This morning I was making my usual commute, and a mother and daughter got on the bus. Judging from the girl’s uniform, it appeared they were on their way to school. I am used to children, sometimes accompanied by their parents, getting on and off the bus around this time, but what was unusual about these two was that the girl was sobbing.

I had my headphones in (creating what I like to call technology-enabled solipsism), but the girl’s crying pierced even Adele’s “Someone Like You,” which is my current obsession. I turned to see whether I could identify the source of her distress, as did many of the other passengers.

The woman with her, whom I have assumed was her mother, seemed unaffected by the girl’s wailing. She gazed indifferently out the window as passengers are wont to do. The girl did not seem to be attempting to get her mother’s attention, nor even to draw the attention of other passengers. Her wailings were not mournful, nor were did they seem pleading. They simply were. And loud.

Other passengers looked in her direction, first to the girl, then to the mother, then back to the girl. Most tried to be discreet about it, but all seemed as puzzled as I was by the strange scene. Then at one stop, two more characters entered the scene.

Another mother and daughter stood at the sidewalk waiting for the bus as we pulled up. I thought both would board, but the mother helped her daughter climb the steps and then stood on the sidewalk and watched the girl navigate to a seat. This girl had an air of accomplishment about her—she was able to ride the bus on her own. Her mother stood on the sidewalk, happiness and pride in her eyes, and perhaps a little sadness, too, that her hija was growing up.

At least a few of the other passengers noticed the juxtaposition of these two mother–daughter pairs and smiled at the latter.

After some angst about the price of apartments in desirable (and accessible particularly for my commute) neighborhoods and the general unavailability of apartments in those neighborhoods at all, we found a few we wanted to visit. Timing was going to be tricky, as I had to be out of my place by a certain date, and Matt had to give 30-days’ notice. Apartment hunting in San Francisco is hyper-competitive, and usually you are competing with several other people for every place you find. Most listings are immediately available and get taken that quickly.

We identified one place that seemed like it might work – within our budget and meeting most of our other criteria (one bathroom instead of two, but we were willing to compromise on that). We attended an open house – the space was fine, clean, and unremarkable. Then the agent mentioned she had another unit on the top (third) floor we should check out (“only $100 more!”). We checked it out thinking we’d probably just go with the first one, as it was already at the high end of our budget. But then we saw the views.

It was a clear afternoon, and through the huge windows we had an uninstructed view of downtown, the Bay Bridge, and even across to the East Bay. We were sold (“only $100 more!”). Moreover, the leasing company was the same one who owned Matt’s current building, so he wouldn’t even have to give notice – it was an “upgrade.” we applied online and remarkably were approved the next day. The leasing agent had said we were among only a dew who looked at the place.

The following weekend (six days later) we moved. More about the move and the following days in a future post.

I came out to my father officially when I was 17, but as he later disclosed to me, he had known with certainty that I was gay for years before that. He explained to me that he had not told me he knew because he wanted me to be ready to be out. Every time I retell the story of my coming out, I mention that detail because it means a lot to me.

When I told my friend that I was gay, he was surprised (I think), but took it completely in stride. He had not yet joined the Marine Corps, but in a sense, he has always been a Marine. We had been friends since we met in Kindergarten, had grown apart somewhat in middle school (when we attended separate schools), and grew back together in high school and college. We have been friends for 21 years now, and I expect it will last a lifetime.

Perhaps my notion of what it means to be a “real” Marine is akin to my perception of the “real” cowboy (something title of this blog alludes to). Regardless, I am happy that there are people close to me in my life who embody what I suppose ultimately comes down to being “good men.”

This week, however, was a commute disaster. Nothing catastrophic, but three days in a row there were delays, augmenting the time of my commute to a hefty 4 hours. Tuesday, my return train was delayed by 20 minutes, which throws off my subsequent connection to the bus. Wednesday, my regular bus home started its route after the stop where I was standing, so I had to catch the next one. And Thursday (today), my morning bus was behind schedule enough that I missed my train and had to wait 15 minutes for the next one (on which I am currently writing this entry).

