San Francisco Daze: May and June

Here for your continued reading pleasure are the May and June entries from San Francisco Daze, a daily meditation on life in our fair city that I kept in 2005, now finally seeing the light of day.

May 1

Sitting with Gwen at an outdoor table at a café near Fisherman’s Wharf. Home cooked breakfast, the sign claimed, and it came out on paper plates, with plastic forks, coffee steaming in styrofoam cups, more home-style (for me) than they knew. Afterwards we strolled down to the Maritime Museum. She and I talked love and relationship (ours’ with other people, not with each other) while old boats creaked and ropes mooring them to the dock squealed like sea lions in the ebb and swell. An orange cat strolled by, momentarily pausing and turning towards us as we made clucking sounds and held out our hands, before he executed a haughty turn and continued on his way. The sky above blazed blue, and tourists (they must have been tourists- locals do not touch the Bay earlier than July) swam at the little beach in front of the amphitheatre where the fireworks are held each year. The spring sky brought out the brown and green in her eyes and highlit the fetching streaks of gray in her hair until they turned silver.

May 2

Television baseball, unnaturally brown and green field, rich orange-brown of wood panels brass gleam over at the bar, red shade on the lights over the pool table, olive all over, writing with Jen at the Plough and the Stars on Second & Clement, on a surprisingly busy Monday night.

May 3

Every day we are presented with signs and wonders. Today at the foot of Telegraph Hill I beheld a small ceramic cartoon figurine cartoon with long thick dreads holding a rolled up cigarette standing next to a pile of joints that had “Legalize” printed in big letters. It was seated on a cement wall, positioned for all the world like a figure of the Virgin that one might expect to lay flowers and other offerings before. Later, at lunch down on California Street, just across from Wells Fargo Bank, I saw two guys loading bags full of Chinese takeout onto one of those big steel elevators that go underground (to service the cable car lines?) and then descending into the depths with the food. I had visions of a massive feast for slaves of an underground kingdom. And tonight, on my way to this very café where I now write, tucked into the bushes on 4^th Avenue I found a stuffed animal— a donkey on two legs, wearing a blue blazer and missing one ear. Further comment seems unnecessary.

May 4

Have I mentioned how fascinated I am with Skinny Writer Girl? She’s sitting across from me on the bus. Her face is serious, maybe even sad, but her gaze is steady and piercing. I know how she feels. Her notebook is bigger than mine and is turquoise, but otherwise very similar in its stretchy binda-thingy. Her handwriting is tons neater than mine, and incredibly straight up-and-down. Her long bony fingers and pursed lips are driving me wild. She’s writing in pencil, a lime-green push-pencil. Suede coat with fuzzy lining inside. Dark jeans, tennis shoes. No nonsense. Who is she? What does it all mean? I must leave off now, to ponder that in writing another day.

May 5

String of disasters one on my much-delayed night out with ex-girlfriend Leah: there was no showing of the movie we wanted to see at the Metreon at 6:30, even though we had each confirmed the time, on separate websites.

String of disasters two: when we hit the street to contemplate our next move, a passing car hit a puddle and splashed my pants with muddy water. Actually, I’ve been waiting my whole life for that scene to occur.

String of disasters three: deciding to take a taxi to the AMC 1000 on Van Ness, we waited in the rain, continually outbid by others, until we found one, only to have it refer us back to another. That one lurched forward three times just when she reached for the handle, finally tiring of the game and coming to a stop.

String of disasters four: safely at new theatre, with a showing at a fine time, tickets in hand, we went to Mel’s for a pre-show dinner. I knocked over my glass of water right when I reached for it, spilling it all over the table.

String of disasters five: just before the show, she got a cell-phone call from an old friend of her’s announcing cancer in his family.

Somehow, despite all this, we had a great evening.

May 6

First time to the South Bay this year. The eerie glow that lights up the 101 at night shone its light on the haunted wrecks of the dot com era. Empty office park next to Candlestick (I will not call it Monster Park) where Snowball.com once lived. Electronic billboards by the side of the road now touting car dealerships rather than operating systems. The empty glass palace where Excite@Home once stood. On and on, a roadside ghost town at 70 miles per hour.

May 7

Ikea

Is an asylum

Ikea

Rising like a Megalith form the Emeryville mall space

Ikea

Front door massive yellow awning dwarfing us mere humans

Ikea

Blue arrows sending you through a thousand living rooms

Ikea

Inspiring kitchen envy

Ikea

Making me consider whole new places to stick floor lamps

Ikea

Suggesting my need for cutesy things exceeds my expectation

Ikea

Terminating in a kingdom of hot apple pie and Swedish meatballs

May 8

Today I discovered something new in San Francisco- Louis’. A family-style diner perched on the side of the Pacific Highway, just up the hill from the Cliff House, established 1937 by a Greek-immigrant family. Inside are multicolored tile and booths and lacquered countertop and old carpets that show delightfully little sign of having changed in decades. The food holds no pretensions, but does feature some of the fattest hash browns ever. The food, the place, everything seems caught in the same time warp that once included the oceanside Funland. And outside, the headlands glowed in rain swept green, darkness peeked out from hedged cypress, seagulls floated in pools of rainwater collected in the ruins of the Sutro Baths and the angry sea foamed against the cliffs. I’ll be back.

May 9

Moon setting low over Pacific

tiniest sliver

facing upwards

a bronze boat

sinking below the horizon

May 10

After writing group last night, John, Jodie and I ambled over to Trader Sam’s for a drink. The rest of our compatriots had abandoned us, spouting inanities about long drives, work the next day and such. The three of us ended up, of all things, talking about business: John’s former consulting job for Siemens. Jodie’s interviewing with an IR agency as she attempted to escape from her biotech marketing job and my stint in IR when I first moved to the city, just before the bubble burst. All of it made me think of the unique tech work culture that we share here in San Francisco. Even itinerant writers, once you get a Sierra Nevada in them, have tales of IPOs, product launches and org chart disfunction.

May 11

The Canvas Café deserves to be written about. Because of the bright primary colors it’s painted in. Because of the massive height of the ceiling and the inverted wood pyramid of the skylight in the middle of it. Because of the TV screen mobile-construction sculpture hanging from the ceiling. Because of…

(to be continued?)

May 12

Single silver ear-

ring hanging from a tree branch

Near the ATM

May 13

Red haired bus girl,

in the flowing pink skirt your

calves were exquisite

May 14

Black Uhuru’s version of “Hey Joe” is going through my head right now. Or is it Jimi’s or Patti’s? I think they’re all mixed together in there. Such are the dangers of Green Apple bargain-CD diving.

May 15-17

Dispatches from an overcast rainy May: It is so freaking humid these last few days here in the city. Maybe global warming really is starting to bite.

May 18

Down on Mission tonight in the rainy evening a pair of brunettes walked past smiling me at me. As I stepped to one side to let them pass, a man carrying a long curvy mirror, its reflecting side facing me, passed on the other. Motion to my right and my left kindled with longing and reflection to open up a moment of clarity. It revealed the machinery of the universe, wheels turning out a moment of synchronicity whose meaning currently escapes me.

May 19

At Jupiter in Berkeley, on the upstairs level waiting with a beer before meeting friends for a movie. Swirls of fifteen year old college undergraduate depression surround me, apropos of nothing going on at the moment. Even so, the barking laughter of the guys at the table across the room pierces.

May 20-22

Weekend out of town vesting parents returning on Cal Train Blues:

You got your San Jose Diridon

Burning in the sun

You got the Palo Alto stop

Ain’t no damn fun

Slipped into Redwood City

Just about fixin’ to die

Memories of Burlingame

Can make a grown man cry

Millbrae

Got a tight connection to BART

South San Francisco warehouses

Set off an achin’ in your heart

Bayshore

Got the Candlestick-Monster blues

Pullin’ in to 4^th and King

Sure is some powerful good news

May 23

cool sea air

caressed my face

this morning

before

the doldrums

of afternoon humidity

set in

May 24

Trader Sam’s was all but deserted on this the night that the Writing Group reviewed half my novel. Empty except for the punk chick in the corner mackin’ out with her boyfriend, and the heavyset guy from Atlanta who was shouting and on the edge of flying off his handle as his Asian friend tried, with limited success, to calm him down. Dimo gave me a break on the two Amstel Lights I ordered for Jodie and me, though, so all was well.

May 25

46^th and Sloat, near 11 PM. The fog pinpricks through the air, nearly the only motion in the otherwise stillness. Across the four land road that ends at the ocean only a few blocks away, the stone gates of the zoo yawn open. No teeth in the blackness visible through their portals. What animals are stirring inside now that the nocturnal glory of their kingdom has come?

May 26

It is not clear why Pizza Orgasmica, which is a Brazilian-style pizza chain, has tribal African décor and safari pictures inside (have I mentioned this before?). It is even less clear why the area near the entrance is given over to little Arabian crash pad low tables, hanging tapestries and pillows everywhere, making it seem that a hookah should be close at hand. What is clear is that this little paradise was made for reclining with Jen and contemplating the mysteries of her scent while drinking beer and waiting for the “Aphrodite” pizza to arrive.

May 27

Sitting in a café near Valencia and 16^th trying to catch up on San Francisco Daze, I gaze out the window to the faded avocado two-story across the street, and spy a pigeon-scaring fake owl on one corner of it’s roof trim, big as two footballs.

