327 Market

This weekend had been like a dream. I feel like I am just waking up and my head is full of a jumble of unrelated images. Of classic California vistas seen from numerous freeways, of old friends in love, of Pleasanton, Livermore, Oakland, Burlingame, San Bruno, Dublin, San Francisco, of crowded valleys and naked hills, of tasty palak paneer served by white church ladies, of a hid-a-bed with Scooby-Doo sheets, of sitting in a lecture hall listening to a Poet laureate speaking of inspiration and pedagogy, of finding myself in Milpitas and pulling over to the side of the road to cry and swear( I wanted to be in DT SJ and clearly had lost my way), of sitting near a pool listening to the sounds of an unplaced southern dialect wash over my jaded ears, of impossibly blue skies, of horrors glimpsed on the telly, of my first experience of Cold Stone Creamery (overrated) of trying to convince a banker of the romance and nobility of his calling (I sang the "tuppence" song from Mary Poppins to him) of getting gently rebuked for running by a bus driver (clearly not of the MUNI variety) of sharing a bedroom with the cat litter box, of babies and crones, of rows and rows of orchids in the tropics of a greenhouse, of teenagers at a mall (of all places! shocking! and wondering is this the america the world bleeds for) of reading the delicious prose of Tom Stoppard in the privacy of my car as Acoustic Sunrise plays on the radio, of perfect Bay Area dawns (the sun rising like a vengeful angel over the parched hills in a scorching blaze), of writing postcards to my favorite pair of Virginians, of eating perfectly grilled artichokes and a splendid strawberry shortcake at Max's with the beloved family, of belting out gospel into the "can" and not caring that hundreds of people can hear me, of being at a fleamarket and wondering why the announcer is asking any doctors to report to stall number 8 and, by the way, the blue astrovan is blocking three parking spaces, of looking at all the beautiful vendors and wishing I had a camera and a gallery and a show to put them all together in...