san diego - drive north!

these are the last pics from san diego! alas, there aren't a lot because... well. TRAFFIC AND RAIN.

anyway. the next day i drove out of there. i stopped by my friend's new optometry practice, and as i was leaving from there, i snapped this great pic of the wide-open boulevards of san diego's suburbs:

From San Diego

big. sky.

alas, soon enough on the trip back north it started to rain:

From San Diego

now, on the trip south, it was dark by the time i got to this area. so at least i saw this in the daylight, even if it was raining! because -- yeah, once i got to irvine, where my trip-south photos ended, i was caught in traffic so long it basically turned pitchblack. but regardless, i just really really wanted to take a picture of THIS:

From San Diego

look to the left side of the freeway there. that's probably the most infamous landmark on the stretch of I-5 between LA and SD. now, this stretch of road is one of the only gaps in the nonstop socal urban sprawl -- this gorgeous, wild section where the freeway runs by the sea, passing estuaries and mountainsides.

however, this is also where, in their infinite wisdom, the state decided to put their nuclear power generators. and this wouldn't be so bad, except these things need shielding. and THAT wouldn't be so bad, except in the interest of not making these generators giant and fugly blocks of concrete, they opted for domes instead.

domes with little peaks on them.

that look EXACTLY like gigantic boobs.

so that's what these are called. "The Boobs". if you mention "the boobs on the I-5" to ANYONE who's lived in san diego for any length of time, esp if they've driven to LA at least once or twice, they will absolutely know what you're talking about.

here's a closer look:

From San Diego

BEWBS.

after the adolescent snicker i got out of that, it was onward to irvine again. it stopped raining for a while, but the sky got more and more ominous as the traffic got thicker and thicker.

https://picasaweb.google.com/112865310833252467406/SanDiego?authkey=Gv1sRgCIyAks_91_jT_wE&feat=embedwebsite#5597950890369097170

...and then, inevitable, ground to a halt:

From San Diego

this was seriously a perfect storm. it was 5pm. i was in LA. it was raining. it could not possibly get worse than that.

to fully understand my predicament, you have to know this: socal people cannot drive in the rain. i don't really get this, because SD actually gets a lot heavier rain than the bay area. we get more rain overall, but san diego gets torrential downpours. so you'd think they'd be used to it! but i guess the fact that they get infrequent but very heavy downpours just means they get even more panicked when it finally happens.

i saw SO MANY CARS do this:

1) slow down in the pouring rain
2) slow down more
3) slow to a crawl
4) turn on high beams
5) TURN ON EMERGENCY BLINKERS

every time, it cracked me up. driver in distress, due to rain!

but yeah. socal people are afraid of rain. LA traffic is always bad, but the LA rush hour is legendarily bad. and just... yeah. it was a weekday, it was rush hour, and it was raining. that stretch of road in the picture above -- the interchange right there? from my position in that picture to the end of the interchange -- the last merge of that highway overhead into the I-5 -- literally took me 45 minutes to get through. 45 minutes for about... maybe a quarter mile.

i almost went out of my mind. i ended up watching avatar on my phone while creeping along. and it wasn't like that was the end of the traffic. this was still the south side of LA, and i had to get all the way through it >_<

this is the last pic i took in socal:

From San Diego

and it's of me still stuck in traffic. i was in westwood by then, almost out of LA. it was horrific. hours had gone by. it took me something like 5-6 hours to get from north san diego to the grapevine -- a trip that SHOULD take about 2 hours.

it was insane going over the grapevine. actually it was insane all the way home. not because there was traffic -- because there wasn't -- but because it was just pouring rain the whole way. it was actually a little harrowing going over the LA mountains this time. just ... drenching rain. tons of Drivers In Distress Due To Rain. and then ... yeah. all the way up the central valley too.

but! eventually! i made it back to the bay. and thus ended my trip to SD :D

last thing! while i was digging for pics of my parents' place, i found some pics of my dog :] i talk about him all the time, but here he is:

