Clara Hsu and Greg Pond will be the featured poets at the Black and Brown Social Club to celebrate its reopening of the poetry reading series. There will be an open mic.
The reading is sponsored by the San Francisco Chapter League of Revolutionaries North America. IRNA.ORG
“Cast a cold eye on Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by.” –W.B. Yeats
Steve,
I opened the reading at Sacred Grounds tonight, just like what you did for years. Except this time there was no “hear ye, hear ye!” but a sad announcement. Your poems led the way: Minotaur, A Thin Line Between the City and the Sea, and A Poem of the Wounded God. There were just a handful of poets there. Has the wind changed? The landscape that we found ourselves in five, six years ago is no longer, as we file out of the picture one by one.
The city, its streets and cafes, the crows outside your window, the luring women in North Beach and then the gyre and the spiral, the gods and goddesses and the myths… You preferred to wander in these vivid worlds than work at the bleak 9 to 5 job. You are a lover. A romantic. It was between Yeats’ tomb and San Francisco that your love affair lasted until the very end. But the heart, no matter how you look at it, was wounded.
To be eighty-nine on the day of a full moon. To be walking without a cane. To hear giggles and laughter and loving words all around her. To stop midway descending the stairway named after her and show off her colorful socks. There ought to be a song that’s called “I Love Adah”.
She gives steady hugs to all, with champagne in one hand and flowers in the other. She wears a long white jacket that has hand-painted stairways of San Francisco. Once she asked me if I knew how many stairways there are in the city. “Eighty? A hundred?” That sounded like a lot to me. “No,” she rolled her eyes, “Over six hundred.” And she had walked them all. Her book, Stairway Walks in San Francisco, is in its 7th edition.
A child counted ninety-six steps. Another counted ninety-one. On the top of the stairway at Waller and Broderick is a bronze plaque: Adah Bakalinsky, Queen of San Francisco Stairway.
The old man was getting ready to leave as I walked into the optometrist’s office. He eyed me.
“I like your hat.”
“Thank you. You’re the first to compliment.”
“Really? Well, you know, when you’re 93 you can say what you want and not feel shy.”
He was waiting for his son to give him some lunch money so he could walk up to the Capitol Restaurant on Clay Street for lunch.
“They have chicken a la king on Thursdays. A little creamy for me but easy on the teeth.”
When he found out I wanted to have an eye exam and get new glasses, he went around the reception desk and pulled out a form for me to fill in.
“You’re Doctor Lee!”
The office was filled with papers of all sorts (mostly newspapers) and the counter had stacks of trays with glasses in them. Everything was dusty. Everything. Chinatown–old family business (over 60 years)–Mr. Rogers/Dr. Lee’s neighborhood. He learned my name and I was his friend.
“My son Michael will take care of you.” He gave me a wave of his hand and walked out.
Where do I put my eyes? In my pocket? Is the acceptable manner to look away stone-faced, pretending the other’s presence don’t exist? The only friend is the one on your cell phone. The rest of the world, horseshit. And when horseshit gazes at you absentmindedly while waiting for the 54 bus at a lonely stop you snap “What the FUCK are you lookin at?”
I’m back in the United States—California—San Francisco—the Excelsior—home. My wandering eyes need to be restrained, my heart needs to turn cold and my smile tuck away. I’m in the city of wind where the air can explode if I’m not careful and the story of a friend dodging bullets on Mission Street I carry it in my mind. Home is a place that no one needs to say welcome. Home is a place where you help yourself. Home is a place where in your loneliness and fury strike out at your fellow inhabitant. It is true, I’m home.
This funky place doesn’t open until 7p and it is one of the joints in the Mission where you can have late night snack or dinner. I like to bring friends to the “club” because it is so unlike other eateries. The entire interior, including the ceiling, is filled with bygone toys, strange photographs, mutilated torsos, thorny busts, Van Gough’s self portrait with a bloody bandage and his ear in a plastic bag, Frank Zapper taking a crap on the toilet and so on. They always play good, upbeat music. The place is jammed with people spilling over onto the sidewalk. One time I watched Dore play chess with an old man at the counter. That’s right. Social interaction.