Weird Postscript- Getting on the train just now at 16^th & Mission, there was a grizzled old man playing a medley of Beatles’ songs on a flute. An entirely different grizzled old man from the one who, when I got on the train on the way to the café at Montgomery, had been playing “Blackbird” on guitar. I look forward to seeing what happens when I get to the Berkeley BART station tonight.

May 28-30

Memorial Day weekend, writing from a sunlit meadow at Bass Lake, somewhere in the wilds of Point Reyes. A powder-blue dragonfly just buzzed the blanket, and a light breeze is ruffling up my shirt and tousling my hair. I can hear at least five kinds of birds in simultaneous calls. A moment ago I saw two white butterflies dancing around each other in the air. Speaking of which, Jen, gorgeous Valkyrie Jen, is laid out on the blanket beside me, lightly snoring in the sun.

May 31

King of Thai Noodle House is an empire. Its vast reaches enclose a downtown and Sunset branch, and at least three on Clement alone. My favorite is the Original King of Thai Noodle House, at 8^th & Clement. It’s barely wider than a door-front, but extends back deep into the block. You make your way past the counter, which really only one person can do at a time, and then get to the realm of tables, each with a massive decanter of chopsticks and an assortment of hot sauces. The place is not as much fun since they got rid of the vintage Thai movie posters on the wall in favor of tasteful art prints. Unlike the King of Thai Noodle House on 4^th & Celement, it doesn’t have its liquor license, so no Singha for you here. Still and all, the crowded ambiance and ability to see everything that happens in the kitchen (as it’s just behind the counter) does it for me every time.

June 1

arise from morning meditation

look out my balcony

on the shorn tree-stump

in my neighbor’s backyard

dog barks in the distance

June 2

Grumpy’s lies down a side street that I never knew about. Green maybe? Or some other street? Off of Battery. And thank God it does. A stocky jowly bulldog mascot (but really, do bulldogs come any other way than stocky and jowly?). Forest of dollar bills tacked to the ceiling. The whole place is bricky and woody and the walls are covered with framed pictures of sports stars and other local illuminati. Diner food par excellence. My fitfully employed companions had beer at lunch but I demurred and went for the diet coke. Margarita night is Thursday. How had I been working in this neighborhood for six months and not found this place yet?

June 3

From the backside of Telegraph Hill as seen from Pier 37 or 38 Coit Tower rises from the top of the hill. As it does from every other view of the hill. But from this direction, the tower is backed by the Transamerica Pyramid. The bleached white triangle and white bleached cylinder stand together like some bizarre set of siblings from this line of sight.

June 4

La Isla De Los Angeles. So the Spanish called it. And I knew about the Chinese, thousands of them held for years, carving poems into the stone walls of the building that housed them. But so much more I did not know. The Civil War garrison guarding the entrance to the Bay. The quarantine station loaded with Cholera, Plague and Smallpox victims. The Nike Missile batteries! Or the velvety black butterflies bouncing along in the sun near the top of the mountain, for that matter. And nothing of all I’d known before could have prepared me for lying on one of Angel Island’s picnic table-tops with Jen, staring up at the twisting branches of trees that formed a canopy overhead.

June 5

Blue Danube

Sunday Afternoon

Redhead reading

Hip-hop playing

Indian beauty

Day-glo paintings

Lesbian sportswomen

Espresso machine

Dreadlocked writer

Sunshine traffic

Newspaper reader

Summer breeze

Countergirls laughing

Refrigerator humming

Sunday Afternoon

Blue Danube

June 6

Tonight was my first public reading ever, at Lit at the Canvas. And I had two members of my writing group show up, as well as an old friend and a new one. Having an audience was both comforting and nerve wracking, but the place soothed my soul. So familiar, so dear. The latest display there, graffiti-style hip-hop urban DJ art, was a weird kind of complement to my reading on becoming (by surprise) a Heavy Metal fan over the last year. The low-key mic crackled and buzzed, and half the section of the café the reading was tuned in to their laptops and lattes. But I made it, with even a laugh or two from the audience. The hostess Melinda sparkled and shined with her mass of curly red hair. And the other reader, Pat Carey, kicked ass with his comedy tales of Irish-American family madness. Only us two writers, Melinda the MC and a small audience, but it felt real. So, one small step for a writer, maybe one giant leap for my literary kind.

June 7

Q on Clement Street at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning. The slight guilt of playing hooky from work is assuaged by the thick mustardy smell wafting out from the kitchen.

June 8

The building downtown

splits in two,

with mirrored wings

that end in

antenna-topped prongs

like some bizarre electric toothbrush

or rabbit-ear aerials gone awry

their tops lost

in the misting semi-rain

of morning

June 9

The crowd at ATA, a ramshackle little theatre at 21^st & Valencia given to independent videography, is its own kind of riot. Flaming brown queen shouting, “last call for all-coo-halll!” just before the show closes, mixes with Zora, the little girl on stage in the Velvet dress who half the crowd is cooing to, and the frizzy-dark-haired wine sipping maven to my left to form a pastiche of hip and artistic San Francisco in this early 21^st century moment.

June 10

Sometime you’re not sure you see the things you see:

Black man

not quite old enough

to have more than a slightly silver beard

wearing sweats

and tattered windbreaker

stands on the steps of

Star of the Sea Catholic church

facing a lit candle in the shape of a small scowling figure

perched on a piece of driftwood

before the doorway of the church.

June 11

One of the Twin Peaks

(the one capped with Sutro Tower)

reclines today

in the hazy summer morning

a green firry hill

leaning back

in the early heat of day

June 12

Ran all over the campus of USF today looking for the annual “Rock and Swap” sponsored by local outlaw radio extraordinaire KUSF. I finally found it, via two out-of-it bushy-haired twenty-somethings carrying a Scorpions album who gave me contradictory directions on how to get there. And while not the Tad or Soulwax I had come questing for; it was well worth the effort. Dead Letter Office, My Aim is True, Graceland, Let it Be, and the Wall later I left a rather happy camper.

June 13

The end of Clement Street

rises up

like a roller-coaster

just before the plunge

twin rows of streetlights

arching into the night

up by the Legion of Honor

and above

one solid end

of the half-moon

dissolves

into mist

June 14

The air was solid today, cold and warm at the same time.

June 15

A pair of handcuffs

Chained to pole on Sansome

How strange this city

June 16

Thursday night Bitter End writing blues. Jodie, Dave and I, nee of the Writing Group, are here. As is the Jukebox. The Stones, “Waiting on a Lady”. The following line: “The only time I ever had a guy touch me there, I was on vacation in Hawaii.” I was in the restroom when I heard that one, somewhere in the bar outside; I’ll never know who said it. Now “L.A. Woman” is playing. Jim had a guy touch him there at some point, I bet. I got a start on “Lust”, one of my Seven Deadly Sins series. But then hit a stopping point, right about when my writing group friends stopped. Thus this entry.

June 17-21

I have nothing to say for this five day period except:

Journey to the East Bay embarks at 10:15 AM, via the 38 Geary. The masses shuffle on board. It’s actually pretty packed for a Saturday. The weirdest scene is the little girl in the checkered cloth coat sitting next to her mother on one of the sideways seats in the accordion section. Nice coat, cute little shoes, that’s not what’s weird. What’s weird is how she sits, slumped against her mother, staring fixedly at me. What do I look like to her? Meanwhile, beside me, my traveling companion reads a local literary journal. More to follow.

* * *

11:00 AM (give or take a minute), boarding the Fremont-bound BART. My traveling companion has just shared her chicken-themed short story with me, which was a delight. In general, this car in the train is itself delightful. It is both beautifully and frightfully loud, the talk-talk-talkity-talk coming from all directions— From a gaggle of little girls in pink in the seat behind me. From a family surrounding a kid with a catcher’s mitt. From people on the side-seats talking about baseball trades. We’ve just broken above ground, to sun and massive gray-white piles of cloud, just in time to see Glad Tidings Church of Christ, which is in exterior a large broken-windowed concrete warehouse bereft of even a hint of gladness. Oh excellent— ramshackle two-story house a few hundred feet further on with “Jesus Saves From Hell” painted on the side. The word “Hell” consumed in garish painted flames. At the Coliseum stop the noise and joy and life of the car disembarks for an A’s game.

* * *

12:02 now, on the 180 Bus, theoretically on the way to the Great Mall in Milpitas. A really nice bus, although the cushions have that slight whiff of urine smell that mass-transit seats so often seem to have.

