preachers daughter

day two of being unemployed is alright. its frigid freezing, mine and vitos noses drip icy cold as we walk 24th street. two men in their 40's buy bags of recycling off each other on folsom and vito and i weave in and out of the madness on this winter day, he noses all the fruit stands on mission and stares, head cocked to the side at homeless people pushing shopping carts, playing guitars with missing strings for change. at one point he stops dead in his tracks to watch two men converse in spanish, it is an easy story over cigarettes and coffee, a morning chat and vito stands at attention, almost listening. it happened so fast i keep thinking, winter did, without warning, and last night i have to rub my feet furiously together in bed to keep warm, adding more blankets and eying the heaters in your old apartment, unsure how to turn them on. this morning we find new ways to create heat until you say, breathlessly, im not cold anymore.

we walk along guerrero after a while, along san jose and i lift vito up onto a brick wall and he runs along in tiny white winter flowers that smell sweet and dirty, like urine all at once and i want to take a picture but ive got mittens on and the moments gone before i can think twice, he hops down, cars whiz by, sketchy boys walk past me and give me the creeps.

last night im going through my books to see if i can find this jonathan franzen book someone gave me, for a birthday? christmas? i cant remember, but years ago, and i had liked it, even though i hadnt wanted to. i was trying to find this quote i remembered from it and leafing through the pages turned to re-reading other books, books from people i remember better, from faces i think of more often, which turns to re-reading journals and dates and i keep telling myself this is a dangerous business, turn back now but i dont and find pages and pages that i have to type down to get them out again, old things rise up and i rip things up cut them up tape them up to the fridge. they are all a part of me, of my life but they are behind me now, in dated notebooks and files and i want to leave them there. most of it anyway. dont worry, i try not to write about the bad stuff so much. i find a page from when i was still at state that starts with "all i want is to..." and i think about lunch with lawrence last week and dinner with b last night and the conversations, the surprise at someone being able to answer the question that begs "forget money and obligations, in a perfect world, what would you do that would make you happy?" and if you find that, is that enough? and how do you know what it really is? and will it always keep you happy? and is your happiness benefiting from someone elses? and vice versa? and are you alone is all this lovely happiness or is someone floating around with you? and even if were some of those lucky people who know what it is that we really love, how do we put it into action? how do we make it fit our lives...or our lives fit it? maybe ive had it all wrong this whole time, trying to figure out how to fit writing into my life when i should have been fitting my life around it. cultivating a type of life that i love and everything else will be natural. i was intrigued. what had my younger self said...how had i answered the question. how different would it be from what i want now?

with so much free time these days and so so much going on in my head i am trying to KISS. keep it simple, silly. this city is such a heartbreak town, just fighting the current, trying to keep my head up. im trying to practice what i preach and i hate the idea of not following through. if in the end nothing amounts to anything, what will all this time have been worth? god knows, im learning things and beginning to understand, but when will things start making a little more sense? when will i get into a groove?

this week i will be practicing everything i wrote on my "all i want list..." years ago to see if my younger self had it right, if it makes me happier, if i can trust that it really was school and two jobs competing for my time and breaking my balls years ago...i know she talked a lot of big game and she sure did have a lot of fun but lets see if i can, as they say, practice what i preach.