I sent Kelly a long email tonight, after not talking to her for a few months. It's a good recap of things going on, and things that will be going on, so I'm pasting pieces of it here:As for me... my life, en capsule: I've moved into a junior one-bedroom in a part of the TL called "Little Saigon." The few blocks around here are full of Vietnamese restaurants, markets, barber shops, video stores, et al. My apartment is on the fifth floor with bay windows overlooking the neighborhood. It has hardwood floors in the front and I've filled it with very little: two bookshelves, overflowing with all manner of beautiful books, a desk, and a simple, sleek, 50s mod-style futon/sofa from Denmark.
I've been here a few months and have been slowly making friends with people in the neighborhood and building. Allen and Maria, from Minnesota and Argentina, respectively, who run an NGO for street kids in Bogota, Colombia, and just moved to the City. Maria used to be a Pilates instructor and has the body, and stunning callipygean ass, to show for it. Being from Buenos Aires, she pronounces her double L's (ll) with a "sh" instead of a "yuh" -- "yo llamado a elle" (yo yam-ahdo ah aye-yuh) becomes "sho shamado ah aye-shuh." I could listen to her talk for weeks on end. Allen is a writer working on his first novel in between long sessions playing basketball with some Mexican guys on the other side of Van Ness. Cameron, the hot blonde social worker (at the St. Anthony's Foundation) and cabaret dancer who lived for a few years in Zambia. "Monica," the conflicted tranny-girl hooker from Sinaloa, Mexico, who hangs out on the corner near here and who I chat with, now and then, when we run into each other. Scott, the strikingly handsome and very suave black man in the apartment above me, originally from DC, now at Stanford Hospital, a fourth-year resident in surgery. All beautiful people that I'm happy to know, even though my relationships with each are in their infancy.
Speaking of Scott, I went to some schmootzy TL (Tenderloin, neighborhood) club called Suite 181 with him and some hussy-girl friends of his last night. My first time in a hip-hop club. It was too hot, too crowded, and had too much of that meat-market vibe that seems to go with clubs/events serving alcohol, but I enjoyed myself all the same. Pole-dancing girls in micro-minis or loose, tossable skirts made things more interesting, as I am, at the end of the day, still just a boy, googly-eyed over hints of snatch or boobs on display. Since it was overflowing with Asians, I think I was the 2nd tallest person in the entire club. Hah.
I'm leaving for Afghanistan in August. The plane tickets are booked, bought, and non-refundable, so I'm busying myself with visas, vaccinations, security reports, reading travelogues and history books, and teaching myself Farsi/Dari. I shaved my beard nearly completely off a few days before I decided on Afghanistan (on a whim, choosing it over Colombia). I'm now letting it grow back in, bushy and scraggly, looking like a tax-evader or shower-stall peeper. There's so much homework to be done for this trip that it completely dominates my mind-space. Consequently, I'm living in the trip now, everyday, even though it's still a month away. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, and the things I'm doing do need to get done, but I catch myself now and then and wonder where my ability to live "in the now" has gone. Stasis. The back corner of the fridge, but only temporarily.
Kristene and I are still seeing each other. She and I took her kids to see "Howl's Moving Castle" today and then walked around the Upper Haight with them, eating mediocre Mexican food and window-shopping. Her older daughter, age 11, is slightly dark and broody, but very witty and funny. She wants to be a poet and looks almost identical to how Kris looked when she was that age. The younger, age 6, is a whirling dervish of explosive energy. She wants to be "a celebrity and an abstract artist" when she grows up and has a beautiful spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Kris and I are very cognizant that eventually this relationship, functionally superficial as it is, will end when one or both of us decide we need more from a relationship/partner, etc, but that we want to be in each others lives even after that. That last part is where the flip has come about, in terms of me knowing her children or not. It's a recent (and careful) decision on our parts, so I'm sure last time you and I talked, her kids weren't yet in the picture. I think we both feel comfortable, at this point, that it's a good, healthy thing to do. It definitely wasn't a decision made in haste.
My mom and my youngest sister, Liesse, are coming to visit me next week. I'm excited to show them the city and to see and talk to them. My mom is playing it cool but Liesse is, at least ostensibly, pretty uncomfortable with me going on this trip. She called me the other day to express her concern and ask me if I could take a satellite phone with me. :) I can't tell if she's genuinely concerned, or if she's reflecting the discomfort of the people around her -- my mom and sisters -- and just has the least ability to keep is under wraps. Between now and next week, I'm flying to Washington DC for four days for work. Gug-alug, busy, it'll be nothing like a vacation, but at least it's a change of scenery. Maybe I'll have a chance to have dinner with Raquel one night if she's not too busy. The plane flights will be a good chance to read. I'm in the middle of eight books. Two on Afghanistan (contemporary), four on Islam, one novel, and one political memoir.
I received an email from SFSU a few days ago saying, "Congratulations! The final check has been done on your degree and you're officially graduated! Your diploma will arrive in the mail in six weeks." Done and stamped. Next up? I plan on applying to the International Relations masters program at State next fall. In the mean time, I've signed up for Spanish at CCSF this fall and will take the subsequent courses in the spring. I'll be fluent, or nearly so. Bilingual! I'm not sure French is still second on the list. Perhaps (Egyptian) Arabic instead?
Also in this "gap year," I'm trying to pursue a program acting as a TA for classes at San Quentin. Weeks ago, at an "underground restaurant" -- illegal, operating without a permit, fancy multi-course gourmet, one night a month and in a different persons house each time, strictly word-of-mouth -- in Oakland with Kris, her sister, and her sister's striking, Sarah McLachlan-looking girlfriend, I heard that there was a college program in the prison and that people could volunteer to teach or TA/tutor classes. I've been pursuing it since, meeting with the people running that and similar programs in SQ, and it looks like while I don't have the MA that they want, I might be able to finaggle my way into being a TA for a class or two there anyway. I really hope so! It seems like an awesome opportunity and I'm very excited about
it.
I'm not sure what else is really going on here. Mossy and Joey are pregnant. It'll be a boy. :) I got x-rays and models, etc, done for braces, but haven't fully committed just yet. I'm running again, and feeling good doing so, with no knee-pain. A few nights ago, I had a long dream that I was in the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan, jogging. Over verdant hills, along cobalt rivers, through fruit trees whose
branches were hanging low with ripe fruit, past villages comprised of mud huts and yaks. All the colors were hypersaturated and my most focused sensation, for the entire duration of the dream, was of inhaling air. I don't know how yaks got in there. My idyllic vision of Afghanistan is blurring with my similar vision of Tibet, perhaps? :) In another recent dream I was in a marketplace in Peshawar, Pakistan -- which is where I'll be landing before going overland, over the Khyber Pass, to Afghanistan -- and I was speaking Dari to someone. It was a phrase I'd learned earlier that day, and I spoke it beautifully and the merchant responded. In the dream, there was no translation into English, etc, just simple, easy understanding.
The moment was perfect and when I woke up, I remembered it and took it as a good sign that my subconscious was happily assimilating the language. I'm very excited about this trip! As long as things don't go completely pear-shaped before the September elections, it should be a fun trip. Maybe it'll still be fun even if they do... or at least "interesting." I really don't want to be stuck spending all my time indoors with a bunch of scared gringos though. We'll see!
