What Google has to say.

Wikipedia’s take.

ABC News: About the blackout. 

***

As I was lying around my parents’ house this weekend, trying to recover the ability to eat solid foods, we watched several ’90s movies on VHS that my mom had bought at a yard sale. In between bouts of some Beethoven sequel and The Little Rascals, my parents brought out a video letter I made for my grandparents when I was thirteen.

(I’ll let you guess which was most painful and awkward.)

In the video letter, I talked to my grandparents, filmed my dad tickling my mom and my mom pretending to hit my dad, showed off the tricks I had taught my parakeet, played a piano recital piece, and demonstrated how I could play a duet on the flute with myself, with the help of my handy tape recorder.

I played duets with myself by recording one part and playing it back while I played the second. That is how lonely I was at thirteen.

I also played tennis alone by hitting a ball against the house.

I generally don’t like to think about my early teen years. I squirmed the whole time I watched the video letter. There I was, in all my thirteen-year-old glory, my hair messy and my clothes baggy and ill-fitting and my glasses enormous, recorded for forever and played back in front of my family and my husband (who lived in Texas during the worst of the teen years).

But the funny thing is, as embarrassed as I was watching the video, I know I didn’t see myself like that then. At that point in my life, I was rather blissfully unaware of myself and of the teenager’s desperate need to fit in. I hadn’t gotten the memo yet. But I would, soon. In the year that followed the filming of that video letter, I lost my best friend after a slow drift apart (namely hers–toward more popular friends). I was on the verge of becoming intensely self-conscious, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

The video ended, and I laughed it off, and everyone seemed fine. No one seemed to notice how painfully awkward I had been–or, they didn’t care. Jesse thought it was cute. I realized that I was the only one who cared about my hair or my dorky shirts.

Later that weekend, we “interviewed” my grandmother on video, recording some of her memories. At the end of our interview, we asked if she had any closing advice. She thought for just a moment and said, “Just be what you already are.”

Just be what you already are.

How I wish I could rewind, visit my thirteen-year-old self and deliver this advice. Just be what you already are.

How I wish I could save her the years of trying to change herself, of trying to fit in. Getting contacts and straightening her hair and fussing with makeup and buying new clothes and smiling with her mouth closed because she doesn’t like her teeth. How I wish I could tell her, the people you’re trying to impress don’t care, and in fifteen years you won’t care about them.

Because the people who really matter think the frizzy hair is kind of cute.

This is a lesson that continually surprises me, one I don’t quite trust to be true yet. But I hope with time I will keep learning it. Until then, I’ll repeat it to myself, a mantra: Just be what you already are.

***

It’s taken two solid months, but I think I’m finally coming back to earth after San Francisco.

I remember the first day we were in the city, on the shared-ride van that drove us from the airport to the apartment—I remember looking out the van’s windows at the highways and the hills and the trees that were so California, and I held my breath and felt immediately and completely at home. I remember driving through sunny neighborhoods of stucco houses, the Spanish tile roofs, the pastel colors of the Sunset district. The day was bright and unseasonably warm and we were giddy on little sleep and little food and too many hours spent cooped up in airplane seats. Everything was beginning.

I took the same shuttle back to the airport the night I left. The sun had set, but it wasn’t fully dark. The drive was longer this time, more stops to pick people up on our way, and as we wound through the city neighborhoods, the streets I knew by now, I felt quiet and torn. I’d been alone for weeks at this point, and I couldn’t wait to see Jesse. But in the month I was there, I did not for one minute feel homesick for anything other than the people in my life back here.

The van stopped on a residential street to wait for a passenger. The light was failing, and the fog was rolling in. Inside the houses, people were switching on lamps and watching TV and running the dishwasher and doing homework. Our driver called the passenger again as we waited, shifting in our seats, tapping our feet, clutching our carry-ons.

A door opened across the street, and we watched a man walk down the stairs of his house, carrying a suitcase. He was taking his time, and at the door he paused to kiss the woman holding it open. In my mind now, they are frozen in that moment, bathed in the warm light of their home, just before he is about to walk into the weak gray dark.

When I got home, I felt half here and half somewhere else. Even the mention of San Francisco could make me cry. I’d look through the pictures I took and close my eyes and breathe deep and try to smell the eucalyptus. I’d remember the wind on my face, the gentle fog, the Western sun setting. But I was home with Jesse and my cats, in the same time zone as our families, and close to our friends.

