kagablog

It’s been over two months since the fire at my apartment, which has forced me to temporarily relocate in Marin County, at my sister’s home, I am feeling stir-crazy today, and the nice weather tells me I should return to San Francisco for a day in the sun. I slip into a sport shirt and a pair of jeans and drive across Golden Gate Bridge to the home of my birth. It’s a thirty-minute drive to Diamond Heights where I stop to pickup my mail from my postal box. The same box I have maintained since l974. I put the mail in the trunk of my car and head down Clipper Street to my old apartment building. I park the car outside, slip my key into the door lock, and, enter the building, walking up the three flights of stairs to Apartment Eight. I slip the second key into the lock and open the door. The apartment has been cleared of the rubble and the walls and ceilings torn down. I am staring at a room on beams. There is no evidence that any other work has begun. I close the door and lock up after me, deciding to make the most of the day, as I head for Martha’s Coffee Shop, three blocks down the street.

I order a cop of decaf coffee and sit at one of the outside tables, sharing part of my blueberry muffin with an overly aggressive sparrow. I open the newspaper and turn to the sports page, touting a rare 2007 Giant’s baseball team victory.

I finish my modest breakfast and return to my car, opening the seldom used sunroof, and drive off with no particular destination in mind. First stop is Aquatic Park, where in the declining days of the Beat Generation, I drank wine with the late poet Bob Kaufman. Finding the concession stand closed, I drive to
North Beach, stopping off for a beer at Gino and Carlo’s bar, where I first met the poets Richard Brautigan and Jack Spicer. I glance at the photographs on the wall, behind the bar, and am taken in by the handsome Irish features of the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Charles McCabe, and, remember how he held court there and was always generous with his words.

I finish my beer and head out to Golden Gate Park, traveling the back roads of my youth. I drive down Kennedy Drive, with few cars on the road, this early in the day. Two miles down, towards Ocean Beach, I spot a mounted policeman and wave out the window at him. I think maybe all police should be on horses or visa versa.

I stop off at the Polo Grounds and think how odd it is that I never visited there when I was a young boy growing up in his native city, never having watched a polo match and having no desire too. The bison are still there, grazing in a fenced in area. Once nearly extinct, they are now a living testament to man’s need to seek out and destroy. The horses at the riding stable are still there too although they look a bit bored, if not tired.

II drive back the opposite way, heading for Stow Lake, and remember how as a member of the Poly High Track Team, I had run around the lake in effortless ease. I park the car and walk down to the concessions stand, and order an Eskimo Pie, my first one since I was twelve years old. I sit down on one of the hard wooden benches and watch the ducks compete with the seagulls for scraps of food tossed to them by a small group of Japanese tourists.

Fifteen minutes later I drive to the Japanese Tea Gardens for a cup of steeped tea, remembering how Dolores (the Landlord’s daughter) and I were banished from the gardens after we were discovered wading into the wishing well pond to remove coins tossed their by tourists.

On to the Golden Gate Park Bandstand where a friend and I had ranted our poetry and gibberish to a bewildered bench-seated audience, so long ago that it now seems like a dream. Growing restless I return to my car, put on a pair of sunglasses, and drive to Big Rec, where in my teens I had played baseball, dreaming of one day playing for the home town Triple “A” San Francisco Seals. A dream that ended in Panama when I I tore-up my right knee playing baseball. I don’t know that being a poet is a fair trade.

On to Irving Street where my best high school buddy and I drank our first beer, and later puked our guts out, while watching a stag movie at his Aunt’s Home. I decide to have one last drink at the old Wishing Well Bar, recalling the number of women I had met there and slept with, and wondering what had become of them.

I stop by what had once been my high school, long ago demolished and replaced by row upon row of tacky houses. You know you’re growing old when your high school has been torn down.

Back to my old apartment house neighborhood to have lunch at Eric’s, voted the best Chinese Restaurant in town. Sitting there looking out the window at the passing cars, I day dream about when I will be able to return to my apartment; walk up those three flights of stairs, sink my ass down on the sofa, turn on an old Billie Holiday record, and return to a life that now seems like a surreal dream.

The sun beats down on me through the sunroof as I drive back across the Golden Gate Bridge on my way back to Marin County.

No betrayals
No poets
No jive
A great time
To just be alive