Greetings again from San Francisco, having left the deluge that has been Seattle to instead bask in the unseasonal Bay area beaming sunshine that is a joy to behold let alone stroll in. "She-who-can't-be-named" is off to the "Tenderloin" for ping-pong lessons so I am sitting in a flat located at Church & 28th instead of my usual Kuan Yin seat in the Wallingford. Climbing up the steps at the 24th & Mission Bart (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station and ascending into the din that is the Mission District it is clear that there is more than just a difference of temperature between the two cities. San Francisco is a resurrected Lazarus and Seattle is the prone unresponsive corpse. When passengers tell me that Seattle reminds them of this city I know that their judgement upon anything is suspect. Hills do not the city make, simplistic comparisons being just that, doing an injustice to both burgs.
As I keep telling anyone who bothers to listen, I prefer either a "real" city (San Francisco, Paris, Chicago, NYC) or nothing at all (eastern Washington, Baker County, Montana, Death Valley, southeastern Utah). Seattle back in 1973 definitely held some "down & dirty" urban qualities. Now we have the newly created South Lake Union neighborhood containing "Tom Douglas" restaurants and upper-class new kind of superior trash. Give me burrito joints and rubbish-strewn streets. At least you know somebody lives, loves and dies in San Francisco versus the bloodless crowd insisting proprietorship over everything including the immediate sidewalks supporting their footsteps. The irony is clear as I know nearly every inch of the Queen now Emerald City. If I were truly a taxi driver I would move back down here, jump in a hack and finally immerse myself into a local writing environment. I am tempted even at my nearing fifty-nine years of age.
Tomorrow again will be in the low eighties. We will be touring the local art museums. I feel refreshed though having only 2 1/2 hours of real sleep. I nodded off on the flight down, awakening upon the descent into the Bay area. Shockingly another jet liner was parallel to us mere seconds from landing. Always something new and scary on this our shared existence. If you haven't already, be sure to vote tomorrow. One to two supreme court appointments hang in the balance. Life isn't a joke or some comic-book reality like some would like you to believe. When one or more bozo (clown) says that the consequences of rape are preordained by their GOD you know all of us are in real trouble. There are many versions of insanity. Driving a taxi, that cultural smorgasbord, will confirm that for you and that, sisters and brothers and cat and dogs is without a doubt something you can believe in that is undeniably true. This past weekend the drunk wife had to stop her even more inebriated husband from making a true fool of himself. Maybe his God (Pan maybe?) was telling him that I was deserving of a fisticuffs redemption. I guess I could use some sense knocked into me. Why not? I'll email Romney and tell him to send his son Tagg over and have him rearrange my nose. It's too long anyway. It would be a public service more ways than one, and Tagg can say he did it all for the Son, and simply because Joe Blondo is a bastard and a heretical son-of-a-immoral gun. And I even don't have 47 wives. For shame, for shame upon me! Or is it 60? Where is the woman who wants 40-100 husbands? What is the name of that Mormon planet? I do know that there is a place in Mars where the women smoke hand-rolled Cuban cigars and the men drive around in Chinese -made Jeeps, or sorry I meant Fiat cars! I learned those facts of religious life way back when in Toledo, Ohio, 1959. It is completely true that my father once worked on the Willys assembly line. And vow for the fact that he was Hungarian. My father was a Magyar, not a Han. But he did introduce me to chow mein when I was ten and I have been using chop sticks ever since. What would Confucius say to that? Never mind!
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