* * *

We are now deep in the bowels of the Great Mall. Actually, in Anderson bakery, which is rather near one of the main entrances. So, not quite a bowel. More like an esophagus. But still. The trip here took about two hours and ten minutes, all-told. We have now done one complete circuit of the mall on the way to ending up here. It’s impossible to reconcile and record all the sensory stimulation that the lap entailed. What pervades everything, like madness, is a slow mellow background beat, soft rock hissing out of innumerable speakers. The stores present, as my traveling companion notes, “So much choice, but no diversity.” This is crystallized in the Food Court. At first, it seems like Shangri-la. Chinese! Japanese! Hot Dog on a Stick! La Salsa! Khan’s Mongolian Fast Food! And yet, when you end up at, say, the Cajun place, the rice, noodles, lemon chicken and spicy fried shrimp there could as well be from the Chinese place, or the Japanese place, or…. And so it goes— clothes, gifts, shoes, you name it. The whole thing is bringing up great vibratory waves of fossil depression in me. Strata of blue laid down by how bored and trapped and unable to connect to another human soul I felt during almost weekly visits to the Northridge Mall while growing up. Heck, that’s how I felt anywhere while growing up. Fortunately, that’s not at all how my life is these days. I find freedom, hope and opportunity to connect almost everywhere I turn now. Witness, as one example, the gorgeous, mirthful hellcat I’m sharing this experience with now. Who’s muttering to herself while she writes, and has turned this trip into a hunting expedition for social and political insights. Yes indeed, my only real problem this afternoon is holding myself back because of intermittent fear that she’ll grow tired of me if I let out too much, when in fact holding back is the thing that makes others tired with one. And what is my life these days if not: not holding back. Thank you, Great Mall, thank you! For reminding me what it felt like then, and where I’m at now. And congratulations, by the way, on the two sports bar-restaurant-arcade-billiards room you have hidden in the true bowels of this maze of consumption. It beats like a great dark heart, surprisingly vital beneath the placid little wood-framed side-door that leads to it. Reminding us that, beneath every seemingly orderly and settled exterior, there are always chaotic irruptions of life.

* * *

Richmond-bound train, circa 6:45. The 180 left the Great Mall around 6:10. Which means we had about 5 ½ hours of direct mall contact— no wonder I feel so wiped out. Even with a plunge into the giant sack in the beanbag store for rest, that’s a lot of meeting with the merchandise meme. Now on the BART there is much less stimulation. Just open space, and sunlight, and East Bay hills burnished by the dusky sun.

* * *

Transfer point: Bayside Station. To make our way from the Richmond Line to the SF/Milbrae line, final stop, Embarcadero. There are rumors that seafood is in the offing. More to follow.

* * *

9:55! I can’t believe it’s 9:55. This has almost officially become a twelve hour journey. Well, it turns out we ended up at an excellent place on the Embarcadero called Montecristo with tuna tartar, and wine. And isn’t an epic journey supposed to finish with a feast? With that, I bid you adieu.

June 22

My Blue Period I (poem):

The sky behind Telegraph Hill

Blazed like blue fire

Through the morning air

June 23

My Blue Period II (prose poem):

Like fire I said, but not quite. Aflame, yes, but as hollow as the deep. Glow behind the glow enhances the empty space in front.

June 24

My Blue Period III (haiku):

Towers of downtown

bathed in clear blue that glows,

like a sea of glass.

June 25-26

I am the Froggie of Power!— The bearded hippie-punk checkout clerk at Whole Foods in Fairfax, repeating back a phrase from a little kid in line.

Jesu Maria, I spent the weekend soaking. Well perhaps not the whole weekend. Just much of Saturday afternoon. But what an afternoon it was, courtesy of Frogs, a low-key and low-cost spa in the town of Fairfax, barely a stone’s throw across the Golden Gate Bridge. Close though it is, the whole Universe seems different over there. Fairfax is a small town with an honest-to-God Main Street, replete with little shops. In any direction you look, hills and mountains wreathed in piney green rear their hilly, mountainy piney-green heads. The sun shines unabashedly, with only faint tendrils of mist around the top of Mount Tamalpais to remind you of the fog that will come with evening. Frogs itself is a small wood-paneled affair. A hot tub, two saunas, private hot-tub rooms, massage rooms, and the sun deck. All quite clothing optional. Sitting in the hot tub, caressed around the shoulders by a cool breeze, I looked up to see a square of blue, dappled with little white clouds. I breathed deep and sighed, believing I’d found paradise. Don’t get me wrong, I love living in the city. But part of maintaining that love is sometimes being able to change the channel.

June 27

Morning fog over Mountain Lake Park

sheets of mist

layered between pine trees

fading into distance

in the direction

of the Golden Gate

June 28

Express

Bus

Morning

Squashed

Between

Cigarette

Smoke

Jacket

Smell

June 29

The crime occurred with bracing swiftness. I was walking along Fisherman’s Wharf at lunch, reveling in the sunshine, light breeze and blue-gray choppiness of the bay without a care in the world. And then suddenly the shadow passed over me, followed by the pressure of its lowness in the air and dark impression of feathers outlined on the pavement in front of me. It swooped down literally on top of the pair of Korean tourists walking ahead of me. Screams, a tussle and commotion, and then the seagull that had knocked a hot dog out of one of the ladies’ hands proceeded to devour it on the ground in front of them. It’s chilling— I don’t know that I feel safe in this city anymore.

June 30

Sidewalk fat furry

Dead rat lying in red stain

Small mammal brother

Politics & Promises

So I like this Barack Obama kid. I use the term “kid” advisedly, as it’s true that he’s nine years older than me. Then again, I’m not running for President. And he is only about one third of the combined age of the two democrats in the race I most liked, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. He’s also running against someone 25 years older than him, which is a whole almost-grown person’s worth of age.

Age and experience are not trivial matters in being able to manage the Presidency (cf. my earlier stated preference for Joe and Bill) but they are also not necessarily decisive. Teddy Roosevelt and JFK each filled out the office pretty darn well, and Mr. William Jefferson Clinton was the same age in 1992 that Mr. Obama is now. And Obama brings something that I still remain hopeful is going to matter: A vastly different perspective from anyone who has held the office in the last fifty years.

It’s not too much to hope, I think, that a bi-racial man raised in Indonesia and Hawaii who from birth has expected to live half his life in the twenty-first century will have a significantly different worldview from the previous occupants of the office. Going further out on a limb, one might hope that this difference will manifest in a different kind of politics, one more holistic than binary and better suited to this new millennium. I remain hopeful, but somewhat less so than I was a few months ago.

Yes, you do what you have to in a campaign in order to get elected. But when you start to do silly misconstsruals and misrepresentations of what your opponents say in order to score points (like harping on Mr. McCain’s “hundred years”), when you adopt positions you don’t really believe in to appeal to one base and then soft-pedal them when it comes time to switch to another (like renegotiating NAFTA), when you break a promise to abide by public funding because it’s become expedient to do so and then try to spin it as a protest against how broken the funding system is, well, it starts to seem…

Twentieth century. Old millennium. Typical. Disappointing to the expectations you yourself had stirred up that this time, things might be different.

John McCain, meanwhile, is championing public funding of elections, campaign finance reform, and is the one offering to have a live, no rules or handlers-mediated series of public debates throughout the country, to which the Obama campaign is saying, oh well, let’s wait and see. Who’s representing a different kind of politics now?

Don’t get me wrong, McCain himself has back-pedaled on so many admirable and risky against-the-grain positions that he formerly held and become such a creature of Bush policies that the reform sheen is decidedly off of him. And like I said, I do like this Obama kid, and remain hopeful that he will be a breath of fresh air in many useful ways.

I wish though, that instead of Obama vs. McCain we could get a contest of two committed reformers refusing to play the same old game. Like maybe pre-January Obama versus 2000 primary season McCain.

Now that would be a contest worthy of the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Promotion

My first job in San Francisco, in the halcyon net-addled days of 1999, was with an Investor Relations firm. Investor Relations is a specialized sub-category of Public Relations, and operates along the same lines- you, the agent working at the agency, have various clients, for whom you try to garner positive coverage and prominent participation in media, events, etc. The wrinkle with IR as opposed to PR is that the clients are corporations listed on some stock exchange or another and the kinds of audiences you promote them to include the financial press, investor conferences and mutual funds.

The place being San Francisco, and the time being the halcyon net-addled days of 1999, the clients whose accounts I worked on were all Internet or other Hi-tech firms. This was all very heady, and I liked it tolerably well, but I never felt entirely comfortable with it. Promotion and all it involves didn’t seem like an instinct that came easily to me. I felt the same way with professional self-promotion. I remember milling around at various young tech business networking events of the era, trying to summon up the energy it took to interject myself into a conversation in progress or hand my card to a complete stranger and start hyping myself, thinking, “This just isn’t my thing.”

In all fairness, as a more-introverted-than-not, more-sensitive-than-baseline type, aggressive self (or other) promotion isn’t a natural strong suit. But I’ve come to realize since that a lot of this feeling had to do with right livelihood. (Apologies for not signaling in advance the abrupt shift into Buddhist discourse.) That is to say, projecting business interests with passion did not come naturally because my natural passion does not lie in business interests. It wasn’t the right focus of energy for me. No quarrel with that as a passion by the way, for some people it is their thing, and you can fairly see the energy of it come crackling off of them, which can be an inspiring sight.

My passion, which was largely dormant at the time but kicking to awaken, is for creative endeavors. And when it comes to promoting my own creative projects, or those of others that I admire, or just generally hobnobbing with creative types and hearing about what they’re up to, lo and behold, the needed energy and confidence is there. Case(s) most recently in point:

I’ve been working on this film, Echo’s Wonder (http://www.echoswonder.com/), that’s going to be screening at the Victoria on June 1st along with other films from the same filmmaking group I’m part of. The director asked me this week if I could take a stab at writing a press release to try and maximize turnout and interest. Also this past week my roommate/musician/budding producer Alex Mikes (http://www.myspace.com/alexmikesmusic) asked me to work on a mission statement for In Bloom, the independent record company he’s starting.

I have wanted to be involved with film and music for literal decades, and it’s so gratifying to harness the energies of my natural bent for writing in promoting these activities. Although they have nothing to do with my day job (financial analyst for a non-profit), working on these two ventures was the most energizing, satisfying work I did all week.

Three cheers for right livelihood!

May Writing News

Hello friends!

