Looking into the distance.

As my dad points out, work is called work because they have to pay you to do it.

Tell the youngsters that there are days, believe it or not, when adults would actually rather be tending to work than what else happens to be going on.

Today Pico is experiencing a bump in the road of perfect health. In my pain and worry I made the mistake of looking on YELP for reviews of San Francisco Veterinarians. According to the internet reviewers of the world, every business sucks. Every restaurant has horrible food, every store has terrible customer service and every vet is mean and uncaring.

Apparently only the disappointed rabble feel inclined to review things. The satisfied majority pushes onward toward other exciting, rewarding experiences which they will no doubt also not YELP about.

What's a worry wart to do?

My friend is sick and neither of us have a reliable relationship with a doctor yet.

I ask that anyone who feels pity for vulnerable kitties and melting tough-guys do one of the following for Pico today:

1) Say a little prayer that she quickly returns to her happy, pooping on the floor self;

2) Put "the vibe" out that everything turns out okay; or

3) Just call me or email me with a kind word.

What is the point of companionship except that it provides comfort when things go awry?

I am happily putting Pico in the car now to drive to the Inner Richmond, to the one vet that has an appointment available on this short work day.

We do all we can do, and the rest we have to wait and see.

Smiling Happy Criminals

Christmas came in the airwaves this year. We couldn't be in Indiana, but our smiling faces joined the party anyway, thanks to SKYPE.

During our video conference with Audrey's family in Lafayette, I showed off my new California driver's license. Noting my enormous smile, Audrey's sister Cheryl said the state of Indiana just passed a law outlawing smiles on Indiana driver's licence photos.

Outlaw smiles and only outlaws will smile!

According to Ron Stiver, Indiana BMV commissioner, the reasoning behind this effort is so that face recognition software can be utilized to more easily identify people with fraudulent IDs.

There are few joys associated with getting a new driver's license. The one possible moment of happiness involved in the process is that brief, passing minutia of love that accompanies the physical act of smiling. A person cannot simultaneously be livid and smiling.

I remember my friend Scotto back in Indiana got robbed earlier this year. A car pulled up to his garage and a guy got out, walked into Scotto's garage, stole a bunch of stuff and put it in his trunk. Scotto confronted the thief as he was making his escape, but the guy just drove off. Scotto successfully got all the numbers off the guy's license plate, along with a detailed description of the vehical.

Scotto reported the crime to the police. He told them the thief had an "In God We Trust" license plate, and he gave them the numbers along with the make, model and color of the car.

The investigating officer told Scotto that the In God We Trust plates also have a letter on them. Scotto didn't get the letter, only the numbers. The officer told Scotto they could not track the thief without the letter.

Scotto noted that the BMV has on file the make, model and color of every vehical they register. Since there are only 26 possible variations of these numbers with a letter, he wondered why the police could not cross reference the license plate numbers with the BMV records to come up with a match. Chances are very good there are not two cars registered in Indiana with an In God We Trust license plate with those exact numbers, that exact make, model and color.

The investigating officer apologized and said there was nothing he could do.

Police in Indiana do not reliably utilize the tools they already have. What is the point of accumulating more tools?

If anyone is interested in following the money, my guess is that someone in the Indiana government is a friend, relative or investment partner with someone in the face recognition software business. Outlawing smiles maybe has nothing to do with police work. It maybe has everything to do with implementing procedures that require government expenditures toward the purchase of products that make someone rich.

Sorry. Does this smile make me look jaded?

Passerby.

I didn't have a light. But he asked for one so politely that I genuinely felt sorry I couldn't help him out. Not that I wanted to enable his smoking habit. For some unexplainable reason I just wanted a deeper connection with this person. It might have been his smile.

It is a feeling of loss to wish you knew a stranger better. This is what seperates me from a mirror. I hold on to the images after they're gone.

One man's trash.

It appeared in the night. No one knows where it came from. Is it garbage? Is it art? Does it belong here?

Is it wondering the same thing about me?

Announcing Real San Francisco, the new blog by Phil Barcio.

Exclusively featuring photographs of stuff I see on the ground.

A Place of Relaxed Eyes

Attn: All Team Members
Re: Update from Mission Control

With the holidays approaching, we here at Mission Control want all team members to rest assured that we are aware of increasing tension surrounding the continued drain on resources caused by system-wide critical upgrade program known as Job Search: SF Bay Edition.

