The view from Fell & Ashbury

If you think time is a fixed entity, then you're right. But you're also wrong. Two months in Barcelona stretched out slowly, deliberately, like a cat's first morning yawn. Mornings spilled into afternoons, poured into evenings, and the divisions between work and home and social and whatnot blurred into an indistinctive-but-lovely haze. In stark contrast, two months in the United States have whizz-zipped by, with barely a free moment to acknowledge the passage of time, nonetheless reflect and write on experiences had. Barcelona was the watched pot that never boils, while being back is the tea kettle that whistles sooner than expected.

Are Spain experiences superior to U.S. ones? Hardly, but that's hardly the point. We swore we would return home with fresh eyes, with the full intention of approaching the familiar life with all the enthusiasm, naivety, and freshness we had for the unfamiliar life. Thus far, we have simply fallen back into the routine chaos that passes for daily life here.

But, I shall try to remedy that now ... I bring you the Bay to Breakers.


This annual race/drunkfest passes right by our apartment building on Fell and Ashbury. The image above is typical of what one sees from our own vantage point. But I imagine, from the helicopter's perspective, the view is not unlike a person looking down upon a worm she's just squooshed with the blunt rubber hoof of her sneaker. The front half wriggles energetically towards the finish line while the rest dissolves into sludge and then merely damp concrete. Drunken, costumed damp concrete to be precise.

And were I not essentially of this place (I am from Lubbock and Salinas, but we'll save that for another time), I'd be fascinated by the mishapen nudists, the drunken girls and boys, the guy who danced his hot pants off atop a worse-for-the-wear SUV... But it all seems so predictable. Here's what I did like:

The women were sent out first. Not the fastest in the race, but the first to pass by our home so very early on a grey Sunday morning. Their bodies lean and taut and tan. I thought of beef jerkey being shot out of some poor choking bastards throat.

And then there's this notion of the Kenyans, which has become slang for the front-runners. They were all African men with extremely dark skin and very long legs. And Kenyan jokes were in abundance before they passed us by, but then as they did pass by a drunken, homeless man started screaming at them: "Kenyans, fucking Kenyans." My pale, mediocre-runner skin crawled, and I thought I might want to stop making that joke. After them, the white corporate teams, chained together like galley slaves. There should be a name for that.

I left. I went to "double down," Yoga Loft speak for back-to-back classes. I indulged in three hours of gradually more intensive poses while things in front of my apartment degraded into drunken, Bon Jovi mayhem. Witness image below.

But it was I who had trouble walking on Monday.

Yes, we are home and will post more soon.

--JENN