California Notes II, 8/19 – 8/22

8/19

• No idea what I want to do for the next 3 days. May go into SF today. Was toying with the idea of going down to San Jose anyway, regardless of the Jolie situation. Still not sure what to do about that. Sure, if she didn’t reply – that’s fine. Don’t know how much is her not wanting a visit, and how much may be just her ability to swing in and out of existence. Meh. It’s her deal.

• Stull feel like finding ’09 Poet’s Market before going home. Like it would give me some work to do.

• Back in the Mission. Daunting price of 3-day Muni pass sent me back on the BART. $18 for 3 days, I can’t justify. I may not even cross the bay again after today. The next 3 days are a mystery. Eric wants me to go with him to the Rites of Jupiter being performed at some strange bookstore, not sure whether I will go. But what instead? Tomorrow will probably see me on a train to San Jose anyway, out of boredom.

• Hooray! Word today (last night) from Jolie promises to perforate my boredom. At least with phone conversation, if not actual hanging out. I’m hoping for the latter, but whatever. Looks like I’m heading to SJ after all. Well, we’ll see. Waiting for word.

8/20

• Wrote a more non-traditional poem today, called Voicemail. It’s an adaptation of what I can remember of an email I received from a jealous husband – foundless of course. I imagine that it was, at least in part inspired by my reading of both House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, and Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall in the past months. Both books take impressive liberties with form and style. The poem is obvious and simple, but I think that’s what I like about it. Hoping to draw more inspired poetry from mundane sources like emails, text messages and the like in the future.

• Made it to Dolores Park in the Mission. Now I’m curious why it took me so long to check it out. It’s huge and great. It’s plunked down in the middle of everything (with the Mission on one side, and Castro not too far on the other,) and has a commanding view of the downtown area. It was a great day to go there too, sunny, no clouds overhead. Some down by the bay, but certainly far from my concern.

• Didn’t seem to make it to any museums on the trip. Not for not trying of course, but I am loathe to pay to see priceless art. It should just be there for us, the world, to appreciate. The redeeming quality of my trip is that I have attended a respectable quantity of parks and beaches, and been sailing twice, which, according to my standards, puts me firmly in the category of rugged outdoorsman.

• After Dolores park, wandered over to the Castro. Had coffee at a quaint little place by 20th (I think) and Castro, then wandered to the streetcar at Market and Castro.

• Took Muni to Civic Center stop on Market, where I got off due to crowds on the car freaking me out. Hipsters I can take in large numbers, but tourists and welfare cases get to me. The reality of their lives is too heavy for me. Makes me emotional.

• Thick packs of tourists on Market caused me to escape down to Mission, where the sidewalks were more accommodating. Walked past a smiling man who was screaming about taking a shit. Tourists coming out of the mall stores. I was on the phone with Shayne when I stumbled on the Yerba Buena Gardens, where I sat for a while, watching people sell Street Sheet, or throw frisbees. Again, good weather to sit around outside.

• Back to Berkeley in the evening for some food and sitting in Tully’s on Shattuck. Had a big conversation on Facebook with Asha, whom I sadly only get to talk to every couple years. She’s married and living in Texas now, though she doesn’t seem like the Texas type.

8/21

• Made good headway in the Shorts Project story. Plot is now on solid ground.

• Got out early and headed across the bay. Got off at Embarcadero stop and had tacos. After that, had coffee at a Peet’s nearby. Killed a little time there, checking emails and stuff, and headed to the Caltrain to go to San Jose. Luck being with me, there was one scheduled to leave 10 minutes after I arrived, and so I got a day pass ($15 for unlimited rides). For all intents, it is the same as Chicago’s Metra. Pricing was ok, 1.5 hours one-way from SF to San Jose.

• San Jose was a pretty big let down. Not a peep from Jolie, and I walked around for a while, stopping at a Kinkos to check in for my flight and print my boarding pass. After that, I wandered around, looking for some cool places, but came up empty. It would have been nice to have someone with who knew the lay of the land, because it’s pretty easy to lose control when you’re in a giant mall with a population. I think that’s my main beef with SJ, everything was very clean and polished and corporate. San Jose will be our sadly homogenized future, if we fail in the revolution. I think people were looking at me strangely, with my tattoos and piercings, and wearing shorts. It was something out of Demolition Man, I was expecting Denis Leary to climb out of the sewer.

• Back on Caltrain, I made my way eventually to Berkeley where, while waiting to meet up with Sean for dinner, I witnessed two completely independent groups of people passing joints around in the little commons next to the Downtown Berkeley Bart stop. Now, I know you can get medicinal marijuana in California and everything, but a bunch of youthfully healthy hippie kids sharing a thick blunt is probably not exactly what the medical community is trying to facilitate. Eventually Sean showed up, and we hit some Italian/American place for dinner. It was tasty, and Sean got to watch the second half of the Bears game.

• After dinner, went home and packed, made it an early night.

8/22

• The final short leg of my trip. Woke up around 9am and showered (trust me, I had been showering on a regular basis, just didn’t think it was significant enough to put in print.) Made sure that my bags were packed properly and headed downstairs with my camera. I wanted to document for everyone where in Oakland I had been staying, to prevent anyone from adapting a suspicious tone about my lodging.

• After pictures, I was free to read and relax until it was time to head to the airport. I took down a couple chapters in my Alatriste book (which, now on the plane, I have finished,) and bummed around until we went to Berkeley to collect Sean for the ride to the airport.

• Now on the plane, I am excited to make it back to Chicago. These past 18 days have been incredible in many ways. Not many people who weren’t with me on this trip could claim to have sailed (and I mean, participated in the operation of the boat) on the San Francisco Bay. I saw – which was one of the chief ambitions of my trip – City Lights Bookstore. Birth of a new literary era in the fifties, a good source of my inspiration decades later as I prepare myself to become a bookseller and publisher. I made it to the Haight/Ashbury and Berkeley scenes 40 years after my mother did (during the height of the free love movement) – a legacy I didn’t know I was carrying on until I had come and seen. I witnessed Gnostic ceremonies and was exposed to more of the Occult than I could have anticipated, while staying in Oakland with Sean’s friend (and now mine) Eric. I saw darkness and feared for my safety in stories I have yet to determine whether they’re mine to tell.

• Now I return home to heat and humidity. Determined to make my ambitions into successes, and in short time at that. California has been good to me in many ways.