Anytime spent in San Francisco will inform even the dullest of souls that it's the typography of the place that creates a unique sense of place. The streets simply rise up to meet you, creating villages out of blocks that would, in a flatter place, merely be addresses further down the street. It separates too. My own street of neatly maintained little homes is more connected to the Medical University just through the cloud forest and the very grand houses perched further up the mountain than to the rows of similar little sweet homes that steeply descend the other side of the mountain. Though truly part of my neighborhood, the steep drop from 850 feet above sea level to 150 feet, the arduous climb back up again, precludes my including them in my daily walks with my dog.
The spell is enhanced by the light. In fall that filtered light embraces city and coast. The summer fogs end and golden toned hues lighten the space with joyous azure, pinks and whites. The city presents itself to those travelers hardy enough to climb the highest peaks an appetizing array of sweet fresh sights and smells, colored by coastal hues playing off mountainous coasts and great inland sea. The only place I have visited that resembles its gentle splendor is the divinely decayed capital of Portugal, Lisboa! There too barrio's are carved upon hilltops, villages huddle around parks and every hill has a view of the Ocean and massive river that meets it, crossed by a rusty colored span much like ours.
Any traveled European who has visited the United States for more than a week and finds themselves in San Francisco will state that they are more at home here than elsewhere in the nation. The compactness of the place, the active street life, people gone mad with a celebration of food as art all served up with a wealth of music playing everywhere. A small place, half its people from elsewhere, speaking dozen's of different languages and dialects continually create and reinvent a city whose people have a unifying language in music and food. It is the surest language of nurturing love for the world's sojourner's that rest for a time within the golden gate.
Food! It's the language understood by us all. It matters not if you're Asian, European, San Franciscan or a visitor from the exotic East. East, that place settled and populated east of the Sierra's but ending at waters edge well before London and Paris. East! The indistinct large place ones distant ancestors originated. My neighbors the Wong's hold a similar view of the mysterious place over the water in the far West. The place from which, in the hazey distant past, The Wong originated. This originator of his race on the Ohlone villages ruins, after climbing the golden mountain and seeing that it was good, settled down, rolled a dumpling or two ate one and served the other to a gentleman from a far away place named Brewster who in turn spoke of it to a gentleman from Brazil who thought that that just might be the thing to serve with his roasted coffee.
The universality of excellent food is the language spoken most readily upon our hillsides glowing in the golden fall light. It is understood by everyone.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Enveloping Fog!
The fog during the summer months lays thick along the coast of central California. It is the stuff of literary legend. Twain's comment, " the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco" is the most often quoted by guidebooks that seek to instruct the casual summer weekend visitor on what to wear when! The freezing blasts leave most unprepared as they "do" San Francisco for the day. The merchants of schlock peddle poorly made fleece windbreakers with SAN FRANCISCO printed across the front, contrasting the worst in seasonal bright colors with black script, to the suffering fools on the route of tourist traps which we allow to infest our wharf area's.
In summer only the hardiest of souls brave the cold blasts of thick gray clouds to walk the dog. It is the definition of dreaded chore to do so. The childhoods of generations of San Franciscan's have many cultural disconnects from the rest of the United States of America, some due to the limitations imposed upon our choices due to the compact nature of our densely built city, others stem from needed restrictions which are common enough in urban area's. The one most unique to our tiny city is that though municipal firework displays are mounted each year to celebrate the Glorious 4th the actual viewing of the display of patriotic fevor is limited to those few souls who are able to find a parking space near the water's edge. In an annual folly worthy of the best Kafka story the city father's mount wonderful firework displays that are seen by nearly no one in San Francisco and mostly by the residents of Oakland and Marin. The moment marks the revolution chiefly in continual booms and an orange glow originating way above the clouds. Still the fog has its magic. One magical trick the fog has for me is that when flying either home or away from San Francisco we always pass over the Mt. Sutro Tower and its top third is the sole recognizable landmark in a sea of white cloud. I know that my house and gardens are just below and a bit to the left. Makes me fell rather special.
