It’s the worst of times and the best of times…when Jane is away. What’s best? I am forced to confront reality. The latter involves a certain amount of aging, vis-à-vis neuromuscular decline, mixed with a very large dose of fear.
My brother and sister-in-law stayed with me during this exciting couple of days. And the worst…or best…excitement came on the first morning alone. Well hardly alone. After all, Richard and Debbie were upstairs. But after waking up early and brooding over the question of whether or not I could get myself out of bed…abdominal musculature being what it is…I attempted to get myself up in the worst possible way. Failed, and yelled up the stairs for my brother’s help. Which arrived soon enough.
Panic does have a way of distorting things. The next morning I employed what I already know. Swing the legs off the edge of the bed, then swing the torso up and over the center of gravity. Then get up and make some tea. Good British tea in this house. We also have a good British role model in my wife. Which contrary to popular cliché has less to do with the stiff upper lip and much more to do with the upper cortex…which given half a chance, does see us through most things.
Though one of the exceptions is definitely public transport. Sorry, San Francisco Bay Area, but you cannot be bursting with tech dollars and impoverishing your transit infrastructure…at the same time. I don’t buy it. I want you to buy it, that is to say, invest in whatever it takes to keep the rusty system running.
And on this topic, I have very little positive to say about my own generation. The problem is us. We. Unbeknownst to me, in California my parents must have voted to tax themselves to build what was to be the world’s largest highway system…and simultaneously authorizing funds for the most ambitious aqueduct project ever undertaken anywhere…while sending a university and state college system sprawling across the land…. I’m not mentioning the moon race, a rather dubious quasi-military effort to land astronauts on the Sea of Tranquility, just in case the latter would provide a bumper crop of green cheese. Whatever.
The country that got a man to the moon these days cannot get a cripple to Market St. Such is the chronically broken state of the elevators on BART, our regional subway.
Anyway, the particular broken elevator was at Castro Station, and under the purview of the San Francisco Municipal Railway, AKA, Muni. Out for service. A notice that could be interpreted as having an illicit date with another elevator. But, no. And why dwell on this? We got to Davies Hall in time to hear the San Francisco Symphony at its exalted best. With both the fragmentary Mahler’s 10th. And the complete First. San Francisco audiences tend to be somewhat restrained. But after seduction by French horns, excitement by timpani and a general cello-induced swoon, everyone leapt to their feet, applauding madly. Long live Michael Tilson Thomas. It’s enough to get one out of bed in the morning.