I have had some amazing moments of being a Lyft Driver over the last 5 months - that I keep promising to write about...today is that quantum leap that has inspired me to keep my promise - if only to myself.
It started, this morning, with a bit of self-care hooky: "O.K. God, if you want me to play more, give me a sweet parking place near Sharon Meadow so I can go to Alice's Now and Zen concert." said I, thinking that I should start Lyfting pretty soon now - I gotta pay that chaplaincy tuition.
Bingo - ignition lights up ahead!
The most surprising band was Larkin Poe, because I hadn't heard of them (I know, I know they just played at the Greek Theatre last night...) a couple of kick ass country rock sisters from 'lanta - both drop dead beautiful, harmonizing, mandolin/guitar playing musicians - a striking pair in a brunette and a platinum. OMG their music was fun.
After Walk Off the Earth, Plain White T’s the ground was getting pretty hard and I walked out to the hordes waiting to get in. They were past capacity. "One Solo going out." And I am sure another grateful solo going in to hear One Republic.
I got into my car, pulled out the pink Mustaches and my signature pink feather boa in the front window and started my app. I passed - a striking pair of women - one a brunette and another a platinum playing on the corner. I checked myself, stopped, parked and walked back to hear. There was Rebecca with her mandolin and Megan harmonizing beside her. "Hey, its great to see you?" They had met some old friends... apparently and created a San Francisco moment right there while they waited at Haight and Strader. "We were just waiting for a Lyft but can't get a signal."
I said, "Well, hey, I am a Lyft Driver, I will be right back with my car." I am not sure who was more thrilled - me or them by this synchronicity. This is my life - one upLYFTing moment after another. You can't make this stuff up.
So I took the opening act of Now and Zen 2013 home today. They all piled into my Jetta, gear in the trunk, and were completely delightful: Southern charm and real grace. I won't tell you where - its part of the fist bump oath of 5-star conduct - a hyper mix of HIPPA and Hippocratic.
I am sworn to secrecy.
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco. Show all posts
29 September 2013
15 August 2013
Self Care and the Technology Refugee.
I am a technology refugee.
It is embarrassing. I wanted to be more together than this, at this point in my life. And I am equally happy to let those comparisons get lost. They get in my way. I am beginning to live a life for which I was made.
I am starting over, again. After five businesses - two as a Landscape Architect, and 3 as a Techie CEO - my knack for the bootstrapping creative digital cartographic concerns was skilled (but not, alas, for convincing money to invest.) I was, until recently, a business owner, a bootstrapped CEO and a 'day late and a dollar short' entrepreneur. I have tried very hard to live another person's life. It was a struggle even for my work-a-holic self.
It was a life that my Diva-CPA mother wanted. "Have your own business. Its something you can count on." As a 50's woman she was ahead of her time and got a bum deal. But she was right, of course. She was just not right - about ME. My grieving of her passing has allowed me to parse a lifelong identity crisis and resurrect a more authentic self - one who I came here to be
It isn't as if I didn't always know I was an artist. I just didn't believe it was enough.
My horoscope chart apparently confirms it in a significant way: I am an artist, a writer and a minister and I have some catching up to do. I am a chaplaincy student who supports herself now by driving people around under the unilateral authority of the furry pink mustache.
And there is no where I would rather be than Lyfting in San Francisco. Seriously, everyone I have picked up in the last 4 months has been creative, thoughtful, talented and sharing a belief in possibilities. They are not angry - the angry people and the grumpy people take cabs.
I actually feel sorry for the cabbies. They have a hard job. I am not a cab. I am part of a connected community - a sharing community. Most of my riders sit in the front seat and after our fist-bumping meet and greet, they tell me their story.
I read the day - each time I drive by reading them. Is San Francisco having a good day? I will know after a few rides. Whether you take Lyft, or a competing ride-sharing service or a cab, if you live in the City you are part of a collective, ethereal fabric happening this moment.
I have a story to tell about that moment - the one that just passed by. My story is also about reaching for a dream - maybe it is yours and maybe it is not (sometimes it is hard to tell.) My story is also about the self-care needed to sustain your dream until it can grow up (or you can.) It is also about driving for Lyft in the most beautiful City in America: San Francisco.
Everybody has a story.
It is embarrassing. I wanted to be more together than this, at this point in my life. And I am equally happy to let those comparisons get lost. They get in my way. I am beginning to live a life for which I was made.
I am starting over, again. After five businesses - two as a Landscape Architect, and 3 as a Techie CEO - my knack for the bootstrapping creative digital cartographic concerns was skilled (but not, alas, for convincing money to invest.) I was, until recently, a business owner, a bootstrapped CEO and a 'day late and a dollar short' entrepreneur. I have tried very hard to live another person's life. It was a struggle even for my work-a-holic self.
It was a life that my Diva-CPA mother wanted. "Have your own business. Its something you can count on." As a 50's woman she was ahead of her time and got a bum deal. But she was right, of course. She was just not right - about ME. My grieving of her passing has allowed me to parse a lifelong identity crisis and resurrect a more authentic self - one who I came here to be
It isn't as if I didn't always know I was an artist. I just didn't believe it was enough.
My horoscope chart apparently confirms it in a significant way: I am an artist, a writer and a minister and I have some catching up to do. I am a chaplaincy student who supports herself now by driving people around under the unilateral authority of the furry pink mustache.
