The Evening of 15 February 2008

How delightful on my way to a discussion at the LBGT Historical Society on Mission Street to see and hear this wonderful man playing electric violin:

A panel had been arranged to lead a discussion about how gay life has differed for older and younger men.

To my mind, at age 70, the young gay men did emanate the difference of those who have grown up since gay life has emerged from its hidden, underground existence previous to gay liberation -- the knowledge that gay people exist was at large in their world; they seemed confident young men accustomed to assuming political responsibility.  So many changes in the world, including the Internet, have changed the process of "coming out."

 

The older gay men described a more tortured process of coming out, decades ago when we grew up being taught that being gay was criminal, subject to imprisonment, or it was defined as a mental illness.  All of the older men on the panel were frank about their personal confusions and dead-end searches in their first days as gay men.  

Harry Britt was the last on the panel to speak.  He is a venerable figure in gay history, of course, as he was appointed to Harvey Milk's position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisor when Milk was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by Supervisor Dan White.  Harvey's cohort, said Britt, included the effeminate men and the butch women because they "fit in" society least, and so they were the most ready for revolutionary change.  

Britt was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1980, 1984, and 1988, and served as President of the Board from 1989-90.  He ran unsuccessfully for the 5th Congressional District of California in 1987, narrowly losing to Nancy Pelosi, and was also unsuccessful in his race against Mark Leno for the California Assembly in 2002.  Currently he teaches at New College, San Francisco, which is in financial troubles in 2008.  

No matter what the differences for the young or the older gay man, Britt said, "What we have in common is our alienation.  What makes us different is how we process that alienation."  In his own case, confronting the fact of his homosexuality, "I thought I needed to learn a new [political] language.  Then I realized that language did not exist, that we would have to create it."

For a moment I dipped into one of those useless questions, as Harry spoke, thinking:  Why should gays have to NOT be alienated from other gay people?  Are "straight" people concerned with NOT being alienated from all other "straight" people?  But minority groups are always caught in strange nets like that, which cannot be avoided, although it is very odd.  

Harry did a brief review of the three decades of gay life ending the last century; how, after Stonewall officially launched what had just been an idea before then -- Gay Liberation -- the Castro became one big long party. One of the older men on the panel had come to the San Francisco just before then as a political activist but saw that there was no choice but to join in the party or watch it, as politics was not on anyone's mind--everyone supposing that "freedom," as a final state, had arrived. Then Britt described how the party ended, with the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS, leading to the more moderate style that seemed evident in the young gay men on the panel.

I felt that Harry missed an opportunity when asked how gay men and lesbians had traveled on separate paths, and it reminded me that I have wanted to contact Tom Ammiano to ask him to make some proclamation of the heroism of lesbians during the AIDS crisis. I heard plenty of anti-women comments among gay men in the days before AIDS, but lesbians became an army of supportive caretakers as their gay brothers sickened and died. Their support has not been properly celebrated.

One question that was floating through the discussions was how the older gay men had had great difficulty finding mentors in their youth to guide them, and where do young gay people find mentors now? (Are they better off without them?)

As discussion was opened to the audience, it was a little disappointing to hear the old oppositions between older and younger gay men, and how each side found it difficult to bridge that difference. The older ones, of course, felt the history they represent is not respected by the young, while the younger men said they supposed the older men just want to have sex with them. Historical struggles were recalled that the older men felt were being forgotten, invoking the names of brave crusaders (who suffered for their struggles, but endured), such as Harry Hay. Britt mentioned Hal Call who published the periodicals of the Mattachine Society; he was one of those who created one of the various collections of books and materials now congregated on the shelves and in boxes in the Historical Society's rooms behind us.

One of the older men seemed bitter not for social or political problems but from his own psychological problems that made him condemn any efforts to communicate, saying that no younger gays share his interest in a particular activity. Although older gay men are apt to discount younger gay men complaining that older gay men are only interested in them sexually, one young man gave a convincing speech about not feeling respected as a person, and certainly there are enough older men (of any sexual persuasion) who are apt to become obnoxious in their attraction to younger men or women. An older man expressed difficulty with getting younger people to attend his group that is intended to promote intergenerational contact. Some young men said they preferred to hang out with other young men as they have the common interests and concerns of their generation.

