I’m not that fragile.

So why are you robbing me of the essential human tic of worrying about you like you do about Read the rest of this entry »

–noun

1. Pathology. a quantitative deficiency of the hemoglobin, often accompanied by a reduced number of red blood cells and causing pallor, weakness, and breathlessness.

2. a lack of power, vigor, vitality, or colorfulness: His writing suffers from anemia…

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrroad trip!!!

The car is tuned. It’s got new tires and is loaded down with jackets and maps and food for doggie and me and of course my camera and the tripod I always take and hardly ever use. The back seat’s converted into Otto’s Command Center so da pooch can survey the world from the comfort of his traveling bed. And we are driving down Highway 101 through the ridiculously green hills of an El Nino winter California listening to Roseanne Cash and Michelle Shocked on our way south to visit family and friends…

That’s what was supposed to happen. Read the rest of this entry »

Who knew? I sure didn’t.

I read somewhere that the full moon meters (photographically speaking)
pretty much the same as daylight, so I gave it a try.  This is a hand-held shot
with a zoom lens, just cropped and sharpened (not enlarged).

I’ve got this deal going – in my head anyway – with the Three Fates. The Greeks called them Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, and they spin out, measure, and in the end cut the thread of our lives. We are literally in their hands.

My deal is, I get to stay alive for some unspecified number of moments after the liver cancer and transplant. I get to be conscious, occasionally functional, and once in a while I even get to thrive. I also get to experience each and every sensation of a body running down its weave.

I’ve started and not finished a dozen posts on my health trials of the past year. One did refer to my struggle last summer just to learn that I’ve comedown two impossible–for-a-transplantee autoimmune diseases, but that’s it. I feel guilt for not having posted more. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always been intrigued by ravens.

I’ve got pictures of them on my bedroom walls; behind one
is feather a raven tossed to the ground near me when grooming.
The Haida story of trickster raven creating the world and
dumping humankind into it just to amuse himself
has always seemed a more realistic description
of our condition than any offered by organized religions.

This one was hovering over Otto, her spread wings twice Otto’s size.
Fortunately she decided Otto wasn’t a threat (0r qualified as dinner)
and left him alone. I do wonder if any chihuahuas or yorkies
went missing that day at Fort Funston.

The blue eye isn’t a photoshop add-on, it’s a reflection of the sky.