My Life: The Movie

Lately, when I cross 16th at Mission and head for the BART escalator, threading through the dodgy folk who seem to habituate the area in an unconnected yet comradely way, it feels like the scene running behind the credits: Benf Descending. BART is some kind of hell: wind tunnel, shrieking, snorting, shoving, suspicion running rampant. Then the edgy crowd, merging to ascend, shuffling themselves into ragged lines to feed their cardboard tickets into the mechanism which will free them to head for the exhaust-laden upper air.

Run the gauntlet of buskers and panhandlers: the tired guy with greying dreads, whose visions do not include anything occurring in realtime; the trumpet and cello duo, so young and earnest and classically trained; the Irish guy with the banjo and a jazzy version of Rock of Ages; the elegant sax player, riffing on Sunny getting blue. Women haul up the stairwells their enormous bags full of emergency supplies and rations, balancing precariously on heels as high as stilts. Young men mouthing the words to whatever Smashmouth anthem is blasting in their earbuds.

Out on the street, cold wind barreling towards the waterfront, tall buildings shadowing the sidewalk, girly magazines hanging with earmuffs, Obama T-shirts and Power Bars at the kiosk, bike messengers in shorts and leather carry-alls vying for place in the tepid, occasional sun hitting the wall of the E-Trade plaza, young guy on the corner, head like a skull, "I'm not begging. I'm just hungry. You wouldn't have anything to eat?"

No signs of life yet at the Nail Salon or the Sushi boat bar. It's coffee time and you could wait longer than forever for your Macchiato grande if you had to get it during prime time. The credits end their roll at the faux marble portals of the corner building, the faux fortress, 39 floors high and turrets on the top. Inside is a different movie, breathtaking in its slow, deliberate minutes-into-hours realism.

As Time Goes By

My back hurts this morning. It didn't hurt until Jazz, the big red-black cat who mostly lives elsewhere, plunked himself on my lap, mostly obscuring the NYT Sunday puzzle I was dabbling at. A weight fell on my shoulders. "Just old age" says my tan, fit, 30-something doc, prancing in on twinkling ballet flats, tossing her blonde main, smiling without care for what will wrinkle. I do like her, just don't like the message.

Last night the mate and I watched back to back episodes of 2 and 1/2 Men. And laughed. We'd had a couple glasses of wine and some sharp cheddar but still. . . Our other big evening is when our local PBS runs As Time Goes By and Keeping Up Appearances in tandem. Naturally, we only confess this addiction to fellow geezers, thus avoiding being told to "Get a Life!"

If I had to choose one word to describe the aging process? "Discouraging!"