Yesterday I applied for many, many jobs. Afterward, I felt like Steven Jesse Bernstein's, "Party Balloon,", so I took a nap. Later, I went for a long walk along Valencia and things were wet from an earlier rain.
Lost Weekend Video is closing and they're mad at "tech", which sure, everything is "tech's" fault isn't it? What hasn't tech ruined? Is there anything cool left in San Francisco? But, Lost Weekend is moving into Alamo Drafthouse, which I think is great. Their archive, especially when added to Le Video's, will be a great resource for rare movie seekers.
The unique slipper store, Laku, it lives on. Inexplicably, I might say. Such gorgeous and odd little things. How does the proprietor manage rent amid this rapacious gentrification?
Needles & Pens is still serving up comics and jewelry, clothes and zines, art shows and weird handmade bits. People love that stuff.
But, Boogaloos is gone (along with Weird Fish). Flax is over. Currents is... past. Therapy Home went. El Majahual is closed. DEMA is done. It's hard to handle. Hell, I'm still mourning Osento and Ti Couz. Things change.
Rainbows do not change though. I should say, the optics, physics, angle at which it is seen, color order... they do not change. They follow the laws of nature.
I learned about rainbows from Alex Filippenko via The Great Courses. I remember this specifically: the colors of a main rainbow will always be Red on the outside, and the rest (OYGBIV) follow to the inside. But, when there is a double rainbow, as there is here, it is the opposite, VIBGYOB, and is always significantly more faint than the main rainbow. And it is always on the outside. This is the common primary and secondary rainbow, but there are variations, even red double rainbows.
When I was stopped on the street, staring in wonder but had not noticed the secondary bow, a girl passing by said, "It's great isn't it? There's a second one..." I looked, and sure enough, there it was, if you looked closely.
It took my breath away as I remembered what I'd learned, to see it right there, so reliable and unchanging. I felt a gushing awe of the universe in that moment and was embarrassed because I didn't want to seem overcome.
It wasn't like, "I can't believe it!" More like, "This is something I can believe."
It's always true.
This transient illusion, of all things, is utterly eternal.
Might be easier to see in this version; on the left it's jussssst there.