Notes Upon Returning to These United States Part. I

August 5^th, 2010.  The Beach Chalet, San Francisco

I arrived home after a baker’s dozen years abroad. Watched a Nicholas Cage movie on the plane over the Pacific, sitting next to two Australian TV Salesmen, who slept like bloated O’ranga-tanga babies – the red fluff on their hands touching me, threatening me in their sleep.

I arrived home yesterday. They have new five-dollar bills now, and some of the green backs have gone pink, and I can hear everyone’s conversation.  Americans are so loud, and very distinctive dressers — so many white Nike shoes; I suppose it is before Labor Day, but our Nike habit is killing the rivers of China, and if you put it that way, most Americans who would still rather be dead than red, would like it.

I arrived home on B. Obama’s B-day, and the day it was ruled illegal to call gay marriage illegal, in California. They’re going to make pot legal, to tax.

Maybe I should go to Euro.  People around me are talking talking talking.

Conversations snatch at my ears:

“No Prime Rib?”

“…my boyfriend gets jealous every time the he hears the phone go beep.”

There are girls in here who look like newscasters, so much make up.

“So they take a picture of me and Bob, and it comes out this next Thursday….”

There’s a date couple next to the window, having a comfortable silence.

“…that free money, spend it now!”

“…you have to go insane if you really want to get in shape.”

There are windows overlooking the grey Pacific and Ocean Beach.  There’s a bar on the opposite wall, with tables in the middle.  I’m at the table closest to the bar.

The waitress with the nice butt says to the waitress with the nice breasts, “Hey Carla, ‘nother two sides of thousand,” and there’s a family of Christians looking happy and healthly out of the windows, rubber charity bracelets on their wrists, Semper-Sober, eating their thousands of islands.

I walked across the city today, time alone with the city I love, the city of my desire.  From the Ferry Building to the Beach Chalet, San Francisco, not in a straight line: Café Trieste to Coit Tower, to Levi Plaza via Greenwich Steps.  “…The steps of Rome, are filled with rubble…” in my head, to the Black Banker’s Heart to Nob Hill, down to Divis, back side Buena Vista to Escape from New York Pizza.  I Bought some bud from a New Yorker named Leigh in the park, walked through the park – some two joints later arrived Beach Chalet, two pints of beer brewed in situ, and I am spinning out.

Am I walking back to Austral-Asia? Walking walking walking, trying to walk off the jet lag.  We throw our souls so far out there, how long does it take for our bodies to catch up? Or is it the other way around?

Land’s End, Golden Gate National Recreation Area,

Later that Same Afternoon.

Why did I risk it all for this city? Standing outside the Western gate of the States, why did I give up any societal standing I may have accrued, to come back to San Francisco. I am nothing here, no job, no address, barely enough of a paper trail left to prove I exist.  I am standing on the edge of an abyss, literally, the cliffs overlooking the sea here will kill you dead quick.

The city has turned into an amusement park, or perhaps it always was.  I’ve been stalking the remains of the Sutro Baths, as I walk these Land’s End sea cliffs trails.  But now you can rent a two person, side by side, yellow scooter pod with an electronic guidance system that will tell you when to turn right and all about the sixties.

Is this place all about the money?  What about Silver Barron Sutro, underwriting a civic train, cutting the line into the cliffs, so people could see his grand house and have public baths – grandiose for the people.

The wind is howling East with the four o’clock fog, pushing over the rock grabbing cypress for centuries, and the city seems just out of reach, over shadowed by nature’s wonder.  I can see the yellow of Angel Island, the red of the G.G. Bridge, and the Marion green of the fogged over pacific pallet before me.  The city seems to hide in the hills behind, full of magazine cream, and top popping key punchers. From this vantage, I can see a lot of the surrounding area — the urban takes over the vast bay’s shores and hills.  How many stops to segregated San Francisco from the Black East Bay?  No cheap transport to the insular peninsula.

San Francisco, stuff of myth and lore, carved out of an image of a Saint who talked to animals, the underground and over ground interface, and the over scroll marketplace.  Is there a universal over-soul besides the internet?

We don’t make anything. I am looking for a job as a writer.

Labor Day, 2010

San Carlos, California

Combat-duty pay, in combination with lower house prices have brought more tattoos to selective satellite city pools and tennis courts.

September 8^th, 2010

Molotov’s, Lower Haight,

San Francisco

There is a loud drunk guy talking.  It’s afternoon and the whole bar is painted black.  The bartendress is a punk rock girl better than Joan Jett.

The drunk’s talking her ear off, and the rest of us. “That was the climax of my fucking story –!” the drunk says,  “A Toast!”

“Are you happy?” the Drunk says.  He’s kind of a bald blond yuppie. “Are You happy?”

The punkers murmur.  I’m sitting at a table by the window, not at the bar, so I don’t have to answer.

“I don’t have a job,” says the drunk.  “But yeah, I’m telling you, I have an idea…I had it all.  I had it all set up, because I speak French and I used to be employed. I’ve been sitting around Smoking Pot! –  watching French movies because I speak French but I forgot a word!…Intellectual Property! Year of the Fucking Tiger! Kick some fucking ass!  But basically I’d be licensing intellectual property to a market five times as big… but here’s to clean sperm and no condoms and my heavily employed wife, a Chinese sector narcissistic explosion – so here’s to making babies.  My wife’s in the shower now, so I’d better get to go…”

The Wu-Tang Clan is on the jukebox, simple piano and the cut-count rhythm of the ODB.  The drunk starts up again: “Here’s what I’m trying to tell you…”

The jukebox changes to Johnny Cash, and the drunk sings along to the guitar solo.  The drunk’s tolerant new bar mates scatter.  He starts flirting with the bartendress.  There are professional borders on the TV with the sound down, another corner screen with the original Bad Lieutenant, sound down plus subtitles.  There is also a red felt pool table near the back.  The drunk mumbles, “Marriage…ha ha ha.  When do you say yes – when do you say yes to That?”

There used to be peanut shells on the floor in here, and black plastic baskets of peanuts on the bar – and before that, you could smoke in here and the pool felt was purple.  But it is 2010 now, nobody knows me in here anymore and it’s afternoon.

My wife and child arrive tomorrow.  I thought I might have a job by now.

The drunk guy: “I’m a Harvard MBA – check it out – goddamn totally man and wh…maybe Willie Mayes… a very freeman baseball player…”

I guess I keep walking around the city, knocking on doors and trying to make something beautiful. Wife and child arrive SFO 16:00 tomorrow, and we will start running out of money by Christmas.

Maybe I can get a job by tomorrow afternoon. Once again, someone’s come to California with a dream and its do or die – but this time its me, and its only romantic if you can make it happen – why do I do this shit to myself, to my family? Perhaps it is the crazy American in me.