mark and cate came this weekend. it feels perfect in my heart to have them here and near.

my turn.

Friday: at the laundromat this kid was telling me that on Fillmore there’s this church that thinks John Coltrane was a gift from God and that the pastor is a madman on the drums and preaches “We don’t need eight white guys to tell us Mother Teresa was a saint." On Valencia today everybody thought it would be a good idea to build garden spaces on the street and so they sodded the pavement and built pirate ships. There was even a rock show on the lawn of the parking space on the street in front of the Mark Sanchez for supervisor campaign office which thrives pretty much by being indie rock. Supervisor of what? Today was my day off and it was good. I did laundry. I ate a mediocre burrito in the park with some guacamole I accidentally stole. Oops! I talked to Cate. I talked to Wendy. I talked to answering machines, talked to the fam. I watched Snow Angels. While I know I am not very good at being decisive, I am quite certain that the salted caramel ice cream at the Bi Rite creamery is my very favorite in the world.

Saturday: Dealt with a very close, very sweet and wonderful, very large and very upset family waiting for the death of great grandma, grandma, mom, and wife of sixty some odd years. What a day: good; exhausting.

Sunday: I went to St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church. I don’t quite know what happened today. I mean, I know what I saw, but this was just something else. His Eminence Archbishop Franzo Wayne King, D.D. and the kid in the Krunk Dog hoodie could sure sing. They sang, “Thank you God for John Coltrane and thank you for your son”- yes, in this order. They sang, by God they sang. They let a five year old play the drums. A toddler was handling the tamborine. I think I’ve found a home. This afternoon went down the coast to Half Moon Bay. Had some deep fried artichoke hearts at a distillery famous for its view and reputed for being haunted. It was pretty, but so is all the gold in the world. OK. Enough. I’m tired and blech from too much ice cream.

I told a Michael I would post pictures of my room. Here they are, some a little sideways because my computer is being squirrelly.

This old Chinese man on the bus always hands a child a candy when he gets off. Sometimes I wonder if he rides just for that reason.

There’s a woman who sleeps on my street. She’s probably ninety pounds and walks ninety degrees at the waist and I keep wondering if this will be the morning I find her dead.

Yesterday I saw a bus stop that was sodded (is that how you spell it? You know, with grass). I’ve been eating farr too many chocolate bars.

Work is good. Fufilling. Imagine that. Monday was my first real day. Began with a page, “Mr. So-and So had expired. Saw to cadavers in my first hour and somehow suddenly I wasn’t so anxious anymore. I spend my days with people who call me dear and tell me about how they met their husband in the war, married it would have been fifty seven years now if he hadn’t died, but I’m ok, I’m ok. People tell me things and I verge tears. People tell me things that make me laugh and either way the days fly by.

I am changing and it feels good. I am focusing on doing things like ripping sheets and braiding them to make a rag rug.

These are pictures from a little getaway I took the other weekend. Here we begin with the Golden Gate!

Entering wine country.

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless time that has no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy- that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden