Crisis

I've run out of cigars and I have no car. (Only slightly less tragic than "I've fallen and I can't get up!")

It is weird that in order to buy the pretty non-special cigars I like, I have to travel two and half miles in this formerly free-wheeling city. Uphill. Welcome to San Francisco, this very non-religious freethinking town where, nevertheless, you must do penance if you have a vice contrary to the dogmas of The First Church of the Open Mind.*

But something vehicular may be in the wind. Found an ad for a 2000 Rodeo, silver, on the Peninsula, in my price range. The owner is gonna send me the VIN so I can do a Carfax check. Very valuable, those things. Losing my parked car in daylight to a drunk truck driver was one of the several moments that has made 2010 so far a year I'd largely like to skip. We'll see.

Used my Clipper card for the first time last night, to go over to Noe Valley for dinner with a friend. You just touch it to the machine inside the bus and, poof, you're on. No need to carry quarters around. (Both B and my ex encouraged me to get one, a rare moment when both of those guys were on the same page.) But I do hope my use of public transportation will be only occasional. The folks on some of those lines, the 24, for example, are not my peeps. The word "dregs" comes to mind.

After dinner, I discovered, for the second time in my life, that someone I considered a good friend considers me their best friend. We've known each other for 13 years but only see each other every six weeks or so. We hardly ever talk on the phone, both being introverts. It was very nice, but a surprise. My ex tells me that someone I consider a good friend is actually MY best friend but I don't know it.

Somehow Hallmark wisdom came through: "Friendship doubles your joy and divides your sorrow". But it can also divide your joy and double your sorrow! In this postlapsarian world, nothing is innocent.

OBTW, on a non-crisis wavelength: It's hard to beat the smell of bacon cooking. Great smells: the clean Pacific air that flows over Twin Peaks in the afternoons, baking bread at (of all places) Subway, the garlic and ginger smell outside Asian restaurants, incense (of the Catholic, not Asian kind), brewing --and especially double-brewing-- coffee in the morning, vanilla in the bottle, Parmesan cheese, the pine and lavender scented warm air in the Sierras, the first whiff of cigarette or cigar, the aromas of a grown man in flagrante delicto.

The car thing. The cigar things. A bunch of other things. Remind me of (at least IMHO) my major character flaw: procrastination. It is amazing how my mind will conspire against me sometimes to make me forget, actively repress the memory of, things I need to do that I don't like to do. I can decide to handle something while I am in the bedroom and by the time I get to the living room have no memory of it. It has caused me more grief and expense in my life than I care to ...remember. Maybe that'll be my next therapeutic task..unless I forget...after I figure out why I find the unattainable so irresistible. (Thanks, Leah.)

A few years ago I was leaving my job after a late meeting and a psychologist on the Board, a straight man, got into his car right next to mine. I was lighting up a cigar. He looked over, somewhat surprised, and then quoted the Freudian cliche, "Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." For some ungodly reason, I grinned and replied, "And sometimes it isn't." He turned as red as a beet.

*I've been thinking of getting a dog. Probably won't, but I like the idea. One of the local animal rescue groups that sets up in the neighborhood has a website where I went to read the adoption agreement. Basically, you only lease the dog from them. It never becomes your property. You can't give it away, etc. and if they find you breaking the agreement, they state the right to "rescind the adoption." At least when you adopt a child, the kid is yours. Dogs, apparently, are more precious.