We went there after a concert last night. At 9:30 the place was quite empty. Two kids playing some dice games and only one table of customers. Is it because of the economic downturn? (The concert also was not full). They have raised the prices on the menu and the food was less than satisfactory. We left loving the place more than what it did to our stomachs.
Leonard Irving led a double life—one in Vermont, another in San Francisco. When in Vermont he was a husband. When in San Francisco he was a poet. Not that he didn’t write when he was with his wife. They got married when Leonard turned 89 because Randy his wife didn’t want to marry a 90 year old man. When Leonard was in town he had a single rented room in downtown San Francisco, took the bus, went to readings and lived a pure poetic existence. I met Leonard at the fateful Sacred Grounds. He had Scottish roots, white hair , blue piercing eyes, spoke with a musical accent.
Many of Leonard’s poems were about city life. Many bus poems–the waiting and waiting of it. But when his first book came out it was all about birds. Published in 1995 in Vermont, it included Randy’s drawings of wildlife. The book was dedicated to Finnegan.
Leonard stopped coming to San Francisco about three years ago. He had invited me to Vermont. They live in a farm. I like to imagine myself snuggling beside a fire while the outside is blanketed with snow. He and Stephanie Manning correspond from time to time and Stephanie would read his letters to us. Well into his nineties now, Leonard is still jolly.
Kungfu artists in China were persecuted as outlaws and revolutionaries toward the end of the Qing Dynasty (later part of 19th C). Many who had established their schools in Foshan, south China, fled to Hong Kong. Some eventually immigrated to the United States.
When my son was small, he took lessons with Sefu Dino of Hung-Sing Kuen (fist) at his Sunset studio. Sefu Dino (second generation grandmaster in San Francisco) wanted to find his Kungfu roots in China. After doing some research for him, we traveled to Foshan in 2000. The legends of the founder still reverberated in the ancestral temple, the alley ways, the tiny dwelling where he lived and died. A small group of Hung-Sing artists were active in teaching and preserving the sites. Sefu Dino and his new found colleagues worked out together. The fist style had changed with time and place, but as they showed off their moves, they were able to recognize many of the signature movements and fondly called each other brother.
Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan would trace their roots to Foshan. The smell of money was too pungent for the government and the movie industry to ignore. Since my visit, I heard Foshan was changing rapidly, surrendering its innocence and simplicity to the modern times. It is to be expected.
They had found her in an apartment with a dead man and brought her to SF Animal Care and Control. She was put in a cage in a big room with other cats, waiting for someone to adopt them. When she saw me she walked near the cage door and spoke to me with her old, soulful eyes. In an instant I knew she was to come home with me.
Cookie has beautiful stripes of orange and black coloring, and strikingly elegant pure white paws. She snuggles next to me while I sleep and sits on my lap when I read or write. During our monthly salon, Cookie often comes into the circle and sits among the poets. She prefers to close her eyes and listens, except most of the time she is pursued by eager hands, wanting to pet or hold her. When Cookie desires a nap over poetry, she burrows under the blankets, as darkness is the refuge of a poet.
Photo by Dore Steinberg.
I walked into the elevator with a group of new acquaintances after a class. As we briefly introduced ourselves to each other I told them I was a poet. “Really!” One lady exclaimed, “I didn’t know they exist.”
Even in San Francisco poets are an obscure breed. Unlike musicians who can generate an audience, there is a general lack of interest in listening to words. Few of my relatives have come to my readings. My sister went to one and would not go again. In cafes and restaurants poets read to their own kind. Once in a while we capture a few accidental listeners but we just can’t get people hooked.
Four years ago H.D.Moe and three other poets went to France and Italy to promote the Baby Beat Generation Anthology (published in France). Moe was heartened to find a real audience in the places he read. They came to hear the poets, not to read their own poems. He sold all his books before coming home. A musician friend once said we must go to where the audience is. I don’t think he meant France.
Photo by Steve Wilson.