I was feeling frustrated at hearing the same stances I had heard over the years, and it was the last half hour before they would break into a social time, while I had to take off for an event at El Rio restaurant, so I wanted to say a few things that had been building up in me, and finally got my turn in the audience to speak: "I have several things I would like to say. I would like to say that when I first came to San Francisco [1959] I used to go to the building at the end of this block [I don't know if anyone there knew the actual location] and walk up a few floors where I could sample the library Hal Call had created there. But I would also like to say that I don't see how you can have a group to create, self-consciously, communication between the generations. I have been in an intergenerational writing group for a couple decades now, and I think you just have to follow your interests and there you will meet others of different generations who follow that interest. Also, for older guys who feel their history is being ignored. I used to feel annoyed because I was part of a gay liberation movement in the 1960s -- Does anyone know about Sherwood Forest [headquarters of those early days of gay liberation] in Berkeley? -- We had kiss-in's and were chased around by the police and did a lot of the groundwork for Gay Liberation -- but Stonewall obliterated that history. But why waste time being resentful about a forgotten past? If you feel your history has been neglected, write it up, and give it to the Historical Society. Why go on living in the past?... Ah...there was something else I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it was."

"That's all right," said someone on the panel, "there will be time."

But I had to leave for El Rio soon after that. A man standing by the door said, "I like what you had to say." Then I remembered the other thing I wanted to say: "And I wish young men would stop hitting on me."

But I have missed so many of Elisa Welsh's performance, and I like her singing and the songs she writes, and tonight it was to be a benefit for Code Pink. I managed to get to El Rio on Mission by the middle of the first song of their set. I am glad that there was this reason finally to go to El Rio. It held that wonderful new generation that I first recognized as something new at a grand "Power to the Peaceful" concert in Golden Gate Park last summer -- They look to me like a new and different kind of human, and I could tell that there was no division between heterosexual and homosexual (and bisexual) young people in El Rio in the first room alongside the long bar; it was clearly their celebratory Friday night. Beyond that was a large back patio where someone was cooking over a grill. I could not see anyone I knew from Code Pink, and finally I realized that in this maze of rooms, I had to go further to the room with a stage where Elisa and her cohort were performing.
A lot better photographs than mine were taken by a professional:
http://bryanharrison.net/photos/pages/index.htm/

Jim McLaren and Bryan Harrison performing



Elisa Welch sang some wonderful old songs, but also some of her own, including one she wrote for those camped out at Camp Pelosi (outside Nancy Pelosi's home, resisting her stance that "the question of impeachment is tabled") to sing during their vigils there, and I hope it will also be sung in peace marches:  WAKE UP.  She gave me permission to print the words here (at the end of this entry), but it will not have the same power as when Elisa and her friends are singing it to Elisa's tune; then you cannot help but join in.*

Renay Davis had a chance to take a break from political action...

Nancy Mancias looked so cute dancing (This is sounding too much like society column chatter), and I was glad to have the opportunity to tell her that the most delightful moment in recent political events was when, shouting against the war at Huckleberry's -- that is, Huckabee's -- appearance in San Francisco, and she was carried off, draped over some guy's shoulder, still facing the crowd, and she was still shouting against the war.... 

*WAKE UP

  [Words & Music by Elisa M. Welch, copyright August 2007]

[Chorus]

[Call]:  Wake up!

     [Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Verse]: Wake up and smell the coffee my friends

Shake up the status quo and put this madness to an end

We have let it go too far it's time to stop this stupid war

[Call]:  It's up to you.

[Response]:  It's up to you.

[Call]:  It's up to me.

[Response]:  It's up to me.

