Riding the 72

I picked it up in downtown Oakland. Sat next to a man with a gray beard who didn't look at me. She got on at fortieth, a strange incarnation of the woman who got off under the overpass this morning (the slight woman with purple socks who carried two bulging black garbage bags over her shoulders like she was carting water), but this woman wore a flat-billed cheap cap and pulled her cart of bulging bags behind her. Both moved slowly and shuffling. The woman in the cap had hardly made it down the aisle when the bus started again and with the lurch, she skipped forward a few steps and made the smallest squeal. I made the smallest motion to catch her, so small even I didn't see it, but she didn't fall. She rode it out. I don't know where she got off or what she carts or who normally catches her. I do know that two others got off with me, a boy and an old man, who both seem to be my neighbors and who don't walk in crosswalks. I seem to be the only one who walks in crosswalks round here. I wonder if anyone on the bus liked Bob Dylan and how many of them are also trying to find a job.

I am one of the unemployed. This morning, I went to the training for my first position through the temp agency. My table swapped stories of hardship (one girl has applied for 86 jobs in the past 2 months!) and I tried to mimic the jaded veteran faces I saw. I think people secretly like being in the fray, being part of something, even if that something is the disillusioned masses scrolling through pages of craigslist postings and pretending that the person next to them at the temp agency isn't competition. Reading the mags lately, it seems that economic CRISIS is giving my generation some authenticity, substance, battle wounds. But all it takes (for me) is a trip into downtown San Francisco to see that the middle class is still the middle class, the poor are still poorer than crisis will make me, and Diesel still employs a full-time DJ to entertain the one customer per hour who enters its store.

I sat next to a guy with the watch the size of the moon, lined with rhinestones and Obama's face as the background. His time reads half past left ear, aka time for CHANGE. I try to resist my over-symbolizing the world, but I kind of like this one...Obama as the ticking clock, the measure of the passage of time--he asked for it, right?

I can't take pictures of woman who got on at fortieth or man with Obama watch. I did snap one of the canada geese that live on the high school playing field next to my house, and I got one of the moon. I'll put some up, but you've all seen SF before.