The Masquerade Ball

Something there is that doesn't love a...ball. Especially a masquerade ball, where concealing your identity, or at least pretending to, is the objective. But there are ironies involved.

At the fundraiser we attended a week ago, couples and singles filed into the room in festive masks, spiffy cocktail dresses and black suits, dinner jackets, and elegant costumes. A court jester, Marie Antoinette, Spanish ladies, Phantoms of the Opera. We came as polished versions of ourselves, the perfectly coiffed, manicured, the camera-ready people we aspire to be. Why then--of all times--did we want to deny who we were?

A mask would be more appropriate, perhaps, when I dash to Safeway in the early morning, de-coiffed, wearing yesterday's yoga pants and sneakers. Or when the UPS man wakes me from a sound afternoon nap. Or the time I inquired about a husband only to learn that he had left her for another man.

At the post office, a long line waiting behind me, I fumble to pay for a stack of wrapped packages, a sheet of stamps, and two tracking slips. As time stands still I realize that my debit card is in my billfold. It's at home, apparently orphaned by a purse exchange. Or when my dog chooses to relieve herself in the crosswalk of four lanes of 19th Avenue traffic. The light counts down--eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, as cars pause and I scoop. This is when a disguise would come in handy.

There have been stretches of my life when I lived with a bag over my head. Times that I felt depressed, isolated, misplaced, alone. Perhaps on those long days a feathered and sparkling mask would have transported me and created within me a fresh sense of self, a point at which to launch a new, improved, more confident version of who I am...one with streamers, glitter, and just a hint of black lace.

San Francisco: Voices

Sitting behind two Mandarin-speakers on the bus, I'm transfixed. They are chatting softly, and their language has a sound I don't hear often, a swish-swish sound--as graceful as French. It seems appropriate that Mandarin is the Chinese language of diplomacy--it has a certain dignity and subtlety.

Most of our Chinese neighbors speak Cantonese, the primary language of Hong Kong, the jumping-off place en route to San Francisco. In its native form it's highly tonal, easy to identify and wildly interesting to my Western ear.

Our friend Claudia speaks German-accented English. I can imagine her as a child, conjugating verbs at the knee of her linguist father. Claudia's husband John speaks Russian-accented English, and lapses into Russian when he can't find the right English expression.

Our contractor's booming voice is Irish. "Ay! She's a fine hound," he says to Cleo as he enters the front door. It's the exuberant sound of John Campbell's Pub on St. Pat's Day, rollicking and rough.

John's workmen all speak Spanish. They communicate in smiles and broken English, and I've tried to bridge the gap with what little Spanish I've picked up along the way. They know how to acknowledge my questions and thanks, and I know how to express some approximation of, "please don't hurt yourself doing that."

With everyone speaking his own brand of English, it's a maze of accents. If the conversation stalls, someone in the crowd jumps in to fill in the blanks. Everyone uses certain untranslatable American words. Background noise--a conversation in Cantonese-- suddenly takes shape when the term "traffic school" leaps out of the verbal maze.

Even with its wealth of conversational color, we don't hear much African-American speech in San Francisco, and I miss that. Walking in sunshine on lower Fillmore--the jazz district--I hear the lively, syncopated cadences that were a part of my childhood. These voices wrap around me like a well-worn shawl.
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painting: "Voices"
ink and watercolor on silk

SF: On Big Cat Feet

I don't have a hundred words for San Francisco fog--but maybe a dozen. There's the Morning Fog--a high tent of gray that can break to blue. We awaken to white on white, but there's a hint of light in the east and a prevailing optimism that the ceiling will lift by noon.

The Fog of Haves and Have-Nots. This fog is thickest near the ocean (49th avenue) and extends over our house at 21st. Look toward downtown, however, and weep. The dome of City Hall is gleaming in reflected sunlight. We can easily see where the fog line ends. Our friends on 12th avenue (The Haves) celebrate sun from morning till night, but the gray stuff hovers over us all day like a migraine headache.

The most dense, most depressing fog arrives in July and August. This is the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) Fog and it can last weeks. The SAD Fog reminds me of November in Kentucky--days and days of relentless gray. In San Francisco it's triggered by the inland heat. As long as it's 100 in Stockton, this coastal fog will have us by the throat.

