Pride in San Francisco

It's Pride Week in San Francisco and I am glad I was there to capture even just a figment of it. San Francisco is, to me, like New York City, but just a tad more hip and artsy. Hip as in fashionable, stylish, funky and phat according to the urban dictionary. Phat and  I didn't mean to say fuckin phat like how I described my laughing Buddha. Phat in the urban dictionary means cool and fun but not obese. San Francisco is fuckin phat, indeed!

Artsy like pretentiously artistic! It's the culture of being young and gay.  Gay as in lighthearted and carefree not just being male and hosexual. At the Justin Herman Plaza, office workers eat their sushi burrito while a juggler tries to catch everybody's attention at a square where a fountain used to feature water an art form. That was before the drought. Even then, the atmosphere in the Justin Herman Plaza is gay which is not just being male and homosexual. 

Justin Herman was not the significant other of Harvey Milk as I thought he would be. Justin Herman which the San Francisco downtown landmark is named after was an urban development hero. Google couldn't  tell me if Herman Plaza was gay and homosexual but Harvey Milk was. 

Harvey Milk was neither the father of the Pride in San Francisco nor the mother firetrucker of the LGBT movement, Brenda Howard was. He did start his happy gay moments in Castro Street. The rainbow flag is probably among his brainchildren as a mother firetrucker. Milk encouraged Gilbert Baker, an Army draftee honorably discharged for being gay, to pursue his dream of being an artist, specifically sewing fabulous clothes that he could not afford. With Milk's "create and change" motto and influence, Gilbert Baker used his sewing skills to create the     iconic rainbow flag.

I deliberately avoided to go past two males wearing pink vests with "Because I am a Girl" logo. I thought they were selling hugs and the logo's message struck me as apologetic or some kind of an excuse. "Because I am a Girl" turns out to be a Plan International's movement to empower girls early on. Plan International is a non profit organization used to be known as Foster Parents Plan Internatonal. 

If it's not for solidarity, I wish people should just leave the rainbow flag alone. The Plan International's riding on LGBT issues to promote their advocacy against genital mutilation of girls in Africa is way out of hand considering that transgendered individuals like Bruce Caitlyn Jenner went under the knife for voluntary genital mutilation. And Pope Francis should shut up as well. How could he have known that same-sex couples do not make good parents?

Making out with BART

I have known about BART since that first visit to meet with classmates from Normal five years ago.

"There's your boyfriend Bart," Djeline teased me. 

I looked up and there was BART. I was riding with Marissa, Djeline and I were on Mila's SUV. Mila was on the wheel. We just came from Union City and we were going to Coyote Hills Regional Park through Highway 680. BART was indeed there, waiting.  

I have forgotten about BART till recently when I made another commitment to Amtrak. I initially planned to go to Yosemite taking the San Joaquin Valley Line from Bakersfield. Recalculating the route after I cancelled the plan to go to Yosemite through Merced, I was glad to learn that the same liner stops at Oakland.  So from  Oakland Jack London Station, I went right to look for Lake Merritt. I kept thinking of Shannon Merritt while looking for Lake Merritt.

BART is not a name of a person like Merritt Weaver, Shannon Merritt.  BART means Bay Area Rapid Transit. But Lake 

Merritt is a real lake formed from a large tidal lagoon right in the heart of Oakland.

Techs in the City

We came up with the name just to sit together as a group in the upcoming game between San Diego Padres and Saint Louis Cardinals in August. Michael in the B station is looking at his outlook  in between beautiful sinus rhytms and artifacts. I am roving and Anette,  who has been calling me Gloria de Jesus! Is in the B2 station and cracking up. Dovey is  at the A station is quizzing Davoo with "name that rhythm", a game she herself designed for newbies like I was recently. 

I was thinking of Teletubbies at first. 

Nah... British infants...too cutesy!

"Techs in the hood?"

Nah...kind of cheesy. There goes that word again. Cheesy is for me a better way of sayiing corny. But corny sounds like horny. 

"Techs in the city!" 

Michael loves to have "techs in the city".

It's a random mindfuck moment for the glorious holy shit!

The Blood of Lambs by Kamal Saleem

I finally finished the book. I got the book as a freebie in a used book nook in my neighborhood public library. 

My close to four years in Saudi Arabia somehow got me interested on novels set in the Gulf region. The book is just one among the many books that are mainly narratives of life as a Muslim. 

The early part of the book was close to believable. I must have read similar stories such that of a child soldier and suicide bombers  in news report, supplied by UPI, Agence France Press and other big news agencies. 