It’s been a few months since I last sent out an update, because; A) There was a lot going on in my life and I was distracted; and, B) There wasn’t a lot going on with my writing, so I figured I had nothing to report. Now I’m thinking that it’s the other way around. Maybe there wasn’t as much going on because I wasn’t reporting it. In the name of reverse-causation magical thinking, I hereby resume monthly updates on my creative endeavors.

Film- I’ve continued with local filmmaking collective Scary Cow (http://www.scarycow.com/), working on Echo’s Wonder, which will screen at the Victoria Theater at 16th & Mission on June 1st along with other films from this four-month round. I’m not as involved writing-wise as I was on Carson Larson, but this film is written and directed by one of that film’s co-writers, Alex Winter, and I believe it will be highly worth seeing. In the afterglow of his brilliance you can appreciate my work as script consultant, production assistant, dialogue-free extra, and (this is the one I’m really excited about) Best Boy! I’ve been waiting 37 years to have a film credit like that. Yes, since birth. Seriously.

Poetry- Red Pulp Underground has put out a print anthology entitled Zygote Extract that includes my poem “Young Karl Marx” which they published last year in their online journal. You don’t have to buy a copy. Really. I’ll read the poem to you, for free, on-demand at any time. But if you truly feel inspired to, you can buy it here: http://www.rpwriters.com/Affliiates.html

Novel- Several publishers are at least vaguely considering my novel, tentatively titled Out In The Neon Night, based on my agent’s queries over the last few months. Thus have I heard. The kinds of things can take quite a while, but then again, when things happen they can happen quickly. I’ll let you know more as the story develops.

Blog- Throughout 2005 I worked on San Francisco Daze, a (nearly) daily reflection on life in San Francisco in prose and poetry form. Since the beginning of the year I’ve been releasing it in monthly installations on my blog, and I’m excited to finally have a venue to publish it in. People kept telling me I should put it online. Thank goodness they didn’t keep telling to me I should jump off of a bridge… In any case, you can find the continuing installments of San Francisco Daze, and all my latest blog activity, at any of the following three locations: http://chris-west.blogspot.com/, http://chrisw-insf.livejournal.com/, http://www.myspace.com/chriswest_writerinsf

That’s it for now- back in June with all-new updates!

I’m Not a Normal Girl

Okay, ‘ya got me, I’m not actually any kind of girl at all. But the first time I heard that song from Maggie Estep,’s 1994 album No More Mr. Nice Girl, I totally identified. I had felt like I was different than everyone else my whole life. You know, not “normal”.

It’s taken me the best part of the last 14 years to realize that I wasn’t imagining things. I’m not normal! And now that I finally know what that means, I’m pretty excited by it.

Sayeth the oracle known as Wikipedia: “In behavior, normal refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average.” Which brings us to… “In mathematics, an average, or central tendency of a data set refers to a measure of the "middle" or "expected" value of the data set.”

Not being normal seems horrible, because “they” tell you it’s horrible. But you know what they are? Average! Which sounds awful to me, but we needn’t pejoratize that term either. All that all of this means, mathematically, is that if we took a group of one hundred people and measured them according to Trait X, 85 of them would line up one way (“normal”) and 15 another (“not normal”). And while people think much more in terms of “good” and “bad” about this as it applies to personality, it’s really no different than when it applies to eye color or blood type.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently as I’ve been reading Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person (http://www.hsperson.com/ ). Her basic contention is that some people are naturally (get ready, this is shocking) more sensitive to external stimuli than other people. This being a minority trait, these people often feel overstimulated by the world, and react to it differently than the not as sensitive norm expects. On the positive side, these people are often the first to notice when things are happening, draw connections between disparate sources, and because they withdraw into themselves more, produce a lot internally.
Keeping this in mind makes my emotional and social life make sense in the same kind of way that suddenly realizing, “Duh, I’m left handed!” would make the world make more sense.

It’s also brought to mind for me having the same feeling over the last few years upon reading Sasha Cagen’s Quirkyalone (http://quirkyalone.net/ ) and Anneli Rufus’ Party of One: A Loner’s Manifesto (http://www.annelirufus.com/index.html ). It turns out there are a lot of us who aren’t like everyone else, and while it may not be normal, it is a different way of being with deep roots

So there you have it- I’m not a normal girl. Maybe you aren’t either. Don’t despair, because it can be fun. As Maggie Estep says:

I’m not a normal girl/ I don’t think I’ll ever be a normal girl/ But still/ I’m terribly popular

San Francisco Daze: April

Continuing to bring San Francisco Daze, a series of daily observations of life in our fair city that I wrote in 2005, finally out into the light of day. With a little bit of non-SF contamination in this one from a trip to Seattle. The Soviettes, FYI, have since broken up. This is very sad, but my love for Sturgeon remains undiminished…

April 1

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (VII):

Last night in Seattle, and tonight I went to the Fun House to see a passel of punk bands, headlining in the Soviettes. Who advertise in Kitchen Sink, one of my favorite local journals, and Alyssa, my Yahoo! Personals contact who has her own music blog loves them, so I figured they must be worth checking out. And they were. The place, first of all, was spectacular. The juke box was all punk, metal and honky-tonk, which confirmed my suspicion that Seattle is full of kindred souls. The place had a long wooden bar, full of the tattooed and pierced and dyed. Not much seating, but a lot of standing room, especially near the back where the bands played. And the stage— an inch off the ground and a foot away from the crowd, well there’s no better way to see a band. The first few bands were fun, in the amped up but repetitive way that punk bands are fun. But the Soviettes were something else entirely. Three girls and one guy, with songs that bristled with energy and personality and an actual fun lyric or two. I was so enthralled that I bought both of their CDs, and embarrassingly gushed to the band members as they circulated through the crowd after the show. On top of that, I fell in love with their guitarist, Sturgeon. I am not fucking kidding— I would bear her children at the drop of a hat. Come to me, oh tall rock goddess with the pixie-cut and the alluring grin!

April 2

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (VIII):

In the airport now, headed back to San Francisco, after my week in Seattle. At last, the story can be told. These were the songs that were the first thing that popped into my head during each day of the trip:

Sunday- Hurricane (Bob Dylan)

Monday- Landspeed Record (Tanya Donneley)

Tuesday- Something in the Way (Nirvana)

Rock & Roll All Night (Kiss)

Wednesday- Could You be The One (Husker Du)

Thursday- Old Lady Behind the Counter in a Small Town (Pearl Jam)

Friday- Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)

Saturday- Iron Man (Black Sabbath)

April 3-10

Egad! What happened to this week? No daily observations at all. I guess in spring a young man’s fancy really does turn.

April 11

The pink blossoms in the brick courtyard near work were as big as buttercups today.

April 12

Yipes— final bus stop on the BX, and they are upon us. The Swarm. The Human Wave. The contingent that must stand because all the best seats are gone. My ride was guilt-free until now, the few spare empty seats that dotted the bus guaranteed expiation. But now, seats gone, standing room only, one must wonder— is some little old lady going seatless because of my ease and comfort? Perhaps a nun even. A nun leading a group of school children. With kittens. I’m probably clear on that one— I would hear the noise of the kids and kittens, even here in the back of the bus. Who I actually see standing in front of me is a tall young guy in jeans and a suede jacket, listening to his I-pod. Beyond him, fading into the hazy distance of the midsection of the bus, some vigorous looking young ladies. Still a twinge there, gentleman sitting while ladies stand and all, but modern bus etiquette is clear on this matter. And anyway, I don’t see any other men giving up their seats. So I’m off the hook for now. But still, I do so fear the onrush of the crowd each time it comes.

April 13

I live at the base of a mountain of parrots. Okay, actually, I work there. But it really is a mountain of parrots. And those parrots, the parrots of Telegraph Hill, scream like flighty feathered madness in the morning. They swarm like yellow and green lunacy at lunch time. They migrate like clucking tittering insanity in the evening. Pets, let loose on a lark a few decades ago. And now they are always with us.

April 14

The building says

“Beamis”

in gold letters

against

peeling salmon paint

on the way home

from my office

to the bus stop.

How

have I not seen it

before?

April 15

“Don’t judge.”

That’s what she said after she got on the bus. It was hard to take your eyes off of her, she was rail thin, clothes tight and yet somehow worn and loose, hair matted and dirty, eyes bloodshot and hollow with that kind of hollowness I’ve sometimes seen before in my own. Hard not to stare, but of course you don’t want to be rude. This leads to surreptitious glances, by their very furtiveness drawing attention to the fact that one is looking. Which no doubt is what led her to say, to noone in particular, while staring straight ahead from her seat by the window, “Don’t judge.”

She was silent for a while after that. Then, as she stood and made her way to the door several stops later, the torrent started.

“Don’t judge. You ain’t got no right. You don’t know. You don’t know a damn thing. So keep your judgments to your own damn self.” And on and on in a similar vein, loud but not angry, as her frame lurched in a jerky off-balance way.

Just before leaving the bus, she looked at us, smiled and laughed, raised one arm above her head in a move that somehow reminded me of a prima ballerina, and said, “Have a nice day. Gosh dang!”

And then she was gone.

April 16-17

A Lost Weekend. No writing, but clearly do I recall Jen’s lackadaisical voice, Valkyrie build and cute round face framed in curved blond hair. That and the puzzling African safari theme revealed in the flickering firelight of Piazza Orgasmica on Clement Street, which is, after all, a Brazilian-owned chain. Most curious.