The billowing wisps are tailor made for twilight games of hide and seek. In fact it's very possible to hide out in the open if one steps away just far enough. The resulting giggling will always give the player away. Twilight, that lovely faded light, lasts from morning until nightfall, making the whole day one singular white grey period with no shadows to mark the flight of the sun's journey. Sundials are not much used in San Francisco gardens and time passes very silently. The savvy gardener will plant windblocks and privacy screens into the domestic landscape, so it is very possible to spend hours reading on a bench in a sheltered garden nook. On the mountainsides the fog creeps quietly over the woodlands of the densely forested valleys and deep canyons of the Crystal Springs Watershed and everything, people, gardens, flower, houses, are held in a Brig-a-doon sort of stasis wherever the coastal fog holds court during the summer. The fog rolls out and it is still 1962, the slumber induced by the enveloping clouds is that deep, the magic of it is that it causes time to stand still. That magic disappears in late August early September when the remembered bright lights of early June are replaced by the shadows of fall amid crystal clear days. A week or two of warmth before the crispness of true fall. It is a time of high frolic that is gives meaning to the word JOY! I recommend it highly.
In summer only the hardiest of souls brave the cold blasts of thick gray clouds to walk the dog. It is the definition of dreaded chore to do so. The childhoods of generations of San Franciscan's have many cultural disconnects from the rest of the United States of America, some due to the limitations imposed upon our choices due to the compact nature of our densely built city, others stem from needed restrictions which are common enough in urban area's. The one most unique to our tiny city is that though municipal firework displays are mounted each year to celebrate the Glorious 4th the actual viewing of the display of patriotic fevor is limited to those few souls who are able to find a parking space near the water's edge. In an annual folly worthy of the best Kafka story the city father's mount wonderful firework displays that are seen by nearly no one in San Francisco and mostly by the residents of Oakland and Marin. The moment marks the revolution chiefly in continual booms and an orange glow originating way above the clouds. Still the fog has its magic. One magical trick the fog has for me is that when flying either home or away from San Francisco we always pass over the Mt. Sutro Tower and its top third is the sole recognizable landmark in a sea of white cloud. I know that my house and gardens are just below and a bit to the left. Makes me fell rather special.
The billowing wisps are tailor made for twilight games of hide and seek. In fact it's very possible to hide out in the open if one steps away just far enough. The resulting giggling will always give the player away. Twilight, that lovely faded light, lasts from morning until nightfall, making the whole day one singular white grey period with no shadows to mark the flight of the sun's journey. Sundials are not much used in San Francisco gardens and time passes very silently. The savvy gardener will plant windblocks and privacy screens into the domestic landscape, so it is very possible to spend hours reading on a bench in a sheltered garden nook. On the mountainsides the fog creeps quietly over the woodlands of the densely forested valleys and deep canyons of the Crystal Springs Watershed and everything, people, gardens, flower, houses, are held in a Brig-a-doon sort of stasis wherever the coastal fog holds court during the summer. The fog rolls out and it is still 1962, the slumber induced by the enveloping clouds is that deep, the magic of it is that it causes time to stand still. That magic disappears in late August early September when the remembered bright lights of early June are replaced by the shadows of fall amid crystal clear days. A week or two of warmth before the crispness of true fall. It is a time of high frolic that is gives meaning to the word JOY! I recommend it highly.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
True California!
I've recently begun a love affair. It leaves me, sweaty, breathless, aching, covered in tiny bites and scratches yet desiring more. When I'm not worshiping my new love I can only think about the moments spent together, of new intimate tricks played and my own abilities. I anticipate greedily the next encounter. I'm jealous of the time spent away and have bitten off more than a few heads of fools who delay me in attending my much anticipated scheduled meetings with my love. The encounters always leave me feeling satisfied, refreshed and if but for a moment, completely speechless. It is profoundly moving. It is a true of truest loves and like many lovers it is entirely one sided. My new love barely notices my existence, treats me as being utterly insignificant, a state of being with which I readily agree. Should I grow up? Move on? Never, not while I can move! This love sustains me in my life, without it I would be merely another urban wretch. A man creature shriveled in decay, despondency and dependency. My new love leaves me smiling, keeps a bounce in my step and best of all, when I'm in the heat of it, burns up a lot of calories. It leaves me with an incredible sense of being free. It's done in the sunny wide open. It is solitary hiking in the Mid -Peninsula Open Space Preserve!