In an effort to assuage lingering doubts that the approaching holiday might somehow be less merry, jolly, elfy, etc. this year than in seasons past, we are happy to hereby announce that at 10:38 last evening "JS:SFBE" concluded work on phase two of its upgrade, the final phase.

100% of total energy reserves are now available once again to run "Life."

Activity Report:
Username: PHILLIP
Jobs Secured: 2
JOB ONE:
Title: ASSISTANT GM
Location: RAMBLAS TAPAS
Sub Directory: VALENCIA STREET, MISSION DISTRICT
Start Date: 12.21.2008
Distance from Mission Control: 1.5 MILES
Approximate Salary: CLASSIFIED
Operational Parameters: FULL TIME
Benefits: FULL
JOB TWO:
Title: BOOK EDITOR
Location: SCHOOL FOR SELF HEALING
Sub Directory: OCEAN BEACH, OUTER SUNSET
Start Date: 12.17.2008
Distance from Mission Control: 7.3 MILES
Approximate Salary: CLASSIFIED
Operational Parameters: CONTRACT
Benefits: POMEGRANATE TEA, DARK CHOCOLATE

We here at Mission Control wish to express our thanks to all team members for sticking with the mission thus far despite any specific far reaching goals or plans.

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others."
-Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Cinnamon buns awarded all around.

Celebration ensuing currently at Java Beach. All team members invited to attend.

The Overthinker

When I was a Realtor back in Indiana, I used to ask every new client I met a frank question about whether or not they actually needed my services: "Is a real estate transaction the necessary and correct next step in your life?"

I had gotten the question off a marketing website and liked it, so I used it every time.

Often, after honestly expressing their fears, expectations and long term goals, they realized the answer was no.

The strategy lost me a lot of business, but it gained me self-respect. It made me feel less like a salesman and more like an ally.

When I arrived in San Francisco I fully intended to continue selling real estate for a living. Then something unexpected happened. During my interview with Pacific Union, the market leader in luxury San Francisco real estate, the Managing Broker asked me a question: "Do you passionately believe that selling real estate in San Francisco is the necessary and correct next step in your life?"

Immediately I realized the answer was a resounding no. In order to be an ally to myself I knew there were other things I had come 2000 miles to do.

For the past six weeks I have been on a vision quest, interviewing for several different occupations. Chocolate shop manager. Staff writer at a vineyard. Marketing assistant for an independent record label. Assistant GM for a Tapas restaurant group who is pioneering the way in ecologically sustainable business practices in their industry. And several others.

Now the time has come to make a choice. I have more than one offer. (Every Realtor's dream, right?)

My favorite subject in college was sociology, the study of individuals' behavior within a society. My favorite topic was the question of what specific behavioral qualities separated human beings from the rest of the animals.

I never did hear an irrefutable answer to this question, and I continued to wonder what the answer might be.

I have heard that animals don't lie. But deception is so key to the survival of chameleons that we borrow their name to describe humans who most effectively display the propensity to deceive.

Mark Twain pointed out that "humans are the only animals who blush, or need to." But monkeys blush, too, it turns out. And possibly need to.

The only answer I myself ever came up with is that humans are the only animals that go out of their way to improve on what other members of their species have done in the past and are currently doing.

I've never seen a squirrel attempt to push squirrel culture forward into new realms of accomplishment. Possibly this is due to the lack of adequate documentation of squirrel culture, or the lack of availability of such documentation in squirrel language.

If my very humanity is based on my ability to innovate and alter the future of my species' culture, I suppose I should seek an occupation that affords me that chance.

Out of all the employers I have interviewed with, only one has broached the subject of what new, and uniquely mine, I feel I can bring to the organization. Sadly, the offer that employer made me has the lowest salary of all my options.

Out of a desire to pay bills, I initially rejected that offer. But last night I saw a t-shirt on my way home portraying a grainy photograph of four Cherokee men posing next to a campfire, holding rifles in their hands. Underneath the picture it said, "Homeland Security."

Humans reinvent old behaviors and call them new behaviors.

America was the Cherokee's terrorist. Now bloodshed, manifest destiny and injustice threaten to end America's reign exactly how it began.

We should just admit the record is skipping and play another tune instead of listening to it over and over, grumbling about how awful it sounds.

