Found Days in San Francisco

Sing your song and dance your dance--time is short. Let's us return to hiking the city. It's Saturday, and Lioness has had enough of the big ville and people who keep randomly talking to her--which they do, just up and talk to her. Like it's her job to be Metaphysically Available or something. It's a drag. Anyway, she's for staying in, and I'm for going out. Sometimes singing your song is done very low and close to the skin and indoors, sometimes not. First there's breakfast and then sandwiches from the micro-Whole Foods call Le Beau , the Nob Hill market, with these two (-->) as company. The cats who own the flat Lioness sublet for the month are my kind of people.

Goals, seek Princess at the Westin, get to City Lights, walk around China Town. I have a list of books to buy that I want to be from SF. We look to plan the route by bus. It makes sense. But, by the time I'm outside, I'm walking, testing my sense of the town's shape and off I go. Downhill for a very long time. This is to the good, but not of my right knee which is missing a ligament and gets cranky about steep and downhill. Whatever. Everything is gorgeous, new, a gift. I'm thinking about the long tradition of DIY here, and how SF just keeps its cool and lovely in spite of most pressures to turn into Dallas (which every city is pressed to do, and most, smartly refuse). I'm thinking about the future, about how much Work there is to do just keep the planet habitable. That these trees and critters evolved to live in a world at a certain mean temperature and with certain average weather patterns. The change we are unleashing will be too quick for them to adapt to, and they will die/migrate. And then there's people to look after, alway. As Henry said it looking back over the history of sapiens sapiens: In no instance did the genius of a people wait until the political and economic life had been arranged in Utopian fashion. No, they just got on with it. I'm thinking, walking down hill, that I really have to stop freaking out that the big picture is so big and just get on with it.

Princess and Boy Detective. Wow. I can't tell you how glad I am that other women have such strong mothering instincts. I have some, but they don't seem rule me. Princess is delirious and raw with lack of sleep (months of it) and yet herself, with her warmth and wry wit. We talk babies, and BlogHer, and my writing and future. She's of the opinion that one of my superpowers is Encouragement. Hmmm. This is a natural part of teaching, I say. She says, Sure, but there's lots of community based ways you can use that gift, with the disadvantaged and the advantaged both. There's no promise that those born lucky also know what to do with themselves. Meanwhile, BT is sampling the dirt and pigeon feathers of Union Square, toddling in circles around his mother. So, this is a thought I'm mulling since. Where to use an ability to see how people light up and their voices drop half an octave when they're thinking about things that make them alive. Helping them figure out how to do that in the world and keep a roof/fill the belly. Human beings cannot be turned out like machines, we do not take the form proscribed from above or outside. We must take our own forms, and teaching is not the only method of helping humans stay human. Hmmm.

Also, as I walk, I find myself surrounded by French people, as if the consulate kicked everyone out for a day on the town. I try to eavesdrop a bit on their conversation, but they're all saying the same things I'm thinking: where's the bus to _____?, surely there's a cafe on this street?, so forth. The cheap dollar means the Europans gets to fly all the way West. Good on them. They need to see that other American style of being. SF is one of those places where America is not prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen. So, I'm glad they're tasting it. The Mothership, I kept saying. The groovy bits of every town I've been to in the US are like out-bases, satellites, probe missions from the spirit of SF. The word uptight simply does not apply here. There's an ease of mingling amongst classes and castes, styles and types, and does one ever have to work hard to be weird here! Your groove, on the stipulation that it not harm, is all good.

I can't find my bus. The stop we located in the morning is on Stockton, which is one way the wrong way. I'm flummoxed before realizing that I just sauntered out of a 5* hotel which has a concierge who knows everything. I approach said Mage, who apologizes for my wait. There's a line, and a Spanish family who want a car for the night and reservations pronto at some eatery, all which is being arranged by, "Hi Sara, it's Mike at the Westin, I need a reservation for eight in an hour..." Suave as can be, and the car for the night $108 an HOUR! OK then. Me, I just need to know where the bus to Broadway is, for which I am provided a map with lines drawn on it directing me personally to my destination and more apologies, to which I just say, Thanks, brother, I'm in no rush. Walk through Union Square to Kearney, that's where the 9x goes uphill. Look up the street. Flat as the prairie but the last two blocks, so a nice stroll in and then upland. And Arrival!