[Chorus]

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Verse]:

Take up the olive branch and drop the sword

Make up and stop your fighting and you'll reap the right reward

We must learn to live together in this little world, you see

[Call]:  It's up to you.

[Response]:  It's up to you.

[Call]:  It's up to me.

[Response]:  It's up to me.

[Chorus]:

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Call]:  Wake up!

[Response]:  Wake up!

[Bridge]:

What's it gonna take?  Do I really need to scream?

What will finally wake you from this endless dream

[Verse]:

How can you let this lunacy go on?

There's a junta in the White House and it's time to get them gone

Yes the answer's in our reach and the answer is IMIPEACH

[Call]:  It's up to you

[Response]:  It's up to you

[Call]:  It's up to me

[Response]:  It's up to me

[Call]:  It's up to you

[Response]:  It's up to you

[Call]:  It's up to me

[Response]:  It's up to me

HONOR, WAR, AND...HOPE?

HONOR
[with some of Martha's signs, in Martha's front window,
and the little man in the de Young Museum]

How do you talk about a universe without God when most of the humans on the planet feel they cannot live without a God? I am not alone in pondering that dilemma. Where can I turn to discuss eliminating the word “honor” when so many feel that is such an essential concept?

Although the addiction of humans to violence leads to a toll of human suffering and death so tragic to the fully human as to be maddening, your average fighting human does not see it. Judging from those who mourn fallen soldiers, most of those fighters do not even fight for some political problem; their purpose and their sacrifice may be for nothing or for something completely wrong-headed, but they feel fulfilled if they are commended for “Honor," the crown bestowed on them by their family and their nation. These men and women of Honor are living in a medieval fantasy; they are not conscious participants in a political strategy. How sad that survivors find consolation in their child or husband or themselves having won the mythical gold coin of honor (represented by military medals or folded flags – I remember the cousin who came to a family reunion on leave from World War II, bitter and certain that he had made a good bargain by exchanging his Purple Heart for a bottle of whiskey). And it would also seem from what they say that the majority of those who become involved in violent actions against other humans do it not for any political reasons, but with an adolescent hunger for adventure and for this movie and fairytale prize of Honor. What is this terrible ignorance called Honor?



I live in fear of the Honorable. Am I going to ask any U.S. Marine if it is truly honorable for them to carry out the orders of a mad man because he has a title, such as President? Or to follow orders to kill “enemies” and civilians with a general sweep of their machine guns because they faithfully follow orders? I wold not question the Honor of any of the warriors unless I had a gang of 8 people around me – for those who love Honor know that their Honor gives them free licence to resort to violence without question. Honor seems to be the bully’s way of saying, “I have a god-given right to be violent because I myself can expose myself to violence without flinching” (the way Gordon Liddy would put out burning cigarettes on the back of his hand to prove his “manhood”—not, let it be noted, his “humanhood”). I suppose Honor has mostly to do with males (and some females seeking equality on all fronts?), wanting to prove they have courage, and they don’t realize that society long ago devised this way to deal with their testosterone-driven urges and anxieties.

Where is the athletic field for the men seeking Honor – war. It may be as old as the human race, but surely Honor is a false sense of integrity based on a man baptizing himself with blood drawn from another man’s body, or by sacrificing his own blood. Surely, this is a relic of the more primitive part of the human brain, the pre-conscious nature of someone who does not know that the human nature (our “better angel,” the evolved person) is achieved only through a searching doubt and questioning consciousness, not blind obedience or possession by some fantasy.



It is unfortunate that there is not an outcry against violent video games and the multitude of other devices for training males to think they "need" violence -- the latest manifestations of the prehuman gone hogwild. It is difficult to watch all the violent entertainments of the so-called heterosexual man – and that is a question: Just what kind of “sexual” are they? If you can bear to watch the average war-as-entertainment-movie, there is something that is very transparent. One man is pursuing another, then the one who is captured is tortured by his conqueror: Watch the writhing (playacting, after all) as the one tortured squirms while the torturer talks to him, asking, in effect, "How does it feel?" -- not asking "Is it good for you?" yet, similarly, asking, "Is it bad for you?" It is so transparent that most male-directed entertainments are sado-masochistic love stories. What is the meaning of that? Is it the way heterosexual men express a repressed homosexuality: We can show love for each other so long as we punish each other at the same time -- a caress disguised as the slice of a knife? I am truly asking this question: How else can I interpret those movies? SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was especially loathsome when at the end a Nazi stabs an American Jewish soldier in a way that is purely sexual, presented as a cruel intimacy. What is it with these violence-addicted males?