From San Diego

see the metal pot thing? that's an old old pot my parents had, that eventually got relegated to dogfood duty. we used to feed him in little dogfood trays, but... yeah. it became easier to just slop his noms into a huge pot *LOL*

btw, that was him in our backyard in san diego, looking unusually calm and thoughtful and well-behaved. he was a remarkably intelligent dog, and i'm almost sure he knew how to pose for photos. however, this was how he usually looked:

From San Diego

i think it was exceptionally windy that day. i made him sit for a portrait, but he did not enjoy this. *LOL* i think he was like. protesting and making little low howly noises in that pic.

aw, dog. :]

this, honestly, is how i remember him best:

From San Diego

i wish that picture wasn't so blurry :] that was him on his little bed that my mom made for him. the piece of wood behind him is to protect the wall from getting all dirty because he tended to roll against it, sit against it, kick it, etc.

he always looked so peaceful when he slept :] i remember once i was jetlagged and couldn't sleep, so i went downstairs and slept on the couch with my hand in his fur. best sleep ever.

:]

aw, dog.

memento.

been a long time since i've written here. suddenly there's so much i want to write, but one thing at a time, right?

lots of things happened in the interim. i worked my ass off, mostly, which is why i haven't had time to write. also some other stuff that'll i'll address. slowly. heh. in the next few entries. maybe.

watch, i'll probably go away for another 6 months.

anyway. just wanted to post this tonight. my dog got bitten by a rattlesnake at the beginning of august. he's all right now, thank god, but for a while it was bad. it was very fucking bad.

it's hard for me to put down what he is to me. we got him 12 years ago, just before i went to college. i had a year with him, and that was it, but it was enough, somehow, to make him a part of me. i love him. that's all i can say. i love him more than just about anything else on this earth, and if he'd died - like that - my grief would have torn me apart.

when he was so sick after getting bitten, when he couldn't even hold his head up and his eyes were sunken and he was dazed, barely even recognizing his family, i was a few thousand miles away and i couldn't do a fucking thing. i knew if this was it, i wouldn't even be able to say goodbye. and there was a night when it seemed like it was the end. he just kept downspiraling. they took lab readings every few hours, and he just kept going down and down, and even after they administered plasma and all - which was supposed to be something of a miracle cure - he still didn't improve.

he improved the next morning, as it turned out. but not then. and when i found out his numbers were still so bad, i couldn't deal with it. i have a double-room thing in my bathroom - the toilet and tub in one small room, the sinks in another. the small room is the most isolated, private, holed-away place in my apartment. that's where i went after i hung up w/ my parents. i put the toilet lid down and sat down and i was just going to think for a moment, just prepare myself somehow, and next thing i knew i was sobbing.

i couldn't help it. it wasn't something i had control over. i couldn't stop it, not by pinching the bridge of my nose, not by pressing my hands to my face. i couldn't even breathe evenly. it kept hitching in my lungs, and the tears just wouldn't stop. i hadn't cried like that since i was a child. in fact, i don't think i've ever cried like that, because i've never known that sort of pain and grief. all i could do was keep it silent and in the dark, and not come out until i was all right.

it took a fucking half-hour.

the lights were off because i didn't want my grief to be visible, or something. there's a window in that room, and through it i could see the moon that night. i think it was a half moon, waning; i remember looking at it and wondering how it could still float like that, normal.

i was hurting and i was furious. i was alternating between doubling over - like maybe that'd help the pain somehow - and cursing. cursing god, i guess. i kept saying "goddammit, saifur--" and i don't know why. i think i wanted him to fight it harder, or maybe i wanted him to be all right somehow, and i thought if i just asked him hard enough he would be.

this is something i wrote at the lowest point of it all, right after i got out of the bathroom. i didn't mean to keep it at the time, but it was an email to someone else. she wrote back, i wrote back, etc etc - and it was always down there, even after my dog had gotten better. so i thought i should save it. just so i remember what it was like.

i don't know why it's important for me to remember. maybe because my dog's old now, and i know he's old now. i know this won't last forever. but maybe it'll make it easier for me when it ends, if i can remember how bad it could have been, and the extra time i had afterwards.

