OVERLAPPING ANOTHER TIME,
ANOTHER LIFE

     Continuing down Kearny Street, which is sort of a border between Chinatown and the financial district, and then segues into North Beach as it approaches Columbus Avenue, I passed this small hotel (rooming house, really) where I lived for 8 months in 1978-9. It had a different name then, "Amparo's Hotel".      I had arrived by Greyhound from Miami Beach after my first wife had kicked me out. I'd spent an exhilirating day walking around the city, feeling, or imagining I felt, vibes from the Gold Rush, down on Market near the bus station. In the late afternoon, I had the thought, "It'll get dark soon, better do something," and I decided, in "zen" spirit, to check in to the next place I passed. This was it.

     I spent the next eight months living in a sort of enchantment. My wife and I had recently returned a Pilgrimage to Meher Baba's tomb-shrine in India, my first time there. We had also spent two weeks in Poona, the city where Meher Baba was born, with his brother, Jal, who had told us again and again, "The whole world is Illusion." My way of trying to live that credo literally, dove-tailed with my personal temperament in a way which eventually ended rather badly. (If I write the whole story, I'll add a link here.)
      But first I spent eight months living in a kind of paradise, in this exotic—to me—Chinatown atmosphere, drinking coffee and eating pastries in Chinese bakeries, writing and painting, and having not much contact with the rest of humanity.

     Across the street from the little hotel, is Portsmouth Square, and oddly English name for a lovely park that could as well be located in China.

     I used to sit on these benches, like these men. I remember seeing tourists come and sit there throwing bread crumbs to the pigeons. Oddly, I began to notice—wondering if I was seeing things—that the pigeons would throw the bread crumbs back to the people! Meher Baba said a new, age of Intuition, brotherhood, and sharing, is gradually dawning on earth. I took this pigeon behavior, which I observed again and again, as a symbol, a sign of this new age, coming from the Silence where it was being birthed. I took a friend to the park one day. His mouth opened in amazement and he said, "the pigeons are throwing them back!"

     Anyway, on my journey up toward North Beach, I took a little side-trip to explore this fascinating park. Below is a little gallery of photos. For more information about the history of Portsmouth Square, use this link.

A Cautionary Tale

     Years ago, I lived in a town for six months and had the most wonderful time I could ever remember having in my life. My memories were filled with color and music, with beautiful girls and bright faces and dreams.
     For thirty years, this memory remained bright within me, illumining my life and mind.
     Then, recently, on a business trip across the country, I happened to notice on the map that I was passing near my old town of happiness.
     I took a short detour off the main road, and went to revisit the environs of my past joy.
     
     There I saw a sight that shocked me deeply.
     Instead of the happy people I remembered, I saw only puppets and mannikens everywhere, mannikens standing stiff and unreal, and puppets lying with their strings collapsed, faces down, heads flopped against their laps, arms akimbo.
     There was not a truly living being in the whole town. And as I drove sadly away the sun was setting, as though on my memories, and I became more deeply aware of what I already should have known: that we can never go back, anywhere at all.