Some Real Character

I was trying to finish at work when I just gave up and grabbed my things and took the train that left from RWC around 423 and rode to 22nd street.  It was hard to park and hard to interact with the other passengers because it was so crowded.  I went over Potrero Hill.  Some guy in a small SUV was rude so I detained him.

When I got to 19th and Deharo I discovered that there was no reasonable route to the 18th street overpass.  My friend was napping so I went to Uptown and finished the newspaper until she inquired as to my whereabouts.  I left her alone to interact with her contact from HI.  When she had finished we hopped a cab at 455 Duboce (who made a u-turn) and went to the Ramp.

The view from there had some real character.  I had been ordering when the girls showed up.  Her HI contact told me about herself.  I talked about my bikes.  They talked about a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know so I kept quiet.  There was a story of the cat stuck beneath their home in HI.  One of the ladies lived in HI.  When I discovered that the other lived in Durango I asked about pollution in the Animas River.  When the snacks were done we walked to third street and on to Tennessee before saying bye.  From there my friend and I returned to the Mission.  On the way she told me that her contact and she had had a hard time living together in North Carolina.

Around 8 the next morning I stopped by the corner store for some creme before making my friend eggs, potatoes and toast.  That took about 45 minutes.  We then grabbed some stuff and took off for her aunt's house around 930.

It was lightly raining when we rode down Duboce to 4K.  I got coffee by myself and then we boarded the train for Palo Alto.  We mostly had the train to ourselves. At Millbrae though my old coworker appeared with a load of baggage.  We talked about all the people we knew and I noted that she had gotten a divorce.  After a short bit we said bye and detrained with our bikes.

The ride to the aunt’s house was pretty quick but it was wet.  We basically left the town center crossed the creek and went a few blocks towards the freeway.  She gave us plastic bags for out bike seats  and had us park our bikes out back.  While we dried off and settled in with warm beverages, she told us the Stanford Grads that lived with her were out all day.

They hadn’t seen each other for quite a long time so they did a lot of catch up over lunch.  I asked the aunt about her art and talked about other artists I knew.  I looked up the term provenance and related the term to my understanding of art.  I remember talking about some of the galleries I knew and she mentioned Catherine Clark.  I noted that she was particularly receptive to this.

They talked about her brother and that unearthed a lot of feelings.  They were able to say positive things about the relationship but I later noted that while she had concluded she had accomplished a lot she was still particularly bitter.  I learned how to change the subject.

We talked about our commitments then as we cleared the counter and ended up in her studio looking at her newest paintings.  She showed us her older stuff using Chinese and I also looked at her treadle sewing machine.  We made some plans to interact in the future then.  My friend was particularly interested in her development both technically as well as emotionally.  I talked about process and writing.

We went on a walk then.  We found a couple of sewer grates were clogged from the rain.  We interacted with a neighbor and his dog.  We talked about family and then walked back to the house and made ready to go.  She was planning on going to a basketball game and we had a train to catch.

We gave each other hugs then and rode the same easy route to the station.  We got passed at Middlefield by some overzealous drivers.  On the train we had a hard time sitting but the other passengers got off and we were able to sit together.  My friend slept while I watched the train go through the tunnels.

At 4K we rode to the apartment with little trouble.  We suggested to one of the roommates that she eat with us but she declined so we walked to the ramen place.  The restaurant had a wait so we sat at Elixir chatting with the bartender about birds until a seat opened up.  I had a small amount of her soup in addition to my small plate.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.