318. Rediscovering Spacetime

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Spacetime

Earlier today I was waiting for a bus when the detritus of the adjacent eucalyptus trees reminded me of our first house in the San Fernando Valley. So both a very specific place (Calhoun Ave in Van Nuys) and a very specific time (1964-1965). Starting there, I soon realized that, because of the way my family moved around when I was a child, all my memories are similarly isolated in both space and time... so spacetime. 

I can't think of Denver without thinking of 1960, the year we lived there. I can't think of 1969 without thinking of Arizona -- specifically Scottsdale and Prescott. Aside from a cluster of Beverly Hills memories from thirty years ago, all my SoCal memories are from the Valley between '64 and '67. If I think of Boulder, it is 1960-1964.

This is even more true when I've traveled. Paris is locked to the year 1981 and the days around May 10th -- when Mitterrand was first elected. My memories of Montreal connect me to the summer of 1971. But these connections are more limited in the spacial dimension -- I have temporal memories of those years from other places. 

Conventions

The expansion of our convention center was completed just recently and I’ve been noticing many more convention goers around the neighborhood. Until today. So I did a quick search to see if that convention had ended. Unfortunately, I can only find the conventions still to come, but the Specialty Food Association convention starts in two days, so I’m pretty sure I’m right. But guess what convention follows Specialty Food? The Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. I wonder if there’s a correlation between the two?

Luxembourg

One of the two new, regular waitresses at The Pork Store is from Luxembourg which gives me a reason to think of that tiny state whenever I’m there for breakfast. This morning I almost asked her if they were taught the history of the House of Luxembourg in school. She was too busy, and then I came up with a headcanon that I like better than any plausible reality. (Given all the words my spelling checker doesn’t know, I was surprised just now to be encouraged to replace “head canon” with “headcanon.” I guess this is the sort of thing a computer program would know.)

In the primary and secondary schools of my imaginary Luxembourg, not only is the history of their House taught, but the school malcontents wear jackets featuring the insignia of the houses of Habsbourg or Hohenzollern. The effete arts crowd wears the Bourbon Lily. 

Voices

Once again (I’m going to have to check to make sure I haven’t already posted something like this). I’m thinking about the voices people hear. Sara Maitland’s teasing book on silence brought up “voice hearing” but had little to reveal about what the voices said. Surely someone is researching what these voices are saying to the people who hear them. And why were Maitland’s voices whispering, to the extent that she needed to find profound silence to properly hear them, when the run of the mill schizo I see on the street is having to shout to be heard over his voices?

Thanks to my recent adventures in neurology, I know that there can be multiple “agents” in our heads. Conflicting lobes. Multiple personalities. And then there’s my favorite, the agent that guides our perception. The one that determines what we perceive and takes a bit of time to do it. How do the voices relate to these agents? I would love to think they came from the later one, but that’s asking a lot. Plus, since the agent I have in mind tends to be primarily concerned with propagating our genes, how would you explain the self-destructive quality of the voices heard by the schizophrenics who make it into the news. If you got on the wrong side of that agent you would really be in a fix. No wonder people think in terms of demonic possession.

Good Luck. Bad luck. Who knows?

I thought of a new, personal, way to tell this story. Thirty years ago I was living in a basement apartment in Noe Valley. It was cheap and in a great neighborhood, but had a bit too much character. But the rent was so low I couldn’t leave. Then, for a petty reason, I decided to move into the house next door when my neighbors moved and put their house up for sale. The market was not good at the time so I anticipated being there for many months. But the house sold quite quickly and after only a couple months in the house I had to find a new place to live.

At that moment I was very busy with work which meant I didn’t have time for apartment hunting, but I did have more money than usual. So I quickly moved into the 29th floor of a building that was always advertising vacancies. I stayed there for three years, gaining a good perspective on high-rise living, and then found a cheaper but smaller place on Nob Hill. There were pros and cons to the place, but mostly I loved the challenge of fitting into such a small space. After four years there I got sick. The only time since I was a child with the measles that I have been basically bedridden. Still don’t know what was wrong with me. But at this same time the owners of the unit suddenly decided they needed to sell it. I could buy it or I could go out and find a new place to live. During this whole process I only looked at other apartments in one other building, two blocks away, and the owner’s agent drove me there because these were the only units he could find that were roughly comparable. (When I commented on the superiority of the units in that building he tried to convince me that we were now in a bad neighborhood. That was the last conversation I had with him.) So I bought my unit. And by the end of the Aughts I owned it outright. And this is why I can afford to live in SF.


However, just to show that my understanding of the “Good luck. Bad luck. Who knows?” story is robust, I will admit that, while this looks like Good luck, you never know. I am now trapped here since I can’t afford to move anywhere else. Perhaps a much happier fate awaited me elsewhere? Perhaps living here will be my doom? Who knows?