And there is no where I would rather be than Lyfting in San Francisco. Seriously, everyone I have picked up in the last 4 months has been creative, thoughtful, talented and sharing a belief in possibilities. They are not angry - the angry people and the grumpy people take cabs.
I actually feel sorry for the cabbies. They have a hard job. I am not a cab. I am part of a connected community - a sharing community. Most of my riders sit in the front seat and after our fist-bumping meet and greet, they tell me their story.
I read the day - each time I drive by reading them. Is San Francisco having a good day? I will know after a few rides. Whether you take Lyft, or a competing ride-sharing service or a cab, if you live in the City you are part of a collective, ethereal fabric happening this moment.
I have a story to tell about that moment - the one that just passed by. My story is also about reaching for a dream - maybe it is yours and maybe it is not (sometimes it is hard to tell.) My story is also about the self-care needed to sustain your dream until it can grow up (or you can.) It is also about driving for Lyft in the most beautiful City in America: San Francisco.
Everybody has a story.
12 December 2008
Invisibility Coat (check)
Last night working a holiday coat check, I experienced invisibility. It is a primal and delightful place from which to observe my literary prey – like the similarly rich ecotone edge between the forest and the plains that first stood our simian ancestors on their toes for a better look.
I was there for the bankers and their wives. It was my job to take their coats, furs, and burdens from them so they could celebrate unencumbered. I am grateful for the work and
new to the high-serving class. I wore black and a Degas barmaid face - open and unexpectant , as least as much as my middle-aged ass could muster.
Thinking that I had pulled it off, a woman walked by and commented in a “drive by” :
“This coat cost $50,000 so I am not going to let you check it…”
After you forgive the tastelessness, it was sweetly authentic; it was an internal moment for her. It was observed by me but not actually registered by her as a public statement. She simply loved the big fur – perhaps more than her own skin – and could not part with it. I imagine she would be more guarded with a peer. Remember, these were financiers looking to keep a very low profile this holiday to refrain from reminding the public that their industry’s greed was instrumental in bringing the country to its monetary knees for the holidays.
Her blurt was an unobserved tree falling in the forest. Did she really say it? There was no one there to judge or even hear her comment. I was not there because I was wearing the hat of a coat check girl. It was like sleepwalking while talking to the trees.
I remember doing something similar 18 years ago to my favorite waiter in our neighborhood café. It was soon after my father announced he had only three months to live. He had come to San Francisco for a last visit. I rose and went to the kitchen to request they wrap up a Dutch Crunch roll for him. He loved those rolls.
Without any reason or segue, I blurted “ That’s my father over there; he is dying and has 3 months to live. Can you wrap up a roll for him”. I think back on that sentence and wonder how it came out of my mouth - like a pressure relieving, loud public fart. What is there to say to such a naked public display of our animal natures? We collectively pale at this kind of disrobing – our own skin prickling under our clothes. I cracked open and the public words fell out – groping to begin the process of making my wonderful father’s death real.
Perhaps it was like that for her. She needed to protect her own vulnerable skin with that big animal fur. She cracked open for a reason. Will she will discover it in a couple of decades that moment again when she connected with her humanity – our sweet animal nature that needs inappropriately, and loves what it will.
It reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem about “perfect” love in our ‘dazzling darkness.’ For me, her bear is about accepting what is .
Spring by Mary Oliver
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
I was there for the bankers and their wives. It was my job to take their coats, furs, and burdens from them so they could celebrate unencumbered. I am grateful for the work and
new to the high-serving class. I wore black and a Degas barmaid face - open and unexpectant , as least as much as my middle-aged ass could muster.
Thinking that I had pulled it off, a woman walked by and commented in a “drive by” :
“This coat cost $50,000 so I am not going to let you check it…”
After you forgive the tastelessness, it was sweetly authentic; it was an internal moment for her. It was observed by me but not actually registered by her as a public statement. She simply loved the big fur – perhaps more than her own skin – and could not part with it. I imagine she would be more guarded with a peer. Remember, these were financiers looking to keep a very low profile this holiday to refrain from reminding the public that their industry’s greed was instrumental in bringing the country to its monetary knees for the holidays.
Her blurt was an unobserved tree falling in the forest. Did she really say it? There was no one there to judge or even hear her comment. I was not there because I was wearing the hat of a coat check girl. It was like sleepwalking while talking to the trees.
I remember doing something similar 18 years ago to my favorite waiter in our neighborhood café. It was soon after my father announced he had only three months to live. He had come to San Francisco for a last visit. I rose and went to the kitchen to request they wrap up a Dutch Crunch roll for him. He loved those rolls.
Without any reason or segue, I blurted “ That’s my father over there; he is dying and has 3 months to live. Can you wrap up a roll for him”. I think back on that sentence and wonder how it came out of my mouth - like a pressure relieving, loud public fart. What is there to say to such a naked public display of our animal natures? We collectively pale at this kind of disrobing – our own skin prickling under our clothes. I cracked open and the public words fell out – groping to begin the process of making my wonderful father’s death real.
Perhaps it was like that for her. She needed to protect her own vulnerable skin with that big animal fur. She cracked open for a reason. Will she will discover it in a couple of decades that moment again when she connected with her humanity – our sweet animal nature that needs inappropriately, and loves what it will.
It reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem about “perfect” love in our ‘dazzling darkness.’ For me, her bear is about accepting what is .
Spring by Mary Oliver
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
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