I already know how it feels to not innovate. What I don't know is how it feels to be asked for new ideas every day by people with sincere interest in putting those ideas to the test.

Yes, there's good money to be made repeating the old behaviors that have never brought me peace. There may be less money today in innovation. But the potential exists there for a different kind of tomorrow.

What would a squirrel do?

Timeless Beauty

Although I have yet to find someone willing to pay me money to write for them, I have made plenty of connections to people willing to exploit me.

Happily!

I freely write anyway. Why not write for free?

My current unpaid assignment is for Tikkun Magazine in Berkeley. It is to write a profile of an artist named Mark Dukes.

Dukes is an iconographer. He recently finished a project he has been working on for ten years.

The project is a wall mural depicting 90 dancing saints, joined hand-in-hand, circling the massive, domed ceiling of St. Gregory’s Church, located in San Francisco’s Portrero Hill neighborhood.

The art world is strewn with remnants of entire careers that didn’t span ten years.

Dukes spent ten years on a single painting.

For comparison, it took Michelangelo four years and seven months to complete his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

If time is something to be measured and tracked, it may seem that Dukes spent a disproportionate amount of a finite substance working on something essentially ethereal.

But time is an illusion.

Elements come together and collaborate in the creation of things. For anything to come into existence in this world, steps must be taken. Formulas must be conceived and adjusted. Ideas must percolate. Style must be established then abandoned then reworked until finally the thing can be.

Everything, all of it, the buildings, the subways, the cars, the clothes, the bicycles, it was all once just an idea in somebody’s head. How long did it take to invent buildings? How long did it take to make clothes?

Creation takes as long as it takes and that’s how long it takes.

Process reflects only an image of the maker, not what is made. Many a thing goes through a process of creation that seems to be conflagrated, nothing but a series of random disasters, but somehow in the end becomes something beautiful, useful, even vital.

Earth is the ultimate example. Earth is art.

The story of the process is irrelevant. All that matters is the beauty, the usefulness, the vitality.

Every wasted argument over evolution vs. creationism vs. whatever other process supposedly got us here only ultimately offends.

Evolution doesn’t make me love. Creationism doesn’t hold my feet atop the ground.

Love itself calls me to it. The ground itself lifts me up.

We products of earth, each of us, are creations, collaborated upon. Each of us is a work of art. We exist independently of time. We are never complete for long.

If we only contemplate petty measures of each other’s worth based on immature concepts such as the passage of minutes and hours and days, we not only confuse our value and mistake our purpose but we defy our nature, and become liars.

There is apparently something in San Francisco called a "rainy season."

We're trying to push through December but December keeps pushing back.

Scientists say that human brain activity associated with memory perception increases along with increased proton activity in the air, which is common on rainy days.

Either they're right or I just miss my family and friends lately.

Nostalgia, having no choice, having filled every other nook and cranny, invaded my dreams last night.

I awoke this morning fresh from a dream about rum balls. My mom made the best rum balls ever in the storied history of rum balls, which, if someone else hasn't already, I look forward to writing.

Assuming no outrageous surprise waits for me in the coming weeks, this will be the first Christmas I spend away from Indiana. Away from my dad. Away from my sisters. Away from Audrey's family. Away from tradition.

So I embrace the new.

Traditions are all invented by someone. Without whoever invented the original Barcio Family Christmas, I would not have the benefit of the melancholy I feel now, tugging me back to Christmases past.

Stoneycreek Farm, Christmas tree hay ride with my dad. Hot apple cider and hot chocolate. Monument Circle tree lighting ceremony downtown. Giant, plastic, toy soldiers lining the street.

A trip across the bay to Alameda Island yesterday confirmed what Audrey and I suspected all along: Christmas decorations look great on tropical plants.
We take a little bit of the past with us wherever we go and add it to whatever we find.

Our friends and neighbors back in Indiana who used to receive tiny packets of rum balls in their mailboxes will have to make other arrangements for awesomeness this year, a challenge I am sure they are up to.

Meanwhile, Audrey's all-organic version of Lillian's famous recipe will soon grace the about-to-be-delighted palates of hundreds of unsuspecting San Franciscans who don't yet know how lucky they are to have made our acquaintance.

Love leaves, and then there's a space to fill with more love. Mom's passing brought me deeper understanding of my dad and my sisters. Moving away again has brought us closer still.

Love anticipates. Love weighs its options. Love remembers.