April 18

A blustery spring wind blew through the city today, whipping leaves around, rattling newspapers and sending my hair flying in golden strands that I had to keep gathering together and tucking back behind my ears.

April 19

The back side of the fountain in Yerba Buena Gardens, cool marble corridor memorial to the Civil Rights movement, where the waterfall pelts you with cool mist, will always be the first place I kissed her.

April 20

Kincaid Room, Unitarian-Universalist Church on Franklin, setting up for a meeting. Defining features: hard plastic chairs, dirty chocolate milk brown and slightly Oreo-dipped white, in a circle. Concrete walls in prison gray. A cement inset in the ceiling, featuring six perfectly square Jackson Pollock-pattern asbestos spattered tiles in the middle. Simple standing lamp in the corner as befits Unitarians. Grade school black counter-top drawers in the back of the room. Tan carpet, square patterns in frayed disrepair. The pervasive smell of old couch cushions, though none are in sight. Dusky sun leaning through the slanted blinds, casting multiple dim shadows of my pen across the paper. Outside, cars roar past as Geary & O’Farrell split in two and flow around the church. Echoing voices, footsteps and creaking doors in the hall outside. Ten minutes to go.

April 21

There’s a little two-block stretch on the ride in to work (if you take the BX, that is). A little two-block stretch along Bush Street that takes in the mysterious stairway leading to the French Consulate, the glass front of the Goethe Institute German Cultural Center, the Taiwanese-run weekly-rate Hotel Astoria where I almost stayed one of the times LiAnne tried to kick me out and the red-gold-green gaudy magnificence of the Chinatown gate on Grant. All in two blocks, within a few blocks of the all-business no-nonsense Financial District. This city inspires such love in me.

April 22

Dusk came today with a green-blue fire over the Pacific.

April 23

South Van Ness is so unlike Mission, which again is unlike Valencia. Valencia is Roxie Theatre glowing on the corner, French crepe restaurant just up the street, well-heeled vintage stores and bars that straddle hip and dive. Mission the same, except it is also Pentecostal churches in Spanish, booming music from discount goods stores and the crack dealers and prostitutes that congregate around the BART stations at 16^th and 24^th. And then South Van Ness, and suddenly it’s auto supply stores, warehouses and gas stations. Three parallel streets that might as well be in different cities.

April 24

Three-tiered

Gray stone birdbath

In the green grass courtyard

Of red brick

Saint James’ Presbyterian

Is dry

Full of black soil

And planted

With seed that promises

A bright spring explosion

April 25

After getting through the whole day without incident, a half block from home, on the very corner where I live, I see a guy smoking a cigar, wearing pajama bottoms with horizontal stripes, a plaid blazer with vertical stripes, and a firemen’s hat loitering in the vicinity of the SF Weekly news box. San Francisco defends to the end her right to present you with the bizarre.

April 26

Telegraph Hill was awash this morning with hummingbirds, dragonflies and butterflies upon the face of the verdant emerald deep.

April 27

The bus ride home today was a festival of dialects. Big bountiful blond girl talking on the phone about the people at work with thick Russian English. Black girls reading out loud from the newspaper about “that guy who got shot in South City, and they killed his ass”. And a Chinese office ladies threesome engaged in nonstop Cantonese-Chinglish all the way home.

April 28

The sky was opaque white, pouring rain this morning on the way to the bus. But by lunch the clouds had piled up into big white and gray masses, scuttling across the baby blue sky as they skidded over the bay out of office window. And tonight, leaving work, the sky was transparent purple, with stars standing out in bright diamond relief.

April 29

The benches in the new Union Square have been designed to encourage the homeless not to loiter in this public space. Accordingly, they are cold hard steel, with straight backs, and left and right armrests dividing the bench into four person-sized seats. It’s impossible to do anything other than sit rigidly facing forward, unable to touch the person next to you, or turn and look in their eyes when you talk. Let’s hope that the whole city doesn’t end up this way.

April 30

I heard the most refreshing thing of the month today. Loitering around North Beach with time to kill before meeting somebody at the movies, I was directed by posters advertising “Art in the Alley” to Jack Kerouac Lane, tucked between Vesuvios and City Lights. The alley was packed with dyed hair, argyle socks, paintings and bass-string jazz notes. When I had my fill, I wandered into Vesuvios, thinking I might do some writing in Jack’s old haunt over a cup of coffee. When I ordered a latte (which, in my defense, had been suggested by the sign out front), the wiry white haired guy with a goatee behind the bar said, “If you want a latte, you should go to a café. I can’t make a good latte. I’m a bartender.”

San Francisco Daze: March

Yes, I know it's now April. What can I say, I'm a laggard. Now posting the March edition of San Francisco Daze, a daily reflection of life here in the city that I wrote in 2005, now being foist upon an unsuspecting world. This one also includes a dash of Seattle, since I did a pilgrimage there in March/April 2005.

March 1

Unable to sleep tonight, I went for a stroll around my neighborhood at 1:00 AM. The streets were lit in spectral yellow and vaguely fuzzy in evening mist. The corner of Eleventh and Clement was four dark empty lanes intersecting, quiet in every direction, restaurants, laundry and linen store all dark and shuttered for the night. Above, through a gap in the clouds, the silent moon shone and a handful of stars glowed blue-white.

March 2

In the mellowness

of late afternoon,

even the dingy neon sign

of the massage parlor

on Polk just before Geary,

looks cheerful,

and glad to be there.

March 3

On the way home tonight, my attention was caught by a red mini-van that had "Denmark" in stenciled in white letters on the side, along with the Danish flag. And, sure enough, it seemed to be surrounded by honest to God Danes. Four of them, tall gangly young guys, dressed for warm weather on a rainy night, with hair too blonde to be believed. It was as if central casting had sent out for Danes. Now I'm completely intrigued— Why does Denmark have a mini-van? Who is the crew manning it? I don't know the answers, but I look forward to seeing more European touring vehicles on the streets of San Francisco (which is, after all, the favorite U.S. city of many European tourists). Maybe Liechtenstein will be next.

March 4

It rained where I stood

And clouds brooded gray

Over the Bay

But the East Bay

Was bathed in light

Home-encrusted hills

Agleam in polished white

One bare hill

Aglow with green and gold

March 5-8

There is no record of these days. Apparently, in spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love.

March 9

Park Presidio foggy AM

Bus-stop wait

Evergreen tops

Turned gray in the mist

Vines climbing rough bark

Into

Grainy

White

Indeterminance

Above

March 10-11

Nothing. Spring strikes again.

March 12

Charlie is a wonder. She stands on the stage at the back of the Make Out Room, MCing Writer's With Drinks, six feet of curly blond haired sunny Texas hoedown-dressed transvestite glory.

March 13

They have been doing restoration work on Mountain Lake Park for the past four years. Clearing the eucalyptus trees whose leaves poisoned the waters, planting local flowers and trees along the shore, improving drainage. Today, on this glorious spring day, standing on the stones that ring the tiny beach, watching the coots, ducks and seagulls plying the surface and the dappled gold of the sunlight play off the mud of the bottom, I understood why.

March 14

Brick arch

just off Pacific & Front

frames perfect scene:

Round green grassy hill

Topped by tree bursting in explosions

Pink and white blossoms

March 15-23

No record of life in San Francisco on these days.

I.s.a.y.m.f.t.t.t.o.l.

March 24

On the express bus, turning my attention to the fact that I really need to finish my essay for Kitchen Sink, even at the risk of absconding from work time to do it. That doesn't feel great, but then again, it doesn't feel awful. And there you have the tectonic shift that's going on in my life. Hopefully the earthquake damage will be limited. But heck, them old plates need to go where they need to go. So, anyway, currently we're hard charging uphill in the rain, chugging along, still working on passing Van Ness. Almost there— we've got Gough and the big stone medieval castle of Trinity Presbyterian. Woo! Now we've broke on through to the other side. A few minutes later, Snackwell Deli, the Psychic Gallery and Café Mozart, all gleaming in some kind of burnished gold, say we're almost there. We've just passed the Top of the Tunnel, the delightfully divey looking bar perched atop the Stockton Tunnel overpass. And now into the brown-gray stone, glass and metal of the Financial District, almost to the stop at Montgomery & Bush.

March 25

Boy is this rainy little downtown-bound bus getting crowded and desperate. This even before the Arguello stop. The gorgeous girl who just got on got to see me sneeze. Glory, glory hallelujah. God I love watching people on the bus, their faces alone are a joy. There's the guy with the knit cap, glasses and a beard. Swarthy looking- I think I'll report him. Environmental issues girl with her square glasses, little cleft in her chin, talking earnestly and non-stop to the friend seated next to her. Guy with the bushy eyebrows and poofy hair is a marvel. Beyond him, girl with the interesting face keeps making surreptitious glances my way. Back to talking-glasses girl— I love her green rain jacket, her sports jersey and the way nobody can be sure whether or not she's a lesbian. Same for her super red-haired friend. So red-haired that even her eyebrows are noticeably red. And I'm more than enough of a dirty bastard to carry that thought through to its conclusion. Oh alas, alack, we've only just passed Van Ness. Well, we'll be there eventually.

March 26

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (I):

Oh so happy to be sitting at the bus terminal in Seattle now. I'm here for a week of vacation, all alone, to make a microbrew and coffee and grunge pilgrimage. The sky is gray and multi-layered outside, and I'm resting for a second before seeking out the bus to the Citycenter Travel Lodge. Nothing to do but sit. And look at the big blond girl with the glasses who I'm inexplicably enamored of. Okay, signing off for now— off to the hotel!

