Wed, 14 May 2008 19:45:18 -0700

Perhaps the stable state -- that time when things are not aflutter, nor sinking; the balance tipping towards very good; the days getting longer, even a heat wave giving me tank-top tans as I eat vegetables on the patio at lunch, my shoes kicked off and my newly-cut hair pulled back off my neck (my built-in temperature control), reflecting with Maya, with whom I was a Noogler, that we're approaching three years this Friday at work -- does not lend itself as well to my obsessive chronicling tendencies, in which I remark on extremes, float ideas that need to be crystalized, turn events into tropes and patterns. Or perhaps I've just been lazy.

Or busy, feeling like a hippie, in weeks past: I've feel healthier than I have in a while. It's certainly partially the hippie food I'm quaffing and gobbling as my primary diet -- not only content with veganism, I move farther and farther into the realm of lightly-cooked vegetables, fruits (albeit mostly in compotes, jams, and smoothies), grains, and avocados (now again approaching seasonability!). Picking up some béchamel to take home that I made the other afternoon in a cooking class at work from Slice, Justin the chef hands me a bowl of his masaman-curry carrot-ginger soup to drink on the spot: heavenly. (What's your secret? I asked, and he pointed to a pitcherful of just-pressed carrot juice on the back counter.) I stopped by the same cafe that morning on my way in, picking up a shot of something green and fresh; they're a staple in my lunch rounds, during which I basically collect all the vegan, mostly-vegetable dishes from up to three cafes and then eat them, like a rabbit, in the sun.

The other component, certainly, is the greaty increased amounts of yoga I've been doing recently, beginning with a late April weekend's yoge retreat up in Wildwood. With about 35 others, I put myself through 18 hours of yoga in the equivalent of 3 days, the rest of the 4-day weekend encompassing jacuzzi-lounging, poolside-sitting, eating, and sleeping. I can now stand on my head in new and interesting ways! My forearms, even! And, in the subsequent week, I've been cutting out of work early to go to yet more yoga, to see familiar faces in class, to balance out a Tuesday night's pitchers of Racer 5 IPA at Zeitgeist, to sweat and be chill and be happy.

Now, I'm sitting here with a full glass of sauvignon blanc (this wine that, I think, as I unscrew the cap from the bottle from the door in my fridge, would remind me immediately of San Francisco, Napa, warm sunlight and summer wines: my California madelaine); Portishead's new Third playing from my iPod through my Tivoli radio (it's been on repeat-all since I opened it two weeks ago, almost; Saturday night as mood music; shuttle rides both down and back, which I never do), my middle bay window thrown open and the white curtains pulled back, through which I saw the last striations of the sunset on the clouds above Fillmore and the Lower Haight, through which now rumbles the sound of the N up and down Duboce. The first real warm night of summer. The kind of night we never get out here, even often during the brief spring that sprouts, green and golden, before the Pacific fog overlays the city during "July."

And work is good: Promoted, recruited, finally. Fuck. That took long enough. And I'm happy to stay where I am.

Summer approaches. I can feel it in the optimism, the long warm sun, the equilibrium, and the new strawberries. I love where I am.