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Parking lot circus: CABALLERO

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As soon as I stepped inside to the darkness and the sound of heavy and light feet going up and down the metal stands with seats in anticipation of what is going to be the circus, I was happy.  When it starts, my breath is taken away by the beautiful young people, with their talent in costumes galore, prancing out on the stage in music, song and dance presenting themselves

One by one you get to know them: the two clowns that work off each other, the juggler and the many trapeze artists who are gloriously attired. Two of them missed the catch, and fell to the net below. “Ooooo  Aaaahh”. 

The strong bodies in the colorful skintight stretchy outfits are stellar with bright light bouncing off and around them. They are archetypal. They are an age old tradition. These people are traveling and living in the trailers that form the corral in the parking lot. At intermission, the people serving me Coke and popcorn are the same people preforming death defying acts earlier. They are a family.

After intermission, the big metal globe made of chain rolls out onto the stage and I think “Oh no. I thought maybe we weren’t going to have to do this.” 

But we do. The giant globe motorcycle act. Inside a tent, this act is nauseating from the gas fumes. And loud. The Mexican aspect makes it bearable.

First one guy gets in there and he zooms all the way around the circle; upside down at the top and truly that’s enough, but then a second guy goes in there, and zooms perpendicular to the first guy. Then a third guy comes in. He’s the diagonal track. A fourth one comes in and the fourth one is the smallest in the family and he crosses himself before he starts his ride and his ride is short.

The final act is a love story. A man and a woman balance at opposite ends of the same tightrope. They are doing amazingly ridiculous things in supreme balance. Watching someone that balanced, does something to you.

When home, all I had left of the magic was the popcorn container. On it is a picture of the circus family. It is now a napkin holder, holding my memories and my longings.

What’s punk in 2025?

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On my computer from KQED is a newsletter blurb. The enticing headline was about reviving a punk club from the 70s and 80s. I wondered if I could be the “”Mabuhay’” because I was here then and that was the only punk club I knew. And went to.

Although I knew I had been to the Mabuhay I couldn’t remember anything about my experiences there and wasn’t sure whether I had gone with Vincent before the fall or Linda after the fall. I texted Linda. Yes, she remembered going there and thanked me for the memory. Then I asked her about the 181 club which she didn’t remember to my astonishment. I texted back “You and I had been to hell and back when we met but compared to what was going on at the 181 we were innocents.”

A few hours later after riding on BART and emerging into and navigating through the low life on16th between Mission and Valencia, I walk a mile to the gallery where I will sit for four hours watching people and selling art.

Two people walk in. I think they’re guys and I say “Hey guys” when I realize that one of them has breasts and is probably not technically a guy but then I recognize that “guys”. although perhaps politically incorrect, is often said referring to an all-around person and not just a male so I’m not too embarrassed about the fact that I’ve used a masculine term for a couple. Then I think the Spanish language does this all the time. All of these thought processes take less than a second.

When the person with the breasts speaks they have a much deeper and fuller voice then the guy with the beard. It’s of no business of me or mine what the pronouns are. I’m never interested in that. I’m interested in who the person is, not what sex they like or are.

We greet each other, and after I ask them how their day is going, and hear their answer, I tell them that I have them trying to figure out who owns PayPal. This is a true icebreaker. We are at it right away… with Musk, Amazon, Airbnb: billionaire bashing.

These two people are so young and beautiful and alive and smart and all sexes at once, just so. This is in someway innocent compared to what they were doing at the 181 in the tenderloin of SF 40 years ago. That was scarier: more dangerous and vulnerable

But hey what’s going down for vulnerable today if not now everyone?

A woman in a hat with the dog comes in. The white dog is named Julian. Julian is so full of love, all I have to do is look at him, tilt my head a little, and he starts to wag his tail.

The woman with the hat and dog mentions the news. We together lament the news as I had been doing earlier in a different way billionare bashing with the guys.

This woman is more pointedly directed towards fascism. I wholeheartedly agree with her and say something hopefully stupid like “Still, it couldn’t happen like it happened in World War II“

She says “It’s already happening. They’re already taking innocent people and putting them away“.

All I could do is agree.

She bought a set of my heart card images. She paid cash and she, after tax, didn’t want the 72cents change. Told me to keep it. The heart cards she bought I originally made in February as “Valentines”. After February I call them “Love cards”.

Who doesn’t need a little more love?

Day and Night

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There an element in the mind that can keep me up at night. Not all the time, but sometimes. Anything almost can do it: taxes, old boyfriends, current work competitors, regret long lasting towards my mother. This last one can especially go on forever as she left her body years and years ago so it’s a no ending one sided conversation. A way I torture myself, I suppose.

In the daytime, all this disappears. No such psychic monster exists on waking. It’s as though the light of day has washed it all away.

There’s an in-between, however. YouTube helps in the middle of the night. If the thoughts become too overpowering, I turn the power over to the phone. I can listen to anything, anytime. My favorite is High Fraser reading Agatha Christie. It’s amazing how many people he can be in an audiobook. I love him.

Sure, maybe murder isn’t a great springboard into the unconscious world of sleep and dream, however Christie has no sex, no violence, no gore or torture. Mostly just intrigue in rich people’s houses.

I could listen to someone on YouTube who is spiritually enlightened. Lord knows there’s an infinite quantity. Problem is I have been on the spiritual path for so many decades, that the path has worn to dirt and walking on it creates clouds of dust which make for hazy vision.

I never saw my school at night. As a child, I left school at 2:30 and I made it home for dinner. We all did. We went to our friends houses or the park. Judy had a long haired dachshund and I had a short haired one. She was my best friend and her house was between school and my house. When time came, dinner bells sounded and mothers yelled. Judy’s house on Winterberry and my house on Maryknoll weren’t too far apart and I was a fast runner in those days.

