brazil

sunday morning. easter morning. arose early, while it was still dark outside and readied myself for a sunrise service at church. stood in the brisk chill of easter morning under the tall 3 crosses as we sang hymns and waited for sunlight to warm us. drank coffee from a thermos that steamed in my hand. felt the warmth.
returned home and proceeded to mount up on my motorbike for an 2 wheeled easterly retreat. into the oakland hills cutting across skyline and joaquin miller surveying vistas below. through the zig-zags of grizzly peak and then up the steep switches toward tilden park. at the brazil building spotted a wedding reception spilling out on to the patio. pulled over and turned off the bike.
pulled out the ear plugs and watched as a light wind rocked the cherry blossoms, gently creating an effect like snowfall that dazzled the eyes. then watched as wedding guests dressed in elegance moved about and listened to their lilting voices, laughing. and for a few moments wished to be a part of that community. the beauty and sanctity of a wedding on easter sunday. new life.
the moment passed. realized place and time. returned ear plugs and sparked bike back to life. then tore back down the hills through berkeley and tunnel road, and finally screaming back on highway 13, toward home.

much to learn

our smallest youngling seen here regaled in his newly fashioned robe (thanks mom) is hard at work studying the jedi arts, and dedicating himself to learning. however, he was born on a thursday, and as the poem says he has far to go. fortunately, we are here to assist.

"truly wonderful, the mind of a child is."

-yoda

imagination
circumnavigates our thoughts
and then returns home

in humility
we stand tall confident in
our high position

still spinning

taking time today to unwind from weekend's activities and slowly spin my wheels.

jang town

one of the great things about having a blog is this idea that you are sharing with the world what's on your virtual bulletin board or refrigerator door. this is jang town, created by my little girl. it's where all her friends and family live and play. in jang town everyone gets along and according to ellie it's always sunny there. except when it's cold, but you still get to wear your favorite outfit. so stop in and say hi, catch a game at a&t, eat an ice cream and let your dog run free in the park. see you at the fountain.

time now for back to school and new shoes...and the endless staring down at them as we walk.

ride

it's all about the ride...
(and it helps if you've got a cool bird in tow)

the familiar sight
of faithful friends brings joy to
the tired and weary

sweet deal

my wife scored this at the target today for less than 3 bucks! i miss my cruiser.

the road diverged

i was thinking about choices the other day. in life when we look back it's sometimes difficult to spot the intersections that moved us from one road to another. unlike film or books, our lives don't always arrange themselves in neat chapter headings of a purposeful narrative. more often it looks to us in the present (and even in memory) as if we were the subject of a sayles brothers documentary in which the camera is continually rolling and no one ever takes time to edit previous footage.
certainly as we grow older though the bigger events of life serve as stone mile markers on our journey through the game of life. college or career. relationships and marriage. the birth of a child. the death of a parent. those are the big ones. and yet how many thousands of choices along the way, seemingly unimportant end up on the cutting room floor of our minds? maybe it's because i'm a man, i don't know, but i have always associated the passing of different eras in my own life by the vehicles i owned at the time, and the symbolic meaning they had as they transported me through time.
it was early summer of 1992 and i found myself living in the spare bedroom of my mother and new stepfather. i had already been out. first living in san francisco and then a traveler on the roads of america. back to san francisco, and now through a series of events found myself homeless and living in a condo bedroom in the town of my youth. the town i had sworn off so recently. i was working part time at the local blockbuster video and my life was a pattern of waking late in the day, hanging out with those friends whose schedule matched my own, working the swing shift, then taking the requisite two videos home each night to watch late into the night.
i had no vehicle, so this meant i was dependent on whoever could shuttle me from place to place. that or i was wearing out shoe leather. the part time video job was certainly no great career choice, and at the promptings of my mom i went looking for something more constructive to occupy my days. the best i thing i could find was a temp job which would have me basically copying real-estate papers for a loan office as there was a refinance boom taking place that summer. the thought of putting a button up shirt and tie on each day and working under the mind numbing fluorescence was hardly appealing, but as i mentioned the proposition to my mom she encouraged me to do it anyway. actually, let me be more truthful. she basically put it to me that i had been living the slacker life and that i had better do something, even this menial temp job or i would further spiral into a life of meaninglessness illustrated by the image 45 year old men sitting next to their mothers on oprah who still lived in the spare bedroom. well, maybe it wasn't that dramatic, but she did challenge me to work through this assignment, and i took the challenge.
still with no vehicle i hoofed or hitched a ride to the bart train each morning and took the train up to the next to last northeastern most stop on the line. the office was a short walk and there each day i fulfilled my duties in the obligatory white shirt and tie. and on each break i ducked outside to the fresh air and sat in front of the obligatory office fountain and counted down the days and hours until it would be over. and as i counted down time i also counted up the dough i was making whose purpose would net me a vehicle. my older friend and mentor had agreed to sell me his little motorcycle for the tidy sum of $300 and promised to hold it until i had finished the temp assignment and gotten paid. and it was the promise of that two wheeled fantasy that kept me going those dreary weeks. finally the job came to an end. i had copied and assimilated every backlogged freddie-mac and fannie-mae form to satisfaction, and caught the overwhelmed loan staff up. and apparently i had done so satisfactorily, because just a short time later i received another assignment from the same temp agency.
this one sent me out on a 2 day inventory job for one of the newly opened tower record stores in dublin, calif. and this was right up my alley. a complete contrast to the office i had just come from, housed with mostly middle-aged ladies in frumpy attire and manner. tower was full of young hipsters. wild characters with amazing mythologies, many of which bore testament by the newly mass-popularized totems of tribalism, tattoos and piercings that adorned them. here again, my faithfulness to completing the task at hand, steadfastly urged on by that original challenge from my mother, i was asked to stay on as a permanent employee. a position that would ultimately begin to cobble for me a creative career. for as i started as just a cashier, i eventually worked my way into the position of "store artist" at a time when i needed an outlet for the burning desire to make each day something with my hands.


