I write at www.thepaltrysum.com
I try and stay away from the comments sections on articles concerning San Francisco. You can divide the responders into three camps, the first do not live here at all and hate liberal SF and everything we stand for. The second group live here but transplanted, usually for tech jobs, from some ultra right wing […]
MoreL.A. is set apart from other cities: it is a city of extremes. I was meant to fly on to Seattle to meet with a member of Mr. Charming’s family. Instead I left the airport in Los Angeles with my kids, three bags and a guitar. I was running away. We were leaving. It was […]
MoreThere is a small patch of green outside my door, there are a few trees and bushes. As I walked outside to dump the trash, perching on a railing I saw a cuckoo, his brown head tilting as he considered staying or flying away. It is the first bird I have seen in over six […]
MoreI occasionally pull out Kerouac’s On the Road and open it up randomly, much as I have seen people do with the Bible. What does Jack have to say today, I wonder to myself. “I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived […]
MoreLets be honest about it, as much as I can go on and on about the Small Faces being a drug band (don’t ask me, I get a little obsessed), they don’t have even a start on Pink Floyd! Where someone once said the Faces made music about drugs, on drugs….the Floyd went one better: […]
MoreThere are certain albums that are the comfy ancient levis jeans of my listening habits. My nerves frazzled to within an inch of giving up on me entirely, my head hurting with a stress headache, I need to blur out the yelps from the street tent encampment and the shouts and bangs from some of […]
MoreTanabata is not the only excuse for a festival. New Years, various temple days over the year, are all reasons to bring out the stalls, and go have some fun. The street matsuri in my local area would take up entire thoroughfares, lined with stalls selling knickknacks. There would be little games of throw the […]
MoreI never got to see a hanami fireworks festival in Japan. The first year it was so hot and I wasn’t used to the heat, so standing outside in the humid hot night air getting bitten by mosquitos didn’t thrill me. Summer arrives in packs of fireworks in the shops, origami crafts for Tanabata in […]
MorePassion is a violent thing Possessive, red, hot, Always on the offensive. Passion devours Passion deflowers Passion is the fruit That is plucked from the tree Passion is always me And rarely you. Yes, passion is destruction Of self in pursuit Hunting down that Object of desire: Passion walks the high wire Strung from Love […]
MoreA very nice young man called me “young lady”. It was ironic. I cried. I mean I can see calling a 90 year old ancient one, “young lady” and it is cute. Awww…look you made her giggle. But dude…dude. It hurt. I am decades off being eligible for that joke! Decades! Man do I look […]
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