March 27

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (II):

Got to fill you in on the run. I'm hunkered down in Pike's Place Market, a cool kitschy collection of shops, and much more alt than I would have thought. I'm in the basement shops now, which is really sort of an endless maze, but I think I'm edging my way toward liberation. Currently just outside the Women's Hall of Fame, and not too far from Lefty's World. Which, sadly, turns out not to be a shop devoted to progressive activism, but instead a dispenser of products for left-handed people. Well, when I do liberate myself, I want to go back and check out that little cheese factory on the street level. Best freaking Macaroni and Cheese I have ever had.

March 28

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (III):

Sitting here in the International District on a bench in a little pagodaed park, under a tree raining down pink and white blossoms. It isn't as idyllic as it sounds. Very flat and drab compared to San Francisco's Chinatown, although the mix of Asian stuff here is nice. And, unfortunately, this place is bordered by total skeeve-ville. Train station on one side, freeway overpass on the other. The street on the third side, which I took a stroll down, looked for all the world like the Tenderloin. Crowds milling in front of liquor stores, low-rent hotels, the works. I swear in the few minutes I've been here I've spotted at least half a dozen people I'm sure one could score off of. Okay, the sun is breaking through the rain clouds now, and I'm off to see what other wonders this realm may hold.

* * *

I'm now at Pioneer Square, which is much different than I'd expected. I was expecting a waterfront park, I think. Whereas this is actually a cobblestone square in an Old West setting. All the buildings abound in stone and wood, and now the presence of the Cowgirl Saloon just down the street makes sense. It's all actually much more charming than I was expecting. Except/including (?) the little kids in a school tour group swarming all around and screaming, chasing birds and climbing over benches. I am grateful, though, that they pointed out that the curved space formed by the union of the backs of the two benches that face in opposite directions is a perfect hobo's house. Oh, and before hitting the square (which is actually more of a triangle, properly speaking) I found the Pyramid Brewery and confirmed tour times. Not bad so far, very productive vis-à-vis my goals for the day.

March 29

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (IV):

Dude, okay, here's the deal— I am some percentage of the way on my way to the University of Washington. I passed that gallery with the Ballard and Ballard exhibit, and it was sweet. Extremely sweet. It had a fake documentary on the fake star of a fake talk-show, complete with fake episodes of the show and fake memorabilia. It makes me think more of the possibilities of collaborative word-visual art. Other than that, a fairly temperate day, lots of clouds in the sky but also lots of blue. Big puffy white clouds, with just the right touch of breeze. And I've stumbled upon this awesome riverside view from a little park, at which I'm now writing. God I love Puget Sound. I love the temperature here. I love the way the air feels. I think my home planet was a lot like this. Okay, now further. UoW awaits.

March 30

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (V):

In the bowels of the Experience Music Project. Actually, in the café. One of the nice features of this whole setup is the hand stamp that allows you to wander in and out. The real thing that got me here, though, was the fire alarm that forced us all outside, and my realization that I needed to refuel before tackling the next floor. So far, this thing has been worth every penny. The Beatles exhibit and the Songwriter room alone have been worth it. Who knew that you could have so much fun with a tempo dial, slowing a classic Rolling Stones song down to Blues or speeding it up to hardcore? And I haven't gotten to the most meaningful (to me) part of the Northwest exhibit, the part that covers Grunge. Or the whole Dylan and Hendrix exhibits on the second floor. And who knows what else is up there? Oh man does this do it for me. You need to start taking guitar lessons and take a stab at the whole DJ class thing, young man.

March 31

How Do You Write About A Place in Its Absence? (VI):

Tonight at a club at Pike Street, with a full bill of Heavy Metal acts. It was an interesting place. The first floor was 18 and up, but you had to show your ID to get to the second, where the booze was. And therein, a balcony that looked down on the stage for much more satisfying views than the general admission crush of the ground floor would have allowed for. Finally, the respect that the elderly deserve! I was slightly enamored of the first band, an outfit from Canada called Controller, Controller. They were good, but truth be told, my enamority was likely fueled as by the fact that they had a round and curvy girl with short dark hair fronting for them. No such aspersions can be cast on my love for the next act, Death From Above 1979. Also Canadian (What is it with Canadians? Are they keeping rock alive until we in the US can re-ignite it?), a two man metal drum and bass duo. Yes. Really. With no back-up, or tape loops, or anything. And yet it worked, it utterly worked. They rocked hard and yet were also somehow danceable. These kids warrant further investigation.

San Francisco Daze: February

Continuation of San Francisco Daze, a monthly record of life written in 2005 but now finally being shared with the world. That was a good Febraury, but you have to figure this one is better since it has 29 days!

February 1
Where do the mid-afternoon café girls come from? I'm ensconced in Blue Danube at 4th & Clement, playing hooky from work on this gorgeously sunny Tuesday. The abstract paintings on the wall that are this week's art show here are good. This dirty beaten up white leather couch with the spangly Indian cloth thing on the back is good. The sign advertising live music on Thursday is very good— I didn't know that they did that here. But what's best is the puzzling profusion of mid-afternoon café girls. Don't they have work? (Then again, don't I?) But no, really, her with the pixie cut, the almost translucent glowing skin and the unidentifiable tattoo, where did she come from? My angel by the window with the curly dark hair, the geekazoid glasses and the go-go boots, what's her story? Wither the blond with her solid homey beauty and squared-off thick-rimmed glasses? The willowy brown haired girl reading Joyce Carol Oates who just caught me looking at her? Cool hipster chick sitting outside in the sun with the too-red dyed hair and sunglasses? Girl with short dark hair also at an outside table? Gal with a latte about as big as a soup bowl struggling over a Japanese textbook? How am I still single in this city?

February 2
One of the highlights of my neighborhood is the Last Day Saloon. The place has been here for something like 30 years, with live music almost every day of the year. And the live space up a slightly creaky set of stairs, wood heavy, glowing bar like a beacon, frayed old carpet, stage not unlike your high school had, is one of my favorites in the city. I've only been there one time when it was crowded (for probably the worst band I've ever heard there). The rest of the time it's only fitfully full, and the band is so close you practically feel you're on stage with them. And tonight, tonight was Metal. The Fluff Grrls, with a frontman so serious about his lack of art that he was practically incoherent between songs. But when it came time, he poured it on and they amped it up. The last band of the evening, Alter Ego SF, were in full-on rock star mode. Their two guitars and bass let loose the thunder in a way that reminded me of Metallica of yesteryear (when did I become such a metalhead?). And yet there was the unexpected sweetness of the banter with their family and friends in the audience. In-between the first band and the last came the real prize, Beautiful Ashes. A drummer who looks like your best friend from high school who was into metal. Guitar and bass. And lead singer Megan, serious, pale, breathing deep to center herself before beginning, shyly requesting more mike. Megan, this little red-haired slip of a girl, who once she gets going, sings and screams into the mike in a way that reminds me of Black Sabbath in the best possible way. The band creates walls of sound behind her, crunching guitars, a pulsing fuzz which Megan (who by now I'm sporting a sillily huge crush on) pulls together into a snarl, a song, a moment of truth torn from somewhere deep inside and handed to us. I walked home at 12:30 AM, ears ringing, loving her, them, the Last day Saloon and my neighborhood.

February 3
Waiting for Melinda at Muddy Waters café on Church & Market. This is my least favorite café in the city. At least, it always struck me as skeevy and dirty. But tonight it seems friendly and welcoming. Perhaps I'm changing. Maybe it's the lighting. Actually, I think it is the lighting- so crisp and clear at night, with none of the dinginess of day. And the brick, I love sitting next to the brick wall. The scuffed planks in the wooden floor, even the worn carpet in front of the register, usually a magnet of suspected sticky ickiness, somehow feels homey tonight. The solid brown wooden doorframe around the big glass windows looks like the gazebo of some literary cottage. And the smooth thick-painted brown pillars barrel up to the ceiling's flared beams that are maybe only barely load bearing. I love them, I love them all. I couldn't feel more comfortable in my own living room. In fact, since my living room is currently full of unfolded laundry, I'd probably feel considerably less comfortable there. All Hail Muddy Waters! And death to those who would drag her down!

February 4
The thin wiry Asian guy with the little round glasses and the crazy hair at the 7-11 on the corner near my home smirks at me every time I come in. I can't tell whether he's commenting on the quality of my purchases, or whether he thinks I'm cute. If it's the former, screw him. The Miller 32-ounce, at $1.49 is extremely economical, and it's been a long week. If it's the later, well, not exactly my scene, but heck, I'm willing to considerable any reasonable offer.

February 5
Weekend Cafes Part I:
Saturday afternoon at Café Bazaar, meeting Jodie to write. I would have liked to have written at one of those hard little tables in the back, the ones in the dark room where it doesn't matter that it's dark because each has its own little study light. Rather what I imagine a reading room at Oxford must be like. But I didn't want to disturb the guy back there, who looked excessively studious. So instead, we sat at the big round table by the window, which had its recompenses. Such as the bright yellow tablecloth, proximity to the piano, and being right by the window, which is stuffed with drums and other instrumentation for the musicians who play here on a regular basis. Also the passers-by visible through the windows are pure delight— hipsters out for a stroll, parents with kiddies in strollers and the more than occasional old Asian couple making their way down the street. And everyone inside is serious and intense. Intensity leavened somewhat by the cool leafy garden out back. An ideal writing café, all in all.