Now, as time continues to pass, I feel myself settling back into life here. Perhaps it’s my classes, my students throwing me an anchor, giving me something to focus on. Maybe it is my friend’s new baby.

Maybe it was the wedding we attended last weekend—the reception, at an old Southern mansion. We sat drinking sweet tea with friends at a long table under sprawling oak trees, our faces gently lit by candles and soft white lights. The day had been cloudy, and now the night sky was oddly orange and felt far away. Maybe it was dancing with Jessica and Amie and Kirsten under a bright white tent, the dark Southern night surrounding us but not touching us. The air was sweet and humid and everything was lovely.

Maybe it is a hundred other things, but I am settling into a sense of comfort here, a sense of being where I am, of loving San Francisco and the memories I have there, but also loving this place for what it is, and enjoying the memories I am currently making here.

***

A little quiz. For those of you who know both Jesse and me, who would you say would be more likely to be the bleeding heart at the sight of sad-looking people holding out cups asking for spare change?

(You answered me, right?)

I mean, when I was a kid I once saw a man in a parking lot pushing a shopping cart full of ratty belongings, and I nearly burst into tears. The first time I came to San Francisco, I’m sure I didn’t go home with any change on me.

Well. Out here now, I’m a little, shall we say, different about it. For instance, while Jesse was out here, you could regularly overhear me hissing at him, “No eye contact!” I mean, I am serious about it. Put a cup in my face and ask for money, and I will not acknowledge you. I will not shake my head and apologize. I will not seem sympathetic. I will keep walking as if I had heard nothing, seen nothing.

Part of this stems from the knowledge that San Francisco, of all cities, has a host of social services, and a very small percentage of homeless people are panhandlers, and not all panhandlers are actually homeless.

But, it was a little shocking to me to see how quickly I could lose that little girl who once cried at the sight of anyone in pain.

Then, the other day I was on the train and we were stopped outside a pharmacy waiting during a shift change for the driver. I saw an older man in faded blue jeans and a blue plaid shirt struggling to stand up. He was gripping a cane in one hand, the wall with the other. I could not see his face, but from the back he reminded me of my grandfather.

He couldn’t get up. He struggled and struggled, and he couldn’t muster the strength to stand.

On the Science Channel the other night, a man with an Australian accent and floppy straight hair talked about the elements, how there are only ninety-two elements in the universe, and how we’re all made of the same things. I thought of this: that we are all, essentially, exactly the same, that we were all at one point rocks or dust or a thought somewhere, and now we’re here, and some of us ride trains and some of us struggle to stand, and there isn’t a single scientific difference between us, not a single quantifiable difference.

Why am I not the man at the wall?

And whose grandfather is he?

The train started up and we sped off and I was glad to be wearing sunglasses. And I thought about how many stories there are in the world, how many stories have come from a little over ninety elements, how many heartbreaks and deaths and illnesses and births and stillbirths and love stories.

I wanted to weep for the man, and I wanted to weep for myself, because I stayed on the train and kept going, and I said nothing and I did nothing and today I will do nothing and tomorrow I will do nothing. I will take my good luck or whatever it is and will keep buying chai lattes because I’m not sure what else to do. I want to help every old man stand up, but I can’t, and my apathy is only apparent to me in glimpses. Most of the time, I am able to keep myself sufficiently numb.

There isn’t going to be an answer here, just thoughts and questions. It seems sometime that we are all the same person in different forms, all the people on the train, and the man, and everyone sitting in the coffee shop while I type this. I still don’t acknowledge people who ask for money. I staunchly avoided looking at the drunk man on the F-line today who was shouting, emphatically, that his name was not Sharon. I once sat next to a woman on the train for several stops before even noticing that she was actually a man. I am caught up in my own world and find myself lodged there.

A mystery, how different we are and how very much the same.

I hope time and growth erodes my apathy, but we will have to see.

***

Tonight, I’m sitting at my computer, drinking a cup of hot Trader Joe’s “Well Rested” tea (chamomile with accents of mint and lemongrass), listening as Jesse and some friends play music in the living room. They are practicing for a mutual friend’s wedding this month, and the songs are lovely. I can hear the piano, African drums, guitar, mandolin, beautiful singing. I can hear them harmonizing with one another. I can hear the slow, steady music, and I can imagine the bridal party walking in, I can see misty-eyed grandmothers.

