Twenty days ago, while I was in San Francisco for a dance event, I received a ticket (from a meter maid!) for parking on a steep hill and NOT turning my wheels toward the curb. Talk about a serious drag. I didn’t know a person was supposed to do this. Anyway, when I talked to a friend of mine who’s a policeman in San Francisco, they said, “Might I suggest a good old-fashioned protest?” Well, sure enough, there’s a website listed on the back of a ticket, in case someone wants to put up a fuss. So, in light of the fact that the ticket is sixty-nine frickin’ dollars, that’s exactly what I did this morning.

I resisted.

Unfortunately, I was limited to 1,000 characters, so I couldn’t be as “flowery” as I wanted to be with my words. Still, here’s what I said:

Hello. My name is Marcus Coker, and I recently visited SF for the first time (in order to attend a swing dance event). The event housed me with a local, on 14th Avenue. Of course, parking was a challenge, but I “finally” found a spot after 45 minutes of circling the neighborhood. You can imagine my relief. There was a sign about not parking on certain street-cleaning days, but otherwise–I thought–I was good. (Phew.) Alas, when I went to check on my vehicle the next day (a friend who is a policeman said vehicle break-ins were common in SF), I’d received a $69 dollar ticket for “parking on grades,” a term that I had to Google and means I didn’t turn my wheels toward the curb. Ugh. This really put a damper on my weekend, especially since I had no idea about your city’s policy. After all, it wasn’t posted, and, being from the flatlands of the south, I never park on hills. As I immediately corrected the problem, I ask that you forgive this incident. Please have mercy. Regards, Marcus

Then, when the website asked if I had any supporting documents, I uploaded this PDF: SF_ParkingProtest

So we’ll see what happens. At the very least, I figure I’ve bought myself some more time. This morning when I saw the ticket in my to-do pile, I freaked out. First, either the protest or the payment is due tomorrow, and that triggered my “not enough time” response. Second, the fact that this is an “authority issue,” made my butt pucker. But then I thought, You can do this, Marcus, and sat down and got to work. In no time, I was simply doing my thing–writing. Plus, I was trying to have a good time. So much of my past has been filled with my being nervous, afraid, and terrified about things that really amount to nothing. A parking ticket. A meter maid. But–regardless of how it turns out–this protest was actually fun for me.

So that’s something.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for my friend and local artist Ralph Irwin. I wrote about Ralph in detail here (in my most highly read article), so I won’t go into great detail about him here. However, I was reminded yesterday what a profound impact one person can have on another. Honestly, although I worked two doors down from him when I had my dance studio, I didn’t spend that much time with Ralph. We only had a handful of heart-to-hearts. That being said, they were enough. Ralph left his mark on me.

One of the things that was mentioned at the memorial service was that Ralph would often take some odd, discarded object, hold it up to the light, squint, and say, “You know, a guy could take this and–.” Then Ralph would proceed into a barrage of wild ideas and creative possibilities. This was my experience with him. Once he told me, “Some people might look at a rusty old door and think of it as trash. But an artist would look at it and see possibility, something you could paint or hang on a wall or use for something else entirely.”

Possibility. If nothing else, Ralph taught me that there’s an infinite number of ways to see the world. What’s more, there’s an infinite number of ways to make your world more beautiful. But it all starts with how you see things. Do you look at the objects and people in your life–do you look at yourself–as trash? Or do you see something beautiful there? Personally, I think Ralph saw people the way he saw objects–full of potential. At least that’s how I think he saw me. I’m not sure he ever said it directly, but he took time to help me flesh out ideas and show me new ways of looking at things. He encouraged me (and I know he did this for countless others).

Of course, it’s no small thing to be encouraged.

There was something said yesterday about how Ralph felt like he didn’t get enough done. The man was teeming with creative ideas and projects, and although many of them were completed during his seventy-six years on earth, many of them were not. I get this–I love completion. But as an artist and creative, I think this is a good “problem” to have–to wake up every day with a million ideas, to see possibility everywhere you look, to not get locked into one way of seeing a situation. This is where I see progress in my own life. Five years ago I would have gotten a traffic ticket, and it would have been “awful” from start to finish. But whereas facts are facts–I got a parking ticket–I can choose how I look at the facts. I can paint them up and put a frame around them that I like and that’s fun for me. I can choose how I respond.

I can hold my problems up to The Light.

I can squint my eyes.

I can see the world differently.

Yes–

It’s more beautiful now.