February 6
Weekend Cafes Part II:
Sunday morning at the Peet's on Sacramento & Fillmore to meet Carolyn to talk about plans for her novel. And holy cow is this place crowded! Who would have suspected all this activity before 10:00 AM on Sunday? Even more, on a Superbowl Sunday? The crowd is mostly the babies and dogs and well to do that you find on upper Fillmore on the weekends. Next to us, though, is a sun-wrinkled figure with short scrubby reddish fading to white beard, in clothes that look like they've been bleached by time to the point of fraying. He has a bag of carrots lying next to a book titled "Secrets of Plant Propagation" and is reading the newspaper. Not reading so intently though, that he can't eavesdrop on our conversation. When I mention working in Hong Kong he asks how I liked it, and if it would be a good place for a guy like him who has an Asian fetish. He then goes on to tell us how a friend of his went to Thailand, and said there are 30,000 women on the beach just waiting to marry foreigners. He himself is sponsoring two children in the Philippines, and he should probably marry one of their mothers. And did we know that you could sponsor children in the Ozarks, right here in the U.S.? Then he leaves us to our conversation. I depart later, thinking that I should probably find a woman on the beach in Thailand, marry her, and adopt a child from the Ozarks. We're probably related anyway.

February 7
Weekly Work Commute Scenes I:
stepping
on to morning street
late for work
dash across intersection
white car pauses
up on sidewalk
day laborers talking
one drops coffee cup
next to trash bin
I look down
see
birdseed
scattered on sidewalk
in front of furniture store
crunch
beneath my shoes

February 8
Weekly Work Commute Scenes II:
Sun
lighting up
the brick side
of Self Storage
makes it
an orange and pink
monolithic slab
of light
on the corner of
Geary & Masonic

February 9
Weekly Work Commute Scenes III:
Elvis! Elvis is on the bus! I swear it. Big bushy sideburns. Hair slicked back, still dark, but graying now. Giant sunglasses, tinted red lenses framed in gold. Big sparkly rings on his fingers, just like you'd expect. Platform shoes. A little stooped with age now, but he looks good. He's definitely lost some weight since his Vegas lounge days. I guess living underground for nearly 30 years would do that to you.

February 10
Weekly Work Commute Scenes IV:
On the bus as it was packed to the hilt and about to split down the middle. Jostling and shoving near the back door produced cries of— "don't push me!" As I moved my head, trying to dodge the twin threats of one guy's backpack about to whack me and someone else's ass nearly in my face, I overheard a guy outside. Apparently trying to get on the bus, and yet unable to manage it.
"What's wrong with you people? Why don't you take taxis? You all got jobs. You can afford it. Why don't you take taxis?"
"What about the environment?" somebody on the bus shouted back at him.
"What's wrong with taxis? You all got jobs." I could almost see him through his voice, heavy-set, middle aged burning raggedly towards old, with wild wispy white hair.
"Take a bus and save the environment!"
"Why don't you take a taxi?"
"What about your children? And your children's children's children?" I found myself honestly unsure whether this interloucer was having fun with the man outside, or really was filled with ecological zeal.
Then the man outside, as the doors closed, addressed his rant to a new passenger. "Hey you! In the black hat. You got a job. I know you got a job. Why don't you take a taxi?"
The doors shut and the bus rumbled to a start as laughter swept the passengers. Which did a considerable amount to lighten the gravity of my being squashed between the splay-legged guy next to me, the backpack and the ass.

February 11
Weekly Work Commute Scenes V:
Pretty bountiful red-haired girl on the bus stops me in my tracks as I board. I abandon my usual policy of driving straight for the back where there's generally more room and less drama, and instead plop down next to a silver-haired lady who looks none too inviting. This just so I can sit in the seat across from the red-haired girl. Who smiles at me when I sit down. Who has gray tennis shoes highlighted in pink. Who is wearing a velvety purple-red coat. Who's hair, like mine, is drying from a morning shower. Who's hair, unlike mine, is a profusion of red-orange curls. Who has horn-rimmed glasses with violet frames (my God is she color-coordinated). Who is reading a paperback, and I wonder what it is. Thus ends the red-haired bus girl jam.

February 12
They line the streets
Lured out
By a week
Of warm air:
Buds
Popping from branches
Into clusters
Of pink & white flowers

February 13
This afternoon my Writing Group (or at least a five-member quorum thereof) sat around Jodie's empty living room in her new place. We met to hammer out submission guidelines and deadlines for the self-published journal we're brewing up. We had just enough of Dave Z's homemade absinthe to throw everything slightly off-kilter, but we got through our agenda items successfully, followed by us being recruited to help her move furniture from her old second-floor walk down Pacific Heights place to her second-floor walk-up new place at Second & Clement. The venture was well run and generally fruitful, but at the end of the day there was no way that the queen-sized box spring from her bed was going to get up the full-sized hallway. She still had the mattress to sleep on, so we all adjourned across the street to Giorgio's for pizza and beer.

February 14
The thing that caught my attention
about walking the blocks
to the bus stop on Market Street
in the rain
as I concentrated
on each step
in order to not
have the motion
of my slippery saddle shoes
against the slick pavement
land me on my ass,
was the way that
everything
around me
became
still
and
quiet,
a Valentine
just for me.

February 15
There is a telephone pole just before Broadway and Sansome into the nooks and crannies of which someone has stuffed hundreds of silver and green peppermint patty foil wrappers.

February 16
I never noticed
the thick grainy sand
that the trees are planted in
as they line the street
until today
when the heavy rain
had turned it bright gold

February 17
I could have been a flight technician in the Air Force. Thought delivered to me on the bus via the woman with the curly red hair toting the plastic bag that says, "Fleet, Fleet" on it. Which made me think of Fleet Week, and Paige's e-mail, and how it rattled some people at work and that my rejoinder would have been that, lefty or not, I actually respect the job that the military has to do. Which made me think of Mike from graduate school in San Diego and the awkward scene with LiAnne in the theatre and how that had come about because I told her that talking with him made me wish I'd joined the military at some point. Because in my talk with him I said that I would have wanted to be in the Air Force but my eyes were too bad to fly, and he said that even if I wasn't a pilot I could still have been a flight officer or a technician and been in the air that way. Thus does the mind work.

February 18
Tonight I saw the Evens at the Swedish American Hall with Melinda, which was a revelation on several levels.
First the Hall itself. I'd always wondered what secrets lurked in its depths, and it proved to be no disappointment. It lay up a flight of squeaky stairs to a high-beamed wooden room that looked not unlike a high school auditorium except that it was richer, and woodier, with a balcony and benches lining the walls broken up by huge wooden thrones. Really. Big kingly seats elevated, with high backs and massive arm rests on each side. Scattered around the room were blocky movable wooden platforms, which the Swedes no doubt used in some fashion during their ungodly rituals.
The next revelation was the crowd. For it was Them. Yes, Them. The people I see at certain bars, certain art shows, certain concerts. With their piercings and their tattoos and their haircuts and keds and thrift store jackets, all recognized, but mostly not known. It made me wonder— am I one of them? I feel like I don't know them, really, but how long do you see all the same people at all the same places you go before you are those people? Kind of like High School, except our parents aren't waiting to pick us up and we can buy beer out in the open. Although I bought a Diet Coke. It had been a long work week, and I was afraid of nodding off.
Now the wheel circles around to Melinda and her friend Jennifer. Melinda who remains sweeter than the sex workers and transvestites and S&M performance artists she hangs out with would lead one to suspect. With whom I clicked so well while waiting in line, and then she seemed checked out later at Sparky's. Maybe due to her and not to anything about me— who can tell these things? And Melinda's friend Jennifer. Jennifer, the dark haired serious faced cutie who is working on a documentary on the Dharma Punx entitled "Meditate & Destroy". She bears further investigation.
The final revelation was the Evens themselves. A veteran punk duo composed of the founders of Dischord Records, which practically produced the Washington DC punk/hardcore scene that Fugazi and Minor Threat and so many others came from. Ian MacKaye looked incongruous, a balding middle-aged guy, who was so soft-spoken between sets, self-deprecating and funny. Then they would fire up, with his blazing speed-chord guitar attack, her drumming, lyrics sometimes shouted and sometimes delivered in ghostly softness, with just enough melody to hold it together. Social and political without being klunky or preachy, and beautiful and loud and fun. Once again, seeing a live shoe left me inspired to write and wanting to learn to play guitar.


February 19
Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt Blues
Jodie canceled (she wasn't paying her dues)
Me and Dave found Kenichi
To fill the space created by she
Rain fell off and on
But that didn't stop us from being up and gone
We climbed Filbert steps to get to a plaque
The clue's answer was maybe on the pole in back
Went down to North Beach to find a Tony
Walked so much I ended up feeling bony
There was another clue about a guy guarding grapes
Which left us all just scratching our napes
Found some numbers on a pole
Then decided it was time to roll
Up to Chinatown to seek Hoffman's partner
Inability to find which made me wish I was a good deal smartner
Then through a tunnel to the Starlight Lounge
Where we found the next answer after quite a scrounge
To an alley near Grant & Pine
Found the restaurant's registration date and felt just fine
Down the end of Market to the clock tower
Almost to the end, we felt our power
Then the final clue about a concrete Octopus
Having completed the hunt, I knew I was no wuss
They announced the results and we didn't win cake or champagne
We went to Chevy's and had blue agave margaritas, feeling no pain

February 20
The Bitter End, on a Sunday afternoon, passing time with Carolyn over many a beer.

