I have similar feelings about sarcasm and irony--both tend to make me feel comfortable because they're a form of sharing social negativity and combining it with humor. Humor itself has to do with social and aesthetic values. The world is full of incongruities between our understanding/expectation and what actually happens or exists. When I'm sarcastic and someone else gets it, we're having a moment of a shared understanding of some particular incongruity or another. What could be more comforting?
But I've been thinking about all of this a lot recently, especially in light of my feelings about my residency here in the San Diego region. There are numerous things I deeply dislike about my life here, but this weekend has been a good weekend, because it was a combination of almost everything I love: talking with friends about stuff that is irritating and stuff that isn't, time outside, movement, art and food. The only thing missing was a poetry reading--a big gap, certainly, but also offset but the fact that the art show was good.
It was also a three-day weekend.
Happy hour on Thursday! I won't sing the praises of D Street Bar and Grill in Encinitas. It's big, it was in a good location for most of us, they serve a variety of different drinks, have solid food, and a reasonable happy hour. So, it's fine with me. Happy hour is a perfect environment during which to express negativity in an energetic, friendly way. Dinner again with friends on Friday--more talking, more friendly negativity. Stayed up too late.
All that socializing and friendly negativity put me in a good mood for Saturday: Mark and I went to Batiquitos lagoon for a leisurely walk and some birdwatching: unusually peaceful crows, a juvenile northern harrier, a very large flock of semipalmated plovers, whimbrels, several terns (maybe Caspian? I couldn't tell), lots of little bushtits, a golden-crowned kinglet, several brown pelicans who were fishing, and an anna's hummingbird. We also saw some other kind of hummingbird--I couldn't identify him, but I know he was a male because he was doing display dives. He'd fly up really really high and then dive down really fast, making an ark at the bottom and a kind of whistling sound.
That afternoon, I went to Swami's Beach for a hoop class and jam. I had a gorgeous time and learned a variety of new ways to break--but now I have weird bruises on the insides of my upper arms, very similar to the kind I used to get on my hands when I started doing more off-body work. Next weekend I'm going to a workshop with Julia Hartsell at the Circus Fund in Del Mar. If I had my way, I'd be taking just about every class they offer there!
On Sunday I saw the splash from a whale breaching (I missed the actual breach), but a few minutes later s/he did a fantastic tale slap.
Today, we somehow avoided the rain (well, almost) and took the train down to see the Tara Donovan exhibit at MCASD Downtown. I'd seen the piece made with pins before, and I still love it, but my favorite was Haze, made entirely out of clear plastic straws, and completely beautiful:
After the show, we walked around, and I eventually ate a hamburger. On the way home from the train station, it rained and rained. We actually got soaked.
