Knotty pasta and imaginary movies.

The other day before work, I was walking to the Starbucks around the corner and listening to something on my iPod. I wasn't really listening though. Sometimes I just like to have earbuds in so I don't feel obligated to acknowledge anyone and let low music dull the sounds of the city. This day I was particularly distracted by everything around me.

In general, I have a slight obsession with shapes and the way they look, how they interact with other shapes and the spaces that are created between them. As I type this I realize that I'm at a round table, with my rectangular-ish laptop in the center, my cell phone carefully placed to the left and my coffee to the right, both spaced perfectly between the side of my computer and the edge of the table. Equilaterality is key. Anyway, this is one my my many neuroses, but sometimes it is a fun one.

This day, the sky was a brilliant blue and there were plenty of fluffy white clouds cruising across the sky. Quite fast actually, which is why they caught my eye. What really struck me was the way all of this combined with the appearance of the buildings on New Montgomery St in San Francisco. It is a one way street and you are surrounded on three sides by buildings. Everything was so picturesque, I wondered what it would be like if my eyes were movie cameras; each blink a carefully placed cut, changing my focus between this or that like the careful artistry of a good director. Then I think about what it would be like to make movies, or rather, to be successful at making one box office smash after another, and it all goes downhill from there.  When I finally come back from my fantasies, I let my brief thoughts be what they were; a fun little moment that was exclusively mine. The camera panned up the side of an older building as clouds shot over the roof and across the street.

Sometimes, it's little moments that nobody else can possibly understand that make life so exciting. No amount of explaining can do it justice.  I felt like I was 9 years old at Disneyland and they had created a ride where you're inside a dream like in Inception and the laws of physics were obliterated as the ground before you bent up toward the sky like a dandelion on time-lapse.

Rereading that, it either sounds like I'm crazy or trying too hard to talk about a brief moment that nobody else could ever really understand. Maybe this moment only existed for me because the tangled spaghetti of neurons in my brain were overstimulated because I finally gave them a chance to do as they willed.  The following poem is not very related except it's about a moment that nobody else can understand, and it's stated in a much more elegant and concise way than my knotty pasta is capable of.

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey 
by Hayden Carruth
 
Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren't we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick, and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don't say a word,
don't tell a soul, they wouldn't
understand, they couldn't, neverin a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were in that old club tonight.
Go outside and don't forget to look up. You just might end up in a movie.

---
Starbucks Coffee
74 New Montgomery St Ste 100
San Francisco, CA 94105

Droid does(n't).

Technology is strange. Billions of dollars are spent on marketing for the latest technology that will make our lives easier or better because it does this or that better than the competition. For a few hundred dollars, we can purchase the freedom to do any of a countless number of tasks (probably simultaneously) whenever or wherever we choose.

We purchase our freedom and for a while it seems that everything is better. We are able to find things we didn't know we were looking for (or could look for) and our lives outside of social media even improve because of the ease that technology has facilitated relational growth with our colleagues, friends and family. Perhaps it has even allowed for new relationships to develop because there is now a connection where there previously was nothing.

All that is great... until its taken away.

I was very slow to jump on the smart phone bandwagon. But when I did, I loved it. It changed everything. I was able to go more, see more, and eat more than I ever had before. It was as good or better than having a new best friend in my new city because it knew all the best places to go for this and that, and I was able to discover who I was. It turns out that Droid, in fact, does... or at least it did until mine didn't for the second time. This isn't about that though. What I found most interesting is that I didn't know what to do when I realized that I wasn't going to have a phone for 24hrs or so. I mean, I knew what to do. I emailed everyone who I knew would try to call or text me today and posted on Facebook for everyone else. But, what to do... Words With Friends was now impossible, I couldn't text anyone, and I didn't have lunch plans yet so how would I even find anything to eat?!

Then I recalled a time before my droid where I would look something up the old-school way... on the internet with my computer, look up a map and go from there. Turns out that it still works. Not having a phone turns out to be better than I could have imagined. I was forced to observe more of the world around me than I had in a long time. It was amazing.

Oh, and by the way, my already delicious lunch was more delicious because I couldn't tell anyone how delicious my pork belly was while it was getting cold. Next time you go out, leave your phone at home and put delicious in your mouth while its still hot.

---
[No photo because my phone was BROKEN.]

Santa Ramen

1944 S El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA 94403

(650) 344-5918