Man and life

I've spent the last few days hanging out with old friends and meeting some new ones. Most especially, though, I've spent them delighting in Jono and Sushu's newfound matrimony. The weekend has been a whirlwind. Hell, in a one-hour span today alone I established in-jokes with my buddies about buffalo, pagodas, and pylons in separate episodes. (Golden Gate Park has all three.) For the record, Stephen's buffalo call is "buffalo!" said in a slightly different voice, and the famously bizarre (but perfectly grammatical) sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" relies on the word "buffalo" being a collective plural noun, a transitive verb, and an adjective, properties we couldn't think of any other word that fit. (The sentence means "Buffalo from a city in New York who are bullied by other buffalo from a city in New York bully still other buffalo from a city in New York.") The stories for the pagoda and pylon are similarly elaborate. We all learned the word "equitational" in connection with the latter.

But I digress. I should really start with Friday, a day spent mostly at the home of the grandparents of Aza Raskin (a webfamous software developer) exploring their wonderfully eccentric farm and treehouse. They have chickens, goats, alpacas, a dog, a cat, a python named Monty, an African gray parrot (not a Norwegian blue), a swing hung from tree branches perhaps thirty feet high, and two tree forts connected by industrial-strength rope netting. I traveled this strange realm with friends old and new; it's been a pleasure getting to know Aza's sister Aviva over the weekend, and I hope we stay in touch! (They have a third sibling, Aenea, and if you are observant about language you will notice that their parents have a particular playful naming convention for their children.) At the Raskin clan's house Alexis and Aviva baked a red velvet cake to complement the wedding while I wrote a story to perform at the picnic, a work of fiction based on the tales I've recounted in previous entries here; it includes elements from Ruby Falls, from Tunnel Hill, and from Winnemucca, and tells how my nonexistent friend Richard had a surreal experience while on a road trip to San Francisco to pick up a statue of St. McGuffin.

The following day I actually told this story in front of the picnic crowd of about sixty people, to general applause! Other acts included a trumpet/cello duet (?!) written especially for the wedding, some really fantastic juggling with that spinning thing on a wire, two ukulele songs, and embarrassing stories about the many ways Jono has almost killed himself over the years. During the eating portion of the picnic I wandered off with Alexis and Aviva. We found a creek, took our shoes off, and had a foot dip. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was for me, maybe more than the storytelling. Spontaneity is difficult! I love spontaneous people, but I have trouble cultivating that quality in myself. I can't go out and mindfully practice it, either, because by definition you can't plan spontaneity. So instead I just have to be alert to the times when I can break out of my own expectations to create something unexpected and wonderful. In this case I came out refreshed and with dirty feet. The willingness to accept dirty feet as the price of being able to tell this story is relevant to what I'm trying to say here.

After the picnic there was the wedding dinner, where I sat at a table of twelve and was very nearly socially functional! The toasts and well-wishes would have been nauseatingly sweet for anyone but Jono and Sushu, who are superhumanly sweet themselves and deserve all the sweetness the world can bestow on them. Afterward there was karaoke. That started out okay, but it turns out that when you pack forty people into a room with flashing lights and loud music and bad technology and people trying to make conversation with you in this environment you have a recipe for social disaster. I fled the scene after about an hour and spent the rest of the evening in my car until the friends I was driving home were ready to leave, turning the car on only to play "Blackbird" softly. I felt really awful. This is the same as the creek story except for the outcome. But I don't want to beat myself up for that; karaoke could have been fantastic and I gave it the opportunity to be. Adventures don't always have happy endings, but most happy endings come about because of adventures.

And then today I got to meet Jono's very little sister Aleksa, who is without doubt the nerdiest eight-year-old girl I know. (I'm guessing at her age.) Jono, Sushu, Aleksa, and I played some Rock Band together, and it turns out I'm best at the drums while Aleksa is best at singing. Then there was tourism: the Exploratorium, a San Francisco interactive science museum full of the coolest exhibits I have ever seen, from magnetic sand to imaging technology that draws evolving, moving stylized sketches of you in real time as you stand in front of the screen gaping at it; and Golden Gate Park, which I've already talked about. That plus the amazing Asian food that my visit to Cali has been full of made this a day well worth getting out of bed for.

It looks like I have two more full days in the Bay Area. I'm driving Alexis and possibly our fellow anime club alum Isaac up to Portland and then Seattle later this week, probably Wednesday, in convoy with Aviva. Until then I will happily stay in these bay cities that have afforded me so many adventures!