NOT GUILTY

Ahem.

Just practising.

Let me try that again.

“I am not guilty.”

Ok.

That’s not true.

I just don’t want to pay the $197 for the ticket.

Can’t I just say that I’m sort of guilty.

I stopped, I had my foot down, I looked both ways before crossing the street, mom, I mean officer, I mean, what the fuck do I mean?

Ugh.

So, off to the notorious traffic court tomorrow to see which way the winds be blowing.

Hopefully the court will call my name first, doubtful, but hey a gal can hope, then I can go get a manicure.

I thought about that today and for just a moment was going to run over to Cole Valley, pick up my nanny clogs, and get a clean manicure.

I have a great manicure right now, pink sparkles, and there’s nothing wrong with my Converse and I have to nanny before I go to court, so what ever I wear is going to have to be nanny proof anyhow.

I am not going to dress up for court.

I will be respectful and on time and I will pay whatever fine the judge hands down.

I will not argue.

I will state exactly what happened, and keep all short cop small dick jokes to myself, I will be polite, calm, and rational.

That will be my outfit, a person of principle.

And I will be nice.

I think that about covers it.

I will also not be rushing around like a mad woman in the morning trying to get up early and scoot into the DMV.

Nope.

I made an online appointment today for the first available day that make sense–Tuesday, March 25th at 10:35 a.m.  I just sent off an e-mail to my employers and asked that I be given the morning off.  I would rejoin the boys at noon.

I can’t imagine that with an appointment it will take me longer than an hour and a half to do the whole she-bang.

Now all I have to do tomorrow is show up for work, a little early to help out with my early departure, and show up at 850 Bryant for my 3 p.m. court date.

Showing up is almost always the true battle.

It will be an experience I can then cross off my bucket list.

Just kidding.

Traffic court has never been, nor I believe ever will be, on my bucket list.

Hmmm.

When was the last time I thought about that?

Things that I want to do before I die.

Not that I am planning on knocking off anytime soon.

I wonder, too, if having certain things is equatable to having certain experiences.

For instance, I really want a Jeep Wrangler 4.0 Sport.

Don’t ask me why, but I have always wanted one, always, since I was a kid, might be the first car I ever wanted to own.  Something about it spoke to me and it still speaks to me.

I want to take said Jeep on a long road trip to Alaska and see the Northern lights.

I also want to take said Jeep to Joshua Tree, never been, ditto, the Grand Canyon, I would like to drive the entire Highway One from the top to the bottom, and camp on as many beaches as I can.

Other things to do or go–Hawaii.

I am Polynesian and I have never been, time for that to happen.

I would really like to see Venice, Barcelona, Cape Town, Amsterdam, Bruges, the Pyramids in Egypt.

I want to go to Coachella.

I want to learn how to hang glide.

Go skydiving.

I would like to go to the Caribbean.

See the Galapagos.

I would like to sail around the world.

I think that would be fantastic.

Charter a catamaran and go.

Love to see the Greek Islands.

I do, at some point, want to get my MFA in Creative Writing.

Do you think there will ever be one for blogging?

I could master that.

Hot air ballooning.

Bicycle through the Loire Valley.

See Niagara Falls.

Go to New York.

Actually, I think that last one is closer than I think it is.

Lots of this stuff is, I don’t doubt that I will do the vast majority of it, I don’t know how or why or when, but I can see doing a lot of it and I am sure that more will be revealed as far as what I like to do and what.

I still find that I am finding out what I like and want to do and that is exciting.

I have to keep on the learning groove.

Showing up for tomorrow is just another experience to add to the richness and depth of my life.

I found myself up in Pacific Heights last weekend, and will again this Saturday, and just the view alone blew me away.

I have seen it before, but it is always breath-taking–the Bay, the green capped hills of Marin, the Golden Gate spanning the water, the islands in the distance–Tiburon, Angel Island, Alcatraz–the deep sky cupping the world in light and fog, it is something else.

I have already done and seen so much, I have come so far, and then to call San Francisco my home, to see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge on so frequently that I can take them for granted.

Or the dome of the Palace of Fine Arts, the Presidio, or the Marina green, the very Bay itself or the ocean, I am surrounded by all this beauty and lushness and am probably living, daily, someone’s bucket list dreams.

I do know that the traffic court is not something that I really want to show up for, but I can consider it a gift that I can, that I get to do so, that I will walk in and take responsibility for my actions and leave a free woman to go explore some more of this lovely life I lead.

In this beautiful city.

My city.

San Francisco.

The Perfect Autumn Day

For chasing leaves around the park.

The grass was an emerald-green that defied Technicolor and the leaves falling from the sugar maples on the edges of Duboce Park flashed and flew and we chased each other around stomping our feet.

CRUNCH.

CRUNCH.

Crunch.

Ah leaf pile fights.

How do I miss thee, let me count the rake pulls.

It’s been a good while since I have handled a rake, but today I was remembering autumn days and though the sunlight belied the calendar, I knew that riding home tonight it would be cold and I would be grateful for the extra layer of my hoodie under a jean jacket.

But until then.

CRUNCH.

Leaves

My little charge and I had a splendid day today.

