Obama Ave.

I am sure many of you are sick of Obama, and how Obama-saturated my updates tend to be, but this Obama story was too good not to report. As we all know, he was inaugurated into the White House on Tuesday. San Francisco was buzzing with joy, people were permitted to come into work late, and his voice seemed to linger in the air everywhere you went.
This story starts with a very long street that runs through the entire city of San Francisco called 'Bush Street'. Some very ambitious individuals decided to rename this street 'Obama Ave' on inauguration day. However, they did not take the traditional route of using spray-paint and defacing these street signs; they actually made stickers using the same font, color, and size of the original signs to make them appear legitimate. The only 'Bush Street' sign that survived was the one lingering at the end of the street that read, 'Bush Ends'.

Another quick Obama report comes from my friend, Mai. She came across a homeless man holding a sign that read, "I'm like Obama...I want change." Clever. I would have given him five dollars.

Sprouting

They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. Well, I have stopped rolling recently and I'm learning how to grow moss again. I am learning that this kind of moss does not grow in sunlight; it grows while being in the gaze of the same people day in and day out. It grows in being a consistent presence in someone's life. I feel this soft green covering growing when a consistent joke crops up among my circle of friends. I feel it pushing up through my pores when one of them accidentally offends, or critiques me. I feel it spreading out, demanding room, when I have to find it in my heart to forgive them, and when I must ask their forgiveness.
This moss grows in worry, new worries for me, like job security, failure, and faith. I must choose wisely these days and live morally. In this lifestyle I must firmly uphold who I believe I am. No more searching. I must make decisions I can defend and stand by. I acquire friends and acquaintances carefully. I can no longer shed this moss in the wind of a speedy train. I cannot smother it in the sterile recycled air of an airplane. It grows fresh and firm in the humid, nurturing air of San Francisco.
I never ran from the moss, or feared its accumulation. Even in my travels it grew in small shallow patches nurtured by my family and a few close friends. I traveled simply because I was curious about what life as a rolling stone felt like. And as my cycle of curiosity usually goes, once I mastered life as a roller and lost almost all recollection of the stationary life...I longed for the opposite, and my curiosity lead me down the next path, which is stayin' put for awhile to see what I can see, and learn what this life has to teach me. The learning curve is steep thus far, but that’s how a new lesson always begins...

On a Train : April 2008

These train yards, houses, shacks, look uninhabitable. Like ancient burnt out relics. I would like to walk across this countryside of Bulgaria. Follow the stream to Romania. The solid green fields butting up against the pure blue sky brings me back to kindergarten. I see pages from a coloring book. Flat blocks of color. Trying to stay in the lines. At this rate we are never going to get to Bucharest! Stopping at every pile of bricks with men in overalls walking the tracks. It was an hour at our last stop due to train trouble...I think. I sat; legs stretched out, bare feet propped up by the open window, letting the stories roll in off the plains. I wish I knew more about Bulgaria, but based on its crumbling and bombed out state, I would guess its been through a lot.
The afternoon air fills my cabin as I swagger in and out of sleep.