I always pick the wrong line at the market...

The man in front of me looked like any man in Alameda: white, late-40s, deliberately casual but clearly upper middle class, moderately good-looking. He was only purchasing a few items, but the checkout girl couldn't find the right price for his leeks. As he cornily made a joke that the leeks "must be free!" the young checkout girl--bookish, tall and pale, with a Band-aid on her chin--ran over to the produce section to check the shelf. Just then, another male clerk walked up, and the man proceeded to make pervy comments to him about another female clerk who wasn't there that day. When the girl returned, the two men continued their lecherous conversation about the absent clerk. After the man made his purchase and left, and the girl rang through my lettuce and lemon, she was quiet for a moment. It was then that I noticed her face had turned a light salmon color. "Did you hear them?" she asked, rolling her eyes. "I tried not to," I replied. "Yeah...creeps," she said, giving me my sales total. "That man's wife is suffering through some pretty intense breast cancer."

I shook my head. Although I was aghast and my heart sank, I wanted to say something about how people grieve in weird ways. But thankfully, the words stuck in my throat. "What an ass," I muttered instead.

"I know. Market drama!" she said, and laughed. "You'd be surprised what goes on around here..." We both wished each other good days, and she thanked me for being there to bear witness to this one tiny horror.

And yet, oddly, I am the one who is suddenly grateful.

In defense of ellipses...

A friend recently posted on Facebook his disdain for--above all other punctuation marks, including the oft-detested semicolon--the ellipses. He says that ellipsis are intended to be a placeholder for something left unsaid that isn't pertinent to the rest of the statement, implying that other uses are extraneous--and to a certain point, he's right.

But ever since then, even though I know better, I've been ellipsing like crazy. I've always been quite fond of ellipses but I also know to not overdo it. Punctuation, like words, should be clear, concise, simple. Ellipses have a way of murking things up a bit. But let's face it, life is murky.

I like when ellipses stand for thoughtful pauses. I enjoy reading dialogue, and often, there are awkward or meaningful blocks of silence between words or sentences that only a well-placed ellipsis can allow us to truly feel. Ellipses create a kind of time-block for authentic conversation. And when used sparingly, they can elicit imagination or engagement with that character's voice. I like that ellipses aren't clearly defined--or, at least, that they stand for something that isn't easily said. I like that they allude to possibilities. And superficially, I like the fact that all this confusion and meaning and unlimited nuance is represented so simply by three uniform dots.

I guess there's just something about ellipses that, above all other punctuation marks, in a way reminds me of... me.

From my couch to...Crouch. In 39 steps!

This year I've decided to dedicate at least one night a week to attend a book reading or literary event. San Francisco is practically bursting at the hinge (analog humor--sorry) with them so I knew it wouldn't be a problem. The trouble, as usual, is me.

While most people know me (from Maui, anyway) to be a social butterfly and creature of the night, I've become more shy and retiring in my old(er) age. I no longer find fun in the notion of frequenting an overcrowded bar of urban 20-somethings, getting drunk on overpriced cocktails, and straining to hear whatever musical, literary or performance art schtick is happening on a too-small and awkwardly placed stage. Plus, I have nothing to wear. And my hair sucks. Also, I've heinously taken to calorie counting and it's seriously fking up my ability to imbibe or do anything, really.

But this desire to find a way to creatively satisfy myself is constantly nagging me. And, as Thespian sometimes points out, staying at home every night doesn't necessarily feed my writerly inspiration. So, after just a touch of kicking and screaming and gentle-Thespian-encouragement, I put some barely adequate clothes on, tamed my unruly locks somewhat, and got my complacent ass on the BART to San Francisco for "Writers With Drinks."

Still pouting, I decided to employ a practice I had inexplicably and long ago given up: note-taking. Hence, here's a numbered account (some say "list") of how my night went:

1. Thanks to Rob Brezsny, I'm thinking about the problem of my ego and what to do with it.

2. There's a man on the train who I can't take my eyes off of. He looks so tired. And sad. The deep wrinkles in his sweet face, his slouched posture and his profound aloneness are making me teary. I hope he has people waiting at home for him--people who love him and tell him he's great, who thank him for working so hard. I want to talk to him, give him a hug. Instead, I do nothing.

3. I get off BART and walk down the streets of the Mission District. It's drizzling and I like the way it makes my face feel fresh, amidst the grime--both material and humane.

4. I arrive at the Make-Out Room. The Smiths' "Hatful of Hollow" is playing. Loving the dark and dreamy, glitzy, melancholic prom decor. And it's fairly empty right now, making the people so far tolerable.

5. I'm practicing openness with strangers. By that I mean, I'm gonna try and be nice. (I offered to slide down so a standing couple from whom I snaked a seat could actually sit. For instance.)