But back to Honor – Try this: Any time you think that Honor may be an appropriate word to use (so vague a term, something having to do with knights and chivalry, surely), try substituting one of these words: Rather than “That was very honorable of you,” try some word that has a clear definition: “That was very honest of you.” Other words that would be more appropriate, besides Honesty: Integrity, Dignity, Character, Respect, Credibility, Authenticity, Respect for Others, Fair, Just, etc. Can anyone give me a good argument in favor of using the word "Honor"? Can anyone suggest a way to undermine its use in the world in general?!



“From the viewpoint of anthropology, cultures of honour typically appear among nomadic peoples and herdsmen who carry their most valuable property with them and risk having it stolen, without having recourse to law enforcement or government. In this situation, inspiring fear forms a better strategy than promoting friendship; and cultivating a reputation for swift and disproportionate revenge increases the safety of one’s person and property. Thinkers ranging from Montesquieu to Steven Pinker have remarked upon the mindset needed for a culture of honour….Cultures of honour also flourish in criminal underworlds and gangs, whose members carry large amounts of cash and contraband and cannot complain to the law if it is stolen. Once a culture of honor exists, it is difficult for its members to make the transition to a culture of law; this requires that people become willing to back down and refuse to immediately retaliate, and from the viewpoint of the culture of honour, this tends to appear to be an unwise act reflecting weakness.” – Wikipedia.

“…During the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts of honour, loyalty, etc., were dominant; during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc.” – Marx and Engles, THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, quoted on Wikipedia.



Although I am tempted to keep the word when I read Sophocles: “Rather fail with honour than succeed by fraud” we can replace honor there with “self-respect.” So many things have to be rewritten to convert the word “God” to “Love,” or, depending on the context, to “Law” or some other meaning.
Here’s a hard one to translate – Want to provide a substitution? “Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but measureable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of man, nations, and countries that is without price. That thing is honor.” – Jozef Beck.

Mmm, maybe I will submit this to some local magazine -- Will anyone be brave enough to accept a denunciation of Honor?

Meanwhile, will he really help change our sick nation? He is even being stenciled on the sidewalks of San Francisco....

Thank you, Gail Horvath

After receiving their company's valentine, which included a beautiful photograph of the moon by Gail Horvaith, and a selection from a Chinese poet, I wanted to respond to Gail Horvath and Dan and Meredith Beam [www.beaminc.com] with a verse by the Chinese poet Tu Fu (Du Fu), but could not find that verse, and so I sent them a few of my favorite Japanese haiku, and Gail responded by superimposing one of the haiku on another of her photographs. Is there anything more wonderful than creative collaboration?

YOU PROBABLY WON'T NEED TO, BUT CLICK ON
THE PHOTO IF YOU WANT TO ENLARGE IT:



That list of haiku I gave them...plus a few more:

Oh do not swat them...
Unhappy flies forever
Wringing their thin hands.
-- Issa

Moon-in-the-water
Turned a white somersault...yes
And went floating off.
-- Ryota

Oh you bawdy breeze...
Thatcher working on the roof
I see your bottom.
-- Issa

Look at the candle!
What a hungry wind it is...
Hunting in the snow.
-- Issa

Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still...
Iris, blue each spring.
-- Shushiki

The turnip farmer
Rose and with a fresh-pulled turnip
...pointed to my road.
-- Issa

Paper-weights protect
Gay picture-books in the shop...
Inquisitive breeze.
-- Kito