and as i went to supply myself with a vehicle to match my new career, i ended up passing on joe's little yamaha. i stayed on 4 wheels and purchased my girlfriend's white 69 squareback instead. (she having just upgraded from this temperamental beast to a more reliable and bright orange 72 squareback) i did so because i imagined the wagon would be a better long distance champ riding the dublin grade back and forth each day. it turned out though to be a constant question mark as it's cracked case meant slow cancer and had other quirks it displayed as well. it would often leave me stranded until i learned to gap the spark in the distributor, and the primitive automatic shifter sometimes failed to make its connection through the sensitive transmission plates. ultimately, less than a year later i ended up selling it to another artist named falco. (more on him some other time) and upgrading to a 79 water pumper - the scirocco.
but even as i had passed on the little yammy that joe kept in his garage all those years, my friend todd would end up purchasing it instead. and ultimately through my association with he and his brother jess, i found myself one sunny sunday morning riding this little bike through the beautiful back mountain roads of mt. hamilton with a bunch of other sub 100cc nuts and thinking about the road not taken and the one that got away.

black friday

as with all of the other retailers today i was open crazy early, fighting back the crowds with hired seasonal security and of course offering insane deals. well, not so much. but there is a new design in the toastrobot store, and a few new additions as well. so stop on by and browse a little and if you don't see anything you like let me know and i'll see what i can do within reason. (i can't afford personal shoppers just yet)
and for the first lucky customer who makes a purchase this holiday season, i'll throw in a little thank you gift from the toastrobot archives. so remember, keep your head. no pushing or shoving. and have yourself a merry little christmas time!

shameless promotion

my cafe press shop is now open for business. as i am still a newb to the whole process it may take me a little time to get up to speed, but in the interim i have this one offering for any devotees who may want to proudly show their affiliation. more to come in weeks ahead. for now, check us out at http://www.cafepress.com/toastrobot.

frances

my wife and i had the chance to attend a wedding recently. we hadn't been to a wedding in a while. and as they are one of the last of the vanishing social rituals, we weren't exactly sure how to dress. barbara has this great copy of amy vanderbilt's "book of etiquette" from the 1960's which we love to peruse, and of course it all made so much more sense then. there were rules. you knew the rules. and then, if you chose to flout convention, well, that was your call. but there were still rules. and now it seems we have no rules.
so as we prepared for the wedding barbara said "let's do it up. forget whether or not everybody will be there in cowboy boots and hawaiian shirts. let's dress like we're going to a wedding." and so we did. she in a dress she had just made, and me in my old (but still very fine) sharkskin suit. yes, we were ready to cut a rug as we headed out the door. and the wedding was beautiful. the bride was a queen, and the groom was in love with his bride, you could see it on his face.
and as we walked out of the church i spotted a beautiful little lady in a lemon suit and gloves and asked if i could snap her picture. she grabbed my arm and blushed and turned away. "why?!" she asked. "because you're beautiful" i told her. she relented. i asked her name. she said it was frances. and then we told her our dilemma about whether or not to dress up for a wedding, to which she replied "i always do". well said frances.

little secret

while down in the bay area a few weeks back staying with a friend i absentmindedly left my belt behind. he called me immediately to let me know, but i figured i'd be back soon enough anyway. "how much do i really need a belt?" i thought. quite a bit as it turns out. sure, there were some pairs of pants and shorts that didn't require it, but i soon discovered that sans support i was quite limited in my fashion choices. (i mean you can't wear sweatpants everyday)
then i remembered in the back of one of my drawers hidden away was a pair of red suspenders. don't ask me how i got them. i'm pretty sure they were a Christmas gift one year from my mom, and may have even come with a matching bow tie, who knows. and i'm really not sure why i've kept them; until now. desperate to wear these shorts one day i strapped up and concealed the braces beneath my t-shirt. although i felt a little odd at first, i soon adapted to my new hosen. i can sympathize a bit with the ladies now and actually i really enjoyed not having that constricting feeling around the bottom of my stomach. and then while reading the sartorialist the other day i thought, "this ain't bad"
and then, out of the blue my old belt showed up again in the mail. my friend must have gotten tired of holding on to it for me. so you may be wondering, now that i have the choice am i still wearing the braces? alas, it turned out to be a summer fling. the red michael jackson suspenders have returned to the darkness of my dresser drawer. still, it's nice to know they're back there. like a reserve parachute, might need 'em again someday.