A Little Peek at Garrison
Last weekend was top-notch in terms of entertainment. Tom and I went to see the Cirque du Soleil show Ovo on Friday night, a mesmerizing, beautiful spectacle. They are such amazing performers, and the costumes were so gorgeous and inventive. It was extremely funny in parts, and the live music was outstanding.Afterward, we went to see the Red Cross ship that is docked at about the east end of 16th St. I first saw it several days ago on my bike ride home and was awestruck. It’s huge, with few windows, and entirely white except for a couple of giant crosses painted in red. Tom and the cab driver were properly impressed. I think the cab driver was a little nervous when we got in the cab and said that we wanted to go to the Mission, but first we wanted to go in the exact opposite direction, to that dark and desolate spot, but as we were leaving the ship, he said he was going to go back the next day with his camera.On Saturday morning, I saw D. at the hospice and we went to see her cat as described below, and then I went to the War Memorial Opera House for a taping of Prairie Home Companion, of which I have become a fan. It was a thrill to see Garrison Keillor in person. He has very long legs and moves quite gracefully. He was wearing a tan suit and white dress shirt and a very bright red tie, and red Adidas tennis shoes, or at any rate, red tennis shoes with three white stripes. We could see the house band and all the guest musicians and the man and woman who do the voices, and the sound effects fellow, who acts things out even when it doesn't contribute to the sonic landscape. When he was making a bird sound, he flapped his arms like a bird, which was charming.The house band warmed up at 2:45, and at 3 p.m. sharp, the opening theme was heard, and at 5 p.m. sharp, it was over, though the house band played one encore and Garrison Keillor came back out for that. The show is evidently broadcast live in some places. It's not live here, but almost: I got home at perhaps 5:30 p.m. and at 6 p.m. I heard that same show starting on KQED and felt thrilled all over again.Saturday evening, Tom and I got a City CarShare car and went across the bay to take Lisa M. out for a birthday dinner at Sweet Basil Thai in Berkeley or Albany. I think it’s actually in Albany, but the charge slip said Berkeley. Anyway, the food was really fantastic at this tiny place which has very pleasant ambience. It was also half as much as you’d pay on Valencia St., with entrees in the neighborhood of $10. I highly recommend it and will likely visit again one day. I had vegetarian pad see yew with soft tofu, and Thai iced coffee. Then we went to downtown Berkeley, right near the BART station, for gelato.On Sunday I did nothing, more or less, and on Monday, a day off from work, I watched three DVDs: Daddy Nostalgia, Rudo y Cursi, and The Other Man. My favorite was Rudo y Cursi, which was quite funny. It stars Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal as Mexican soccer players who get a shot at stardom.
Rightly Indignant Bug
On the first day of this year, I met my new hospice visitee, D., who is only 57. The first thing I noticed was how beautifully she’d decorated her room at the hospice, though she’d only been there a few days. It is full of art and gorgeous things to look at and framed photos, and she herself was dressed on that day as if she were going on a date, complete with sparkling jewelry.I have since been struck by the contrast between us, how I will let the simplest thing go undone year after year because in a mere thirty years, give or take, I’m going to be dead and it won’t matter anymore, while D., who actually may die very soon, does every possible thing to make her living space and appearance just the way she wants them. So she can enjoy them today. To be around her is suddenly to be surrounded by dogs and cats and people and gifts. Plans mutate from moment to moment and there is a certain excitement in the air. Embarrassingly, D. is more at peace with her death than I am. The hospice volunteer is not supposed to say, “So, I gather you’re going to die.” But nor is the hospice volunteer supposed to pretend the patient is not going to die, and twice I have caught myself saying things that implied D. has a possibly long future.One of them had to do with a hair appointment she wanted me to make for her at a famous salon. I pride myself somewhat on getting things done, but I was no match for this place. I absolutely could not get through to them. But when I started to apologize to D. on the phone for not having been able to make the appointment yet, she said, “Oh, don’t worry—I took care of it.” I complimented her, “Next time I need help making something happen, I know who to turn to,” and she was pleased, but I probably oughtn’t to have said