A childless housewife...
How tenderly she touches
Little dolls for sale.
-- Ransetsu

Here is the dark tree
Denuded now of leafage...
But a million stars.
-- Shiki

I scooped up the moon
In my water bucket...and spill
It on the grass.
-- Ryuho

Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretching...
Amble out for love.
-- Issa

Oh do not swat them...
Unhappy flies forever
Wringing their thin hands.
-- Issa

Two Slide Shows

Veterans for Peace, Courage to Resist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLLEYBaF1Dw

It's a Woman's Choice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6AwVFWGCG0

George Segal Holocaust Monument

Grand Lake Marquee

The latest comment by the owner of the wonderful old movie palace in my neighborhood....

Rainy Days

From the tower in the De Young Museum...


Outside the window by my computer...

U.S. Out of Cuba!

While Martha Hubert is, for the most part, taking a vacation from painting in order to oppose the war in Iraq, her picket signs are superior -- great quotations, weatherproofed signs, even tape on the handles to prevent splinters -- and her large banners are great. This new one was photographed by Jes Richardson of Gandhi Peace Brigade. He and his wife Leslie are doing lectures cross country about their time spent in Iran, and I forgot to email him a request for a larger copy of his photo before they left. I like Martha's banner, but I think it should be accompanied by a picket sign saying, "U.S. Out of Cuba!"...

Daniel Ellsberg, Col. Ann Wright, Cindy Sheehan

No politician, no one in public media -- NO ONE -- speaks anything close to the facts, and so I feel both terribly grateful (while the situation is sad) that I am able to be present for meetings such as the one staged tonight by COURAGE TO RESIST. By all means, contribute to the large number of soldiers resisting service in Iraq -- As Cindy Sheehan said, moral support is great, but these guys need food: http://www.couragetoresist.org
All the people who spoke were shining examples of moral integrity, and so it was appropriate that the event was being held to introduce DISSENT: VOICES OF CONSCIENCE by Colonel Ann Wright, U.S. Army, Retired -- who went into the diplomatic services, then left the government in protest over the war in Iraq.
Jeff Paterson, with Courage to Resist, reported on his attendance, with Lori Hurlebaus, at a hearing of a committee of the Canadian House of Commons which swung closer to providing sanctuary to the many soldiers who have gone to Canada. At their website you will find the addresses for writing letters (requires 69-cent stamp), to three Canadian officials, asking "you to make a provision for sanctuary for the scores of U.S. military sevice members currently in Canada."
Daniel Ellsberg wrote the foreward to Ann Wright's book, and I assume he is one of the heroes in her book as one of the first to speak out with conscience, not bend to some blind, rote commitment to party or politics. His definition of the moral action that is required even by certain government principles that are supposed to be posted in every government office -- loyalty above person, party, etc., loyalty only to country and high moral principles -- spoke from the place from which the only hope for the country comes. He was great, urging not only that impeachment of Cheney and Bush should proceed, but reminding us that people like Pelosi are also violating the Constitution. That she and Jane Harmon knew about tortures being used and did not immediately speak out about them publicly makes them NOT voices of conscience.



Ann Wright told some of the stories of the heros described in her book. One of them was about the soldier who took the photos of the tortures of Abu Ghraib that revealed to the world what was going on there. Rumsford revealed his identity while speaking to his unit in Iraq, so much endangering the young man's life that he must now live in hiding under the Witness Protection program.
Ann Wright asked this wonderful group how many had served time in jail as acts of conscience. I felt embarrassed to be one of the few who had escaped jail, but one woman said that being in the Army for two years would do to represent my jail time. The wide variety of groups represented there -- labor, teachers, Code Pink, those working for Impeachment, etc. -- as people who served time as a result of protesting so many stupid U.S. actions over the decades -- invasions, overthrowing governments, etc. -- represented the secret and better part of U.S. history so far as I am concerned. As with other resisting veterans, Mike Wong's equivalent of "jail time" was his exile of two years when he deserted the American War in Vietnam. In groups like this, I always understand the power in an old spiritual turned protest song: This little light'll shine. Ann Wright, I saw, resisted the easy way, despair.


