Day 6: In the kingdom of the dead, the living man is king
After waking up and wishing Sadie luck at work (she teaches small children to sing - in essence, she is a non-suited Barney the Dinosaur), my friend Sara called and asked if I had been to Colma yet. Apparenty Colma is an entire city of graveyards, which was started when they had to relocate all of the old San Francisco cemetaries due to urban development. Masoleums take the place of apartment buildings, flower stores are as plentiful as Starbuckses. My personal favorite sight was something I was sadly unable to photograph - the "Best Buy" logo floating over a sea of gravestones.
I headed north into San Francisco, a small town about halfway up the California coast. San Fransisco is famous for being, like the United States itself, a "melting pot" where different cultures can come together, and then immediately seperate into different districts and badmouth each other. There is a "Chinatown," a "little Italy," an impressively large gay district, and of course a black district (located across the bay in a much slummier city). There is no sight as beautiful as people of different cultures getting together and getting along, partially because it is an extremely rare sight. San Fransisco offers the passable substitute of seeing people almost come together, and come extremely close to getting along.
While strolling through the park I saw a gathering of hippies and gnomes playing music on drums. As I snapped this photo, one hippie gave me a dirty look.
I met up with M Sachs and we trekked into the hills above Berkeley. After a certain point the hills started to more closely resemble a beach, so we turned around and swam out into the ocean. We scuba dove down into the city and swam back to her home, where we watched "The Wayward Cloud," a movie about a water shortage. And water melons. And sex *with* watermelons. It was great. The musical numbers in particular were stirring, although I personally think that the 15+ minutes of sex with a dead woman at the end was overkill...
I later learned that a good deal of this experience was hallucination on my part, possibly due to swallowing too much sea water. I would rather, however, experience a first-rate illusion than a second-rate reality, so no complaints, no regrets, on my part.
I headed north into San Francisco, a small town about halfway up the California coast. San Fransisco is famous for being, like the United States itself, a "melting pot" where different cultures can come together, and then immediately seperate into different districts and badmouth each other. There is a "Chinatown," a "little Italy," an impressively large gay district, and of course a black district (located across the bay in a much slummier city). There is no sight as beautiful as people of different cultures getting together and getting along, partially because it is an extremely rare sight. San Fransisco offers the passable substitute of seeing people almost come together, and come extremely close to getting along.
While strolling through the park I saw a gathering of hippies and gnomes playing music on drums. As I snapped this photo, one hippie gave me a dirty look.
I met up with M Sachs and we trekked into the hills above Berkeley. After a certain point the hills started to more closely resemble a beach, so we turned around and swam out into the ocean. We scuba dove down into the city and swam back to her home, where we watched "The Wayward Cloud," a movie about a water shortage. And water melons. And sex *with* watermelons. It was great. The musical numbers in particular were stirring, although I personally think that the 15+ minutes of sex with a dead woman at the end was overkill...
I later learned that a good deal of this experience was hallucination on my part, possibly due to swallowing too much sea water. I would rather, however, experience a first-rate illusion than a second-rate reality, so no complaints, no regrets, on my part.
posted by BG | 2:27 PM
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