This is a caricature of Albany. The Prius is the best part. "Minimizing their ecological footprint" or so they think. If you are always doing inner city driving, you are only using gas so you are emitting just as many emissions as every other car on the street, not to mention how much pollution is created in making the car. Yet, in the one square mile town that is Albany, there are more Priuses per capita than in the rest of the country. By all appearances "we" are liberal and open minded, when in actuality "we" are pretentious bigots.
My favorite feeling in the whole wide world is being warmed by a fire talking with good friends. Although this is an actual fire, when I'm with good friends, I feel that warmth and intimacy of being around a camp fire in the middle of nowhere. This seems to be a romanticized all-American pastime - sitting around a campfire with family and friends making smores, singing songs, and gazing at stars. This is not actual family, and not all of these people are actual friends, I've created that same cultural experience.
"We share a common bond." This is a quote from a text that binds these people and I together though that book represents only the solution while what really binds us is the shared disease. We come together and know each other because of our shared illness. Most of us have nothing in common besides an affinity that we are not alone in our struggles. These are the people I've shared my life with and by grace will continue to share until the end of it. By walking in and being a member of this group, I'm fully exposed and yet I feel safest here in a meeting.
Taken from a window on Bart. What sticks out at me is the barbed wire that's keeping people inside the Bart station and the levels of highway. I know its meant to keep people safe, but its apropos in that if you look at the different levels of highway with Bart being on the bottom, its like the different levels of our economy. The upper class and middle class can easily move around while the lower classes are caged behind barbed wire - they can move only on a track back and forth.
This is at the Dyke March. Every year these guys put up this sign to show their support. I know because I've seen it up several years. It captures the playfulness in the gay community that blossoms fully at pride. You can't walk past it without giggling. Its not about "being in your face" gay anymore. Its much more about self-acceptance and being comfortable in your own skin. That gay men are asserting seize the vagina is a positive statement of support and inclusion of not only gay women, but also of straight men.
At first glance, it looks like some sort of protest or vandalism. In actuality, its his enthusiasm and interest in the event that he wanted to get a great view of the dykes on bikes as they drove by on their motorcycles. By saying nothing, just the fact that he is up on that light is a statement of his enthusiastic support. Sometimes our presence and attention is more of an effective statement than lots of posters, signs, words or shouting. Only in San Francisco would he not be pulled down.
This is in the back of an AC Transit bus. The guy in the photo almost looks like he's meditating which is a statement of two things: 1. I love using public transportation to meditate and I've learned how to sleep while riding. Its my alone time. 2. We're so separated from each other that we feel alone even when piled in with many people traveling the same route.