Only once in 2nd grade did I see my school after dark. It was lit up for a book fair. It was magic. I got a book about dragons and I felt omniscient as I’d just learned to spell.

Now kids are in aftercare till after dark during daylight savings time. No magic in that.

Later as a young adult, I enjoyed pools at night with the round white light coming from the walls underwater: Magic. Walking hand and hand on a golf course under the moon: Magic.

Now, as an older adult, I sit in the hot tub very late at night hearing the owl say “who?who?who?” Magic.

Medical Money

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I’d had the same assistant for 5 years. He was a 25 year younger than me soulmate. He anticipated what was needed. He was never sick, late or on his phone during class. However, all things come to an end. “You’ll never find another Joseph” everyone said and I knew they were right

My next assistant Ann, was late, was sick and talked on her phone in class but she was OK.

What I can offer someone is just gig work. To post a Craigslist ad for help with a gig is $10. For help as a job is $75. I need someone to help Monday, Tuesday & Friday for 2 hours each afternoon. It’s 6 hours a week and even though I offer a way better than average hourly wage, it’s not gonna pay your rent.

The crazy thing is on Tuesday I teach 20 kids in a public school. I teach an afterschool class. Just an hour. For that hour myself and my assistant must have a TB test, a fingerprint scan, liability insurance, and most difficult: take a course and pass a test about children being neglected or abused. It’s a lot of fun.

Imagine the prospect of getting someone to jump through those hoops for a few hours a week. And yet there are people who need this job. Recently the best man for this job is a cheery 36 year old from Africa. He’s way overqualified but is in a pinch.

He jumps through all the hoops and only has the TB test to go. Seems simple, right? Not so. The only place you can get a free TB test is in the Village Free Clinic. It is the only free clinic around for many towns.

Everywhere else charges anywhere from $100 to $300 to get an office appointment with a TB test. Highway Robbery. The test itself only costs $5.  The Free Clinic only does the TB tests on Thursdays. It is mobbed. Cherry can’t get in. 

My friend said she used to work for a startup that did insurance billing for doctors and they horrifically would try to charge $100. for a bandaid and $200 for Advil.

When Saturday Night Live mentions Luigi Mangione  on weekend update, the audience immediately cheers a loud “Yaayy!!!” and Colin Jost makes eye contact with us in the fourth wall and says “Woooooo…”     And I’m right there with both of  them.

In an insane world, what’s sane?

Fire!

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In 1991 my ex-husband’s Oakland house burned down when I was walking around in San Francisco on Valencia Street with my friends. Pages of burnt books were falling on our heads. By the time we made it to Market and Castro there was a big TV store and through the street store window we could see all the fancy TVs. Every single one of them had live footage of the Oakland Hills burning.

Not long after that, I married my husband and moved to the new house in the Oakland Hills. The winds get very strong up here and when they get violent, the electrical company turns off the electricity and we get loud alerts on our phone. An alert is what you get before you get an evacuation notice. The alert says “hey, you might get evacuated!” more or less.

I don’t just have a ‘go bag’ I have it all figured out. I know what I can get in my Honda Fit and how I would pile it in there. I’ve got it written out because I know from my friends who’ve been through this; it takes 20 minutes before you get that evacuation notice and your house is burned to the ground.

I am now watching from Northern California some of the most expensive real estate in the world burn to the ground in southern California. L.A. City of the Angels. Pacific Palisades before and after images resemble Gaza and Ukraine. The whole entire thing looks like fiction. Except it’s horrifically real, and happening to people and places I know.

I heard of one man who is an artist like me. He is in his early 80s and did not want to lose his life’s work. Mostly he had accepted the situation. However, just one painting he wanted to save so he walked out of the house with it and the hurricane level winds used it as a sail to lift him high in the sky, and then drop him down breaking a few ribs.

I heard another story where a newsreporter was interviewing a woman who couldn’t talk for her sobs watching her house about to burn. She was most distressed because she had chickens and ducks in the backyard. The cameraman took pity on her and ran back there and got as many chickens and ducks out of that backyard as he could before the thing went up.

Holding a saved chicken, she could then talk a little bit. She held onto that chicken as if it was keeping her alive. Funny thing though, most people eat chickens.

Capitalism gone mad

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I live in a neighborhood that has a name. Which makes it a town within the big city.

In my town, there is a Safeway and there is a Lucky. I prefer to go to the Lucky. I’d rather be lucky than safe.

My son is needing something so we go at 8 pm. Next-door to the Lucky is a Rite Aid or is it CVS or does it make a difference?

My son decides he would rather shop there. I give in even after I explained that the grocery store has a better vibe which doesn’t make any sense to him.

We go into bright bright light. Brighter than bright. The store is Caverness. Huge. There are more than 21 aisles. It seems no one is in the store except my son and I.

We are going up and down the aisles trying to find simple things like toothpaste and Kleenex. We do this for a while.

We are in a vast wasteland desert of commercial products under lock and key passing by empty nail polish displays. It has a scary feel to it like a stranger might jump one in any empty aisle for any reason.

Even the minimally valuable items are under lock and key. It’s a giant store with no one in it. It’s capitalism gone mad. It’s creepy and crawley and suffocatingly artificial.

We finally ask the person at the register where to find the Kleenex and on my way to that I spy something on a lower shelf.

It is a translucent plastic bottle in a certain shape with a certain color blue label and I think to myself “I am out of rubbing alcohol, I’ll get that too”, so I pick it up.

Thank goodness, I have parked a little bit away so my son and I, in walking back to the car, have a chance to mutually acknowledge how strange the situation was.

When I get home, I realize I have witch hazel, not rubbing alcohol.