Perspective

I hesitated the other day to ask workers to move a truck that was blocking our exit from a parking space, because conflict makes me uncomfortable.

A 17 year old kid helping a relative haul groceries, and who had recently left one school to avoid gang trouble, was shot and killed in Bayview-Hunters Point, another innocent bystander.

I don't like driving in the city, because of all the cars and noise and having to stalk people for their parking spaces. It's loud and metallic and non-tranquil.

After a dinner on Mission Street at Specchio, we couldn't get back to the car right away, because a police car was blocking entry and exit from the side street where we parked and where two people were shot while we ate.

I sometimes get agitated because I can't decide if I really want to commit to writing.

I actually have a good job with some job security at a job I can believe in philosophically. Job! Yay!

The people who crush through the back doors of Muni buses irk me, especially the fare-dodgers, and the loud teenagers with their skateboards and the cloying scent of artless permanent marker. And when I walked past someone on the street today smoking a cigarette, the scent was like swallowing liquid ash.

Looking at the city from the top of Bernal Hill, it is divided into two tidal pools of architecture, north and south, the buildings like water filling the spaces between the hills, frozen in a sunset. The downtown skyline is like a force of nature. A red-tailed hawk settles quietly, unnoticed by others, on the branch of the tree above our heads.