Thursday, November 7, 2013

Fog City

I was meandering through iPhoto, which I rather like doing, because we have thousands of photos, depicting family members and experiences. Many get passed over for being unremarkable. In any event they are stored on the computer. Periodically I'll wade in and delete as many irrelevant photos as I can manage. I do get waylaid more often than not by my mesmerizing granddaughter, Ashby. She shuns, for the most part, posing for pictures, although she acquiesces, when family pics are required. I'm always taken aback when I see her frozen in time, with expressions, or actions, suggesting an entire universe behind those absorbing eyes. She never fails to draw me in. I try to imagine what she is imagining. The wonder I see, is wonderful to me, and reminds me the film of callousness I've nurtured over a lifetime, is useless. Enjoy!


Monday, November 4, 2013

Fog City

Mortality. Something you never think of in the throes of youth. But that's what we have birthdays for. When you're young and trying to make heads or tails of things, the future seems endless, and setbacks and possibilities are daily occurrences. If your lucky, you'll find a tolerable job, or even better, do what you like and get paid for it. Maybe even find someone and create a family and a world. Again your consciousness is constantly in the now. Time. Age. One day the chaos, the duty, have all moved outward from your world, the world you created, the notions, the ideas your identity is built on. Well I shared this dilemma recently with my little brother, an old reference to a time when he was smaller than me. Both our families are grown. It was his 59th birthday. I'm 65. We sat talking over lunch, about being our grand parents age, yet still seeing the world through youthful eyes. We realized the end was much nearer than we cared to admit, and the prospect of new journeys, were appropriately pipe dreams. Hope was finding contentment in no regrets. And we laughed. If there was one bonding ingredient in our relationship, it was the ability to laugh, loud and heartily at life and it's paradoxes. We will forge on, flaws and misgivings, simply because people are depending on our laughs!


Fog City

Since I'm trying to catch up and make my blog current, here's more. I'm staring. Staring is part of my quest for calm, and my expansive view provided by wall to ceiling windows, helps immeasurably. The sun's lower, winter, trajectory creates long shadows. Long shadows, for me, trigger waves of nostalgia. Nostalgia for what? Certainly not a fractured youth, and all the missteps and wrong turns. But more a nostalgia for a sensibility, a vision, a day dream, a moment when you transcend the now, and soar. I was reminded recently of a transcendent sense which overwhelmed me some 40 years ago. I arrived in San Francisco, a self appointed dharma bum, and stumbled into Vesuvio's. Needless to say it was a revelation. I immersed myself. Wallowing in the open dialogue of artists and poets, transformed me, and I had found my mental center, in this salon society. I had cause to revisit such a sensibility a couple of weeks ago, as Vesuvio's was celebrating 65 years as an institution of


avant garde' intellectualism. I no longer frequent, with regularity, this haven, that nurtured and fostered my evolving thought process, but being there for this anniversary stirred more than a few grand memories.

Fog City

Fall is upon us, of course here in San Francisco, the seasons vary ever so subtlety. Also the time has been altered by an hour, which used to be a concern, but now it's just another bump in the road. It doesn't affect me one way or another. My pursuit of maximizing my solitude, and fortifying my calmness is hardly impacted by time. Let it flow. It is my intent though, to chronicle some of what happens in the course of that unceasing flow, and frankly the people and experiences in my life only work to embellish positively, my journey. These ideas, thoughts and observations, I'd like to highlight with some corroborating photos. So first, a few heart warmers of my granddaughter Reese.


I wish the photos would populate side by side, and probably do, if I only knew how. Like me she loves pasta, and I should also wear a bib when I eat it.