And I’m looking through pictures from San Francisco. I can feel that place on my skin still, I can feel the energy–like an electric current at the very edge of me–I can feel the exact rush of awe as I walked along a dirt path and turned a corner and suddenly saw the Golden Gate Bridge in front of me. The shock of red against the blue water and the brown hills.

The tea I’m drinking I bought there. Every night, I’d have a cup of it with organic honey I’d bought at the corner store. I’d sit in the apartment and listen to quiet music and I’d read or I’d write and then I would go to sleep.

I have come to realize that I want impossible things.

I want to live in San Francisco. And I want to live near all my friends. And I want to live near all my family.

And I cannot have what I want, no matter how fervently I want it.

Last night, Jesse and I watched an episode of This American Life. The episode was called “John Smith,” and it told the story of seven people all named John Smith. From birth to death.

The episode was brilliant. (You can read about it here.) There was life, in an hour, in seven people, in a baby named John Smith, in a dying man named John Smith. John Smith wins the science fair. John Smith watches his mother die.

I cried, and after it was over I just went to bed. Jesse and I tried to talk about it a bit, but the emotions it had dredged up were still a little too raw. When you’re a kid, you’re afraid that bad things might happen to you; when you’re an adult, you become aware that bad things will happen to you. It’s just timing. Life is elation and sorrow, and you don’t get to have one without the other. No one gets exempt from pain. My parents will, one day, die, and they will probably die before I do. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life dreading that moment, worrying about it, crying over it before it happens, but that appears to be what I’m going to do.

I don’t know how to deal with my parents’ aging.

So here is the predicament I find myself in, this wanting of the impossible. I want to always have my friends in the living room practicing for a wedding, and I want to have my parents over for dinner without their having to pack a suitcase, and I want to feel what I felt in San Francisco–that aliveness–and I don’t want that to mean I’m a seven-hour flight away from everything else I love. I want to write, and I want to drink tea, and I want to see Seattle, and I want to teach and teach and teach, and I want to preserve everything just like it is right now, and I want everything to change.

In San Francisco, I’d sometimes find myself with an urge to call my parents or Jesse, only to remember the time difference, the fact that they were already in bed. And even if I had nothing important to tell them, I would feel it like a punch. I couldn’t call. They were unreachable, they were very far away, they were asleep and I was not. So I’d drink my tea and listen to my music and sleep fitfully and call the next day and that was fine, and I was fine, but last night I watched a man named John Smith talk about how he used to call his mother every day on his way home from work, and now he finds himself still wanting to call, but then he realizes she’s dead and all he can do is put the phone down and keep driving.

Okay, then, this is life. Sometimes I wonder how any of us can stand it, this living.

But, we do. The John Smiths keep driving.

And maybe one day I’ll know how all this turns out, and I’ll find myself wanting other things, new things, or the same things, or maybe I’ll let go of the wanting and sit where I am, wherever I am, knowing that what I have is what I have, and where I am is where I am, and that is enough, because it has to be, because it is.

***

Growing up in Titusville, Florida, you get used to the launches, you become accustomed to the strange fact that one of our nation’s greatest technical achievements is on full display mere miles from your house, that every now and then a 300,000-pound rocket is shot from the earth into space, or that every now and then a group of people get strapped into a black and white vehicle and leave earth, and you can watch it all happen from the street in front of your house.

This is how you watch a launch, when you’re nine and living in a one-story house that was built in the 1960s. Your mom has the TV on, to watch the countdown, and when the announcer calls out, “Liftoff!” you run out the front door and into the street—not worrying, because no one drives down this street except people who live here, and they’re used to kids being in the road. You’re barefoot, and you feel the asphalt on your feet, every bump and bit of gravel, and you turn back toward your house and look at the sky.

Then, it happens: You see the rocket or the shuttle as it thunders up, you watch the enormous column of smoke pouring from it, you see the fire just at the top of the smoke, and you can’t help but feel excited, even though you don’t realize just how lucky you are to be watching it. You don’t think about the miracle of technology, about the improbability of it all, what it means, you just watch it and know somehow that you’re watching something thrilling.

Your dad works at the Cape, on the Delta II rocket. At work, he touches satellites and works in rooms with motors that hold seven thousand pounds of rocket fuel. The rooms are designed for explosions, to protect the people in the rest of the building if something goes wrong—the people who might have a shot at getting out alive.

But you don’t know anything about that.