The Wilderness- Oh wild California. True California, untouched in its' primordial splendor. The blessings of ancient Oaks shading me and myriad forms of life from the burning mid day summer sun, the scent of the Oak a heady perfume matched only by wet Redwoods. Manzanita, Lichen, giant Ferns, fleeing Lizards, Turkey Vultures waiting, ever waiting, silently, knowingly patient, fixtures set upon limbs of dead trees. The enduring archetypal sound of Owls hooting in Redwood groves so dense that even at high noon daylight filters to the Forest floor weakly, creating a never world of ever twilight, transporting the listener back thousands of years, to the sounds and sights our ancestors experienced when living under the towering intertwined branches of the worlds primeval forests. Forest's that covered whole lands. This wildland relic of pre-Columbian California is within hiking distance of the Valley and University most responsible for the shattering of old ways of communication and conducting business as usual. The technology and limitless amounts of capital controlled by a very few individuals, that very force which has made whole industry's obsolete is within hearing at the trailheads but fast disappears as the sojourner makes his way into the wilderness.
The sylvan setting and gentle riparian sounds are rarely disturbed by the hubbub of the neo-Nabobs setting the course of 22nd Century California ten miles down the mountain. The insatiable appetite of a few hundred individuals set out to acquire ever more billions with no regard for the democracy that nurtured them is for me a more frightening reality of destruction than the real chance of an encounter with a wild Pig, Coyote or Mountain Lion. In such an encounter, the beasts of the field and forest act as they must to a human interloper within their world- the injury caused by a chance battle more understandable than enduring the crushed markets caused by the creative destruction of the beast of prey known as the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist. The wonderful reality is that the all embracing largeness of the wilderness of this True California evens the playing field for all. The Mountain Lion doesn't much wait upon ceremony and has a real disregard to the size, location and variety of bank accounts and investments. The neo-Nabob is on equal terms with every other child of nature in the wilderness and benefits more from the utter disregard that that very wilderness, my new love, holds us all in. That disregard frees them if only for the moment from self imposed rules. There is nothing as humbling and yet little that is more grounding, or that which can right side over the top ego's than a vista through ancient Oaks across deep forested canyons full of Mountain Lions, Coyotes, Foxes, on a perfection made eternal spring of a True California summer day. To not fall madly, profoundly in love at such a moment is simply to be dead to the world It is an all consuming love I wish everyone to encounter!
The Wilderness- Oh wild California. True California, untouched in its' primordial splendor. The blessings of ancient Oaks shading me and myriad forms of life from the burning mid day summer sun, the scent of the Oak a heady perfume matched only by wet Redwoods. Manzanita, Lichen, giant Ferns, fleeing Lizards, Turkey Vultures waiting, ever waiting, silently, knowingly patient, fixtures set upon limbs of dead trees. The enduring archetypal sound of Owls hooting in Redwood groves so dense that even at high noon daylight filters to the Forest floor weakly, creating a never world of ever twilight, transporting the listener back thousands of years, to the sounds and sights our ancestors experienced when living under the towering intertwined branches of the worlds primeval forests. Forest's that covered whole lands. This wildland relic of pre-Columbian California is within hiking distance of the Valley and University most responsible for the shattering of old ways of communication and conducting business as usual. The technology and limitless amounts of capital controlled by a very few individuals, that very force which has made whole industry's obsolete is within hearing at the trailheads but fast disappears as the sojourner makes his way into the wilderness.
The sylvan setting and gentle riparian sounds are rarely disturbed by the hubbub of the neo-Nabobs setting the course of 22nd Century California ten miles down the mountain. The insatiable appetite of a few hundred individuals set out to acquire ever more billions with no regard for the democracy that nurtured them is for me a more frightening reality of destruction than the real chance of an encounter with a wild Pig, Coyote or Mountain Lion. In such an encounter, the beasts of the field and forest act as they must to a human interloper within their world- the injury caused by a chance battle more understandable than enduring the crushed markets caused by the creative destruction of the beast of prey known as the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist. The wonderful reality is that the all embracing largeness of the wilderness of this True California evens the playing field for all. The Mountain Lion doesn't much wait upon ceremony and has a real disregard to the size, location and variety of bank accounts and investments. The neo-Nabob is on equal terms with every other child of nature in the wilderness and benefits more from the utter disregard that that very wilderness, my new love, holds us all in. That disregard frees them if only for the moment from self imposed rules. There is nothing as humbling and yet little that is more grounding, or that which can right side over the top ego's than a vista through ancient Oaks across deep forested canyons full of Mountain Lions, Coyotes, Foxes, on a perfection made eternal spring of a True California summer day. To not fall madly, profoundly in love at such a moment is simply to be dead to the world It is an all consuming love I wish everyone to encounter!
