Signs of Chaos, Signs of Chance, Signs of Structure

Not that I tend to believe in signs of the apocalypse as more than fodder for the thus-named section of Sports Illustrated--a weekly one-shot example of something outrageous, generally connected to sports--but the last several days have offered up several incidents that are just plain weird, crazy, eerie, however you want to describe them.

1) Thursday night, I'm walking from O'Farrell Street down Powell to take BART out to the Mission to Marina's apartment, when I notice a long line of cable cars in holding pattern, waiting to proceed into the final corridor for the cable car turnaround in the big plaza on Market Street. At first, I figure it has to do with a high demand for available cable cars for tourists fresh from the authentic San Francisco experience of shopping in the Westfield Centre, complete with a fancy European spelling of 'mall', not to mention a Nordstroms.

But no. As I cross Ellis Street and get into the pedestrian plaza which allows no traffic save the cable cars, I see a perimeter of police caution tape surrounding two cable cars, throngs of camera-toting rubberneckers, and, as I reach a certain angle, the taxi cab that somehow managed to turn into this corridor and crash into two stopped cable cars.

I don't care if your passengers were in a hurry to get to the airport, as my friends heard later; if you drive a taxi in this city, you really ought to be aware of where the cable cars are going to be, especially in such a well-known setting. How do you NOT know to not make that turn?

2) Friday afternoon after lunch with Marina, I walk her to her car and then take a leisurely stroll around the block, which takes me up the hill behind the UCSF Laurel Heights campus. At the top, looking east towards downtown and Cathedral Hill, I see an ash-grey plume of smoke towering into the sky, which is rarely a positive thing. As I head back to work, I see the engine from Station 10 tearing away, siren blaring.

I find out later there has been an underground explosion of unknown origin at O'Farrell and Polk, and an exclusion zone of a few blocks in diameter is maintained for much of the afternoon. It's comforting to think that there is a possibility of the city's infrastructure just suddenly exploding under your feet.

3) Saturday afternoon, after we learned to play croquet (for which our anti-colonialist Filipino friend chided us while wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt), we drove to Berkeley for lunch on the patio at Jupiter, surrounded by trellises of climbing flowers, Marina's sister and mom and nephew, and Nephew Boden's latest gaggle of charmed female fans. Leaving them to the shopping at Urban Outfitters, I wend my way back to the BART Station, where, while waiting for the train to take me back to the city to watch the U.S.-Honduras World Cup Qualifier, I hear a sudden, sharp bang, followed by a subtle vibration. An earthquake delays everything for ten to fifteen minutes while they monitor for aftershocks.

It is tempting to link the these three events together into a narrative of doom, but really, the latter is just typical geological activity, and the first two just ordinary examples of the failings of human beings and/or our technology.

4) And on the more cheerful side, on our walk back from the Sunday Streets festivities today, we passed a street sign indicating the end of Lucky Street, a rather down-trodden alley, from what we could see. We turned the corner, and I promptly spied a lucky penny. Take that for what it is worth. One cent, in this case, unless you choose to be more metaphysical about it.