that, because she won’t be here to turn to for long, though I now have no doubt she’s going to do plenty of things while she is still here.The next time I saw her, she made sure I understood that she is going to die. She told me she has paid for her cremation—she said it’s going to be X number of dollars, in contrast to that of a friend of hers, whose cremation was arranged after he had died, and cost 20 times that amount. Apparently, once there is a decomposing body in the picture, they have you by the short hairs. D. said as much, and that she wasn’t having that, and so she has already taken care of it, along with choosing the place for her memorial service and lining up a pastor to officiate.She said she wants me to attend her service, and as we discussed it and I pictured us all there remembering her, I was afraid I might cry right then. I felt sad to think of her gone. In fact, I can hardly imagine it. She is so full of life.The last time I saw her, our third time together, I took her by cab to visit her cat in her cat’s new home, and D. got in a fight with the cab driver. Normally that wouldn’t seem highly positive, but under the circumstances, I thought it was great.My small meditation group met last week. Beforehand, I walked from work to Ananda Fuara for dinner, and then from there to the Zen Center. At Seventh and Market, a white homeless guy in a rage threw something at a black homeless guy. The thing—a banana—missed the intended target and hit me squarely on the same knee that got bashed in my bicycle accident on December 21, though just a tad above the area that still aches, fortunately.Then the white guy threw something else at the black guy, missed him again, and hit my other leg! The banana left a welt, but I was just glad it wasn’t a rock, a bottle, or a broken bottle, and that it didn’t hit me in the face.My apartment seems to have an ant on every possible surface. They are on the kitchen counters, the toilet seat, my pillow, the cat. They are walking up and down the clothes hanging in the closet. An ant is an increasingly unwelcome sight, but per my commitment to non-harming of these tiny creatures, most deaths have been accidental.I spend some time each morning fishing ants out of Hammett’s water bowl and have even gotten to perform a more dramatic rescue or two, as when one fell into the tub just after I’d turned on the hot water.I scooped it out of the water as fast as I could with a small piece of paper and set it on the window sill to recuperate, but it didn’t seem to be moving. It needed some life force, perhaps, so I picked up the piece of paper and held it on my hand. Sure enough, the ant feebly waved an arm or two and then suddenly sprang entirely back to life. I set the piece of paper back down and he or she stalked off in high dudgeon.About a week after New Year’s Day, I met the grilling neighbor and his wife while doing laundry around the corner. The wife and I greeted each other, as always, but, for the first time in a mighty long time, more than a year, the husband also said something to me. I’m happy that now we can all at least say hello again. A recent New Yorker had an article about the replacing of the venerable fountain at the Lincoln Center. The new fountain is by the world’s foremost water fountain guy, the fellow who did the incredible water show at the Bellagio in the Las Vegas, and the tallest water fountain in the world (it is in Dubai and sends water 500 feet into the air), and, yep, the water feature I like so much at the McNamara Terminal of the Detroit airport.When I called my mother to draw this to her attention, I made the regrettable discovery that she pronounces McNamara incorrectly, though I was not able to persuade her of this. She seems to think the place is named for McNamara, the Vietnam guy, who was also a president of the Ford Motor Company, and that it’s pronounced MACKNamara, but I feel it is pronounced MICKNamara, since McDonald’s, the ubiquitous burger purveyor, is pronounced MICKDonald’s (isn’t it?).Did you know McNamara’s middle name was Strange? His mother’s maiden name.My mother sent me a follow-up email that ended with something like, “I used to be confused about many things when I was young, too (like about 47).”She also had this good advice: “Be careful, the two things that you could say that will certainly result in a humiliatingly invasive search at the airport are: ‘bomb’ and ‘MICKNamara.’”
What the Lucid Dreaming Project Looks Like
On 12/16/09, I turned the lights out at 8:54 p.m., and was up again making dream notes at 11:11 p.m., 12:00 a.m., 1:42 a.m., 3:26 a.m. and 4:48 a.m. (A REM period ends approximately every 90 minutes.) The alarm went off at 5:20 a.m. the next day and I recorded five good solid juicy dreams plus three snippets, referring to the dream notes on the floor.
