Sunday, May 07, 2006

A Most Unsatisfactory Jib

On Friday afternoon I went to see my acupuncturist and it was delightful, as always. To get home from there, I walk up to Geary St. and wait for the 38, and then transfer to the 22 at Fillmore. While I was on the 22, a wheelchair passenger needed to get on. The bus was crowded and several people had to stand up to make room for the wheelchair. A few blocks later, a second wheelchair passenger got on. I heard the driver murmur, as he cleared the area for the second passenger, “This isn’t my day.”

We got to Market St. and there was some kind of drama at the back door. Someone in a uniform was bending over outside the door trying to free something and people were saying, “Someone’s stuck!” I went and told the driver and he said, “You lyin’?” which was kind of funny. The person lived.

Today I canceled a haircut appointment for this afternoon and went off to the movies. I’ve been reading a book by Ezra Bayda, who is a fan of very detailed thought-labeling (“Having a thought that perhaps I’ll have a peanut butter and tomato sandwich”), so I’ve been doing that lately and have noticed that fully 25 percent of my thoughts are about my hair. He also talks about noticing what our requirements are: I require that people not sniffle a hundred times a day. I require that people not fill my apartment with cigarette smoke. And so forth, right on down to requiring that people not walk behind me on the sidewalk with loud clacking heels. Yet the more requirements I have, the less happy I am sure to be, as there will be that many more opportunities for dissatisfaction. And where do these requirements come from? I think them up!

I was meaning to see the original Poseidon Adventure today, and figured there would be a line around the block, as there were only going to be two shows. I was very pleased to find that I was the only person in San Francisco who wanted to do this; the theater was deserted except for a ticket-taker who told me it was showing at 12 a.m., not 12 p.m. I wasn’t peeved. I could see it would be wasted effort. It’s not like the guy was going to say, “Oh, well, in that case, we’ll show it right now.”

I got back on the bus, and then it occurred to me that maybe something I wanted to see might be on at the Kabuki, so I got off again two blocks later and indeed, I found that United 93, which I had meant to see this weekend anyway, was starting in two minutes, so I saw that.

When I saw the trailer for it a month ago, I felt a bit blindsided and thought I wouldn’t want to see it, but the reviews convinced me it would be worthwhile, and it was. I’m terrified to fly, and was before 9/11, and feared the movie would exacerbate that. Heck, just a movie about someone taking the shuttle to L.A. would be my idea of a frightening movie: “Jesus, look—that guy is at the airport!” But I don’t think United 93 will have that kind of effect after all, either because it depicts what is obviously a very rare occurrence and/or because of the magic of denial: “Naw, this could never happen,” even though it did happen. I think there may have actually been something therapeutic in watching these events, as least as imagined by the director, unfold.

After that I went to have a picture framed at Flax. It’s a drawing I made when I was seven, and evidently learning about commas, as the caption features a couple of large, careful ones. I agonized extensively over the mat and frame choices, and then worried, as I was leaving the store, that it will look ugly. It cost a rather staggering amount, but I promised myself that if I don’t love the result, I will start all over again. It can be in lieu of a fancy vacation.

I walked up Valencia and bought a newspaper and read it over a burrito and Orangina at Mariachi’s.

This evening Tom and I saw The Constant Gardener, which was excellent.

Today I received a letter from Frank Manahan in Dublin saying that he wanted me to have something personal of his to remember him by, so he was sending me his Safeway card from when he lived here.

I wrote him back right away, thanking him very much and assuring him that my pleasure in having this memento was not in the slightest dimmed by the fact that he didn’t actually enclose it.

He often bitterly refers to my having thrown what he characterizes as a “snot rag” at him years ago and hit him in the eye, so I enclosed a wad of toilet paper and told him it was the original item, which I’d been storing in a safe deposit box. I closed with an affectionate “UYC,” which stands for “Up yours, children,” which is a remark made by the principal to his students in a Simpsons episode. Frank and I have enough inside jokes to be able to converse almost without recourse to the English language.

He also is still brooding over the time he had a terrible sty in his eye and I brought Ben over to admire it. Sometimes he’ll say, “I hope you get a sty.”

One time he sent me an email saying he was about ready to bring a gun to work and I cautioned him that he probably shouldn’t express such sentiments in company email, though of course I knew he wasn’t serious. He wrote back, “Right, ixnay on the udderlay, underway.” I wrote back, “What?” and he replied, “I can't remember either.”

He and his friend Lochlainn, who still lives here (and who is an extremely lovely person), and I all refer to each other as Cutley, which can also be an adjective (“I really don’t think that’s very cutley”). It comes from a day I was teaching Frank something when we worked together. We came upon a task I had already done. “Oh, look,” I said. “LWA has already done this for you.” “I don’t care for the cut of your jib,” he said instantly. This has had to be announced by one party or the other quite frequently since then, plus I think he said it to my mother the first time he talked to her on the phone. Either that, or he may well have said, "Up yours."

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