Have you ever felt so filled up with stories to tell that you're like a water balloon, ready to burst? That's how it is for me, this mild evening in lovely San Francisco, a city filled with oddballs, geniuses, misfits, hackers, artists, lovers, and those of us just trying to get by.
It's a city of writers and stories waiting to be told. For the one year I was editor of 7x7 magazine, I gathered as many of these tales as time and space would permit. In many ways, that was the perfect job for the older me, a writer/editor who has lived here since the fall of 1971, and who's worked in or with just about every media and educational organization native to the Bay Area, not to mention a ton of non-profit and community orgs, networks, and schools.
One of our greatest natural storytellers, IMHO, was Frank Norris.
(Why do I sense a non-plussed, widespread raising of the eyebrows?) Is it possible that most people today do not know who this writer was? That's okay. Please follow this link: Frank_Norris's bio.
If you come to San Francisco, and you visit the Tenderloin, there will be no better way to understand this neighborhood than reading the great novel McTeague, published sometime back in the late 19th century.
Having read this wonderful book before I arrived here in '71, I felt a chill run up and down my spine as I walked through the Tenderloin for the first time. Could it be that certain city sections persist for a century or longer?
Later, as the neighborhood newspaper, The Tenderloin Times, emerged to chronicle this vital, if downtrodden district of our city, the aftermath of the U.S. losing the Vietnam War transformed a slum of blacks and whites, drunks, dealers, and prostitutes into a place where families were living -- Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian immigrants, fleeing the cataclysm of a U.S. foreign policy disaster only exceeded (in my lifetime) by the unspeakably looming horror
of the U.S. defeat in Iraq.
As that inevitably comes to be, the empire will have lost three straight wars -- the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War. We will become a dangerously injured empire, armed with WMDs of unimaginably destructive magnitude. I shudder at the prospect of what comes next for us, here truly in the Belly of the Beast.
***
I don't usually give investing advice, but if you are wondering about which stocks to keep an eye on you might check out Apple. Last year, my oldest daughter bought one share of Apple stock for her fiancé; I think it was in the $60s. Tonight, Apple closed at $107+ per share. I suspect it is about due for a stock split.
If that should happen, the price for purchasing a share of the company stock will be half of what it is tonight -- i.e., in the mid-$50s. Given the quality of the company's products, including some not yet released, it appears headed for an extended period of growth.
Now, understand, I am not a stock analyst, just your ordinary small investor. That said, Apple has been good to me since I purchased it at ~$20/share. Stay tuned, because this is one of the best investment stories in 2007, should it keep going the way it is going...
***
As indicated by the photo at the top of this blog, I've continued to experiment with the colors that my growing collection of sake bottles can be made to display. I love color so much it is almost a physical issue for me. I feel sorry for men who are color-blind. Few sights can bring me more immediate pleasure than the range of colors displayed in a rainbow.
Although I do not yet have my vessels properly arranged, I am creating a rainbow in my back window, with smoky bottles, water, and food dyes.
***
Remember that stoop and the pretty girl smoking? Wouldn't you know it, one day goes by and the whole scene changes. Workers have constructed a new stoop right next to hers -- couple loud guys laughing and pounding and erecting a new structure into our viewfinder.
Meanwhile, our young angel has disappeared, to be replaced by the old woman who slowly hangs and later recalls her laundry, and who stares endlessly at her cats. I don't think she can see as far as my yard, because her gaze is vacant whenever she lifts her head and navigates her eyes in my general direction.
In any event, she doesn't see me.
Maybe the pretty girl is an apparition, a figment of my fantasy world, in other words, my imagination, which admittedly, often spins wildly out of control. Wishful thinking.
***
I have not even scraped the surface of all the stories I wanted to tell tonight. I am still waiting to eulogize the man whose life ended precipitously and shockingly Tuesday morning. I, and all of us in his extended community of friends, remain in shock. I want to write about him, but his family remains silent, so I will too.
***
If you scroll back through my recent posts, you will notice a number of intelligent comments from Mesmacat
Bear with me, Mesmacet, I will do this soon, I promise.
-30-