The Day I Pondered About The Blood Spilt On The Sidewalk

The blood on the sidewalk looks fresh and wet and part of me wants to crouch down and touch it, just to see, but I decide against the impulse and stop here and there, instead, to examine the splatters and splashes and the smeared red handprint on the side of a flower vase outside of The Press. It's got to be blood. It's red enough to pass for blood. But there's so much of it. A trail, like breadcrumbs, leading me down two city blocks almost all the way to my house on the corner, swerving and spiraling across the cracked cement like someone was stabbed and stumbled a hundred yards in search of help, in search of escape. Who knows? Maybe it's fake. Maybe it's an artistic statement. Maybe the blood is real. Maybe Jenny and I walked back to her house last night only moments before an attempted murder. Sacramento is a peculiar place sometimes, and like all cities it has a dark underbelly fueled by human greed and frustration, and sometimes people get hurt. Sometimes people leave trails of blood along the sidewalk of a street you once thought was distanced from that sort of behavior. Sometimes you realize you live next door to violence, and then you realize that we all do, in some way, and that's the sad thing. It wasn't long ago that Jenny and I heard the unmistakable sound of someone firing six bullets from a handgun in the dark hours of the night near her apartment. The world is not a safe place by any means, not until we can all agree to be kind to one another, and there are too many factors that prohibit such a change from occurring overnight. Inequality, racism and misinformation. Cheaters, liars, hustlers, dealers and criminals. Corruption. Intolerance. Selfishness. So when we're faced with the evidence of violence in our own town, when it's splashed across our sidewalks and headlines, we need to remind ourselves to be good to one another, to do our part in preventing more blood to be spilt in our neighborhoods. Gandhi was right when he told us to be the change we wanted to see in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm just young and idealistic when I imagine fixing big problems with the simplest of solutions, but then again, why the hell not? Why does it have to be so complicated? I suppose the best thing I can do for this city, for this world, is continue being a good person to those around me, help those in need of help, and do it with a smile because we've seen enough frowning already and I'm pretty much sick of it.

With Jenny I feel younger than I think I'm supposed to feel, which blows my mind at twenty-four. I want to take advantage of every opportunity to be myself when I'm around her, to follow impulses and speak truth and share secrets. I don't want to hold anything back from her. Even better, I feel the same thing from her. With Jenny, I'm compelled to become what I'm meant to become now that I've taken my first steps out of the stagnancy of post-college disillusionment. I see Jenny doing things (perhaps too much too soon, but still great things) with her degree that I'd only dreamed of and this is encouragement enough to get serious about my passions and hone my skills for a rewarding career. And maybe it's good to feel young because working out your future takes a lot of energy and being progressive takes effort.

Tutoring is quite the experience. Today was 50% English with a girl (Victoria?) in Mrs. Coates' class and 50% algebra with Randall in the tutoring room.

I walk in just before the hour-long homework session starts at 3:00 and already see a bunch of arms raised for help with their assignments, and Mrs. Coates says, "We're just going to throw you right in," to me and tells the class that I'm here to help. I don't even know what the assignment is. I look at one girl's work and read the instructions (compound sentences, simple sentences, that sort of stuff) and it baffles me. I have no idea if she's doing it right so I nod and hand it back. Looks good. Yep. Another girl shows me her work and I'm clueless. After writing creatively for the past ten years, you forget that there are official rules and names for the make-up of a sentence. A sentence to me is the stroke of a paintbrush, never uniform, never predictable, and always colorful and unique. Ask me to evaluate that previous sentence and I'll shrug and say that it sounds alright and it makes sense, so why pigeonhole it? Of course I can't say this to the student with the homework, so I make sure the sentence at least makes sense and has a comma, like the example, and tell her, "Good work." Eventually Mrs. Coates pairs me up with the girl (Victoria?) and together we go over her entire assignment and I watch her write single complex sentences out of three statements. Then it's vocab (stereotype, bias, accurate, inadequate, etc.) and class ends and that's that. I had the girl read questions out loud and give me her own definitions and evaluate answers and I felt my best at this moment, when I was watching a kid learn how to write thoughts.

Then came Randall and the graphing of quadratic equations and fuck me because I have no idea how the hell to graph a quadratic equation. I opened up an algebra book to try and spark up some shadowy memory of the procedure, but staring at that book did not help at all. I remember why I never liked math. It's so inhuman. It's so detached from the real world. Even Randall said, "I think it's the most unnecessary math to learn. I don't think anyone in this room is going to be building bridges." So I'm blank-faced and embarrassed as Randall expects me to check over his work--which is scribbled and nonsensical--and I don't even know what the hell these examples are doing. Just when I think I'm onto something, I look at Randall's homework and the question looks nothing like what I've just figured out. I might as well be reading a German novel. And I have to lie to him and say that he did a good job, even though I don't know for sure, and the only real help I offer which he doesn't take all that seriously is that the instructions asked him to show all his work, and he didn't, and so he jots down a few more random notations and calls it a day. I'm not a math guy. I'm aiming to teach English, which I understand, and yet I can't just turn Randall away. Even though I have no idea how to do his homework, I got the impression that some of it was wrong. He's an interesting kid. He wanted to know if I'd seen the Halo-based series "Red Vs. Blue" and mentioned that any bridge he'd ever build wouldn't rely on gravity, so graphing parabolas was irrelevant. He figures stuff out in his head but you wonder if his neurons are staying focused. The work he scribbled for some of the math problems looked like John Nash's notes on his dorm-room window and probably only make sense to Randall, if they make sense at all.