A Picture of Hope

There is no need to wonder what a man getting a shoe shine is thinking. He is thinking, "I need to look my best. It is so important for me to look good that I am paying another human being to shine my shoes for me. My shoes. The bottom of everything. The exclamation point on the screaming awesomeness of me. Yes, the competition is so stiff where I am about to go that I cannot afford even the tiniest flaw."

A shoe shine is never the first thing a man does. It is the final preparation.

Have you ever seen a man with a wrinkled shirt or a messy haircut on a shoe shine stand?

No.

Because there is nothing more empowering than a shoe shine. It is the moment when a man tells himself once and for all, "I am worth something. I have hope."

Sitting there, feeling the gentle pressure of bristles pushing through leather, watching the other people walking by, he thinks, "I am as good as any of them are. I belong in this world. I deserve a shot. This shoe shine is going to put me over the top. I am going to look my very best, very, very soon."

A man getting a shoe shine thinks, "Once I get this job / promotion / date / client / account / recording contract / nomination, I am going to make a habit of getting my shoes shined all the time. Every week. Every day maybe. Yes, I'll get up an hour earlier every day from now on and buy a paper and a cup of coffee and come here and get my shoes shined. I'll be on a first name basis with the shoe shine guy. I'll get a jump on the day. That's what I'm a-gonna do. And I'll start listening to more jazz, too. And I'll eat right. And start going back to karate!"

Sometimes it works out for him. Sometimes everything goes according to plan. He gets what he wants, and he is catapulted into a world where daily shoe shines actually make sense.

Other times the competition is just too much for him, and nothing, not even a shoe shine, can put him over the top. He is denied.

Does the man for whom a shoe shine was no help ever go back to the shoe shine stand again? Does he look back fondly upon it as a wonderful thing, a silly, hopeful, private pleasure he afforded himself in a moment of bouyent aspiration.

No.

There is no need to wonder what that man is thinking.

He is thinking, "There is nothing stupider than a shoe shine. I have seven less dollars. I am a fool. I can't believe I gave that guy a tip."

The Really Really Free Market

I get asked for spare change almost every day by someone on the street. But I always say no.

It isn't that I'm stingy. It's just that, according to the principles of reality, there can be no such thing as extra money.

We have a system. People receive quantities of stored value (money) in exchange for units of perceived value (work). Said quantities of stored value are then utilized by said people to obtain accouterments (food, shelter, clothing).

The higher the perception of value is for someone's units, the more stored value they can accumulate and the more eclectic accouterments they can acquire (skateboards, balloons, personal assistants).

This paradigm is known as "the economy." Exchanges of value within "the economy" are known as "transactions."

So when someone on the street asks me if I have any spare change, I have no choice. The only honest answer I can give is no. Since I perceive no value in being asked for money by a stranger, there is therefore no basis for a transaction, resulting in the absence of an economy, necessitating the nonexistence of any money, let alone extra money.

This makes me sad.

But thankfully, the days when the economy is based on trading are ending.

What will a new economy based on sharing look like?


Human beings assembled informally, giving away whatever they have for free.


Other human beings taking whatever they believe they can use from whatever is being offered.


The economy of sharing proliferates giving. "Free trade" is a contradiction.

Think of it as a "hand-me-up."

Audrey begins her new job today.

And I have a second interview at one o'clock for a dream job of my own.

Future comes calling. We push toward something newish, marching ever toward healthier choices. Nothing putrid can last.

In the shadows clinging to their myths are the left-behind scowlers, waiting for history to repeat itself, watching stink-eyed as the present descends upon them and they slip into irrelevance.

I can see Audrey standing beside her desk, laughing, listening, adoring her new friends at work.

I visualize my handshake with the President of my new company, fresh, crisp W2 forms being slid in front of me to sign.

But then something says, "What if not? What if no laughing? No handshake? No W2s?"

Cynicism is a form of mental retardation.

Religion is no cure, despite its promise of something in the next life worth sacrificing for. Implicit in that placebo is acquiescence that nothing in this life is.

Logic and reason also fall short, relying too much on perspective. What appears to be sensible might not be, depending on one's point of view.

The only cure for cynicism is sheer will.


Simply refuse to believe that everything will fail.

Take hold of the relics of love and implant them in some material way in your life. Take a picture of love when you see it.


Invent ways to sustain love's tiny, withering echoes. That's the cure.