--

my dog's not doing so good. he's so old, you know, and the fucking snake, it bit him like 2-3 times. piece of fucking SHIT. i swear, i've never wanted to kill anything before - i mean honestly, seriously, open-eyedly want something DEAD - but if i had half a chance i'd kill that snake if i could, and as slowly as i could.

i know it's horrible and utterly inhumane, but i can't help it. my DOG, goddammit, i got him when i was in high school. 12 fucking years, and every time i went to my parents' i felt like i'd gone home because that dog was there to welcome me. he never forgets a friend, and he never forgot me even though i was really only with him for one, fucking, precious year before college. i love that dog. 12 years of my life, he's been there for me, even if he lived somewhere else, and now i can't do SHIT when he's going through utter hell that no one should have to go through.

the venom is designed to do one thing, man. cause. destruction. it's not even to KILL. that's a fucking neurotoxin, where you go numb, lethargic and drop dead in 2 minutes, painlessly. this is just destruction. it's a venom designed to chew up the internal structure of the victim. it's designed to incapacitate by PAIN, and then DIGEST while the victim's still alive.

and the fucking piece of SHIT snake hit my dog 3 times with it.

i forgave the shit one bite. i know my dog must've bothered it. he's a curious dog, and tends to totally ignore all danger and all attempts to call him off when he's hellbent on investigating something. he's a rough dog too, who likes to chew up little animals. i know that. i know the snake's entitled to self defense. but three fucking strikes, man. three fucking strikes. that's fucking malice, and i don't care if it's irrational to think that about a fucking idiot reptile who can't even MOVE if it drops below 40 degrees.

....argh...

anyway, so he went in with decent vitals. his hematocrit was 45%, and that's stayed pretty steady, but that's not a real big deal. his protein levels has been going up and down, and has been steadily a bit low. went in 5.2 (normal is 6-8), went down to 4.0 at his lowest last night around 9pm, which had us scared bad.

but it's the fucking clotting time that's shit right now. that's what the venom does, partially - it chews up muscle, and it also fucks the blood up. it kills RBCs to some extent, and it kills off clotting factors so the blood just flows. he went in with 90 sec clotting time, which is a bit high, but still okay. it shot up to fucking 130 at 9pm. went back to 80 at 12 midnight, which we thought meant he was outta the woods. but then at 6am he was back up to 110, and then he spiked to like 180-190, which is fucking AWFUL.

so they put him on plasma transfusions at about 2pm, which is supposed to help a lot. at 8pm though, he was still at 150...plus his proteins went from 5.0 at 6am to 4.4.

i'm so fucking scared. i know he's old. i know everyone has his time to die. but not like THIS, goddammit. not like this. i want him to die at home, peaceful, in his sleep, old and comfortable and warm. i want to be there even though i know it'll tear me to pieces. but then this fucking rattler bites him three fucking times and he's SUFFERING in the hospital and he hates the fucking hospital, but he's too damn weak to even put up a fight now. he's just lying there with strangers in a cage, alone, and i'm just so scared to death that he might just give up.

goddammit. i was so hoping that the 8pm readngs would be good. when i heard they hadn't improved nearly as much as the doctors had hoped i fell to pieces. i didn't even know wtf hit me. i sat on the fucking toilet lid and bawled for half an hour. i couldn't stop. he's my DOG. i love him, and now he's in a fucking hospital fighting for his life and i can't even talk coherently because i'm so fucking scared for him.

and i wish i could have more faith in the vets. it's hypocritical of me. this is the shit i complain about in my own patients. but i can't help but wonder how much they really give a fuck about my dog, and how much of this is them looking at dollar signs. it's been $5000 so far. it'll be indefinitely more. i just wish i could have some TRUST in them, that they're doing all they can. that they're not doing more than they should and making it worse. that they're not letting him linger even if there's no hope just for the money. that, if it really comes down to it, they'll be able to ignore the $200/bag price tag on the plasma transfusion, the $1000-$2000/day on drugs and hospitalization and transfusions and all that shit, and tell us, honestly, that my dog has suffered more than his share, and it's time to let him go rather than stake it out to the bitter fucking end.

i'm thinking so negatively. i can't help it. i don't know wtf to do. i'm scared that they're not doing enough. i'm scared that my dog is just going to give up even though i KNOW he won't. i'm scared that they're doing too much. i'm scared that he's scared and isn't going to rest properly. i'm scared to death and back that he's going to lose this battle and it's going to be horrible for him.

