red rubber ball

This morning while biking to school a melon-sized red ball flew over a fence into the road and I stopped to pick it up. I have no idea how these small pipsqueak 3 1/2 foot tall children managed to propel this ball over the 18 foot chain link fence between them and I, and I was reluctant to throw it back to them-- I knew that I wasn't going to make it the first time. The only other person on the sidewalk was an older woman, hunched over and carrying a newspaper. I asked the kids, "Okaaaaaay, are you ready?" and they all said, "YES! YES! YES!" So I threw it really high but not quite far enough-- it may not have even touched the fence before whistling back down and landing 4 feet away from where I was standing. So the next time I put my bike down on the sidewalk, really wound up and slung it over my shoulder. I was pretty determined this time-- at this point the entire morning recess gang was watching the spectacle of this white girl in a yellow helmet, throwing. And I made it. The small older woman yelled "What do you say to the nice lady kids?" but they were already chasing down my poorly directed throw. I told her, "Oh, they don't need to say anything-- that's probably the most important thing I'll do all day."

I met with Tammy Rae Carland for the first time today and we looked through my photographs from Colma-- I still don't know what I'm going to do with them. How do I resolve the feeling that digital photographs don't imply enough of my narrative or voice? How do I get over my romance with analog technology and craft to include new vocabularies with which to speak? I went to therapy this morning and Peter seemed to think that all of the questions I was asking were "very interesting" but couldn't help figure out answers to them. I'm so frustrated with the noise of working in building with so many other people-- it's hard to really feel alone enough, even when I'm being by myself. When I first saw San Francisco from afar, a little over a year ago with Holly when I was visiting CCA, I was dismayed by how it looked. I told her that it looked like a heap of trash-- all these white angular boxes piled on top of one another. I thought it was funny then, as I guess I still do now, but am feeling antsy to find some more secrets outside of the Mission-- maybe making a ritual of my Saturday mornings to roam around new parts of the city where I haven't been before, which is most of it. My smallest brother, Dennis, was for awhile OBSESSED with the Simon and Garfunkel song, Red Rubber Ball, which I looked up after throwing one today-- the lyrics seemed appropriately uplifting. And yes, that turned out to be the best thing I did today.