February 21
Bursts of cauliflower white
Gray underbellies
Brooding monsters
Highlighted in brown
Thin icy wisps
Bulking white super-carriers
Looming saucers
Clouds
Scooted across the baby-blue sky
Outside my window
All afternoon long

February 22
Tonight I met Cheshire after work. (Yes, that really is his name, and no, he did not have it when he was born.) He lives in Emeryville and is married now, so I don't get to see him too terribly often. The mere sight of his fuzzy shaved head was worth the price of admission. We met at the Fourth Street Bar & Grill so he could give me some feedback on my novel. There sat the manuscript, with disheveled pages and weird stains, looking just like a reviewed manuscript should. And those 267 some-odd pages were filled with his comments, upon which he expanded over greasy food and an intermittent supply of ice tea (apparently the frequency was held up by our serving staff's low opinion of us). I took four and a half pages on notes, and I don't think I've had a better night out all month. I look forward to the Fourth Street Bar & Grill, with its weird hotel sports bar polish, and big men stuffed into too-small shirts talking about revenue and cash flow, finding its way into our biographies.

February 23
Oh bummer- the person with the ash and dirt-flecked knit cap who was sitting in front of me, raining ash down from their cap and hood upon my poor little notebook, has moved on. And the weird girl with the coke-bottle glasses who I have a crush on has just shuffled off. Even grungy skateboard totting guy is gone. Leaving me, I'm afraid, as the grungiest thing going on the bus.

February 24-27
Home sick. Throat hurts. Body aches. Hot and cold flashes. In living room, writing at dusk. Afternoon naps, listening to music. Main problem is fever and chills leave me with alternate need to pile on clothes and blankets, and then strip them off again. Stripping not as fun as it sounds.

February 28
Today, my first day decidedly on the rebound thanks to a combination of antibiotics, ibuprofen and Vick's nasal inhaler, I stepped off the bus downtown and reveled in the cool morning breeze pouring down Market Street. The steel-blue sky behind the office buildings and the sun glinting off the glass and steel made distorted tesseracts of golden light. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. It felt glorious. It felt free.

Cha-cha-cha-changes

This will be brief, as time has been at a premium recently. Some of that premium is due to a transient late winter cold that got me into a Dayquil of the Dead state for a week or so. And then work has been hopping in an especially hoppy way the past few weeks as well. But mostly two big new things are afoot in my life:

1. I just signed the lease on a three-bedroom house in the Sunset. I'll be moving in there with two friends, both in recovery. So a nice sane and sober household, near the beach, also near enough to the N-Judah and 71 Noriega that I won't vanish from the face of the Earth. Yaay! I've been looking for something for a few months now, so it's very exciting to have that part of my life more settled. Not to mention freeing up the time that has been spent looking and putting it to some more fun and free use. Among which is…

2. Within the past week or two I've been on my first dates in about a year and a half. I'm sure I'll be talking about the whole process at more length here over time. For now suffice it to say that the world is full of some really lovely and interesting people. I'm very happy to be at a place in my life where I can show up for meeting them and be available enough to attract worthwhile and available people in to my own life. I'm happy now, anyway. Every alternate day the process is driving me batty!

That's it for now, more to come once I'm fully moved in and all that.

Top Ten Albums of 2007

You might reasonably ask why I'm coming out with this list in mid-February. The truth is, I think you have to build in at least a good month of overhang, because you still may not have found and digested some of the year's best albums properly by midnight on December 31st. This past year took some digesting too, unfortunately more from dearth than from girth. Here, in alphabetical order, are my picks for the best albums of 2007:

1. Chrome Dreams II (Neil Young)- Neil Young is a pleasure even when he's piddling around. It's an especial pleasure to find him here, well past the age of 50, still able to narrate interesting stories with his plaintive wail on a coherent set of songs that alternate between relaxed folkiness and Crazy Horse style assaults of heavy guitar feedback.

2. Icky Thump (White Stripes)- A so-so White Stripes album is kind of like so-so sex. It's still pretty compelling, and you certainly never think of leaving before it's over. As with Get Behind Me Satan, there's a little too much self-conscious experimentation here to really achieve the straight ahead, undiluted quality of their best work. Nevertheless, I'll still take a near miss from Jack and Meg over the best effort of many another outfit any day of the week.

3. I'm Not There (soundtrack, various)- Soundtracks usually have trouble succeeding as truly acceptable stand-alone albums since a significant layer of their meaning relies so heavily on the movies they spring from. Without that they run the risk of just being a weird assemblage of songs. This soundtrack, however, benefits from coming out of a movie that was itself about music and the life (through the work) of a single musician. Between unusual songs, unusual approaches to familiar songs and a surprising variety of artists participating, this ends up being a fresh and invigorating showcase of Dylan's song craft. I particularly recommend disc two.

4. Juno (soundtrack, various)- See caveat above about sound tracks as albums. How delightful, then, that this soundtrack pulls it off. The heart and soul of the effort, of course, is Kimya Dawson's delightful folk-punk songs, with their innocent and exuberant insistence on simple, fun lyrics. More remarkable is that the songs here by other artists, despite their diversity of styles and eras, feel like they belong with Dawson's songs and create a quirky, yearning and ultimately sweet organic whole.

5. Losin' It! (Vancougar)- Many have their eye on the music scenes in Canada's big cities as the source of the next big thing. This quartet from Vancouver certainly encourages you to think that hope may not be in vain. Part punk, part girl-group harmony and all energy, every time I listen to this album I wish there were more people out there making rock with this sense of loving attention to it's basic idioms and joyous adventure. And still producing songs that are actually about something, with distinctive voices from each of the individual members. Keep your eye out on what these gals are up to next.

6. Twelve (Patti Smith)- Well here's someone who knows a thing or two about loving attention to rock's idioms. A good cover should honor the essence of the original, but approach it sonically in a new and different way. If covers are going to sound just like the original, after all, that's what we have originals for. Patti Smith breathes new life into all twelve songs she covers here, not tripping at all in the transition from Tears for Fears to Neil Young to Jefferson Airplane to Dylan to Nirvana to Stevie Wonder (et al) and holding the whole thing together with the hypnotic power of her own singular voice and vision. Outstanding fun for any music lover.

7. Under the Blacklight (Rilo Kiley)- Try it and see if these songs aren't so damn hooky that they get stuck in your head the next day. And yet leave behind shards of lyrics that unsettle as they slowly dissolve. There's more than a trace of the now thankfully peaking and passing dance-rock indie sub-genre here, but with a lean more toward the rock side of the equation such that they end up with a genuine power and urgency that the efforts of many others in this vein ultimately lack. More than that, Jenny Lewis' incisive and insightful lyrical vision and lush and world-weary vocal delivery carries the whole thing to another level entirely.

8. 93-03 (Frank Black)- I'd agree in principle that it's questionable to include a greatest hits collection in a list of the top albums of the year. Nonetheless, the first 11 tracks of this compilation of the first ten years of the solo career of the former Pixies front man is one of the most consistently excellent listens of the year.

9. Almost Made Its- No, this isn't a band or an album name. Although it's a good name, isn't it? Pay me a nickel if you use it. What I mean is all the albums that made a vigorous stab at being superb but just missed it. Art Brut's It's a Little Bit Complicated, the Foo Fighters Echoes, Silence , Patience & Grace, Kings of Leon's Because of the Times, Bruce Springsteen's Magic, and Tegan and Sara's the Con are all worthy of attention.

10. There is no number 10. Lest it escape anyone's attention, it's a bad sign when the best albums of the year include two soundtracks, a greatest hits collection and a covers album. It's no accident that Frank Black got on the list with a set of songs from the mid-90s, the most recent of rock's periodic outbursts of renaissance. That last musical fluorescence has run it's course, and once again the old Gods are nearly dead. It's time for a revolution!

February Writing News

Hello friends,

I went on a retreat over New Year's and part of it was a New Year's Eve ritual where we put our intentions for the year out in front of the group. One of mine was to get me creativity out in public more in 2008. Only early February now, but some of this has already come to pass- watch out when you put an intention out there to the universe in front of everybody!

Exhibit I: On January 27th, Carson Larson Gets the Picture, a film that I was a writer on (and did production work on and even briefly acted in) screened at the Victoria Theatre. And won the audience vote for best picture in our round, which means our team gets funding for our next production! And won best writing, which especially warmed my heart. If you want to check it out, you can see it here, it's the one for Team 12 and runs about 14 minutes: http://www.scarycow.com/videos/round0004/round004.html

Exhibit II: Red Pulp Underground, an online journal that published a poem of mine last fall, is putting out an anthology. Like a real live, in-print anthology. And including my poem in it! It's coming out in May, and if you buy a copy I promise I'll sign it. You can read some more about it here: http://www.rpwriters.com/competition.html

There is no Exhibit III regarding my novel (yet), but my agent has inquiries out to eight publishers, and is preparing them for several more. So let's keep our fingers crossed…

And you can always catch up with my blog on MySpace, Blogspot or Live Journal:

http://chris-west.blogspot.com/
http://chrisw-insf.livejournal.com/
http://www.myspace.com/chriswest_writerinsf

Hope you all are well, and I'll see you in March.