Once in a Blue Moon
The last day of 2009, we were allowed to leave work three hours early, which I wasn’t expecting. I decided to spend this bounty of time eating junk food and watching three DVDs in a row.After I got home, I got sidetracked reading a novel, but had implemented my plan to the extent of eating way too much sugar when I got a call about vigil.When I went through hospice training, my intention was to sit with people who were actively dying, in the hopes that no one would die alone. But prior to New Year’s Eve, I had instead spent time with people who were in hospice but not dying per se, which is perfectly fine, and probably most of what I’ll be doing, if only because people spend more time living and even being in hospice than they do actually dying.And, to tell the truth, somewhere along the line, I’d kind of lost my enthusiasm for being in a room with a corpse, so when I was sitting in my comfy chair, digesting my chocolate cake (and peanut butter brownie), and reading my novel, it didn’t seem like a good thing when I got a call from the worst quadrant of the city, on New Year’s Eve, when I would probably end up stuck in that dangerous neighborhood permanently—I’d probably have to live there, due to not being able to get a cab back—and when the locals would probably be shooting off guns and killing strangers to celebrate the holiday. The last time I tried to get a cab on a New Year’s Eve, I ended up having to walk all the way home.It also happened to be a full moon, when people act even more strangely than usual (according to the police), and in fact a blue moon! It was the second full moon in a calendar month.I kept reading for ten minutes or so and finally stood up and listened to the message again, about the lady about to die all alone because the relative who had been visiting her regularly happened to be out of town now that the time had come. Oh, cripe. It wasn’t like I could go next time she died. This was the time.I wrote down the address and looked it up on Google, since, despite living here for 27 years, I’d never even heard of the street the place was on, nor half the streets you take to get to it. I called a taxi company to see if I’d be able to get a cab to pick me up at that location later in the evening. They falsely claimed it would not be a problem, but I didn’t believe them. I called Tom to see if he’d by any chance like to spend a couple of hours sitting in the waiting room of a care facility on New Year’s Eve. “Not really,” he said, and when I told him the location, he whistled.Since Tom is always very optimistic about everything, I decided I absolutely was not going. If even Tom thinks a spot is no good, I definitely don’t belong there. But then he added that if I were to go early in the evening, it would probably be fine, and then we both remembered about City CarShare, which turned out to have a car available a block away.It was a good thing Tom and I had already tried City CarShare for a past trip, because it might have been stressful to do it for the first time while already worried about six other things, but since I’d already done it, it was perfectly smooth. In fact, it was perfectly smooth the first time. Car sharing is a great thing, and City CarShare makes it simple.I drove south, eventually admitted I was lost and unfurled my map but couldn’t make out that tiny print—next time I’ll bring one of the many LED lights I’ve gotten for Christmas over the years. As someone who hardly ever drives, I also couldn’t remember how to turn on the hazard lights, which I wanted to do in case someone drove right up behind me, figured out I wasn’t moving, and then shot me with their New Year’s Eve celebration machine gun.I called Tom and he couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to go either, but he did know how to turn on the flashers, which was good. I headed north again and finally found the place, a lovely, immaculate facility with friendly staff, housed in a gorgeous historical building with high ceilings.I sat with the dying lady for three hours, until 9:45 p.m. I found out after the fact that she was Catholic and had wanted someone to hold her hand and pray with her. I did neither, because her hands were largely out of reach, and because when I asked at the front desk, “Is she Christian? Does she believe in God?” the young woman there said, “Oh, no!” “Is she an atheist?”The young woman nodded, so, being an atheist myself, I just sat with her, right next to her bed, and patted her arm now and then, and read her some Mary Oliver poems quietly, and told her everything was all right, in English and Spanish. I kind of ended up hoping she would pass away while I was with her, after all, because if she didn’t, it meant she probably would die alone. I learned in hospice training that most people do tend to die in the wee hours and alone.She slept during most of our time together. She tried to speak a time or two, but it was quite indistinct. She was alive when I left that evening, but I imagine is gone now. I hope she wasn’t afraid when she died, and that she was at peace.