All along the way, I'm in the shadow of the TransAmerica Pyramid. It does raise the question, Why pyramid? A tomb, for crying out loud, and the irony there. Here I am, says this phallus, this pinnacle, this proclamation, a taller, skinnier, monument to ... death. Triumphant as the natural force itself. What we dream we become. We'll get the knack of it soon. We'll learn how to annihilate the whole planet in the wink of an eye--just wait and see. And just three years after H wrote that, we did. We made of the sun a death. But, here in SF, this tomb rises bright and certain and glorified. Up at Broadway, it shoulders up this Victorian beauty which seems to have survived the fire or been built four seconds after it. It's this kind of juxtaposition that gets those CA Language poets running. This is a building that says, Come in, sit with your coffee, live in me. I am wrapped in copper and have missed you always. This is a living thing. It is also, some will know, the home of Cafe Zoetrope, which, yum and pretty. But, I'm not around the corner yet, the corner where the financial district ends and the strip clubs emerge and the bookstore nestles. Alas, that waits the next installment. I leave you then with these images and this meditation: Tell me what it is that man can build, to protect himself, which other men cannot destroy? What are we trying to defend? Only what is old, useless, dead, indefensible. Every defense is a provocation to assault. Why not surrender? Why not give--give all? It's so damned practical, so thoroughly effective and disarming. Here we are, we the people of the United States: the greatest people on earth, so we thing. We have everything--everything it takes to make people happy. We have land, water, sky and all that goes with it. We could become a great shining example of the world; we could radiate peace, joy, power, benevolence. But there are ghosts all about, ghosts whom we can't seem to lay hands on. We are not happy, not contented, not radiant, not fearless. But, we still could be. See, it's right there in that picture.

Lost Days in San Francisco

Sunday in San Francisco, meant to get up On Time and hustle over to the, not kidding, African Orthodox Church of St. John Coltrane, but was up late processing life and soul with Lioness, hence went to bed functioning on one tenth of brain, and forgot to set alarm. No Jazz Mass for me. But, a link for all of us that we may gaze and desire in classic "can't have that" mode. Next time. Next time with lovely M who is kinetic enough that I'll be kinetic enough to get my booty to church on time.

Also, it's cold and windy out. Yesterday, I hiked the city, and hiked home to the top of Nob Hill from China Town and City Lights, and it was cold and windy then too, so I'm not feeling it today. I simply am not feeling brave and jumpy enough for The Haight and Church and possible other wonders.

So, stay in, waste it, and read H. Miller's The Air Conditioned Nightmare purchased at City Lights yesterday. Because he was human, and even here on the Mother Ship, there's way too much that's not-human. The doppelganger mad homeless I've seen in the last two days are haunting me. One, late at night, Lioness and I having visited the Princess in town for BlogHer, and eaten at some random forgettable cafe, wait for the bus. A man is doubling over and screaming, "ahhhhalalallalalalalala!" about every four to seven seconds. He is not performing. He is mad, lost, shattered, and trying to walk down the street, but has to stop, bend, and yell every few seconds. Truly a lost soul. There is no way to help him, no one can even tell if its possible to communicate to with him. Everything that is inhuman in us infected this man and sent his self away. Next day, in Union Square Park, am waiting for another bus after visit with the Princess and new son, The Boy Detective. Another homeless man lies on the grass as if napping, head cradled in arm, face down, convulsing. I observe because he might need more aggressive help than a city shelter and hot meal. He is laughing, at nothing, and no one, alone in his laugh, and seems just as trapped in it as Yelling Man was in his yell. This is the nightmare paralleling the pretty pretty city and it's lovely lovely groove and jazzy church. Not at all ironically, these men bookended visits to The Westin St. Francis. Anyway, it was air conditioned, heavily carpeted, elegantly jammed, discreetly lit, pompously efficient in every detail. S-w-a-n-k. Lioness stayed in this day too and read for her seminars. That work, this crewe of people she's meeting, and the knowledge sister is nailing down, this will help the world suck less. I'm so wildly proud of her. While stimulating, it has not been easy for her. Brave woman.

Art is not born of a dead people.

Have now returned home. Let's us begin with the return home. I can get back to hiking the city later. Air travel these days.What. As Miller puts it, writing of America as WWII gets into high gear: we sit in the sky and talk of cardboard boxes and button fasteners, while they sit in the sky and talk of extermination. Now the reverse, but still. I was waiting to sit in the sky. On the way to SFO Monday bright, I met Dean, the taxi driver. I like taxis because I never know whether the driver will be chatty and affable or not (unless in the South or Ireland where, always). Dean was chatty. He warmed me up with weather (excellent for walking, easy on the tourists), and the architecture (color, history) and BAM, we were off on Dean (the painter's) theory of urban renewal and historical restoration, which boils, correctly, down to this: How can you have a vision for your future if you cannot see your past? A rhetorical point applicable far far beyond the city. Also, Dean is not originally from America, he's from someplace where the routine is to keep the history. And then on walking: humans are designed for it, suburbs make us fat and dead. He was vibrant, wide open, and completely one of Henry Miller's men. Alive. I arrived at SFO awake and happy and ready to go.