6. Makers Mark on the rocks. 67 calories.

7. The lady next to me, early 30s, says to her dude: "I think it'd be cool to, like, have a house on a cliff." The man on my right, mid-40s, is checking Facebook.

8. I wish I hadn't been such a weirdo to Thespian before I left. I'm glad I apologized right away. But still.

9. There are lots of nerdy people here. Of course I like that.

10. I am jealous of the bartender's bangs. She looks like this (I have a sketch in my journal but this photo will do):

11. The under-bar lighting is perfect for discreetly writing judgmental and/or exploitative notes in your journal.

12. Gawddamn I love this album.

13. It's getting kind of crowded now. I miss having friends. You know, who live in the same town. And who I want to go out with. I miss wanting to go out. Or do I? Gawd I am such a pain in the ass...

14. I love Charlie Jane Anders.

15. Her rant on the booming real estate market in the Houses of Collective Hysteria (versus last year's Houses of Consciousness) is hilarious. Because it's true.

16. Must read more of Kirsten Amani Kasai's erotic poetry! So good.

17. Especially "Raspberries and Cream," which has since been changed to "I Hate You You Fucking Fuck." It's really quite pretty.

18. As Kasai readers her "sweetest" erotic poem, the oompah-boom of next door's Mexican dancehall music punctuates her emotions and crudely distracts from the overall headiness of the night's literary pursuits. THIS is San Francisco.

19. Skip Horack. I love Louisiana accents.

20. The modelesque, hipsterish young SF hottie standing next to me is obsessive/compulsively stroking her chin and putting her fingers in her mouth. It's simultaneously freaking me out and kind of comforting me. Just a little.

21. Benjamin Bac Sierra. Holyshit I met him at the San Francisco Bay Guardian Best Of party last year with Thespian. He was very nice. Now he is rocking a wifebeater and giving the most spirited account of life in the barrio. He's awesome. And loudly so.

22. "I will have no problem with the mic tonight!" He proclaims.

23. Dude is built, too. I'm skerred.

24. The model next to me is turned on. Possibly also disturbed. She is twirling her hair and swaying to Bac Sierra's machismo staccato.

25. Delivery is key. Passion matters.

26. Intermission. Model and her friend are drunkenly discussing relationship troubles. Also strangely comforting.

27. Charlie Jane Anders is back, dissecting the month of March and the year 2012. (By the way, her intros of each author are a show in and of themselves.) She hushes the room by telling us we're all failures--and also, fairy urine. Which is sparkly.

28. The voice of the woman on my left is becoming more shrill and annoying. How did I escape having that kind of voice?

29. Dude to my right, 50ish, is drinking like a fish. I think he's British. I already like him.

30. Charlie is touting bad sex in 2012. I secretly hope she's drunk. But I think not. Which, really, is more awesome.

31. M.K. Hobson. One of the two apparent headliners tonight. Paranormal novelist from Oregon. Could explain the earlier geekery presence. "The only way to be transgressive in Portland now (given "Portlandia") is to dress like you work at RE/MAX in Houston," she says, to laughs. "The problem is when you come to San Francisco..."

32. I'm less interested in fiction. But this is so wrong of me!
...Right?

33. Could be because of my second Makers on the rocks. 67 calories. No dinner.

34. Katie Crouch. Very cute, very charming Southern gal (especially after two Manhattans, she confesses). She reminds me of a young friend from the Midwest. She reads a passage narrated by a British character, although thankfully she doesn't attempt the accent. The man next to me seems pleased, which confirms my suspicions about his nationality.

35. I think deeply about offering to buy the man on my right a drink for guarding my seat while I visit the ladies' room but think against it as he might get the wrong idea. Now that I'm back I wish I had.

36. I am shy.

37. But also, he had stopped drinking and I didn't want to tempt him or make him push his limit. Anyway, I left and came back and all was well with the seat, without bribery.

38. Yep, still not too interested in fiction. But that was good. No, really.

39. Next: April 14.

My so-called super gooey purple cheese sticky sour kush life...

Earlier this week, while visiting my parents in Palm Springs, my mom and I decided to stop by a dispensary in the area. Being a loyal patient of Harborside Health Center (and more importantly, girlfriend of the GM/co-star of "Weed Wars," Andrew DeAngelo), I hadn't frequented many other dispensaries and was interested in seeing what was available to my parents and friends in the desert. I was careful to enter the small shop without preconceived notions, and instructed my mom to not "brag" about me and my illustrious connections. I very simply wanted to see what other patients see when they enter such an establishment. Plus, I love my parents very much but a medicated brownie was becoming necessary...

Once inside, reception was warm and welcoming, giving us cautious tips on compliant traveling and driving with medicine in tow. But once the owner caught sight of my Oakland address, things turned a little sour--and I don't mean of the "diesel" variety (a little dorky cannabis humor for you).