We do not usually see each other on Fridays and it was interesting to be in the neighborhood as it headed into the weekend.

The excitement in the air, the joy that was tinged with a tiny thread of bittersweet, everyone seemed to know that days like this are rare, far between and must to be enjoyed.

I was barely at my charges house before tucking her into a pullover and putting her hair up in pig tails.

I was out the door and into the sun.

I am no fool.

Though I may have looked like one at times chasing her around various parks.

I could have cared less.

The thick sun light dying at the edge of Alamo Square park as we made our last stroll around the top of the hill was like honey in her hair and I could not stop taking photographs of her.

Mom is off at a conference all weekend and I sent her loads of photographs.

As I was looking at the down loaded shots tonight while sipping my tea, I noticed that I now have over 6,100 photos in my computer.

Where do they all come from?

My god.

I don’t necessarily have an idea as to what to do with them, but I am fond of having them.

I don’t go through them after I down load them except to post a few to my photo blog or maybe put a couple in an album on facecrack.

Just like I don’t go through my blogs after I write them.

I have thoughts about doing it, but never really do.

Once they are typed they go off to the world and who knows where they shall land.

Little messages in a bottle piling up on some digital shore somewhere in the universe.

Maybe they go back to some constellation of stars at the edge of the universe made out of alphabet letters and when the time is right they fall back through the black skies to land in the head of another writer somewhere looking for just that word there.

While the little one was napping I finished Tom Robbins Still Life With Woodpecker, wrote three pages long hand, had some tea, meditated for a half hour and started up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I have never read it.

There are so many books I have never read.

So many ways of saying something that I have not even experienced.

Yet the words danced on the page and I was suddenly on the road with the narrator.

That was awesome.

“I see one of those in your near future,” my friend said acknowledging a motorcycle just in front of us on the street.

Yes.

I would like.

And the surf board.

But the cycle was calling to me.

One of my favorite childhood memories is riding on a motorcycle with my dad.

Magic.

I don’t know that either of us was wearing a helmet, I just remember how present I was and how utterly safe I felt and I wanted the ride to go on forever.

I remember seeing fireflies in the meadows of grass along the road at the twilight hour and the scent of a late summer night alive with sounds and insects, the swoop of barn swallows the song of lush life asserting itself.

The opening of the novel talks about the sloughs and marshes and I could see them, the lines of cattail and weeds at the marshes, the Great Blue Herons and their royal bearing as they sat silent in the reeds waiting for just that tasty slim minnow to flash by unsuspecting.

The thin leg steady and reedy looking.

The fish darts between the legs.

Flash.

The head ducks down, stabs the fish, the throat warbles, the crown of feathers shakes, ruffles of water ripple out, then in moments, silence.

Stillness.

The bird resumes its stance.

Reading it made me think of what I had written in today’s morning pages.

I have always written about being a world traveller and the last few months I have been thinking that I could stand some travelling in my own country.

I would like to do an extended road trip.

Now is not the time.

I am aware of that.

But some short jaunts.

Places I have not been and want to see.

Whether on the back of cycle or riding one myself.

In a rental flatbed truck with a sleeping bag to spread against the cab and look out the deeps of the prairies and see the stars spread like a quilt of eternity above me.

The Grand Canyon.

I have never seen it.

Yosemite.

Nope.

Appalachia.

No to that as well.

I thought about finding streams and wading in them, cold feet, rushing water.

The smell of campfires.

The deep quiet satisfaction of building one yourself and setting it properly.

The sleep of the outside world.

It was a seductive morning.

I live in California and there is so much I have not seen.

Or haven’t seen in a while.

Time for a day trip to Muir Woods.

Time for a drive out to Marin.

Time for a ride up the coast or down the coast.

I ride my bike past the park every day and there are certain parts that smell more wild and natural than have any right to smell deep in the heart of this urban landscape and I feel that pull to get out to it and be in it.

The perfect autumn day, in the park with my little charge, crunching leaves, thinking of apple picking at Sky High Apple Orchard outside of Baraboo in Wisconsin, climbing the Rock of Gibraltar in Columbia county, camping in the Upper Peninsula and long road trips to Door County at the tip of the state, memories of the great outdoors that never fail to stir something up inside my soul.

A little travel bug lit on me.

I am not intending to go anywhere wild and wooly or foreign, but I think once I have gotten through the holidays and all that they entail, whether or not I have plans yet for any of it, matters not, rather that when the new year rolls around I want to devote a little energy that way.

Until them I am off to prepare for a work day tomorrow at the old Mint downtown at 5th and Mission–Makers Mart–helping a friend sell her prints and art work.

Two days of that, one day of nannying on Monday, then six days in a row with not a whole lot to do.

Maybe I will go for a hike a long the sea cliffs.

I haven’t explored the Sutro baths.

I can start my little exploration in my own back yard.

Swim in the ocean.

Get together with anyone and go surfing.

Get the boogie board out.

Or just walk on the beach.

I may be in the city, but the outside is just there, a stones throw to the edge of the world, waiting for me to come join it.

To crunch again through the leaves and scuffle in the smell of all that is alive.