This is what happens when I brush my hair

Haight Street between Shrader and Stanyan

Shrader Street at Waller

What my neighbors eat, what my neighbors do not eat

Throwing food waste in your garbage can will now earn you a fine in the city of San Francisco. Composting is legally required. Some people I’ve run into (mostly cab drivers or people who live in other cities) think this is an egregious violation of privacy and free will. And I have heard stories of sanitation workers slashing garbage bags on the sidewalk to find that errant apple core, which does seem a bit extreme.

But I like composting. I mean, c’mon, what makes more sense than turning our food waste into fertilizer to grow more food? (Or, in the case of San Francisco, organic food and delicious wine). I also like looking at my neighbor’s food waste.

Mind you, I’m not sorting through the garbage paparazzi style. The actual garbage bin totally grosses me out. But for some reason the contents of that green composting bin keep me coming back for a peek. When disposing of my own household’s waste, I hold the lid open for as long as I can before the swarm of fruit flies attack. The side of the bin is coated in this black slimy substance that is like nothing else. When it’s empty, there’s always a kind of sticky muck at the bottom with at least one bright orange orange peel glowing up in a sweet, hopeful way. And when it’s full, It’s just kind of amazing that six cramped one-bedroom apartments can generate that much foody goop. It smells strongly, but not in the nasty, threatening way the actual garbage bin smells. Instead it’s just…well, “pungent” I think describes it well. I find it sort of pleasant. Once last week I saw a little something shuffling around in the juicy detritus. Maggots?! Rats?! Either way, pretty exciting.

Last week J. caught me staring into the void. “Close that lid!” he yelled from the back window.

I’ve never seen anything that exciting in the actual food compost, though. It’s always just a slurry of eggshells and old pasta sauce and orange peels and paper takeaway containers, whether it’s coming from apartment 1034A or 1036A. Maybe that’s why I like looking; it affirms the sense that we are all common beings, subsisting in our little, expensive apartments on eggs and pasta and oranges and cheap Thai takeaway.

Niagra Biscuits*

*I found this jotted in a work notebook from 4 years ago...

I went to New York for the first time last week, stayed in midtown, in on business only for three days and when I tell my grandmother Priscilla about it she tells me a story about when she first went to New York, also when she was thirty. It was a package tour that included Niagra Falls. What was Niagra Falls like? I ask her. She tells me that when she was a girl (she's 89 now) her family always had shredded wheat biscuits for breakfast, and that the box they came in had a picture of Niagra Falls, and that was exactly what Niagra Falls looked like.

And now

And now, of course, I have to take back every shitty, cynical thing I've ever said about being a mother*, because here he is, asleep on my belly, making grunting little animal sounds and rooting, occasionally, for a warmer, softer spot to put his nose. And I love him unconditionally, of course; I don't care if he says dumb things outside a Japanese restaurant or (of more immediate concern) if he vomits on my shirt. Actually, I'm going to love him no matter what he does, and I'm probably going to love 97% of every thing he does.

P.S. re: the previous post: yes, his cheeks are fat like peach pudding and his hands almost constantly engaged in a fascinating duet, and all that awful poetic blablabla, but really those things have very little to do with who my son is or why I love him.

*And, in fact, I retract every shitty & cynical thing I've ever said about anything, because while I'm fond of saying such things, they nearly always end up being misguided and embarrassing and wrong in retrospect. From now on I will say only sunny and optimistic things.

Cheeks and Hands

Baby: the whole organism is too much for me to comprehend—the shadowy spine and ribcage on the ultrasound screen, the delicate transparent planet of the skull, nestled in the bony cradle of my pelvis. Too much, too much.

But I can think of these disparate things, pieces of the whole; I can comfort myself with these notions:

Those Cheeks--squirrel-fatted, exaggerated for extra suction, flush in a pattern of miniscule new arteries, swelling in unbelievable beauty and abundance, then melting like some kind of delectable peach pudding into the fat of the neck.

And Fingers--tiny functioning tools, topped with razor sharp little fingernails. Fingers and hands that will grasp at so many things in the course of a lifetime, but now, in the moments and months after entering the world, grasp only at the notion of grasping, caressing the air, pinching the monstrously larger fingers that adult humans offer it. And perhaps they grasp at a breast, the better to feed those cheeks. I will let you know.