When you’re almost fourteen, your dad has been complaining about the company cutting corners, cutting safety, cutting expenses. There’s a launch coming up, and your dad says he’s afraid this one will end up in the river.

The launch happens, the rocket lifting off, the announcer calling “Liftoff!” but then something happens. The rocket explodes. It’s almost beautiful, like fireworks. You watch a video later, you watch it on the news, you see it over and over again. The announcer says, “We have had an anomaly.” You feel sick when you see it.

Eventually, you leave Titusville for Orlando and college. You can’t see the launches anymore, but from time to time you go home and watch them. You’re busy, though, and you’re moving on, and Titusville seems small and sad, with its old cinder block houses and scrubby palm trees. You’re in a city now, and you’re not thinking about missing the launches. And then, you graduate. And then, a year later, you move to North Carolina. You are doing big things; you are going to grad school. You have left the state you grew up in.

Your father retires. You don’t know when the rockets launch now. The longer you’re away, the more this bothers you. Your in-laws tell you about shuttle launches, and you wish you could see them. You know the shuttles will themselves be retired soon. You visit the National Air and Space museum just outside of DC and when you see the shuttle there, dramatically lit and gorgeous, you feel like crying.

You see one more shuttle launch, on a sunny May morning, the day before your sister-in-law gets married. One of the last shuttle launches.

You stand in front of the Indian River and watch the launch, you watch the fire and smoke, without thinking you pray it won’t explode, you feel the rumble of it in your stomach, the loud sound of all that fire and power, and you know very acutely now how lucky you are to see this, how miraculous it is, and why you’re thrilled, and why you’re sad. You know.

Shuttle launch May 14, 2010

***

Today, I’m remembering:

Being newlyweds in Key West in the summer, the heat powerful and perfect, afternoon naps in a papaya-colored room. I remember eating Mexican food outside about an hour before sunset, music playing in a language I don’t understand, the sun winking just over a brown fence, behind a large ficus tree. Rain in Mallory Square—crouching together under a blue poncho, smelling the sweet wet air, watching car blinkers reflecting on the slick ground. Everything is good. Everything is possible. We can celebrate sunset, we can watch cats jump through flaming hula hoops, we can sit in a garden surrounded by birds and orchids, we can get on a big boat and eat cheese and fruit while the wind hits our faces and the warm light hits the tall polished mast. Everything is ours.

And—four years later—my twenty-fifth birthday. I’m in an Italian restaurant in Hong Kong, eating a blissfully good plate of pasta, laughing with friends, enjoying the city at night. I am wearing a necklace Jesse hid in my suitcase as a birthday present, and I’m missing him. But in ways the tinge of pain just heightens the experience, the otherworldly feel of being on the other side of the planet from home.

After the restaurant, or before, I can’t remember, we walk through the street markets, and we haggle and we enjoy it. We have been sharpening our bargaining skills all week, and we walk out of stalls with heads held high, intent on getting the best price. And we do.

The lights of the markets are harsh against the blackness, and it’s perfect, because we are on another planet, or we are in another state of mind, and we feel like magic. The lights buzz and I can feel it on my skin and it feels like energy and excitement. A triumph of human achievement: the electric light, the city sandwiched between water and mountain, the ability to make trinkets and argue over their price. Life is just beginning, and life is perfect.

***

The days are getting longer. As I type this, the sun has not yet set, even though I’ve not eaten dinner, nor am I hungry. I can see the house across the street getting the evening light, their Bradford pear perfectly shaped and bathed in the loveliest shade of yellow.

I can’t remember those particular neighbors’ names, but I have watched their little boy go from baby to toddler to child. His mother is pregnant again. Their yard always looks nice.

Since they moved in across the street, I wonder, what have they noticed of us?

They have not watched children go from crawling to walking. They may have seen our cats in the window. They do not know that Oliver is perpetually hungry and always looking for food to steal. They might laugh if they saw us hiding bread in the microwave. Or, they might think we were nuts.

They have likely noticed I work irregular hours. They do not know what I feel when I hear my students have lost loved ones, when I know they are ill, when I know they are struggling, when I see they feel unloved. Nor, I imagine, do my students.

My neighbors do not know this year has been one of my hardest, that I have questioned everything. Everything. That while driving I sometimes imagine not taking my exit—perhaps this time I’ll just keep driving, just keep going, until I hit the Pacific ocean.

But because I am no longer twenty-five, or twenty-six, or twenty-seven, dreaming becomes harder to maintain, and escape routes seem perpetually blocked. There is a mortgage. There are utility bills. There is a savings account that must be maintained.

