After Sonoma County, and S.F / Part One

I've returned from my trip to San Francisco and Sonoma County, where I thought of you, Steve, and all the people we knew back in the late 60's in that beautiful part of the world. I should put a nostalgia warning on this post.
     My sisters and I hit the city during a merciful stretch of weather. Sun sharpened the lines of the colourfully-painted Victorians and approriately bathed all the flowers in the city and on the roadsides. Thanks for the suggestions you sent before I left. We happened upon the Tadich Grill around lunchtime and loved its delicious seafood cioppino and broiled halibut, and the classic atmosphere of dark wood walls and bar, small, glass-shaded lamps, men waiting on tables and serving behind the bar, white linen napkins. My kind of place. The previous day my nephew Jeremy, who is the western organizer for the Appollo Alliance, took us to a North Beach cafe for lunch and then we visited City Lights bookstore where I bought a copy of Beckett's three novels and found a copy of Centre/Center on the shelf. Nice surprise.
     After lunch at the Tadisch, we wandered through the downtown out to the waterfront and returned to my nephew's Fell Street apartment by streetcar, an Italian model, with polished wood interior and and squash- coloured exterior. I love the idea of using streetcars that were abandoned in various parts of the world. Other food stops you may have heard of include the Taqueria CanCun, where we had fabulous burritos, and some great Thai restaurant near Haight. Can't remember its name, which is no help to you.
     We just happened to spend most of Earth Day in Golden Gate Park, wandering the gardens, eating lunch at the de Young cafe, then visiting the Arts and Craft exhibit that's on at the de Young. I think we need another Arts and Crafts movement, as an alternative to the chain-store culture of our time. Of course individual artists still operate, and individual designers create. I wonder if the furniture and art works of the A and C movement were appreciated only by the wealthy few or also influenced the design of goods affordable to middle and lower classes.
    My sister Judy is still a churchgoer, and I offered to help her find a place to attend mass on Sunday morning, and keep her company. Jeremy found us studying lists on his kitchen table lap top and took over, recommending St. Mary's of the Assumption - the very modern cathedral with its distinctive roof - then deciding to join us.  St. Mary's is beautiful inside. Lofty as cathedrals should be, and with an organ whose pipes are a sculpture in themselves. Being the second Sunday after Easter, it was a special Gregorian chant mass, which I really enjoyed. I can appreciate the rituals of the Catholic church now without being threatened by its rules, which I rejected before I met you. The recessional was the Ode to Joy theme of Beethoven's 9th, perfect for making me feel I'd been cleansed somehow.
     Then into Jeremy and Hope's Subaru wagon, sister Mike driving, and across the GG bridge on 101. I love the hills around SF Bay, and they're wonderfully green right now because of the rainy spring. We got lost a bit approaching Santa Rosa, but found our way to West Ave, and the house I lived in there, with Kim for awhile, before we split up. I'm going to send you a picture as soon as I figure out how to do it, because it will bring back memories for you, too. I can't remember how long you and Linda lived there, but I can remember that much happened to me in that house, a literal earthquake and a decision to change my life by moving north. It's also the house I was thinking of when I wrote the first section of Centre/Center. My black cat Dinah just about had kittens on my lap, as I sat in our brown overstuffed chair between those two front windows in the kitchen area. My stereo broke during the earthquake in 69, my cable-spool bookcase - that Kim built - toppled over, and all the medicines, etc from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom fell into the sink. Lizzie was safe in her back bedroom besieged only the stuffed animals that toppled from her shelves. The Beatle's Abbey Road album came out while I was there, and I associate "Here Comes the Sun" with the living room, where I slept on a bed behind a screen, near the farthest front window, maybe I should have said most-westerly? It isn't as easy to determine compass points there. Here I always know because the mountains are north, the sea west.

The West Avenue house looks the same, and I know there were always outbuildings behind it, but there seemed to be more buildings, closer, and there's a sidewalk in front, modern homes around. The rural character of West Avenue lingers, barely. The accacia tree outside the kitchen window is older, a little scraggly.