i want him to go home. i want to believe that he will, and keep a positive attitude, but right now it's so fucking hard.

failing that, i want him to not suffer anymore. but i know that'll just shred me to pieces. i can't even think of him not being there anymore, leaving like THIS, without crying. it's not fucking fair. he's never been anything but good and brave and loyal and too damn smart for his own good. it's not fucking fair that he should have to go through this, you know? and if he doesn't pull through, it's just... christ.

i know if it happens people would comfort me by saying he's lived a good long life with my parents and me, and that we've loved him more than anyone, but STILL. goddammit. NOT LIKE THIS. nothing is worth this.

i would honestly, happily, give years off my life to save my fucking dog. even if it's just to get him out of the hospital, stabilized again, if only for a month so he can pass away peacefully the way he should. i don't care. i want him to live, but if it's his time to go, i just want him to go with some dignity, and where he feels safe.

just not like this.

goddammit...PLEASE.

i gotta stop thinking so fucking negatively. part of me wants to delete everything i've written because i'm so fucking scared right now i'll grab for any straws, and i'm afraid i'll jinx it or something. at the same time if i don't say it, somewhere, i'm going to explode, and i can't even say it IRL because i could never be able to get all this out without falling to pieces.

i just need someone to tell me it'll all be okay. more than that, i need it to all be okay, but that's too much to ask of anyone. i wish the fucking doctors would tell us SOMETHING definite. they just say "okay let's put on some more plasma" and there's never a distinct call on anything. and i understand that on one hand. you don't want to get their hopes up just to crush them. you don't want to get them so down that they'll give up. so you hover in the fucking middle.

but GODDAMMIT...

just...

christ, i can't handle it. i cannot deal with this. i've been preparing myself ever since he turned 12 for the day that my parents are going to call to say he passed away peacefully in his sleep on his favorite bed after taking a walk and eating his favorite steak dinner.

but not this. goddammit. it's just not fucking fair.

....i gotta get some sleep. heh. i'm just talking myself into another fall-apart.

memories and thoughts.

Just...babbling.

*

Sunsets. this one night in san diego, when i was 17, i took my dog for a walk. we had canyons near our house, so i took him for a walk there. looked a lot like steppe-land. grasslands.

it was summer, so the grass was long and yellow, and the hills rolled and tumbled down from black mtn, which is this 1000-ft tall "mountain" in the area. not big, but you grow to like the way it looks. but anyway, there's this sorta frontier there at the edge of the canyon.

there's Del Mar on the west near the sea, and Penasquitos, where i live, inland, and canyon in between. so there's this squiggly line where the houses end and the canyons begin, and all the way at the horizon you can see del mar, and beyond, the sea. so that's what it looks like, this line of houses and then just open canyon. and the farther into the canyon you go the less you can see the houses until eventually you see nothing but canyons, some stands of eucalyptus trees, some parts where the grass grows green, and in the ravines, little streams.

(or actually, they were mud. but there were still reeds)

that night, there were these clouds in the sky. streaking out of the west in long strips. and when the sun set, they went red. and the whole. fucking. sky was on fire.

i'd never seen anything like it, and i haven't since. i've seen sunsets were half the sky was red - that happens a lot. but not when there was red all the way into the eastern horizon. and it was right before a storm, right? and in san diego the storms roll out of the east. so you followed these streaking clouds east, and there were these huge, huge round thunderheads sitting there

and there was me and my dog beneath this incredible sky. in the middle of this canyon. silence and birdsong all around.

*

When i was in fifth grade i knew this chick named carole. she had greasy black hair and a really raucous laugh. i didn't like her. once we were on the playground crawling through a tunnel in the jungle gym, or something like that, and i had the bad luck to be behind her. her underwear had a big yellow stain on it.

since she was the first girl other than my sister whose underwear i'd seen, it put me off the idea for a long time.

