Are you looking?

A young woman is standing at the bottom of a staircase with her foot on the bottom step.  She is looking up and smiling at something that is blocked from my view by the neighboring house. There is a slightly indulgent quality to her smile that makes me think she is looking at someone very young or very old.

I pass the obstructing wall and see that she is looking at a cat.  Or, more specifically, she is looking at a woman who is a few years older than herself who has a fat cat on a leash. I smile at the women as I pass because I am looking right at them and it is the neighborly thing to do.  The younger woman continues to smirk at the cat and the older woman smiles back at me raising her eyebrows in a manner I interpret to mean, "Hey look!  I have a cat on a leash!  Zany, right?"

For me cats on leashes are in the same general category as birds on shoulders or snakes draped around necks. This kind of pet as prop behavior says much more about the owner than the animal. And, frankly, what it says isn't particularly flattering. (You, with the dog in the baby bjorn. Yeah. You too.)

I keep my smile neutral, offering neither affirmation nor denial of the zaniness of a cat on a leash.  I try, in fact, to exclude the cat from my gaze altogether. What cat?  What leash?  Pleasant evening, is it not?  That is the neighborly thing to do.

My country, 'tis of thee

Recently, I've been corresponding with someone I've never met. We're planning to be friends as soon as we get the time. Lately, we've been busy. For practice, for now, we're being imaginary friends. We're doing a pretty good job so far. 

This weekend, I gave myself citizenship homework.  Voting in San Francisco is a major undertaking. We may be--dare I say it?--a bit overzealous about democracy.  Counting both state and local measures, my fellow San Franciscans and I are asked to weigh in on 42 propositions.  Forty-two.  Everything from plastic bags to parole.  From soda to seniors.  Among these is a proposal to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections, to which I say, "Sure. See how they like it."

In the midst of my ballot research, I sent a small plaintive email to my future friend (also a San Franciscan), to which he replied with sympathy and shared trepidation about making the wrong decision about some critical issue.  He himself has already voted.  He said,  "I'm 99.9% sure that you walk to your local polling place in person and cast your vote."

By this, he may well have meant "you are so hopelessly out of date, surely you do this in the least efficient possible way."  Maybe.  But for whatever reason, when I read it, I was as chuffed as could be.  In part, I was just pleased that he was right. My imaginary friend totally gets me. It made me think about this choice though. It would be easier to vote absentee, surely, but I know I'd miss the "we're all in this together" comradery of showing up at my polling station.  I like the "these are the people in your neighborhood" aspect. I like the connection--to my neighbors and to my nation. I like the public display of earnest scouting-badge-style good citizenship. I like the knowing, patient smiles as we all wait our turn to be counted.  I like the sticker.

Even as I have almost nothing good to say about this election cycle, and even though I think 42 propositions is too many propositions, I am still grateful to get to vote. 

That said, this year, more than ever before, I'm eager for the whole thing to just be OH-VER, so I may vote early.  I'll miss the garage polling station a block from my house--they got new lights before the primary and everything. But voting at San Francisco City Hall may be even more exciting than a sticker.  Just look at it.

Interior, San Francisco City Hall

Democracy.  Let's do this.

*****

Update:  11/3/16

I voted early in glamorous city hall AND I got a sticker.  A really good day for America.

Me:  Oh! Stickers!
Election worker lady:  You gotta have the sticker.
Me:  Yes!  I've never voted early before. I wasn't sure you'd have the stickers.
EWL:  This is the Department of Elections!  I would hope we'd have the stickers!

Good point, Election worker lady, good point.  If not you, who?
 

Promises, promises

Last year, I managed to write every day in December.  After which, I stopped writing altogether for months on end. Two steps forward, etc.  Nevertheless, it did happen that one time (or those 31 times, depending on how you look at it), so, why should it not happen again?

"You could totally do that again," I said to myself.
"Mmmm. Yeah. I mean, technically, yes, I could," I replied. "But I could also just not do it again, which sounds easier."
"Do you want easy to be the default setting of your life?"
"Kinda. Yeah. Yes."
"Pffft. You want to just lie around watching British period dramas and getting quietly older?"
"I don't like your tone, frankly."
"Look.  It's 30 times. You could totally write 30 somethings. That's a thing you could do and then you could lie around watching BBC miniseries afterwards. I'm not suggesting there will be no British television involved."
"Wellllllll..."
"You sit down while you're writing so that's almost as good as lying down. And you could have tea while you do it. You like tea."
"Also true."
"So. You in?"
"Okay, okay. I'm in. Pipe down."

I thought this year I might try November instead of December so I would have the (at least imagined) solidarity of all the Nanowrimo people.  They're writing a whole book, after all.  Then, yesterday, my friend Talya told me she'd signed up for a playwriting class and she has to write a short play or a monologue every day.  "I'm already regretting it," she said. She is my kinda girl.

In a moment of folly I told her I'd been thinking of giving myself the month challenge and if she'd commit to a play a day, I'd commit to a something a day too.  We'd do it together. Pinky swear.

Then, last night, I got home at 10:30, ate a bowl of bran flakes, sat down on my bed "for just a minute" and promptly fell asleep with all my clothes and the light on. When I woke up disoriented an hour or so later, I had a clearer understanding of why we say "fall" asleep. It was as sudden and deep as a trip over a stone and a headlong tumble into a mine shaft.  Upon waking, did I cry out, "Egads! My blog!  My promise!" and leap out of bed to type some witty remembrances?  No.  I summoned enough wherewithal to take of my bra and turn off the lamp.

And that, readers, is how I blew it on day one of thirty. 

Dammit.
Now I have to write two things today. 
I mean, I'm lazy, sure. But a promise is a promise.
 

Une petite pensée

This particular corner of the sky is the one I could see an hour ago from my reclining position in the shade of a tree beside a week-old swimming pool in Provence.  It is, therefore, one of my favorite corners of sky.

Tomorrow, as it happens, is my birthday. I find myself a little astonished that on that annual opportunity to take stock of one's life, I will wake up in the south of France in the new [old] house of someone I love who, rather unexpectedly, has been my friend for nearly 20 years.

On the downside, yes,  I have been bitten by several mysterious insects who speak only French with an indecipherable southern accent and thus cannot be reasoned with. But I've also had ice cream (deux boules: framboise pêche) in the plaza in La Garde-Adhémar, a town that, before today,  I did not know existed. It is so hot in the afternoon that the ice cream begins to melt the second it hits the bowl, but it is no less delicious for that and you are rich in the knowledge that the pool is waiting at home.

Now, looking out my bedroom window, I see one tanned foot protruding from the hammock that my friend has only just succeeded in hanging (challenging stone wall) and into which he has promptly installed himself in the welcome evening breeze. There is music playing. There is always music playing and it is unfailingly beautiful.  On est bien, là.

In short, on this birthday eve, I'm going on record to say: I am awash with good fortune. And unutterably grateful.