"Oh yeah, in Oakland you have Harborside and 'Weed Wars' so it's all mainstream there," said the owner, with more than a hint of derision. I kept my mouth shut, steeling myself for what soon became a tirade of disparaging remarks about Harborside's success. Trying to ascertain the source behind the bitterness, and trying to stop the flush from overcoming my face, I calmly replied that Harborside is where I like to go in my hometown, and the owner backed off--just a bit--vaguely acknowledging her onslaught of negativity with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Although the owner was quite helpful and generous with product recommendations after that, I couldn't shake the feeling of being misunderstood and attacked--even subversively. It's a feeling I've grown accustomed to as of late, what with the broadcast of "Weed Wars" and the many hours I've spent online since, scouring critical reviews, blog commentary and endless tweets about the show, about Harborside, and about my beloved boyfriend and his family.

Despite its legal, medical uprising in certain states, cannabis remains a hot-button topic. And because Harborside Health Center is the largest medical cannabis dispensary in the country, it already receives a lot of media attention and public scrutiny. I expect critical backlash from people who haven't been educated about cannabis' medical merits or those who simply choose to hang on to their conservative "all drugs are bad" stance. But what I didn't expect was that the majority of "haters" would come from within the medical cannabis industry itself.

When "Weed Wars" debuted, I obsessed with people's honest and immediate reaction to the show and mainstream perceptions of the industry. Naturally, I turned to Twitter. The majority of tweets were favorable and/or incredulous (mainly in non-medical cannabis regulated states and countries), but of course I fixated on the negative criticisms. And what struck me were the blatant hypocrisies...

"Let's Get High," aka @PokerStoned, who in his profile pic is wearing a green t-shirt with a smiley face smoking a joint, tweeted that "sometimes the people on weed wars don't help the image of a stereotypical pothead." Along the same lines, "Stoner Simpson," aka @PapersNoBlunts, who cites himself as a "verified weed smoker...modern day hippy...smoke something bitch..." tweeted that "this weed wars shit making potheads look bad."

I realize that public figures must regularly face this kind of critique, both good and bad--and none of it has to necessarily make any sense. And it has made me reassess how I judge celebrities in general. But Harborside is not the Kardashians. And it is especially difficult to accept this kind of blind badgering from people within the industry who realize all too well the political and social obstacles they face on a daily basis. Any success, done legally and with beneficent intent for the medical cannabis community at large, should be encouraged within that community. Open discussions, instead of one-sided attacks, will only propel that larger success.

This is somewhat strange for me, as I've never claimed to be a cannabis activist. But I guess I'm reacting to the pattern of social injustices that we often fall into because we're afraid of change, or we're quickly lacking control of our own lives, or we fail to see that someone else's success does not negate our own.

I'm hoping that through this process, I can keep my ears and eyes open, and not be too discouraged by humanity's great law of entropy. Maybe this wasn't my battle to fight, but it's definitely teaching me how to win with grace.

A Night Out...

Tonight I broke free of the confines and rituals of my Oakland locale and left for an exotic night in San Francisco with Elan, with whom I had not hung out in quite some time. He'd wanted to start with dinner and drinks at Morac, a Moroccan restaurant and bar in the Mission, so I'd thought it appropriate to have a pre-night-out cocktail, solo, at the old dive bar Murio's Trophy Room--which had just undergone a Moroccan-influenced renovation--on upper Haight. While I sipped my Bulleit and soda, I was struck by the dramatic transformation Murio's had recently undertaken, and quietly contemplated the ghosts of the grungy, smelly, unpredictable dive bar I had once frequented. Meanwhile, a lovely young couple from Canada struck up a conversation with me about food and travel, culminating with her ultimate meal--on MAUI! At Spago's! (It turns out the couple run this awesome eatery on Vancouver Island.) Eventually Elan showed up shortly after another attractive couple--this time wearing Patagonia sportswear and ordering Pinot Grigio (with ice cubes)--tried to take over the empty stool next to me, and we sped off to the popular, trendy Moroccan restaurant where harried Russian cocktail waitresses took our order and stunningly beautiful, young Persian women at the table next to us lamented their success working at corporate jobs they weren't "passionate about." After Elan and I had our fill of tech-industry gossip, we hightailed it to Sasha's new bartending gig--at the Gold Star--and I marveled at the classroom-inspired cocktail menu, while Gabrielle horrified me with details on the Mission Rapist. I kept one eye on the clock in order to catch the last BART train back to the East Bay (at 12:20! Gimme a break!!) while Elan guilted me on not staying in San Francisco for the evening. After missing the last BART, and instead of taking the two-hour bus back to Oakland, I opted to take a $50 cab ride back to my car at Fruitvale, even though I can barely afford (nor do I know the exchange rate) to make sense. And although I really tried to get it right, not one person said I looked pretty tonight. Not that that's what it's all about but still.

