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A boy named Jesse

10 Nov

A boy named Jesse

Yesterday I went looking for the Man in Black. I was at the Country Music Hall of Fame, anticipating mountains of Cash memorabilia. In the end, I found only a spotless black suit, nothing else. I thought of Jesse Morris, and how I’d have to tell him about it.

Today, while flying home from Nashville, I heard the sad news that Jesse had died. I didn’t know him very well, yet he was one of my favorite people in San Francisco. He’d been busking since his teenage years, tossing in Fear and Black Flag covers along with the Johnny Cash covers that made him famous around here. The first time I heard his voice in the 24th Street BART station, I was convinced that someone was playing a rare Cash record on excellent speakers. Instead, I rounded the corner to find an inked-up, baby-faced punk belting out “Folsom Prison Blues.”

I tossed a few dollars into his guitar case, and over the year or two that followed, we developed a friendly rapport. He was a truly nice guy, funny and opinionated — and talented, too. I bought his CDs and gave them to my brother and the Southern Gentleman; I pitched him as a profile for This American Life. I was often late to work because Jesse and I’d start talking about 999 and Fear, moving on into discussions of love and joy and sadness and living, and before you knew it, 20 minutes had passed. He told me that he was engaged — or at least he’d officially be so when his lady finally accepted his many proposals — and he was clearly in love. We talked about his attempts to stay clean, his ongoing struggle against illness, and how music helped him cope.

We talked about depression, too, which is eventually what led to his death. He and I had commiserated about well-meaning folks who don’t understand despair, who tell others to smile their way out of crushing sadness. We talked about our fear that even when things were good, depression would always be hiding behind a corner, ready to pounce on any contentment we could find. I remember feeling corny, because I touched his arm and felt like a mama bird when I said I believed he deserved happiness.

Embarrassed, he tried to toss my sentiment aside. I remember touching his elbow and making him look at me as I told him: You bring joy to so many people and you don’t even know it. He smiled then, a broad and bright smile. And for the first and last time, I saw a glimpse of the little boy he’d once been.

A long lead-in

30 Jan

A long lead-in

Living in California makes you soft. Everybody knows that already, of course, but it isn’t the bad thing that some people insist it is. The only way it truly makes you a wuss is that cold becomes an abstraction. A forty-degree night feels downright frigid out here. It’s not really our fault, though, because although January should mean ice, here it means cherry blossoms and 70-degree days. Last weekend, I dozed on the sloping hillside of Mount Tam before crabbily waking up in the sun. “It’s TOO HOT,” I groused. “We need to go get a chocolate malt in honor of my father.” (Chocolate malts are always for Dad, and we did later procure one as a subtle paternal salute.)

A dirty secret that Midwest and East Coast transplants try — but ultimately fail — to hide is this: We don’t remember what winter feels like. We know it exists, of course, but the actual feeling of being miserably cold becomes an abstraction. The few of us who hold some romantic remembrance of freezing temperatures can just drive to the mountains if they’re really craving snow, but even then, it’s an option. You aren’t forced to deal with it. It’s a winter opt-in. See? California makes you soft.

Soft, and forgetful. Sometimes I think back to the brutal, whipped-wind winters I spent in Chicago and think, “Was it really that freezing? It couldn’t have been that bad.” I really believed this for a while and was considering a chilly visit back home until I came across my new measuring stick for winter nastiness: Reykjavik. Every time I’ve looked at the temperature in Chicago this winter, I then looked at the temperature in Reykjavik, and every single time it has been warmer in Iceland. Try it for yourself: Reykjavik weather and Chicago weather.

I am saying this not to rub the nasty weather in anyone’s face, but as an unnecessarily elaborate way to say that I went to Iceland and have many stories to tell, and will work on doing so this week.

Nice place to visit…

28 Jun

Nice place to visit…

The thing about Southern California is that even if you’ve never been there, you’ve been there. You’ve seen Los Angeles in movies and you’ve felt it, too, because LA culture seeps into American culture deeply and quickly. Visiting becomes a strange exercise in discovering things you don’t think you know, only to realize that the sights were already imprinted in your mind.

Every time I’m there, it’s hard not to feel like an anthropologist — and better yet, the city welcomes curious eyes. New York wants you to be blasé, shrugging at much of its marvels as though it’s no big thing. Los Angeles shouts until you look, and then it demands you to look some more. So without further ado, a completely unfair list of odd things about LA. (more…)

In a minute

22 Jun

In a minute

The other night, I was waiting for the cable car at Powell. About 15 tourists were ahead of me in line. The wait wasn’t bad, mostly because a man sang Otis Redding songs for change while we waited. The woman in front of me was watching a squirming toddler; she might have been a neighbor or nanny, but she definitely wasn’t the boy’s mother. (OK, maybe she could have been, but very few sixty-something Asian women are adopting Nordic-looking babies these days.)

The rascal was whipping around in joyful little circles, darting in and out of line. If I’d pulled that sort of rowdy behavior at his age, Betty would have doled out a warning, and I would have stopped. This is not what happened. The woman seemed only vaguely engaged in watching him, and when she asked the boy to stop, he ignored her. See, this is why you don’t plead with toddlers to do something; they need to understand that there’s a right way to behave, and part of that involves being a loving dictatorial type when it comes to teaching social norms. It rankles me when I hear adults defer to someone who’s yet to master the art of using a toilet. I’m all for respecting children as individuals, but there’s a reason toddlers need caretakers, you know? (more…)

Bright skies

9 Apr

Bright skies

The sun is different in California. I said this to JC last year, and he didn’t believe me. “The sun’s the sun,” he said. But when he and Alex visited and the morning light roused them, he reconsidered. Other non-Californians have said the same thing: the light is softer somehow.

While walking around in the mornings, I like seeing how the light bounces off buildings. I enjoy watching pigeon shadows soar over sidewalks, and I love the days when the fog rolls in elsewhere but I’m standing in sunshine.

This week has brought happy news from friends: a pregnancy, an engagement, a new job. These things made me smile, choke up a little in the good way, find a moment of quiet pride for them. “There is magic out there in the world,” one commented.

There is, and during my morning and evening walks I usually look for a little of it. Sometimes I literally stop and smell flowers, which is so maudlin, but since my dad died, I try to appreciate things like that more. And I am trying to shift my viewpoints overall. Lately I’m trying to find different perspectives by radically redecorating my room, finding new routes to familiar places, and looking at the city as though I were a visitor. I keep going back to an Einstein quote that Toby sent me a few weeks ago:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Monty, I’ll take door number two. 2.

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