I have had this idea, had it for quite a while, and now as I emerge from the Caltrain station in San Francisco, there it is staring me in the face. It is the bicycle shop. Well, more than that, a parking-cum-repair operation. The place is more or less out of bounds for me. I am hardly a bicyclist. And the fact that I once was makes it all the more difficult. After all, in between my able-bodied youth and the present there was this interim phase of disabled tricycle riding. Which came to an end 10 Read more [...]

My uncle emerges from the hallway leading to his garage, gazes about those of us gathered in his living room and makes a beaming, openhanded gesture. I know this bemused stance and have seen it all my life. A gentle and generous-hearted person, he is inviting us to share in his consternation. What is going on here, his expression says. And is he feigning schlemiel status or does he actually deserve it? Thus, my uncle's familiar comic trope, which in this case both warms the heart and chills the soul. Read more [...]

For a moment, looking up from my cappuccino and away from Steel Wheels, all seemed marvelously clear. In my mind, certain cosmic forces had coalesced near Yosemite National Park, and damned if I wasn't going to forge them into change. Hovering over my mind's scene in the lower Sierra was the former director of Caltrans, California's Department of Transportation. Good thing all of these disparate bits were coming together, for not everyone had the ability to synthesize strains of thought this far-flung Read more [...]

I wonder what Isaac Babel was thinking as his captors let him down some last corridor of Lubyanka Prison. That he had always known this would come? Or hoped that his dark forebodings were only imagined? Either way, he had peopled his own consciousness with reality's hard edge. And whether it is better to be prepared or unprepared for the KGB's bullet, who can say?Which brings me to Valerie and Luis, 19-year-olds, one my sister's former student. They have visited me for the last five days. Well, more Read more [...]

It is the spirit behind the action that counts, I was thinking as Jane navigated Saturday night Bay Bridge traffic into San Francisco.  For we have had quite a marvelous, yet strange, afternoon at the Berkeley Repertory.  The Knee-High Theatre is visiting from Truro, Cornwall, with a production of a Grimm fairy tale, The Wild Bride.  They take on anything, these people.  And their secret, if there is one, is that they are operating on a different level.  This is my only conclusion.  Read more [...]

The wheelchair guys, you will remember them, have just repaired my Swedish model, and not only that, dramatically amped up the speed.  Pretty good, right?  Perhaps not, upon reflection, and reflection is what it is all about.  Where, after all, am I hurtling at such a rate?  Lunch?  Peet's?  Trader Joe's?  Please.  None of these locations demands the wheelchair equivalent of a TGV.  Though if there is such a thing, my Swedish model would be well on the Read more [...]