Honestly, I faced white-water rafting with more equanimity. And I have done this a time or two, had my disabled self hauled into a inflated conveyance and cast off down the, variously, Yampa and American Rivers. Of course, in neither instance was I piloting. No, command and control had been delegated to others. So never mind the foaming rapids, lethal boulders playing peekaboo, the surging currents. Really, that was someone else's problem. Driving to San Francisco is my problem. Gentle reader, Read more [...]

Let us go back to my occasional, that is to say, recurrent, dreams of driving a car that is out of control. You know what I mean. The brake goes to the floor with no effect, while the hill gets steeper, etc. This propels a certain amount of my current internal worry. The notion of setting off on some minor road excursion and finding myself in a whole heap of trouble. Case in point, the San Francisco fundraiser on Thursday that involves going to some high-rise on Market Street, where the parking is Read more [...]

More than a good idea, it seemed like a splendid one...at first...the sort of civic minded action we should all take. We should all take to the hills, I am now thinking, next time this impulse grabs me. So, to start, let's take one hill. Chenery St., San Francisco. Site of our new house. Of which we have putative ownership, but so far, remarkably little control. Which was why, for the second time in very recent history, I was pounding up the Chenery Street hill, our hill, at least in my mind. Read more [...]

Some surprises I don't like. A prime example involving my new van. Which explains why I wandered out of the live octopus display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium yesterday just to make sure. That the van was still there. It was. So was my bladder. Naturally, I hastened back inside. The real question, vis-à-vis surprises, being did I make it? After all, the psychodynamics of several million gallons of fluid circulating all around one in vast oceanic tanks, well, that sort of thing can have its effect. Read more [...]

This is it. The news has reached me. I am on final approach – if lucky – and no other. Sobering to be pushing 67. But somehow I am not sober enough. Not from the way I carry on. For example, I waltz into my local Jewish congregation for a brief event. And complain of being mystified. I don't know Hebrew. Have forgotten half the prayers and songs. And, yes, this will be remedied with the availability of the van. Still, Jane asks the logical question: why not study a bit? I mean, just a bit Read more [...]

Hard to say why the morning's walk proves to be such an ordeal, but it is, alas. What am I doing wrong? Things get under way painfully and stiffly, me leaning on Jane's arm in the accustomed way. Though, truth be told, I am trying to proceed differently, shifting more of my weight to the right. And since I am walking so much less these days, the shift seems vaguely cataclysmic. The sense that I am toppling to my paralyzed right side, things distinctly out of control. And so we proceed, Jane and I, Read more [...]