A Day in the Life... Three Odd Tales

Intuition

Early in the morning, I was walking to a bus stop in the Inner Sunset... not my usual neighborhood but I was staying in the area for 4 days watching my coworker J's dog, Buddy. As I am strolling down 6th avenue, a guy about my age comes out of his apartment, cuts right in front of me and walks hurriedly ahead. I am a bit put off, thinking this guy is a little rude. (And I have not had my coffee yet.) He arrives a couple seconds before I do to the same bus stop and stands directly underneath the street light on the side of the road. I was casually observing this guy, sizing him up. He seems antsy, nervous, wound up. His hands were in his pockets and he kept on looking down the street for sight of the bus. He is shifting his feet, bouncing up and down. He seems a little cold. He only has a tee shirt on and the weather is probably in the mid 50's. After about two minutes of this fidgety dance, all of a sudden he stops, gasps, and takes a giant step backwards. Just then a HUGE bird dropping splats on the ground right where he had been standing. We look up and see that there is a large black raven perched on the lamp post above. He looks at me, lit up and smiling. "Did you just see that?" I laugh and tell him, "You are a very lucky man." He said that he just "had a hunch." Then he announces loudly to me and to the world, "Today is going to be a good day." At that exact moment, the bus pulls up, he stands aside and asks whether I am getting on. I say no that I am waiting for the 43. He smiles, waves and hops on the bus. He rides away.



Calculator Race

Last week, it was one of those dull, slow days in the office. Almost nobody is around. My office mate J is on vacation. My boss is out. I decide to check again for any new emails. Then I move on to reading updates on my facebook home page. No new updates. No notifications. No messages. I move on to obscure, random articles on CNN.com, the couple ones remaining that I have not yet read. Just then, my coworker B stumbles through the doorway, almost Kramer like, and asks with a wild, determined expression in his eye, "Do you want to have a calculator race?" More of a statement than a question. He immediately picks up my calculator off my desk, places it in my hand and tells me to type in 1 plus 1. Ok. (I am not getting it.) He tells me to hit the equal sign repeatedly. In my curiosity, I comply. "Ok, stop" he says. He asks me what number I am at and the screen says 25. "25." I am sitting there, looking at him, eyebrows raised, totally confused. I still have no idea what is going on. He tells me, "Now, wait until I say go." He lowers his head down onto his folded hands on my desk, deep in concentrated thought. After a subtle beat, he dramatically peers up at me and says "Go!" I begin pressing the equal sign and he starts rapidly sputtering the numbers, out loud, in sequence up from 25! No freaking way, I think to myself. Game on! I get into it. I am pressing pressing pressing, going going going, and he is rattling the numbers off so fast I realize he actually could beat me. =,=,=,=,=,=,=,=... (I am laughing out loud, completely bewildered at this point.) He reaches one hundred in a matter of seconds and yells "Stop! What is it?" I glance at my calculator screen and I slowly turn it around to show him... 129! Win.



The Screecher

Yesterday I was riding on the number 1 bus home from work. The bus was somewhat crowded when I got on. I was able to snatch a seat halfway down the aisle, so I laid back against the chair and relaxed. My moment of zen is interrupted by an unusual screeching, giggling noise coming from the other end of the bus. I look over curiously. There is a family of four sitting in the back row of bucket seats, obviously from out of town being that they had cameras around their necks and a map in their hands. With them was a small, blond, 8 year old girl who was gazing out the window at the city scenes passing us by. Yep. She was the screecher. The bus started to climb Russian Hill, and she screams "Wow, look, this hill is sooooo steep!" Then the bus's PA system announces we are arriving at the "Mason" stop and she screams, "We are at Mason now!" Later when the bus reached the top of the hill and started it's descent, she screamed "We're going down... wheeeeee!" And then we finally come (not soon enough) to my stop at the bottom of the hill on Stockton in the heart of Chinatown. As I am leaving the bus through the back door, I hear her scream "I see Chinese people!"

I laugh out loud to myself all the way home.

You Better Bring Your Own Sun

"Oh! could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love
With unbeclouded eyes."

We listened to this hymn in church this morning and a tremor of sorrow and recognition struck me.

Unbeclouded.

I long to see my own city with unbeclouded eyes.

I have been struggling with the fogginess of San Francisco in my first few summer weeks. The eerie cloudedness seems to enhance the gloomy thoughts residing inside of me... the remaining grief from my cross country move which I have been trying desperately at various times to avoid, endure or sidestep. In some moments, the heaviness of the grief feels like too much. (And this smothering fog doesn't help.)

My roommate K. and I were taking a driving tour of the city last week and she commented on the strangeness of San Francisco compared to the other fair weathered Californian metropolises which surround us. She explained that if you just drive an hour north, south, west or heck, just right over the Golden Gate: the curtain of fog opens up and, behold, the sun is there.

The sun still exists!

(Okay, yes, I apologize. The melodrama is to enhance the effect.)

But I started thinking about it and I fell in love with the notion that the sun is as big and as bright and as beautiful as ever, as it has always been. Only that momentarily it's brilliance and it's heat is covered and overshadowed from where I am currently standing, from my physical perspective.

The Floridians and the Bahamians in this same moment are contentedly soaking up their supple rays, as happily as ever.

There is something about the image, the memory of the sun still shining brightly that helped melt away some of the cloudedness of my dark thoughts.

And then I allowed myself to start looking at the city in a different way. Walking home after church today I realized that the hills and the houses and the white trimming and the fog are all pieces of a whole. The gloomy cloudedness is part of this city's beauty. It is part of the same portrait. Just then and only then did I notice the other elements standing out, contrasted against the darkness... the whimsy of pastel houses, the tingling coolness of the wind and the huge, gorgeous blue bay... I get a scenic, breathtaking glimpse as I reach the top of a peak in Nob Hill.

What else would I see if I were to glance upon this city with unbeclouded eyes?...

Perhaps an unbeclouded vision does not require sun.

Perhaps it means remembering the sunshine and seeing the beauty that lives in spite of the darkness.