When the fog moves in to stay I tell myself--stop whining. Be rational. We wanted to live in The Avenues because this neighborhood hugs the park and extends to the glorious ocean. We can walk (a long walk) to the beach on a Saturday morning, run Cleo in the sand, have a cup of chai at Java Beach, and trudge back through the park...all without getting the car out of the garage. Still...the SAD fog can get really old.

Some fogs are wonderful, such as the Daytime Drama Fog. This random and unexpected fog whisks into the neighborhood on really big cat feet, and floats down alleys and around houses like dense cigar smoke. One minute we can see Balboa Avenue and the next minute it's gone, visibility is near zero, car headlights are on, and even houses across the street have vanished under the white snuggy. This fog cranks up the adrenaline and gives me the same feeling I have when a heavy snowfall moves in to Kentucky. It's a wonder to behold.

When we stand at our front door, 33 steps above the street, we can usually see Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands in the distance. But sometimes the bridge and bay alone are buried in fog. Look toward Golden Gate and it's not there--all you see is a wide white brush-stroke along the horizon.

This might called the Bridge-Swallowing Fog. These days are fun, too, because they bring the foghorns out. Their leisurely two-note call (a perfect fifth) provides a haunting and beautiful musical score through the day.

Often the Bridge-Swallowing Fog and accompanying foghorns stretch into the evening and turn into the Lullaby Fog. On these nights--which can occur all year round in San Francisco--just open the windows, cover up, close your eyes and listen. The fog keeps the street noise at bay, and the fog horns sing all thoughts into oblivion.
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drawing: "Summer is Foghorn Season"
watercolor and 005 micron pen on paper

Kentucky: Doves

The mourning doves
trail me
from San Francisco
light
and haunt
with woodwind notes.

I've lived long
been moved, met
stone,
known sorrow, lost,
been taught, atoned. So

lose me, find me
follow me across
wide pools
plains and ranges,

calling: loss is gain,
truth fluid
that which sears,
which burns to keen
will lift to float
and cool you at the end.

SF: L' Opera a la Claudia

Forget the Bolshoi. For us the ultimate Russian experience is opera-– thanks to Claudia.

She’s eighty-ish, the picture of refinement. We met Claudia and her husband John during our first month in San Francisco. Ira was walking on 21st with Cleo and a Russian-accented voice shouted from across the street, “A whippet!"

Within minutes Ira and Cleo had been snagged and pulled up the stairs of the Markevich’s two-story stucco for a discussion of dog breeds, a viewing of John’s wood sculpture, and a taste of Claudia’s torte. So began our friendship and our introduction to L'Opera a la Claudia.

At $80 a ticket, the SF Opera is too pricey for us attend with any regularity. But free performances do come around and we’ve rapidly learned the truth: Claudia must go. In the four years we’ve known them we’ve shuttled her to opera in the park, chauffeured her to Daily City for opera at the cinema, and have spent whole afternoons at John and Claudia’s house with dog, a bottle of white wine, and--opera on the stereo.

The Markevich’s respective pasts could shape a fine libretto. Claudia‘s father was a scholar–-a German linguist--sent to a POW camp in Siberia after World War I. After his release (traveling through China) he met and married Claudia’s mother, a Russian living in China. So Claudia grew up in Asia and as a young adult met John Markevich, another Russian wending his way through China. Their cultural diversity is apparent in any gathering: Claudia understands Chinese, speaks fluent Russian with John, her immediate family and their Russian Orthodox friends, German with her cousins, and English with us. But her favorite language is music.

So today–-free opera in Golden Gate Park–-Claudia is on needles and pins. She has requested we pick her up a full hour before the performance so we can sit with other Russian friends. As she’d predicted, the park is packed. We find the group, claim seats in the white-chair section reserved for senior citizens, and wait for music director Nicola Luisotti to raise his baton. Picnickers crowd around us, and blankets stretch all the way to the hills.

The food is delicious and bountiful, very Russian and very red: cold cuts on crusty rolls, pickled herring with beets, and red potato salad. I contribute stuffed figs and deviled eggs. I miss having green stuff, but they don't.

We eat and share our wine under a white paper sky and silver disk sun. We hum Donizetti's arias, and smile as we recognize O mio bambino caro from Puccini. The notes are like the birds that float and dart overhead, soaring and then vanishing. Claudia is beaming and tapping time. Ira and I turn to each other and just mouthe, “Click” –- or, “wish we could photograph this.”