by joshua heineman                        ( about cb )

Our function in the universe is unclear, while our malfunctions are self-evident.

Why that “happiness thing” is so difficult for all of us human beings, caught somewhere between true beasts & pure angels. A theory.

Literally holed up in a beautiful dive in North Beach yesterday evening drinking Irish Coffees & lost in a book when a former poet laureate interrupts me… ‘buy a newspaper,’ he says. (?!)

The New Year came to me on a high roof in San Francisco w/fireworks over the Embarcadero & wine euphoria & one of my favorite people suddenly singing ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it’ beside me while the explosions intensified in tempo & color. A real moment.

Earlier there was a feast among friends & blind Cab Sauvignon tastings & maybe just a touch of apprehension over the looming year… & the last, a troubled knot in the history of this stupid & beautiful world. All that was lost by the final hour & I felt hopeful in ways I didn’t wish to admit.

I spent the first daylight hours of 2012 above the Golden Gate on high cliffs w/my wife & our friends. We had a blanket, a baguette & goat cheese, apples, dried papaya & bottled beer. I’d seen dolphins in the water from the same spot in another life (mine, but long ago in another time). By midday we moved on to the Cliff House for three rounds of coffee, an Irish Coffee & two Ramos Fizz. The ‘Giant Camera’ outside on the landing reminded me of the time I attempted to turn my entire apartment into a camera obscura - 2011. The waves beat on. The sun astounded. People everywhere, laughing like sea birds on new years. I forgot everything but happiness before the new winter day was down.

Washingtonia Robusta

If California could only dye the fronds of its common palm tree yellow, the entire state would resemble an immense field of dandelions.

You are walking on the moon, reader. I am under the waves of the sea. This point seems overdone, but your life is only obvious because of what it is & who you are in relation to each other. If we had been born somehow among the rings of Saturn, we wouldn’t understand the swirling violence & noise at the surface of the earth on a quiet sunny day in December.

I feel, at 30, like I thought I would at 20 years… that is, almost ready to be serious.

Here is unserious:

Could the mild, unspeakable guilt we feel as hosts when entertaining out-of-town visitors during a spell of bad weather be in any way related to the horrible, misplaced guilt a child of divorcing parents feels?

Here is serious:

What if we told each other the truth from the start? What if (instead of a long life of relative comfort & ease) we promised our children mystery? They will get it! They will grow up several steps closer to the source… & still fall in love & still get in trouble & still grow just as old as us.

(… & as I’m typing the 2nd earthquake of the day tossed San Francisco around sharply)

We’re redefining a ‘good night’ based on the last: an impromptu, beautiful concert of Bulgarian folk songs played on violin in our apartment at midnight. Thank you, Isabel.

THEMED MEMORIES (consumables)

• Coffee & croissants in the palm tree gardens of the Fairmont on weekends.
• Argentine empanadas consumed along the oil-slick Embarcadero.
• Barbecue afternoons on the rooftops of Telegraph Hill, drinking sunlight.
• Secret rooms & expensive cocktails in the speakeasy ghetto.
• Games of tag w/the surf at sunset, slowed by Greek food & honeyed custard.