When sending in your contribution to Veterans Resisting the War, and those refusing to serve in this illegal war, you might also send a contribution to the Congressional Campaign of Cindy Sheehan (http://www.cindyforcongress.org/). It is so refreshing to listen to someone who doesn't mince words, unlike Pelosi, the mealy-mouth she would replace, who is part of Nob Hill society, and a party functionary.




Keep an ear open for all the politicians who speak of the U.S.A. as a Capitalist Democracy. Those are the code words that are supposed to make us salivate. What is Capitalist Democracy? Looking around, it looks like a disaster locally (except for those content to have a iPod in place of a brain as they step over the people sleeping in the streets) and internationally (where we are replacing the Nazis as symbols of sadistic and murderous arrogance). If you want to see what Capitalist Democracy is, see the documentary, OUR BRAND IS CRISIS. What would non-Capitalist Democracy look like? I think I want some of that.

Miscellaneous Recent Photos

Lucky, the cat I cared for recently, while his owners were on vacation -- looking at me closely to see if I am near death so he can eat me...


At the 12 December 2007 annual celebration of Our Lady of Guadaloupe at the San Rafael Mission in San Rafael, California:


Winter landscapes, McInnis Park and Wetlands, San Rafael...



Another piece of the cathedral being built in Oakland, looking through the South (?) window showing through to the North (?) window...



Snowy Egret in the Morning...


A goldeneye dives...

2 January 2008, Another Day of Wandering

Returning from a month in Marin County where I almost totally avoided a computer and could not overschedule myself as I do when I am in Oakland, I was not, and am not, certain that I want to be carried back into that routine. However, here is one of those typical days, repeated on 2 January. It started in the morning with doing tai chi with my buddy Martha. Her neighborhood around Church and 29th Street still has an autumnal look...

The rain made the building where Mother Theresa's order lives (beside the church that was the location of the film, SISTER ACT) look especially somber, streaked with rain.

Martha had prepared the canvas for her next painting, the canvas, lying flat, looking like a pool of orange. Her arrangement of things in her and Thom's apartment are artistic compositions in themselves.

To keep from taking too many trips to San Francisco in the week, I try to arrange a lot in single days, which makes for more free time in Oakland, but can make for very long days in San Francisco. How to kill the time between one site and the next? I take books, writing to revise, but then sometimes too I just let the day carry me along to unexpected places. Next I went for my appointment at the V.A. Hospital. I try not to be too depressed by the men worn down or broken by war.

But then you can wander around behind the V.A. hospital and get a panoramic view of the entrance toward the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay, and the buildings, probably WPA constructions, have wonderful decorative work.

Next is the writing group with Louise at 7 p.m. in Glen Park, but that leaves quite a bit of time to fill, so, when I start out on the Great Highway, intending to take Sloat to Portola to O'Shaughnessy to Glen Park, I find myself stopping by the beach beside the Great Highway. When I first came to San Francisco, that was the favorite destination, being a guy from the plains who had never seen an ocean, but I had not dropped by this area for many years. On such a winter day, there were only solitary walkers along the sand, or lovers, and two people walked into the ocean to surf.

The houses on the street facing the ocean, the Great Highway between them and the Pacific, have a look peculiar to the houses in that area.


Before it grew dark in the Glen Park district, I saw the signs of San Francisco's January spring.

It grew dark long before 7 p.m., and I wandered around looking at the holiday lighting of the houses, and found too that people were playing games in the night on the lighted field in Glen Park.

Back home in Oakland, after the writing class, I took the time to begin to look at photos taken in and around the house where I stayed in Marin. Before Kenneth and Rafael left for Nicaragua, I had overlapped with them for a day, and I saw a startling image on the glass door to the garden where bird feeders hang that draw the yellow finches, hummingbirds, and other birds. I went and interrupted Kenneth who was at his computer. "Would you please come look at something?" I thought perhaps he had stenciled an image on the glass door, but he said, "That happens sometimes. A hawk may frighten a bird and it flies into the glass. Sometimes it kills them."

