When I bought this suit, it was the year 2000. Many things were different then, including my waistline. The difference between then and now is not so profound as uncomfortable. I can barely fit into this suit. Wearing the silly thing has a strangling effect about the lower thorax. Never mind. In this way, I tell myself, I shall achieve dietary moderation. Which seems to be working so far, three hours into today's discomfort. Surely I know what I'm doing. And what am I doing? Well, I'm off to the Read more [...]

It's part of my stomping ground, Canyon Market. And damned if I wasn't stomping…or wheeling…through the place yesterday morning in search of a Saturday morning taster of frijoles when minor disaster struck. The place routinely offers customers samples on the small steel table near the exit. Of course, the table is small. Everything is small at Canyon Market, except my appetite. Because I can always conceive of stuff to eat, I can also conceive of stuff to buy. And on this particular date, the Read more [...]

In the olden days waiting for a bus was fraught. One gazed down the street hopefully. The bus either appeared or it didn't. Meanwhile, one waited. Godot waited too, so this is not without precedent. What Godot didn't have is an iPhone app. The latter tells me exactly where my bus is, when it will arrive…and roughly how satisfied and fulfilled I will be when it does. Nothing like data to factor in with other data, and come up with a life course. For example. Imagine that your wheelchair batteries Read more [...]

Hurtling down the road of life…damned if I didn't run into the technology editor of one of the nation's national newspapers. She is our neighbor. And while her task is to cover Silicon Valley, she admitted to me that this particular Saturday her mind is elsewhere…specifically in the sordid and gobsmacking news that endlessly rolls out of the White House. I found it reassuring that someone involved in such a disciplined profession, her time tightly rationed and her mind highly focused…also can't Read more [...]

Basic advice regarding what might be called multitasking. If you're going to learn French, go for it and learn French. If you're going to rent a disabled-accessible van in Paris, go for that too. Just don't do both at the same time. Actually, I don't find language learning all that funny. So let's forget the anecdotes. Suffice it to say that after a series of email exchanges, a French company had informed me that I could rent a van with a fold-down wheelchair ramp and tool around Paris for three Read more [...]

Hard to say exactly what was happening attitudinally, but there I was waiting for my sister in front of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art…and not being nice to the homeless passersby. One wanted me to buy his newspaper, a publication of and by the homeless. Which logically is the very sort of thing self-styled writers should support, right? Wrong. I reacted badly. Maybe I get tired of being so regularly importuned. So I moved 100 m up the street, only to encounter a withered woman in a wheelchair. Read more [...]