Lay Off Detroit, Already
Christmas was absolutely splendid once again this year, perhaps the eleventh in a row I have celebrated with Tom’s family, bless their welcoming and kindly hearts. Tom and I took the train to Sacramento Christmas Eve, albeit different trains, since Tom missed the bus from the Ferry Building to Emeryville due to some last-minute shopping.One thing he had wanted to do was pick up one of his bike frames from Steve Rex’s shop (where hang the photos of Tom’s brother Steve, if you happen to be there), and since he would now be arriving too late to do that, his brother Dan and I went and fetched it.Tom expressed his gratitude later: “Thank you so much! Say, where’s my fork?” Oops. Even though I was there when he dropped off the frame and fork in the first place, I’d forgotten about the latter and so did the fellow at the shop. By chance, that person is someone I went to music school in San Francisco with, also a trumpet player.We—Paul, Eva, Steve, Julie, Sarah, Josh, Ann, Mac, Chris, Dan, Tom and I—stuffed ourselves with appetizers and then again with Eva’s wonderful dinner, including Chris’s “man quiche,” followed by Sarah’s beautiful apple pie and Ann’s delectable pecan pie.We talked and laughed and hung out and opened a veritable mountain of gifts. I got a book or two I am looking forward to reading, some good gadgets—Tom’s brother Paul has provided me with many excellent gadgets over the years; if you’ve lost count, Tom has three brothers—and a nutmeg grinder from Ann, which is enhancing my morning bowl of oatmeal.Tom and I spent that night at Steve and Julie’s and in the morning, went back to Paul and Eva’s for stockings. Yet again, the various Santas were extremely generous. As we drove to Paul and Eva’s, Julie gave her mother in Michigan a call. I said from the backseat, “Tell your mother I say ‘Merry Christmas.’” Then Steve said, “Tell your mother I wished her a merry Christmas before Linda did.” Of all the people at gatherings of Tom’s family and friends, Steve and I are most nearly the same age, just a couple of months apart. (Who is the wiser by those two months? I am, of course, though Steve likes to characterize it as being more elderly.) We would have made fine actual siblings, which does require some one-upmanship on occasion.Later Julie said to her mother, “Linda and Steve wish you a merry Christmas.”“I said it first,” Steve clarified (if out-and-out fibs can ever be said to clarify anything).“I said it first,” I averred.“Whatever.” Steve from the driver’s seat.
The four of us spent Christmas Day afternoon at Ann and Mac’s, while other energetic members of the company headed east for skiing, and then Tom and I had a nice ride home on the train (the same train this time). One of us may or may not have eaten almost an entire small box of See’s truffles that she received for Christmas en route.I gave my Uncle Rick a call the next day and he told me my cousin had been there for the holidays but had had to head back home on Christmas Day itself. She left the Detroit airport “an hour before the terrorist arrived.” I hadn’t heard about this terrorist, but was soon edified. He was flying Northwest Airlines, which I always fly to Michigan, and basically—and I do take this personally—he was trying to blow up that water feature in the McNamara Terminal I like so much. Also, like Detroit in general needed that kind of thing: thanks, creep.
I forgot to call my own mother and father in Michigan to wish them a merry Christmas: Merry Belated Christmas!
I forgot because Steve forgot to remind me, as he has every Christmas for a decade now, so you can see whose fault that was.
