burst my bubble

It is day 2 of my 3-day weekend ("weekend" being defined as a period of time without having to go to work or school) and I felt a little guilty for having spent day 1 galavanting around town and not doing an ounce of writing, reading, or studying. So today I woke up early and besides some necessary trips to the kitchen and the bathroom, stayed at my desk. But I could tell from looking out the windows and from how happy my roommates were on coming in from the outside world that it was a pretty, sunny day out there. And so around four I gathered a pile of books, papers, and my laptop under my arm and ventured as far as the corner and found myself a little table at Maxfield's, my favorite cafe. So I got myself a nice warm cup of tea and cracked open my Arabic book to begin conjugating some new verbs. Halfway through the first set, I noticed a man coming up to me in my periphery.

Man: What's that? Hebrew?

Me: No. Arabic.

He wore jeans splattered in white paint and a similarly stained hat. He had a pencil behind his ear, and the skin on his face was red, splotched, scarred. He had a blond mustache and the idea that he was an angry person grew and grew as he continued to talk to me. Picture it: I am sitting at a small table just next to but facing away from the counter where the cafe people have put all the different kinds of sweeteners and creamers and utensils and this man is doctoring up his cup of coffee and continuing to talk at me and I vacillate between ignoring him to get back to my conjugation and turning to look at him because it seems like he wants to have a conversation but also it seems like he thinks he already knows who I am and he is angry at that person.

Man: What are you going to do with that? [Meaning, I suppose, the Arabic.] Be an interpreter for the U.S. government?

Me: No.

Man: You got student loans?

Me: Not for this. [I motion to my Arabic notebook.]

Man: You know, if you work for the government ten years they'll forgive your student loans, all of 'em.

Me: [Look up at him.]

Man: That's the problem with you kids nowadays. [I swear, these are the exact words that came from his lips.] You all want to be freelancers. Don't want to be managed. Just want to manage.

Me: [Look up at him.]

Man: You know what's going to happen? [No pause.] Our whole country's going to be run by [he might have said "illegal" here] immigrants.

Me: [Look up at him and feel a bit frightened by what I interpret as a hateful sneer and begin to have the urge to tell him to shut up.]

Man: You know where all this comes from? [No pause.] Lack of religion. No one wants to be told what to do.

And then he walks out of the cafe.

I've been thinking a lot lately how San Francisco, especially my 'hood, is like a bubble. It's all preaching to the choir. Everyone agrees. And as a result, people don't go deep, which leads me to judge them as ignorant and boring, which upsets me because I'm really working at being non-judgemental, but it's hard.

Maybe god sent me this guy to interrupt that recurrent thought.

A Perfect Day

Yesterday was a great day. You know the kind...? When everything goes right and the rhythm of it flows so it just feels good. In the middle of it, I went for a walk with A and B to Buena Vista Park. A didn't know where we were going, and he insisted it didn't matter, but as we walked up Haight Street and things started going uphill, he began to complain. And...as we reached the park and began to climb upwards on paths and steps, he insisted we take breaks. But we made it to the top and it was gorgeous. I mean, of course, seeing most cities from above is nice, particularly a city like San Francisco. But it was also...nice to be there so high up and listen to the crows.

Here's a picture of A and B from behind as we were walking down, light shooting at us through the trees.

Before the park, I made lunch at home and we listened to Egyptian music. (Egypt's where I know A from. We worked at the same gallery in downtown Cairo when I was in Egypt for nine months between 2004 and 2005. He was born in a town outside Cairo and just moved here two months ago now, his first time outside Egypt.) I listen to Arabic music alone pretty often but rarely with other Arabs, so it was nice to sit and talk about the lyrics--what they mean, whether they are poetry or dialect. This is the sort of conversation you have when you listen to Om Kalthoum. Most of her recorded music is in very long operatic songs, beautiful, moving, painful, even if you don't know Arabic. You can listen to some of them here. The two that I know well are Al-Atlal (The Ruins) and El Hobb Keda (Love is Like This (or That?)). Both highly recommended. We also got in some Fairouz. She goes very well with sweet, dark tea.

A also reminded me about this crazy video:

A very tongue-in-cheek production out of his home country and my temporarily adopted home country. Awesome.

And then after the park it got cold and I biked west alone and then east again with T to a lovely gathering in honor of dessert. Creme brulee, ginger snaps, fruit salad, whipped cream, strawberry-crowned cupcakes, macaroons, mojitos. I'm not a sugar person, but damn was that a nice sugar high.