In the city one can stroll at random and feel like a civilized human being. But not the airport. Flight out of SFO was delayed beyond my scheduled arrival time at LAX. Clearly the Travel Gods were not with me this day. Something else held their attention. This happens. Roll with it is my take. Time to give in and shop. Couple lefty mags to read (RS's cover of Obama, just he man, no words, go you RS!!) , a souvenir coffee cup for a friend who collects souvenirs from other people's trips.She's awesome. Some lunch. A snack. Some walking around noticing the distinct and unsettling lack of clocks in SFO. At last on the plane. Up, pleasantly, and notice that none other than Forrest Whitaker is sitting three rows up. -- !!!!! -- I don't know what snafu led him sit in coach on my flight, and I waited to detect the incomplete gesture, the smile not right, the tell that this was an impersonator, but no, it was him. We locked I eyes, I smiled thanks for the good work, and so there he was. All cheerful and easy. That fast way of turning his head, the slightly lazy eye, him. The French father behind me asked for a pic with his son, and got it, happily. So, you know, brush with fame. Then saw a forest fire out the window. Billows of brown smoke rising wide and high as a mountain before flattening in the lower winds. Angry thing it was. A future. Then, LAX.

They buy anything and everything, just keep the money in circulation.

Every bad thing anyone ever said about LAX is true and then some. Sadly. I'm a bright-side sort, really, don't expect angels to pee in my beer. I'm pretty sure they already did. Defeat awaits the optimist, however. It arrives at not-quite ridiculous 11.55pm. Six minutes late, and it's tomorrow. I call the 'rents with the skinny. They suggest bargaining for an earlier flight. I try. There are none that do not route me through A. Chicago, or B. Atlanta and get me in at 1 am or 9can't wait for the pessimist. The pessimist is already there. Chat up the AA rep about the next flight to STL, of which there had better be one, and there is. at 6.20. OK, that's only a few more hours delay and puts me into STLish tomorrow morning!!!! NFW am I doing that. Call the 'rents with my refusal. Agreed. Check the flight status board. My flight is now delayed until, gulp, center self, 8.40 pm. I will not arrive in STL until 3 am, which means that I will not see my house until 4 am. Which I don't, and decide to just ride it out Tuesday and not sleep (which I didn't, until 7 pm when I fell like a stone). But, I'm in LA right now, stuck there long enough that I bought a Tshirt to commemorate the experience. These are my feet and and another book which I started reading because deconstructing the notion of hospitality in philosophy was, srsly, comforting in the badland that is LAX where was so little to be found. Because, you see, there was this huge storm over the Rockies and then the Midwest around which all the flights were diverting, both ways. In the total travel time from apartment on Nob to home at Walden, I could have hied myself to, oh, Bangkok, or Istanbul. Really.

Up side of this: not the bowl of "chili" I had at the Chili's (you sad bastards) in the terminal, nor the million hours til my next cigarette. Only this: I got to fly around a thunderstorm of epic intensity for the second time in my life!!!!!! I flip out over this. This rocks. This is why there is 20th Century technology. Seeing that energy, that explosion from the point of view of angels--oh. hell. yes! I want this for a present someday: four hours circling a thunderstorm in a plane. Anyone? Coming? There will be music? C'mon. I'm going to save up for it. OK, and my iPod battery made the whole trip, and the flight attendant decided I was cute and doubled my drinks. I was not so cute at that hour, but I had inquired of the crew to make sure they felt OK and were still alert. Same attendant showed me the cover of the current US NEWS&WR, the snake eating tail, and said, "This is what the crew feels like. It's been an ass of a day." So, I was humane to this guy because he was human to me and voila, free libations for me. Easy. I mean that late at night, trapped in a tube hurtling through the sky, exhausted, sleepless, no longer able to focus well enough to read, I will not turn down booze offered to moi for being moi. Oh no. I can't sleep on planes, so I read, play cards, or drink a little. What.

THE WORLD AWAKE! Just to repeat that to yourself five times a day is enough to make an anarchist of you. How would you awaken the world? Have you ever thought about it? Or would you rather remain asleep?

On that flight, it was a toss up (but for my nosleeponplanes thing). I would fly people around thunderstorms. I would do that and say, We will have to stop this on Wednesday so that we might survive.