Tree Trees
Guess who had a lucid dream? My mother!She was having a recurring dream, which caused her to become lucid—“I’ve seen this before”—and she also successfully practiced dream control! She said to herself, “If I’m dreaming, I ought to be able to do such-and-such,” and then immediately did it.Lucid dreaming is no more a goal of hers than it is of my father’s, but, as she said, it’s in the air these days.I also had a lucid dream quite recently, the morning of Christmas Day, in Steve and Julie’s luxurious Lucid Dreaming Guest Bed, 19 days after the previous one. Some house keys were behaving very strangely and I asked, “Why is all this weird stuff happening?” and answered myself, “Because I AM DREAMING!” The period of knowing I was dreaming, before I woke up, was very brief. I’m starting to think I enjoyed some beginner’s luck when it came to prolonging lucidity and dream control, because recent periods of lucidity have been extremely short, though I am very confident about dream control itself. So far it has been as simple as saying, “I want such-and-such to happen.”The two best-known methods of prolonging lucidity are to rub your dream hands together and to spin your dream body as if you’re trying to become dizzy. A time or two I have tried rubbing my hands together with absolutely no effect, and to date, I have not been able to remember to spin in any lucid dream. In the lucid dream that lasted the longest, one of the first things I did after confirming I was dreaming was to jump up and down for a while, another known prolonger of lucidity. Maybe that’s the best technique for me.In this most recent lucid dream, I remembered to remain calm and observe my surroundings, which were patchy. What I could see—a person’s face, my own hands—was very clear, but there were holes in it. In straining to see, I opened my real eyes, and woke up. Rats. But great!I also realized again that I was still not exactly following instructions. To recap, Stephen LaBerge’s classic MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming) technique calls for mentally replaying a dream you have just awoken from until you can easily remember it. Then you are to affirm something along the lines of “Next time I’m dreaming, I will recognize I’m dreaming,” and picture yourself back in the dream you just awoke from, but this time realizing you are dreaming. I had decided it would be better to picture a previous actual lucid dream, to jog my unconscious’s memory of that event—no imagination required. I also thought it might boost its confidence to be able to remember an episode where it enjoyed success, but lately I have realized why it might be better to use the most recent dream, as LaBerge says: because it is entirely psychologically consonant with the rest of one’s life, circa now. Organic. All of a piece. Maybe it confuses one’s unconscious to be asked to focus on something that no longer has anything to do with anything. I periodically review the list of things I want to do in lucid dreams, and quite a few of those things are turning up in non-lucid dreams. One item is to make friends with my grilling neighbors, and I have had very nice dreams about them, like one in which I told the man and his wife, “I sent you a Christmas card,” and they replied, “Oh, we sent you a Christmas card!” It makes me feel better even if the friendly things are happening only in dreams.A recent Forum on KQED was about the antisocial aspects of wood smoke—it accounts for 40 percent of air pollution some days, and is hard on people with asthma and bronchitis. Also, trees don’t grow on trees, as it were. They had someone there from the something something barbecue association, so I hoped they might even get to the evils of charcoal grilling, but I had to wend my way toward my next engagement, alas. I have a new hospice visitee, D., and will meet her for the first time on New Year’s Day. But I also got a call from B., who graduated from hospice and is now living elsewhere. I was delighted. I really like her so much. After B. left hospice, I called her daughter and said that if B. ever felt like calling me, she was more than welcome to do so, though I wouldn’t expect it. Then I hung up and hoped B.’s daughter didn’t think I was some sort of stalker, but when B. called yesterday, I could hear her daughter coaching her in the background, helping B. leave her message.