I hurried home afterward to figure out how to graph the quadratic equation and found a website that explained it simply for the forgetful college graduates.

To find y, set x to zero.

- Left to Fry

The Day I (Accidentally) Told Jenny That I Love Her And Meant It

In the morning Jenny and I are buried under blankets on my bed next to the lowered, sun-lit window-shade, and we're just laying there in each other's arms talking about her plans for the Medi-Cal article when Jenny gives me a big hug and says, "You like me," and I reply impulsively, matter-of-factly, "No. I love you."

Woops. 

Luckily this slip of the tongue doesn't send Jenny bolting out the window, not that I expected her to flee, but the words had been poised behind my lips for a while now, waiting, waiting, waiting, and here they saw an escape and they took it--without my permission, but whatever--and Jenny and I talk a little bit about the heavy value we place on the word Love, and we just sort of push through that abrupt and slightly awkward confession of affection. The good news is that Jenny mirrors the sentiment, though we've both known that for a while. 

We lounge about for a while longer before taking a walk downtown and getting eggs benedict at Bernardo's. The weather is beautiful. 

"I guess now I don't know when to say it again," I tell her over dinner at Tower Cafe. But I suppose the band-aid approach to this relationship has proven successful so far, so now that we've gotten the hard part out of the way, the rest comes easier. "We're in love," Jenny says later that night, explaining why our hearts were beating so fast and I could hardly catch my breath. She says, "We made it." 

So March is ending on Thursday and Sean will be leaving for San Diego. I still haven't heard back from Sac State, but I'm glad that I have the tutoring gig to keep me occupied and feeling progressive. It was a holiday on Monday so I didn't go, but I'll be back at the end of the week, and with each experience I feel myself wanting to make a bigger change than the time before. I hope these kids are ready and willing because I might not be Superman, but I do know how much they need one. 

Monday night's bonfire went really well, thanks to an official Facebook invite and Jenny's help spreading the word. It started with me getting dinner at Old Soul around 6:00 where I bumped into Paul and Daniel and Daniel donated a six-pack and Paul wanted to smoke a joint, so I put Daniel's beer in the fridge and took a few hits off the joint while Paul told me about his relationship woes and I tried to give him advice, but Paul's the kind of guy who already thought of the advice you're giving him, and he's mostly just looking for an ear to talk to. I'm a good ear. I set up the projector and the screen outside and wait for 8pm to roll around. Jenny and Shaun and Daniel are the first guests. We start the fire and watch the beginning of 2001. Jen arrives. We switch the movie to the original Willy Wonka. Then comes Zoe, Iven, Nick, Kimberly, Ariel, a bunch of Jen's friends and Lance. About fifteen people, all told, and not enough chairs but plenty of beer and food and conversation and logs for the fire. I spend a good amount of time catching up with Iven, one of my best friends from high school, and find out he works at Best Buy and lives with his parents in Auburn and wants to move to Midtown. We reminisced and laughed and it's crazy to think it's been about five years since I've seen him. I'm glad Kimberly came--she's one of the customers from the Old Soul morning group--and she brought delicious finger food and red wine. Lance ordered Hot Italian pizza. It was a good turnout and I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. Willy Wonka transitioned into Jaws. Nick was especially excited because Jaws is apparently one of his favorite movies of all time, and at one point later in the night he got really upset and cried, "You guys are missing the best part," as we chatted around the fire. Jenny and I talked to Shaun about his dilemma with Chelsea, trying to give him advice and encouragement but knowing it'll ultimately be his decision to make. The crowd dwindled to a small group and after passing around a joint and watching Jaws explode into a billion little chunks, we let the fire die and called it a night. Definitely the biggest Bonfire Monday so far, this being the fourth, and it felt good to be the host of something that could really prove to be a Midtown staple, if only for the summer. I want it to be an event where people come to meet and mingle. I want it to be bigger than me. 

- Left to Fry

The Day I Posted Photos From The Auburn Excursion

Having digested the emotion from the weekend, I realized I had many other photos from Saturday's excursion to Auburn, and here I've put them up for display. It starts in Midtown with Jenny holding a cranberry orange tea in a raincoat during a break in the storm, which doesn't last for long and the storm returns full-force to make the commute on the freeway feel like driving through the rinse cycle of a washing machine. We meet up with Sean and start our adventure at Taco Tree before venturing across the street to my old high school, where faded memories bounce off the rain-soaked walls and we take photographs of a campus I once considered my life entire. After this we journey along Auburn's main drag, stop into Winston's Books, and circle around town without a destination, ending up back at the car with a craving for candy and plans to see Sucker Punch. We get our tickets and have an hour to spare so we drive across the Foresthill Bridge during a gorgeous sunset. The movie is better than decent, not great, but fantastic to watch, and afterward we say goodbye to Sean and drive home without a drop of rain on the windshield. 

 

- Left to Fry