Man at His Best

Still catching up on my issues of Esquire. Just finished reading November's, which made me ride a roller coaster of emotions. The always amazing Tom Chiarella helped me to understand rage and "what a man and his anger are capable of," as well as the profound and dynamic relationship between an aging father and son in his touching personal essay, "Damages." I suffered through my own kind of anger reading yet another profile on yet another grossly wealthy, young, ego-maniacal, "God-loving" basketball player, and instructions on making a prank call. Oh, Esquire... Like all great men I've loved, you are not perfect. But uh... sorry, could you just turn that down a bit? Thanks.

"The Case Against Jogging" inspired me to try high-intensity interval training (at an outdoor swimming pool in 46-degree weather), which unfortunately led to my first cold of the season. I developed a crush on fashion designer Simon Spurr and am convinced that Thespian needs to wear his suits. I was enthralled with Stephen Marche's A Thousand Words didactic on "losing your faith" in the almighty dollar in "What is a Dollar Worth? Perhaps Nothing." He concludes by saying:

But losing your faith, while painful, can also be liberating. The attraction of dollar value, which Marx predicted as the transformation of all "personal worth into exchange value," wasn't the same as greed; it was really just laziness... Losing the dollar as the marker of all value might reveal new possibilities of worth, for people and for things, even for the world.

The article update on Ryan Adams (um, who?) prompted an initially interesting conversation--and ensuing jukebox selections--from a strange man at a bar. But the intellectually stimulating music lesson soon turned into a not-so-subtle boob-stare-a-thon (as they so often do) and I resolved to read the rest of my nude-Rihanna-covered issue alone.

Then I was enraged, aghast and depressed while reading "'There is No Truth,' He Said. The Future of the Written Word, and Liberation of James Frey. With Space Aliens." by the bold and inspiring writer, John H. Richardson. The interview Richardson conducted with the author of the infamous (and untrue) memoir A Million Little Pieces twisted and turned dramatically (and ultimately proved quite illuminating and a little sad) but in the interim revealed a horrific glimpse into a totally Hollywood-centric, multimedia publishing industry that hires factories of fresh-faced (sans actual credit or appropriate compensation other than "the exposure") writers to churn out marketable ideas for page-screen-videogame projects and blurs the lines between "art" and "commerce," "fiction" and "nonfiction," "working writer" and "slave labor," etc. My favorite excerpt:

Frey: I think you're getting hung up on the idea of fine art--I don't think there's any difference between writing fine art and producing genre fiction. I think of it all as part of a larger body of work.

Richardson: That's so funny because when I was a kid in college, we were all militantly trying to collapse the boundaries between high and low--"There's no difference between rock 'n' roll and Milton, so why can't I write my thesis on Elvis Costello?" And, of course, we were right. But somehow that seems to have led to Jersey Shore.

Ah, yes... And because I refuse to post a clip from that effing show that has produced another literary genius, Snooki--here instead is a sweet, sweet classic from a true talent:

'Freedom without limits is just a word.'

Last night Thespian and I watched the early-2011 thriller, Limitless. The story revolves around a struggling writer with a severe case of writer's block whose life is spiraling into nothingness--his girlfriend dumps him, his editor is giving up on him, he's about to get kicked out of his apartment and he seriously needs a haircut and a shave. But then he gets turned on to an underground super-drug called NZT, which enables him to remember every single detail of information that he's observed or experienced throughout his life and he pumps out--literally, overnight--a novel which prompts his editor to leave breathless messages of exalted praise on his voicemail. The drug also acts like an instant makeover so dude was soon looking sharp, glossed, glazed and decked out in finery--which the ex-girlfriend enjoyed to the point of reconciliation. Oh, and he had raucous sex with the landlord's wife.

Laughingly (like, through the tears), I could relate to the guy's immobility at first. I enviously scoffed at the proffering of some mighty drug to ease his writing woes and I might've even drooled a little about those post-brilliant-novel-submission editorial phone calls. But then what does the best-selling, uber-dapper, incomparably smart, sexgod writer want to do with his new superpowers?

Become a senator, of course.

This plot twist left me more depressed than ever. Because what, really, would be the end result to some magic pill that enabled me to be the superhuman writer/devastatingly beatific woman I've always wanted to be? Would I, too, be caught in the maelstrom of ambition, ultimately leading to aggrandized notions of power? And when I finally figure it out, what will allow me to think that I've really "made it"--that I am, at long last, "successful"? Not that this scenario is even close to happening anytime soon, as I can't even seem to find a proper coffeehouse to do this so-called writing I like to flagellate myself with. Apparently, it's the non-writing that I'm preferring to write about these days. Sigh.

Ah, to be a writer~ ain't it grand? And so, I dedicate this song to... me:


Depeche Mode - Strangelove (1987) by clp23