Labor of the Lost Wallet

Wonderful to housesit/catsit for Kenneth and Rafael at their house off Huckleberry Road in Marin where an hibiscus may grow inside.
I loved sleeping in a room with one of the quilts made by Kenneth's mother. (Some more pieces throughout what follows.)



LABOR OF THE LOST WALLET

I chose to see the most useless and absurd day I spent during my recent retreat, as housesitter/catsitter, as a classical Labor, as in the Labors of Hercules or of some other mythical figure. When Psyche, overcome by curiousity, wanted to see the lover, Eros, who had been visiting her nightly, she broke his rule when she raised her lamp to look at him as he slept, and Psyche was condemned by Eros’ mother Venus, ruler of love’s silly games, to suffer for her new knowledge. She would not be allowed to recover love without enduring some maddening task -- in her case, finding something tiny in a large pile of grain, searching seed by seed. Call them the tedious days we work for the sake of certain golden days or moments – we who live where love is not at all a constant. Now that I’ve gone all mythical on you, for my own sake I want to review my Labor of the Lost Wallet grain by grain, but you may skip all that by jumping to the paragraph that begins with the capitalized words: “SHOWERED AND READY….”


























Late afternoon on 25 December, my friend Fred dropped by on his way back to San Francisco after spending time with his relatives in Sacramento, and, faced with the challenge of finding a place to eat on Christmas Day night, we met up with his friends, Howard and Tom, who live, with their son Matthew, near where I was staying; they arranged for us to meet them at the House of Lee in San Rafael – How many times have I found that the one restaurant open on Christmas Day night was a Chinese restaurant?

After dinner, we dropped a weary Tom off at their home, and Howard and Matthew took Fred and me on a tour of houses with elaborate holiday decorations. Late that night, “home” alone, I discovered that I had lost my wallet. I went back and forth between kitchen and bedroom looking every place I had been since returning to the house. I went over the same route a dozen times, meanwhile imagining how someone was using my credit card, and spending the cash in the wallet. All the cards would need to be replaced, including my driver’s license. And there was that extra key to my car that I must conceal in my wallet as I am always locking myself out of my car. Sleep was almost impossible as I continued to run a circuit through the house in my mind, forced to get up at times to explore some new notion of where the wallet might be.



























In the morning I called Fred who searched his car thoroughly, especially around the passenger’s seat. I also called Fred’s friend Howard. He was about to take his son to his school nearby, and he would pass by the houses we had seen last night and write down the addresses. He called me later with the list of addresses, and I drove around to each house, all of them looking so different by day. Moving bean by bean, I was searching for that needle, my wallet. By day the houses, without their lights, lost their magic, like the painted canvas backdrops at a carnival show that come alive only at night among the revolving lights of amusement rides, with the barkers' magic incantations. This was the clear light of day, and even before 9 in the morning, a wallet would have been noticed.

Following an obvious sequence of actions, I drove into San Rafael and parked near the House of Lee. They would not respond to my knocking on their glass door (of course nothing comes easy during a Labor): Someone inside shouted, “We open at 11!” After killing time at the Kenneth's favorite morning sot, the Aroma Coffee Shop, a few blocks away, I returned, and finally gained admittance to the House of Lee. I looked under the table where we had eaten. One of the women folding napkins there obliged me by stepping out of the chair where I had been sitting. No wallet to be found. The manager said, “If you had called us after you left last night....”

“I didn’t discover it until after midnight,” I explained.


























The days of my enjoying a retreat by housesitting in Marin were precious and numbered in my mind, and this was a day that, of necessity, would be spent in a long series of absurd measures that I had no choice but to take step by step and in sequence. Up until now, there had been some vestige of the hope that I would be handed the familiar wallet, embossed with “Borinquen” – a loved gift from my friend Victor who brought it back from a visit to Borinquen (Puerto Rico); it would suddenly appear before me as if bathed in a holy light: You know, that great surge of relief when something lost is found again – and the pain of hope would be healed when hope was no longer needed.