And that, that was the down time. I leave you with this bit from Henry, indicting myself on two counts along with all of us: The wealthy can always be induced to support another museum; the academics can always be counted upon to provide us with watch-dogs and hyenas; the critics can always be bought who will kill what is fresh and vital; the educators can always be rallied who will misinform the young as to the meaning of art; the vandals can always be instigated to destroy what is powerful and disturbing. The poor can think of nothing but food and rent problems; the rich can amuse themselves by collecting safe investments furnished to them by the ghouls who traffic in the sweat and blood of artists; the middle classes can pay admission to gape and criticize, vain about their half-baked knowledge of art and too timid to champion the men whom in their hearts they fear, know that the real enemy is not the man above, whom they must toady to, but the rebel who exposes in word or paint the rottenness of the edifice which they, the spineless middle class, are obliged to support.... Such is the state of America to-day. How long will it endure? Perhaps the war is a blessing in disguise. Perhaps, after the war we have gone through another blood bath, well will give heed to the men who seek to arrange life on in other terms than greed, rivalry, hatred, death and destruction.

That was four for five wars ago. All I have to add to this, to the coal-hot rant of that generation is this:

How dead are you willing to get?

Darn it all

So, I'm recumbent, reading Proust (no, really, all of it) because I don't want to take this tome on the plane to Tejas; though, revisiting would make doing so just. I have achieved page 773 of 1018 of the first volume of The Novel, which, as you know, is .... hefty. Proust is on a carriage ride. In "Place-Names: The Place" (which is also title of part of Bonnefoy's Douve I recall), I read this:

Presently, at a crossroads, the carriage left them. It was bearing me way from what alone I believed to be true, what would have made me truly happy; it was like my life.

I watched the trees gradually recede, waving their despairing arms, seeming to say to me: "What you fail to learn from us today, you will never know. If you allow us to drop back into the hollow of this road from which sought to raise ourselves up to you, a whole part of yourself which we were bringing to you will vanish forever into thin air." And indeed if, in the course of time, I did discover this kind of pleasure and disquiet which I had just felt once again, and if one evening -- too late, but then for all time -- I fastened myself to it, of those trees themselves I was never to what what they had been trying to give me nor where else I had seen them. And when, the road having forked and the carriage with it, I turned my back on them and ceased to see them, while Mme de Villeparisis asked me what I was dreaming about, I was a wretched as if I had just lost a friend, had died myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god.

Because That is true-true, I know have to take this book on the plane. Oh. Poor. Me. Boo. Hoo. And harass my friends by playing "hey, listen to this." la-la!

Oh, my phone's working. And the folks I interviewed with tonight for that director's gig: yeh, those people are bon-kers.

Words to Live By

I was just re-watching John Stewart on Crossfire, you know, for the reminder that there are sane people in America, sane and stubborn and speaking people that is, who when baited say things like, "No, I won't be your monkey."

Less game, better game.

Quotation Happiness

From "Time Travel", by Lewis H. Lapham, in Harper's, on the loss of Arthur Schlessinger Jr.

AS: Many signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust that this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not know where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future.

AS:Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.

And Goethe too: He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living hand to mouth.

Roots, something the vast PoMo play in signifiers, now a context for us in America, the sad, bad kind of PoMo. Transcending this requires not the forgetting of history, but lots of knowledge of it in order to responsibly imagine our future.

And LH:Just as the fifteenth-century printing press made possible the overthrow of a settled aesthetic and political order, so also in the twenty-first century the revolutionary forms of high-speed communication -- television, computers, the Internet, cell phones -- give rise to new structure of feeling and thought. (PP) Narrative becomes montage, and our ministers of state forget why and how we go to war. Our news broadcasts bring us the world in twenty-two minutes. Hollywood markets its product to audiences assigned and average age of sixteen and believed to be happily at play in the bathtubs of the Everlasting Now. ...

Worth some attention, this essay.

And now these from Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton, which I just finished, and because these sentences actually sing:

Therefore I shall devote myself, my time, my energy, my talents, to the service of South Africa. I shall no longer as myself if this or that is expedient, but only if it is right. I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie....

I do this not because I am courageous or honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul. I do it because I am no longer able to aspire to the highest with one part of myself, and to deny it with another.

-- And against what was young Jarvis working?

Yet men were afraid, with fear that was deep, deep in the heart, a fear so deep that they hid their kindness, or brought it out with fierceness and anger, and hid it behind fierce and frowning eyes. They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.

Nice things to carry about in oneself.

Encouragement for Any and All

I wanted to take the time to send you the quote I read
to you prior to you leaving Dallas. It is from the
movie Akheela and the Bee.

Here it is:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our
deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

We ask ourselves "who am I to be powerful, brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?"

Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make
manifest to the glory of God that is within us. And
as we let our own light shine we give other people
permission to do the same.

Thanks Hiram.