Towards the end of the book, I couldn't help but smack my head. The  book is pure fiction most likely  made up by a Jehovah's Witness and backed up by archived news reports. 

An excerpt from the section "America: 1985-1991", page 280-281 reads: 

But as I bent to lift the edge of the carpet, I heard a voice. 

"Kamal, the Muslims believe in the God of Father Abraham, and so do the Jews and the Christians. Why don't you call on the God of Father Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?"

The voice was so strong, so powerful, so real.

And I knew I would never have thought such thoughts on my own. 

Terrified not to listen, I rushed back to the window and fell on my knees again. I cried out in a loud voice, with every fiber within me, "God of Father Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, if you are real, speak to me! God of Father Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if you are real, I want to know you!"

Then, for the first time in my life, a miracle happened in front of me. The window brightened until its frame disappeared. The entire room was flooded with light. In this light was overwhelming peace and joy. My heart leapt within me because I knew it was the light of God. 

"Who are you, my Lord?" I cried.

A voice spoke in my heart: "I am that I am."

"What does that mean?" I called out.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega," the voice said. "I have known you since before the foundation of the world."

"My Lord, I will live and die for you!" I said.

"Do not die for me," the voice said. "I died for you that you may live."

At that moment, I knew I met my Christian God. I knew I had met my Creator. There was no turning back. 

Fr. Francis Xavier

It's still Sunday and I have too much time on my hand. Wasn't I supposed to be in church? I don't remember when I was in church last. Maybe it was when I tried to steal the body of Christ for Karlee. I have been trying to remind myself that Jesus Christ doesn't have an F for a middle initial!

Two posts on the same blog in a day? I must be fucking bored! After downloading another Noel Cabangon song, in Ilocano this time, I started typing names of people I haven't seen on Facebook at Google. 

St. Francis Xavier?  I randomly typed names  and Google asked if I meant St. Francis Xavier. I am reminded of a book I once read, about the miraculous remains of St. Francis Xavier. I have  a copy of the book. 

I have just been reading an old blog I posted almost five years ago where I mentioned about starting graduate school at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro with Renaissance Literarure and Theology. What I never mentioned in my blog was about meeting Francis Xavier himself. I met a living one of course, not the miraculous remains that is still encased in a glass casket. 

Francis Xavier was named or named himself after the saint whose remains miraculously stayed intact after his death. St. Francis Xavier was the Spanish missionary who co-founded the Society of Jesus, Since his death in the 16th century in China, his body has been transported from one place to another for  public viewing. He was never interred.

Catholic pilgrims travel to where his remains lie in state and kiss the casket like they normally do to the statue of Baby Jesus.

I met Francis Xavier after mass one day at the Xavier University campus in Cagayan de Oro City. I am sure he is not the reincarnated saint because St. Francis Xavier never went through Ash Wednesday.

"Thou art dust and unto dust, thou shalt return!"

To me, this meant that the real St. Francis Xavier never turned into dust and still in his own flesh preserved as a sacred relic at some church in Goa, India.  There's no need for reincarnation.

Funny how I am learning now that this short-term uyab who was then attending the South East Asian Rural Institute (SEARSOLIN) in Cagayan de Oro, is an ordained priest!

Guilt Trip cancelled

Aguilera and I were classmates at Grossmont College and we both started  working  almost at the same time as Telemetry Technicians. I came from another campus after I broke off  with  Ayyedis Vahkkendjaab. Aguilera  is new to the acute care setting.

Aguilera is still not familiar with pharmacology terms in the first month so when a nurse called that a patient she is monitoring is getting something she heard like a guilt trip, she thought the patient must be catholic. The patient was actually getting a Diltiazem drip. Diltiazem which is a calcium channel blocker works by relaxing the heart muscles and blood vessels. The medication was going to be administered intravenously on a drip. And the guilt trip is actually a Dilt drip. 

Today being a Sunday and still considering myself a catholic, another term for freewilling and universal agnostic, I am having a guilt drip. 

I am supposed to be riding the Metrolink to LA Union station tonight to catch an Amtrak bus to Bakersfield. From Bakersfield, I would have been riding the train to Modesto and wait for Djeline and Rich to pick me up at Modesto and off we go to Groveland for some fun trip to Yosemite National Park. The trip was something I initiated. 

While watching patients' heart rhythms and oxygen saturations to pay for my fun trip, I am not about to leave RN, my El Capitan of a husband to go looking for the El Capitan in Yosemite. RN must have caught a germ I didn't wash off my clothes at one time. I am staying home for now for my El Capitan.