But, clearly, this last step, back to the House of Lee, was the end of false hope. The thing was dead and would not be revived. I remembered how I had fumbling with the wallet after dinner, as we calculated the bill, at the same time that I became entangled in my carrying bag and jacket as I was also needing to go to the restroom. It was time to accept that whoever followed us at that table, consistent with the U.S. and California tradition of “panning for gold,” could not resist considering the wallet an official “find,” with no connection to any person’s “loss.”

In a way it felt good to be rid of that search to find the lost wallet. All the next steps were rote -- initiating the replacement of cards, etc., by driving back to Oakland to find the appropriate numbers to call with the information I would need to convey by phone. Dropping by the Post Office in Oakland on the way home, to pick up whatever mail had accumulated, I wondered how I could persuade them to give me my mail without the customary identification, a driver’s license. I had recovered my mail the week before from the same short, cheerful Asian woman standing before me. At that time she had asked who that man was on the button on my jacket.

“Lt. Ehren Watada,” I explained. “He is refusing to serve in Iraq.”

“He’s very handsome,” she said, amused.

On the basis of my plaintive manner and the button of Watada that she remembered, the woman was willing to accept primitive proof, my name typed on a piece of paper in my wallet, and gave me my mail.

The very last wisp of hope evaporated when I reached home and found no message on my home phone telling me that someone had found my wallet. Now there was just the tiresome but necessary business of making copies of auto insurance and registraton papers, etc., then calling to have a new credit card and a new Bank ATM card generated and sent to me (enduring the Bank employee’s usual speech about taking advantage of other Bank services.

Then I drove over to the DMV in San Francisco to order a replacement Driver’s License and obtain a temporary paper one. So, next step: Drive across the Bay Bridge. Take the Octavia Street exit. Turn on Fell Street and proceed to the DMV. Stand in a line while filling out a form. Then receive a number and wait among the mass of seated people until the number attached to your form appears on one of the television screens, telling you to report to a particular window.

Figuring that there would be time to get a new V.A. card before my next appointment there on 2 January, I drove back to Marin, with my tedious Labor behind me; I had ticked the tasks off so efficiently that I even had time to stop for another look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Marin Civic Center, this time with the tower shining bright and golden in the late afternoon sun; and I even had time when I got back to my temporary “home” to climb the high hill behind the development of Eichler houses. The trail began at the wooden sign where someone had indicated with an upward-pointing arrow and clear white letters: “To NeverNeverLand." Up there on the hill, the autumn oaks were gold and umber in the dying light as I witnessed the earth’s evening turn away from our Mother Sun.

It was time then to go to my borrowed “home,” shower, and settle in for the evening so that their cat Lucky might have time to enjoy a nap in my lap.

SHOWERED AND READY for the sofa and the cat, I opened the container in which I had brought my favorite tea bags, and found the wallet embossed Borinquen inside the tea container.

What a relief, albeit a relief somewhat degraded. I was grateful to have the wallet back, although now it was a wallet with inivalid credit and ATM cards. I am too Freudian to see this as complete accident. I had to believe that putting the wallet in with the teabags couild not be pure nonsense. As the hours were approaching when I would need to leave this latest house I had cared for as a happy solution to the need now and then for a period of isolation, a place for a creative retreat, I realized that I put the wallet in the container of tea bags because that was where I wanted to "put my money" -- place my values -- where my heart abides: Making tea after twilight and settling into those evening hours when one is free of obligations and other commitments, hours when the imagination is free to roam where it will and create what it likes.

After the usual initial period not of being "blocked," but of "avoiding," with the time narrowing for my stay off Huckleberry Road, but I continued by making a mobile, revising verses or a play, making collages – such as this one – an image for beginning the year 2008:

An Image For the New Year

"Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is the supreme law. By it alone can mankind be saved." -- Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1869-1948)