Comments

[steve]

Yes, I think you the people we knew there and that late 60's - early 70's time period and Sonoma County's beauty often. I'm so very pleased to get the report of your visit. Ah, San Francisco, it is my favorite place. You say you had merciful weather, I know they had terrible rain this early spring, but weather is one of the main things I love about San Fran. Whenever the weather is tolerable here in NYC, I think, wow! this like San Fran! Such a city, you can live throughout the year with no heater or air conditioner in your apartment. A few chilly mornings, but manageable with your windows cracked open to let in that sweet Pacific air. Well, you have loads of that up in B.C. I miss it here, so very much.

It was bright when you were there. Not typical. Usually, as you know, it's mercifully soft, white sky, no shadows, no glare, sometime the city dissolving into the gray fog. That's what I love, those cool, softly lit days of summer. City's are no place for sun or heat. I love to be able to ignore the weather. Just take a jacket -- good anytime of year. But, enough. I'll start whining about not being able to be there. As much as I liked Sonoma County, admired its golden rolling hill beauty, San Francisco was where I felt most at home. I get along with all of it very well, I need no other place. But, here I am, in the LES, it has its charms, but cannot compare with SF for comfort.

I digress.

I'm so happy you made it to Tadich --- and the perfect order, the cioppino is quintessential. Wow! I'm so jealous. It's been years since I've been there for that, but the loveliness of it and a Canarios Valley Pinot and the bread, the ambiance, man! that's lunch for the gods! I want to go today!

You didn't mention Triste Cafe when you were in North Beach, you were there for food, Triste is for Cappuccinos con vov, opera on the jukebox and timeless boho ambiance. But, City Lights, absolutely, a must stop, so very cool. With your great book on the shelf, so smart of them to stock Centre/Center -- man, that's got to feel good. Did you sign it?

I know that Italian streetcar, it's my favorite. So smart of SF Muni to have those international streetcars. The Argentinean one is nice, too.

Taqueria CanCun, not one I frequented, but I've seldom experienced better Mexican fast food than in the many Taquerias in the Mission. When Nathan was in High School, we lived near 17th on Dolores, just down the street from the old Spanish Mission Church. He and I ate daily out of the Taqueria on 16th near Valencia, also one around the corner on Valencia. Gorgeous, satisfying, quick, cheap and reasonably nutritious. Though NYC has burrito shops advertising that they have "San Francisco Burritos" there is not one that is even close. God awful, I can't figure out how they can destroy such a simple concept. The poor culturally deprived New Yorkers just don't know better. Another case in point -- New York is good for those who don't know better.

Many Thai restaurants around SF, maybe it was the one with the culturally tone-deaf name, "Phuket Thai" on Haight and Divisidero. Good, fresh Thai is another standard food treat all over San Fran, sadly missing from NYC. The Thai here is stale, unimaginative and suspect.

That Arts and Craft movement really had a big influence on many of us, didn't it? Add in the Bauhaus influence and you have just everything that was good about 20th Century design.

I'm glad you went to Mass with your sister. It's a nice thing if it's not anything more serious than art and entertainment to you and you keep that thought to yourself. The modernist church you chose, that I thought looked something like a washing machine agitator, is just down the street from the last place I lived in San Fran. Our Geary street apartment was not glamorous, but turned out to be quite a nice one for us, all the rooms were connected, the bathroom had two doors, we circled the entire apartment through all the rooms, which turned out to be oddly convenient. The Mass you saw sounds lovely.

The West Avenue house was significant one for me, also. We were in the farm house on Petaluma Hill Road farmhouse for the '69 earthquake. I, actually was at Sonoma State working in the Ceramics studio when it hit. The strong modern buildings didn't react much, so, though I knew it was a strong quake, I wasn't prepared for Linda's freaked out condition. She was home with baby Nathan and a big, kind, Australian shepherd dog. She was meditating, heard the earthquake come rumbling up the valley, it hit the old house hard, tossing her across the floor and the dog into the baby's crib. Though all were safe and Socrates, the dog, was wise, Linda went out of her mind, never really to recover. Thirty years after, she died still suffering from mental illness. That earthquake night, as my friend from the Ceramics studio drove me up the road to my house, we stopped Linda driving the other way, wild-eyed with baby and dog. I didn't recognize the extent she was upset and she didn't gain adequate comfort from me. This was the end of our marriage.