And, so, I take the exit, every time.

I go to school. I teach my classes. I take the summer off to write. I am beginning to have my doubts.

I am shelving the book. If it will find a place in the world, it will be as a second or third book, when I’ve got some distance and perhaps some outside input.

This summer, I am starting a new one, something very different—I suppose in the hopes I will write something more marketable—and I cannot help but fear I’m wasting my time, wasting my life, chasing a dream that will never materialize.

Still, I keep chasing, because I don’t know what else to do. I do not have a hundred interests, a dozen possible paths, a range of possible career interests. I have writing, and I have teaching, and that’s it.

My neighbors, however, know none of this. What they must see is this: a young couple who are always behind on yard work, who drive aging sporty cars never washed often enough, who keep a big white upright piano in their garage that they will probably never restore. They see us coming and going, they see friends and guests coming and going. Perhaps from time to time they hear clips of music—Jesse on the piano, or strumming a guitar, or the sad songs I play while I’m writing, or something with a beat while I’m cleaning.

There is a bush in our backyard that we forgot to keep trimmed. It is now above the fence. I keep looking at it in dismay, but the solution does not seem readily apparent; because we have let it go so long, we’d need different tools than we currently own in order to be rid of it. And it’s a cycle—the longer I wait, the harder it becomes to cut down the bush. Surely, our neighbors have noticed that.

Sometimes, I become very afraid that we are exactly how we seem.

But now the sun is almost behind our house, and we are nearly blocking the light from hitting that tree. I am tired, but with summer comes hope—of change, of restoration. The doors that have been inching shut this past year have not closed completely, and maybe, just maybe, I will slip through one.

Yesterday, I was leaving Walmart when I noticed a little clump of upset people near the door. Two managerial-looking Walmart employees stood with disapproving and suspicious looks on their faces next to three people, probably in their twenties, who were holding an un-bagged box and saying something in indignant and loud voices. There were two men and one woman. The man who held the box had close-cropped blond hair and wore a white wife-beater. The other man had darker hair. The woman was brunette and wore cut-off jean shorts and a floppy black shirt.

It didn’t take much to figure out what the situation was about or what each party thought about said situation. Clearly, the Walmart employees thought the trio was stealing. Clearly, the trio did not appreciate this and was making that known quite loudly.

I mentally sided with the Walmart employees. This judgment was based solely on appearances (and tone of voice–my professional opinion is that loud voices indicate guilt), proving that I am just as judgmental and haughty as everyone else. I should remember that next time I try to get on my high horse.

(Do you have a high horse too? And where the heck did that expression come from?)

I left the store. As I walked toward my car, I heard the alarms going off and turned to see the trio leaving the store, still loudly complaining, though they clearly found the ordeal fairly funny for some reason. (Laughter = also sign of guilt.)

The woman then became excited and I watched as she ran to jump piggyback on the brown-haired man, who I assumed was her boyfriend.

Only, the man didn’t see her and kept walking.

So, she jumped, but she jumped too soon. She didn’t get a good grip on his shoulders. Her timing was off.

She fell to the ground. Then, she shrieked with laughter.

I didn’t know whether to be amused or mildly horrified that this is where I live. (I was leaning toward the latter.) I think there’s a metaphor in here, a nugget of wisdom about humanity.

But honestly, I don’t really want to know.

***

If you have never had a baked pork bun, let me tell you just one thing: You need to have a baked pork bun. Preferably right now. And preferably made by a Chinese person in San Francisco. Preferably from this bakery right here:

What is a baked pork bun, you ask?

A baked pork bun is heaven in bun form. The bread is soft and sweat. (Tastes somewhat reminiscent of Quincy’s yeast rolls–remember those?) It fits perfectly in your hand, so you can cradle it with one hand and still have the other hand free for driving or holding onto a cable car or gesturing in great joy and excitement. Or, better yet, for holding another pork bun.

Inside that beautiful, perfectly baked roll is a gloriously tasty meaty filling.

(Now, it’s important that you don’t look at the meat very closely and that you don’t think very much about what it is or where it came from. Just enjoy the glory of the pork bun and don’t be a diva about it.)

If you are Jesse, this is how you eat a pork bun:

Look at that face! Look at the joy! Now, don’t you want to try one too? (Don’t answer that unless the answer is “Yes,” which is the only correct answer to that question.)