When I get frustrated with the commute, I have to remind myself why I do it. I love my apartment and the neighborhood where I live. And of course, there are few places I would rather live than San Francisco. On the other side of the commute is my job. I’m doing exactly what I enjoy most—writing and editing—and I have the flexibility to write on pretty much any topic that interests me. How many (employed) people have that luxury?

What frustrates me is not the length of the commute itself. It is that a longer commute means more dead time (10–20 extra minutes waiting for a connection), but it also means less time to do what I want. In other words, less time to play tennis, to practice my viola, to hang out with friends, to go to the gym, to sleep. That’s what really gets to me.

Although I enjoy what I do for work, it’s hard to beat a nice weekend of doing whatever I want. On Saturday, I went over to Berkeley to play tennis in the morning and basically spent the rest of the day there walking around and shopping. Without a car, everything takes longer, so any kind of shopping requires dedication of a significant portion of the day. Yesterday I went to see Captain America, which was pretty good. I’m pretty sure that superhero storylines appeal to most boys, and gay boys perhaps even more. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to feature an actor like Chris Evans, either.

I rarely see movies. For some reason, that has come up in conversation with people several times lately. My explanation is usually that while I don’t dislike movies, I tend to prefer more interactive forms of entertainment—conversation, activities, etc.—to the passive (and generally silent) exercise of watching a movie. Except for the occasional lean-over-and-whisper moment, movies have always seemed better suited for solitary enjoyment. Same goes for TV (I don’t even have one). I recognize that my ignorance of television and movies cripples me in social settings, but I certainly think I make up for it with knowledge of other areas—though few topics quite so benign as movies.

That said, I do enjoy movies when I do see them. Captain America was no exception. I’ve always enjoyed the psychology of war propaganda, and I’ll admit I get teary-eyed at anything patriotic. Seeing Captain America as a sort of as a relic of pro-war sentiment of the 1940s made me wonder whether our culture has radically changed since then with respect to armed conflict. Will we ever be engaged in a war that most of the country supports? I suspect the answer is “no”; that leads to the follow-up question, “Is that a good thing?”

On the one hand, wars are bad. Perhaps I am simply another victim of the propaganda (as I have just admitted to enjoying it), but World War II seems to me to be the epitome of “Good versus Evil.” Surely it was easy to get behind an effort to keep a hostile country (with a severe-looking leader) from taking over the world. But contemporary conflict doesn’t seem quite so straightforward. It tends to be much harder to identify in such black-and-white terms the good guys from the bad guys. Maybe that’s a good thing.

For one thing, warfare has changed. I’m no expert on the matter, but it seems pretty clear that lines and lines of soldiers with machine guns are no longer the mode. Unmanned missions, stealth operations, missiles, bombs, assassinations, terrorism, intelligence—these seem to be the weapons of modern-day conflicts. Politics and industry seem to be the primary motivations, rather than a sense of “moral outrage” (to borrow legal jargon). Again, maybe not a bad thing.

As the United States ages, I think its “moral compass” has matured as well. Some might argue that a “compass” should not change, but I disagree. In the 1940s, while there might have been a sense of moral outrage at international affairs, people seemed completely blind to civil and human rights violations right here on our own soil. While getting involved in WWII may have been (and by my assessment, certainly was) the right thing to do at the time, I don’t think that kind of situation will ever present itself again. We are, by and large, a more enlightened people (though recent political trends and events have challenged that proposition), and I simply cannot envision such a situation that our entire nation and its diverse interests can ever again stand behind a cause so uniformly and passionately as it once was able.

Yesterday I had my first (new) quartet rehearsal. It was a nice combination of new and old; one of the violinists was in a quartet with me for a few years at Rice, the other is her friend, and the cellist is a performance major I met through a mutual friend. We read a quartet by Cesar Franck (Performance; Sheet Music) and then one of my all-time favorites, Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 in F (Performance; Sheet Music). Both were very nice, but we opted to work on the Beethoven because it’s more accessible and would be more fun to rehearse.

In the middle of rehearsal, my new sofa was delivered! I’m pretty excited, as it nearly completes my new apartment. I’ll probably be spending quite a bit of time on it now (indeed, I am writing this blog post from it). I’ll also be having friends over soon, I hope, since there is now a place for them to sit.

That’s all for now. No promises about frequency of postings, but I hope to get back into it.