San Francisco

Coming back here to San Francisco makes me feel alive. I love this city, this state, this country. It's the home I cannot have, but probably will again some day. I slept too much on the plane and then after chaecking into my hotel I walked down to the Buena Vista and drowned myself in Irish Coffees. There was nice kid in the construction industry who I talked to for quite a bit while I was there. Actually I feel like more of a locamotive and will probably not sleep until tomorrow night. I bought some glassware for Camilla. I rode the cablecar back to my hotel instead of walking.

But apparently you're not supposed to jump off. They scolded me for doing so, but there was no line to pull and I assumed rather than asking. Ugh. I should ask more. I assume and just go with it far to often, and, like they said, "you're going to break your skull, man!" I missed the closure of the liquor stores while I dallied at the Buena Vista, so it will be a sober night indeed. My dinnertime standup meeting with my team occurs before breakfast here. And then I'm going to have lunch with Matthew, who I haven't seen in perhaps a decade. He went through divorcing his wife he knocked up as a teenager long before me, but it's an inevitable fate I think. Moving to Europe sure hastened the end for us, but even in the South we would have split and it would have been uglier.

On the plane tonight I wrote a poem about how I feel about California, how it's a part of me, and how lovely/terrible it is.

The first thing you notice about California is the smell.
The soil east of the Mississippi has a different fragrance.
And water is a holy thing by its lack.
As a boy I came and visited and got sunburnt.
And then we moved there -
As a child of my parents,
And then my own family as an adult.
The redwoods are magical trees -
I don't think they could ever grow in Norway,
But they grew in Colorado once.
The fog - that holy water suspended in the air - feeds the trees.
Wealth and poverty and beauty in Nature:
Ladybugs swarming on the ferns,
Slugs yellow like bananas,
Monarchs gathering by the thousands,
Sea otters lazily tied to the kelp,
While humpback whale spray in the distance,
And a homeless man urinates on the streets in front of me.
Maybe Starfleet Academy will never be built on the Presidio,
But California will always be science and fiction in my heart.

Where I type up this poem is a good microcosm of why I love California. The bartender is French (Canadian?) and trading quips with a patron. There's a valley girl spouting her vapid drivel at a man obviously just waiting to fuck her. An Australian pilot for Quantas came up to tell me about his and his fellow pilot's songwriting. They have a bar that usually has an open mic night this part of the week, but it's being renovated.