More of San Francisco

I know I promised you some more reflections on my trip, but since returning to New York, I've been inundated with all the work I've half-doing/not-doing since the start of the semester. Someone needs to write a book (no, not me) that treats graduate school as a constant negotiation of guilt--of work that's been deferred, put off, not done or not done well enough. It would help if I didn't care, but I do care, hence I am in graduate school, so I am stuck with guilt until I decide to do my work. I have done quite a bit this week, but it's not enough. See, there's the guilt.

Maybe I should just chill out, eat 5 more choco tacos, and wait until inspiration hits.

San Francisco was great, if I haven't said that already. The weather was perfect, the food arguably as good as New York, and the people much nicer and less crazed in their goal(stress)-orientedness than the Newyorkese. I was having such a good time going on long runs by the bay, watching old people on the nude part of Baker Beach, and getting lost in the Presidio, that I forgot to take pictures until the last day, when Anna and I went to Sausalito, Miur Woods to see the redwoods and then to the beach.

Here's a picture of Anna in Sausalito, eating an overpriced breakfast. I'd like to tell you that we were surrounded by fishermen, but we weren't. Anna looks hot. Great colors, right?


Anna was at first resistant to our expedition into nature, but she soon turned down the Avril Lavigne on the radio and began belting out Ani lyrics as we descended into this misty valley!


Ok, Anna belting out soulful Ani DiFranco lyrics didn't happen, but we did descend to the misty valley where the big trees live.
They were big, and they made us quiet.




















When I am in New York, I miss being quiet and thinking in unbounded space. Being in New York can make you a cogitation machine, always responding to external stimuli through systematic procedures, dealing with inputs and outputs, being attentive so as to avoid a threat or to take advantage of an opportunity.

We drove up out of the valley to a lookout over the coast.



And then headed down to Miur beach!


I bought a $6 kite in Sausalito, and tried to fly it, but the wind was not helping. Anna laughed as I ran up and down the beach, trying to catch the wind. I think my spare tire was jiggling quite a lot. Beyond those rocks was one spare (old) nudist, rather tanned, with his ball sack hanging low. Hanging around were some great starfish that looked like bigs purply disfigured brains from the sea.


I later learned on wikipedia that starfish have external stomachs that swallow mollusks whole! Can you imagine your stomach reaching outside of your body to catch your dinner? I can.

God I feel like I'm Jack Hanna on his animal adventures show. I'll get back to regularly scheduled blogging soon, with more details of my totally sweet, downtown! life soon.