*

When i was maybe eight, my dad took me for a hike. it started out with this trail winding up the side of a mountain, and the pebbles were loose. there was no handrail to the right; the left was the rock face of the cliff; the path seemed about a foot wide to me. i slipped and fell and i was dead certain i was going to die. but i didn't.

when i got to the top of that mountain, the trail wound into the forest and it was damp and dark and peaceful and earthy-smelling, but i kept wondering where the cliff went. it didn't make sense to me then, that half the world could be a cliff one minute and not the next. it makes sense now, of course. we simply passed through the summit.

*

Heh. once, in kindergarten, this kid reached for the scissors i wanted, so without a thought i sank my teeth into his arm. he howled. i was immensely proud of myself, especially since i could see the marks from my teeth in his forearm.

*

I've been so high/I've been so down

Up to the sky/Down to the ground.

It doesn't sound like Madonna. But it's so. SO. heartbreakingly beautiful. such a great song. i love it so much. it reminds me of...oh...shadows in blue and green and shades of pale...slow-motion waterfalls that are water, but more like sheets of fabric. not silk, not that smooth. something a little coarser, with texture. linen? is that what it's called? it reminds me of looking back through that waterfall after you've died at the world you've left behind. and it reminds me of some last dance with a lover while your world goes gray and you lose yourself. and it reminds me of making love beneath the northern lights while the world burns away to ash, somewhere.

it's a fascinating song. it's called Paradise.

*

Las Vegas.

it's kinda sad. i'm always disappointed by Vegas. i love driving there over the desert. all the white heat and the asphalt and stuff? and i always love Vegas when i'm leaving and i look back and it's all glittering and blatantly artificial. but then when i'm in it, i HATE it.

i think it's because i love the idea of las vegas. imagine - a city almost completely devoted to the vice of gambling, with prostitution walking side by side along with stage magic, exotic animals, and the ever-pervasive dry heat of the desert. Las Vegas. this completely man-made city of sin rising out of the desert, all glitz and glitter and gambling and whoring. it's attractive in a gaudy, perverse, wicked way. it sounds sandy, stifling hot, crackling and blistering with electricity and neon lights and desert heat. it sounds corrupt. it sounds like the electric serpent east of eden.

eden would be california.

but then you get there. and there's a billion other tourists just like you, with their Illinois plates and their station wagons full of luggage and crying babies, wandering around clutching their children's hands and telling them not to get lost, stealing peeks at the Hustler magazines in the newstands as they pass. looking for the fabled city of sin.

but it's not there.

it's not there.

it's overrun by tourists looking for it, and it's lost in its own glitz and hype. and really, it's sad. it's a mirage. you can only see it when you're outside, and dreaming, and it disappears when you get there. all you have left is an empty wallet.

*

It rains so much in the Bay that i had dreams that the world was flooding, just like Noah's Ark. i remember looking out the window and seeing rain pouring down so thick it was hard to see through it. i remember it at night, looking out at the ivy dark green and soaked and wet, pounded in a monsoon-sized rainstorm, listening to the thunder boom once before the sky cracked open.

i remember it during the day, even better. it was like a haze. i remember the mist pouring over the mountaintops and tendriling between the eucalyptus at the summits of those mountain ranges. and the way the trees looked, especially the cherry trees in spring when the blossoms were this shocking, vulnerable pink against the dark, dark, dark brown of the wet, slick bark. and how the ones with greenery seemed so much more vibrantly green because it was humid and the sky was dark. and the bay in the distance, when it began to rain and the water falling made the sea ripple in millions of tiny places, and made it seem shimmering silver to me far away.

sometimes i think i love San Francisco all the more because i'm not in it, because when i go to the east bay i see it from afar, lit from behind by the setting sun which makes the fog rolling in under the silhouetted Golden Gate Bridge glow luminously silver-white. and the city is white, too, at times like that...glowing white, but also backlit.

but it's not like las vegas. i love it just as much when i'm in it. driving into it, there's nothing like seeing that great city rear up before you on the Bay Bridge, or appear out of nowhere around the mountain. or, even, taking the BART up and suddenly rising out in the midst of the pigeons and the people and the towering, towering skyscrapers.

*

i don't have anything else to say tonight. except that sometimes when i'm awake in the middle of the night looking out at the world that's all quiet and dark, i really love everything.