Why Don’t Yew
That’s the subject line of an email I sent my mother not long ago.It continued: “Look into how we’d get Skype so we can see each other when we talk?”She wrote back:“I’ve put it on my to-do list (at the bottom).”I keep forgetting to say that private traffic must now exit Market St. at either Eighth or Sixth by turning right. The city is so serious about this that they have had workers standing in those intersections every day for many weeks now insisting that private vehicles get off the main drag.It is quite luxurious for us cyclists to have so few cars on Market St., though at first, I noticed that cab drivers seemed to be going all the faster, as if they were on some sort of law-free frontier. Cyclists were invited to send their feedback to the city, and I mentioned this along with my thanks, and maybe others did, too, because cab drivers seem to be back to their normal level of recklessness.I had additional reason to be grateful for the reduced amount of traffic on Market St. when, in a bizarre four-day stretch of accident proneness, I foolishly rode over a round white lane marker in the rain (those evil devices known as Bott’s Dots; thanks, David) landing solidly on my left knee and giving the left side of my head a hearty thump as well.(For the record, the night before that, I sliced my thumb while cutting bread. The day after my bike accident, I cut the top of my toe on a toilet seat. If you’d also like to do this, I can try to explain in a subsequent entry exactly how it happened. And when I opened the carton my new bike helmet came in—you should replace your bike helmet once it receives pretty much any type of impact, even if it looks fine—I got not one but two paper cuts.)I lay on the ground for a while—and that’s why it’s good there is less traffic on Market St.—saying “Ow ow ow ow,” on account of my hapless knee, and the workmen I was going around in the first place eventually drifted over and, not going so far as to help me up, which might have implied some sort of liability, did ask if I thought I’d be able to get up.After a bit, I could and did rise to my feet, and my bike was fine, and I was actually able to ride the rest of the way to work, but, with a headache having developed right away and the specter of poor Natasha Richardson hovering before me, I called my doctor’s office and they said to proceed to the emergency room and have my head scanned, which I did, and also had my abraded knee taped up. At the hospital, they said the side of the head, which is what I landed on, is the worst thing to bump because of some artery or something right there.Needless to say (so I will be sure to say it), my head was encased in a helmet at the time of impact, and this is actually one of the best reasons for wearing a helmet. Not to be a Gloomy Gus, but if you really get clobbered by a motor vehicle, your helmet is not going to make much of a difference. But if you get very slightly bumped by a car, or have one of any number of minor mishaps that cause you to hit your head, with or without a fall per se, a helmet could make the entire difference between living and dying.
In sum, when you’re deciding whether or not to put your helmet on, think of Liam Neeson.Final tally: Scraped knee, eight or nine bruises, and the embarrassment of having to admit to my first moving single-person bicycle accident. I would have said “first single-person bicycle accident,” period, but then I remembered the time I fell down a flight of cement stairs while carrying my bike. I’d put my helmet on before starting down the stairs and it helped then, too. I didn’t call my doctor that time. I was younger and less of a hypochondriac, and Natasha Richardson was still alive.The brain scan showed that there was no internal bleeding and that everything that had been inside my head was still more or less there. Which is not to make any claims for the original quality or quantity of that substance.They gave me 30 Vicodin and 30 Soma (muscle relaxants), thus suddenly increasing my popularity: “You can send Mommy some Vicodin,” suggested one email. Another, from a co-worker, contained just two words, the name of the internal mail system at our company. (My mother later discovered that Vicodin contains acetaminophen and retracted her request, which I imagine was not serious to begin with.)I didn’t take any Vicodin—I’d had occasion to take one in the past, and it made me feel like I was being dragged underwater—but I did try a muscle relaxant, and immediately felt very stoned.I happened to have a medical test a couple of days after the accident, and when Dr. M. called with the results—all was well—she said, “So, I see you had a bike accident! I hope you’re OK.” That was very nice, and slightly humiliating. Dr. M. really makes good use of the new computerized health records, as I discovered when I went for my annual exam and she mystified and dazzled me by saying, “I see your eye doctor told you to do such-and-such. Did you do it?”
How Does It Feel To Be Alive?