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Longcase Clock
"....It was bought on the morn of the day he was born...", one of the manifold charms antique furniture has is its' ability to transport you to past times merely by its presence in your life. Such is the charmed hold my two longcase clocks have on me. One, a solid mahogany-beveled glass paneled Edwardian gem, was purchased at W.J. Sloane and Company by my maternal great-grandparents sometime after the great fire had destroyed their house. The elegant clock stood for its first 65 year's in the hallway of 519 Castro Street, the Victorian set of flats above one of their stores, which become their main residence after they choose to cut their house on Baker Street into units in response to the massive housing shortage post '06. The new homes location in the than country, belied the furnishings and fittings of the interior. San Francisco was still very much a gentleman's adventure pre-World War 1 and gentleman had longcase clocks, study's, dining room, a formal parlor and back parlor. The rooms may have been liliputan in size compared to the massive scale of the Nabob mansions but the furniture, art and endless amounts of bric-a-brac would, at least in this instance, did not have pail in modesty had any comparison been made.
It has stood in elegant silence in my front foyer for the last 40's years. It has silently witnessed the maturation of several generations as well as the passing of several. It's use as a lucky touchstone by my grandmother, who would touch one of it's wood columns for luck as she passed on her increasingly infrequent strolls through the house, has long ended and its deep resounding chime has been silent even longer still. The beloved heirloom is mostly an elegant reminder of past times, a cherished relic of a beloved branch of my family. It also foils rather well my George the Second, George the Third and Federal period pieces. It's a great layer in a roomful of 4 centuries of fine furniture, ( the 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st centuries all being represented).
In the mornings I awake in my bedroom suite the first thing I recognize is the refined elegance of the George the Third longcase clock standing against the far wall from my bed. It's highly polished wood gleaming in the morning light. I never fail to smile when I see it. I've no idea who originally owned it and I love playing a story game which has no end of versions but will start with. I was made in the year 1783, than any number of versions of the following... of loyalist flight from newly independent Unites States, bought by a loyalist American to furnish his new London townhouse on the day his son was born and given to his son on the day his son was born when Waterloo ended the Wars started when Louis was King and given to his son on the day he married in the year that Victoria ascended the throne, than passed to a daughter on her wedding day the year Albert died, and left to a nephew upon her death the year Shaw opened his first play in London, than given to a grandchild the year Victoria died to mark the birth of a son who married the year the treaty of Vesailles was signed who presented it to his son upon downsizing from the manor house to a bedsit in Brighton the year Ireland ended its's love affair with English Royalty and India was no longer the Empire. Who in turn gave it to a grandchild that found it all to dark and had it auctioned off to purchase a Eurobox! Which caused it to be bought by me in the year a sailor landed in my life when the second boom of the 21st century was in flower!
It has its spell and I adore it!
It has stood in elegant silence in my front foyer for the last 40's years. It has silently witnessed the maturation of several generations as well as the passing of several. It's use as a lucky touchstone by my grandmother, who would touch one of it's wood columns for luck as she passed on her increasingly infrequent strolls through the house, has long ended and its deep resounding chime has been silent even longer still. The beloved heirloom is mostly an elegant reminder of past times, a cherished relic of a beloved branch of my family. It also foils rather well my George the Second, George the Third and Federal period pieces. It's a great layer in a roomful of 4 centuries of fine furniture, ( the 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st centuries all being represented).
In the mornings I awake in my bedroom suite the first thing I recognize is the refined elegance of the George the Third longcase clock standing against the far wall from my bed. It's highly polished wood gleaming in the morning light. I never fail to smile when I see it. I've no idea who originally owned it and I love playing a story game which has no end of versions but will start with. I was made in the year 1783, than any number of versions of the following... of loyalist flight from newly independent Unites States, bought by a loyalist American to furnish his new London townhouse on the day his son was born and given to his son on the day his son was born when Waterloo ended the Wars started when Louis was King and given to his son on the day he married in the year that Victoria ascended the throne, than passed to a daughter on her wedding day the year Albert died, and left to a nephew upon her death the year Shaw opened his first play in London, than given to a grandchild the year Victoria died to mark the birth of a son who married the year the treaty of Vesailles was signed who presented it to his son upon downsizing from the manor house to a bedsit in Brighton the year Ireland ended its's love affair with English Royalty and India was no longer the Empire. Who in turn gave it to a grandchild that found it all to dark and had it auctioned off to purchase a Eurobox! Which caused it to be bought by me in the year a sailor landed in my life when the second boom of the 21st century was in flower!
It has its spell and I adore it!
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