It was after several months of separation and many dramas that we tried to get back together in the West Avenue house. I didn't recognize it from the picture, I don't remember seeing it since I left it in the Fall of '70. After a long look, I could see some familiarity. We slept in the living room, too. I had a painting studio in the first bedroom and baby Nathan had the back -- don't ask. Our time there was filled with weird events, lots of drugs, strange visitors, me trying to paint, to do yoga, not helping Linda much. Poor girl. I just didn't like her. We went to some stupid sexuality training, part of that odious Human Potential Movement which became so prevalent. We openly had sex with others, I was just trying to get rid of her. I left her, I guess I wanted to do it that way, because she had left me the first time.

I went off to sleep in my VW bus. She went between Mendocino and West Avenue with a guy named Charlie, lead-man for the band, Cat Mother, I was in school during the week, took Nathan in the bus with me on the weekends. Over the winter of '70 - '71. I lived in the bus parked across the street from Sonoma State, and also out south of the Russian River mouth on Hwy. 1, in a friend's driveway in Monte Rio. Then for two months I lived in a cabin buried under a Rio Nido Redwood Grove, then back in the bus, but parked this time in a garage in Graton, then in a house on Roblar Rd. where Linda's rock-star boyfriend delivered Nate to me for a permanent stay. A few weeks later, Nate and I got our own house in Penngrove.

[maryburns]

Wow, Steve! How interesting that the earthquake proved to be such a turning point for both of us. Although we knew each other during that time and undoubtedly saw each other from time to time, I guess we were both so involved in our own dramas that I didn't know about much of this. I do recall Linda being involved with a rocker, and I must have known about the bus. Did you know Stan Daniels, or McDaniels? Had a place out somewhere like you describe? I think it was a six-sided house on two levels, or maybe that's imagination toying with memory again. He was a philosophy prof at Sonoma State and cut a dashing figure in a cloak I later copied. I think I was in his class when the campus was disrupted by black activists, or some kind of activists.
Funny too how you think you know someone and you have no idea. I used to think you and Linda a good couple and enjoyed being in on the high of Nathan's birth.Human potential seemed to be all about sex then. I had greatly conflicting ideas about it at the time, instincts titillated by ideas that were going around battled with the beliefs of a former Catholic school girl. You write with strong feeling, 35 years later, so I can only imagine how hard it was for you then.
Since we're on the subject, check out our way home reunion. I'll send you a link by email.

[steve]

Stan McDaniels, I think. I took an "Eastern Thought" class from him in '71 where we'd move away the chairs, turn out the lights, light candles and incense, sit on blankets on the floor, start and end the classes with chants. He attended our Hatha Yoga classes sometimes, tried to give lectures there, Eleanor Criswell http://www.thinking-allowed.com/2ecriswell.html, the instructor asked him not to. He had moved into a communal housing experiment on E. Coatati Avenue by then, though. He and his student-aged girlfriend were macrobiotic, had long, straight, dull hair, deathly pale skin and were skinny like anorexics. I thought he was a bit of a joke, he graded me down in his class because I, "didn't move between the levels". He and another philosophy prof at SSU were trying to form an "Indian Studies" degree. The other prof approached Dr. Richard Alpert in my presence when Alpert was calling himself Baba Ram Das. The prof asked Ram Das for faculty recommendations for the new proposed program, saying, "At first, we will want people with solid academic credentials, later we can consider more 'disreputable characters'. Ram Das gave him no names, made no promises. The prof left, Ram Das turned to me, saying, "I'm so beyond that world".

Our Human Potential workshops were after you left, my time in the bus after that.