I don’t complain. I’m allergic to it. Incapable. I don’t know how. I try. And I fail.
I realize that complaining, to a certain degree, is the currency of compassion. We sit, a coffee, a glass of wine, an apertif. You complain, I soothe. Then: I complain, you soothe. We relate, we bond, and we tell [...]

Each city had its own smell. That’s one way I know that the person I am today has changed from the person I was then. There was a time - let’s call it the end of last millenium - when the first thing I would notice after opening the car door was the city’s unique [...]

It’s sandal weather again, hallelujah.
Dropping off Mari at City Hall, coasting down San Pablo while Keith Jarrett’s 1970’s piano chops flow out of public jazz radio like a flirtatious girl on a first date.
The stretch of San Pablo from 20th to 40th is one of Oakland’s most blighted thoroughfares. Every block is bookended with a [...]

The habit was as common as it was annoying. Every day someone would walk behind the counter of the neighborhood coffeeshop where I worked. Behind the counter and into the kitchen. I would look up, exasperated, with a serrated knife in my hand that I wanted to plunge into my trespasser’s gut.

But not this time. [...]

The salt stuck to my skin like Gulf War I camouflage. My shoulders were red. Later, my legs would be even more red as would my feet save a white calligraphic ‘V’, kept pasty white by my Haviana sandals. The problem was that we had no destination and an adventure is not an adventure without [...]

I spent the last block of my walk to Peet’s in deep contemplation. Did I want a small (10 oz.) or a medium (12 oz.)? The difference was neither two ounces nor 15 cents; it was purely psychological. It’s like potato chips. You know that the small bag of chips is plenty, that you’ll feel [...]

It’s that time of year when what seems like half of the US blogosphere is partying it up in Austin, TX for South by Southwest. This is the first SXSW with Twitter, which, methinks, doesn’t play well with alcohol. Around 2 a.m. Central Time, I’ve been entertained over the past couple days with a steady [...]

I’ve never really been a smoker, but that isn’t to say that I’ve never smoked. The first time I was 16, sitting on the south-facing, rust-colored sandstone bluff in Del Mar that faces the San Diego River mouth and, beyond, Torrey Pines State Beach. Those who have watched a sunset from that perch, or one [...]

Booger and I are driving south. We are going to visit our grandmother and our mother. At the same time. That don’t happen too much. March first cherry blossoms are everywhere on both sides of the highway, a gradient of white to pink exploding beneath central California’s lethargic white-blue sky. The night before I tell [...]

One of the dozen or so employees at my neighborhood Peet’s coffee is blonde. He is the only blonde employee. Rarely do I see him working, but most mornings he sits outside on one of the two wooden benches and watches people cross the street in front of him. In his left hand is a [...]