It has been quite chilly here lately, not so one would have to close the windows or anything, but my fingers feel kind of frozen when I’m cycling, so I got a pair of Pearl Izumi “Softshell Gloves” that I am very happy with. They are warm, but not bulky, and don’t interfere too much with operation of that crucial piece of equipment, the bicycle bell. I dribbled something light colored down my at-home sweater not long ago, which meant it was time for its triennial dry cleaning. I had noticed a place on Valencia St. that does environmentally friendly cleaning, so I stopped there on my way to work one day to see what the hours are and so forth, and was surprised to see it was just one little room containing two banks of lockers, devoid of human life.I took a flyer from the box by the door and studied up on the details. The place is called Laundry Locker, and they do indeed do environmentally friendly dry cleaning and regular laundry, but they don’t stand around waiting for you to hand them a garment. You create an account online, and then you go to any of about a million locations in San Francisco, put your thing in a locker, go online and regale them with the details of your laundry need, and then wait for an email (or text message on your phone) saying it’s done! Normally I stay away from this newfangled stuff, but I decided to give it a whirl, and it worked out very well. My sweater came back shredded and full of holes, just the way it was when I dropped it off, except clean.I did attend the memorial gathering for my co-worker Chuck, at a location of the company I work for. There were maybe 25 people there, most very well known to me. Chuck’s widow was there, and two of their sons. It was about the saddest event I’ve ever been to. There were a couple of Employee Assistance people there to facilitate, and several photos of Chuck, and we sat in a circle, and anyone who was so moved could share a memory or thought. Most people didn’t, and there were many silent minutes, and a lot of red eyes and sniffling, but it was kind of nice just to sit there with so many familiar faces, quietly remembering Chuck together. The silence, as we held it together, didn’t seem particularly awkward. I introduced myself to his kids afterwards, and enjoyed talking to both of them, two smart young men. Chuck was only 52 when he died! Several days later, I dreamed I saw him outdoors in front of a beautiful purplish mountain. He was dancing, spinning around, with a look of pure joy on his face.Four days after my one and only visit to C., I got a call that she had passed away. I’m glad that worried and unquiet soul is at rest.Saturday December 12 was the final day of my Establishing the Path of Practice class at the San Francisco Zen Center. We were there from nine a.m. until five p.m., and did a variety of rituals and exercises to recognize the ending/beginning. We also meditated in the zendo and had lunch together. Just before five p.m., we did a closing ceremony and each received a small gift and a document signed by all of the teachers, and then we did some group photos, and then I went outside and there was Mr. Bull lounging in the driver’s seat of a rented car with Metallica on the CD player, but not blasting since it was right in front of the Zen Center. It was a rather fine moment.We picked up burritos (that Mr. Bull had pre-ordered) and headed down to San Jose, to the HP Pavilion, for the Metallica show. The place apparently seats 17,000 and was pretty much full, though not utterly sold out. That’s a lot of Metallica fans!Mr. Bull mentioned that she prefers to store items in the trunk of the car prior to being at the event, so as not to attract thieves. She added casually that, no no, she wouldn’t mind being seen at the Metallica show with someone carrying a backpack; till then, it had not occurred to me there was anything bad about having a backpack, but I left it in the car, and indeed there was no one else there with a backpack. I said I supposed she didn’t want to be seen at the Metallica show with someone in a yellow raincoat, either, but she said I could be as square as I want to be (in so many words)—she said she’s old now and doesn’t care anymore.We ate our burritos sitting in the backseat of the car in the parking lot. The line to get into HP Pavilion was unbelievably long, and people had already been filing in for an hour. I never saw any mention of opening bands, but there were two. I don’t know the name of the first one—we missed them—but the second was Machine Head. The people in line with us didn’t seem particular friendly, but they didn’t seem like out-and-out thugs, either; well, some probably were. There were a few children there, and people of our generation, some people with grey hair. I would say the average age was as high as 28 or 30. (Which is fine with me. I would have been happy if everyone there had been 80.)We were fairly high up, since we didn’t decide to go until somewhat late in the game, but this is not to say we couldn’t hear. It was extremely loud, of course, and we both dispensed with our earplugs, since this was once in a lifetime. The stage was huge and James Hetfield, Rob Trujillo and Kirk Hammett (my cat Hammett’s namesake) kind of wandered from station to station; Lars Ulrich was of course detained at the drum kit. Kirk moves quite gracefully. He evidently keeps up with his yoga. We were probably 150 feet away from the stage, but it was still fantastic just to be separated from Kirk and James by nothing but air.They had flames shooting out of boxes on stage at various moments and we were struck by the fact that the instant the flames appeared, we could feet the physical heat fairly intensely, despite being pretty far away from the stage. They played my favorite song from the new CD and the first song of theirs that Mr. Bull ever loved, and much else.Quite a wonderful day and evening.
Winter Ride Home from Work
