S.F. Day 4

Yesterday I got sick of being in close quarters with the fam, so I ran down Columbus Street to the bookstore and sequestered myself upstairs by a big window in a wooden arm chair with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and snuck peeks at everyone who came up the stairs and tried to seem mysterious and appealing and like a book character to the young good looking guys with their girlfriends.

Later I met my father in Chinatown and we foraged among the shops and bought bahn mi and noodles and sticky rice and BBQ pork buns for D. Then the whole family went down to the docks and we caught a ferry in the dusk and fog to Alcatraz, just entirely Gothic and freaky, and wandered around in the dark there. Avoiding the ghosts, though there were relatively few. Came back on the late boat, chilled and curly, and moved as if in a daze through the Disney-land world of Pier 39 (carousels and cigarettes and flashy lights), smelled Fishmans Wharf, and then after a lot of walking and asking people for directions and grumbling and saying accusing things like: You said you knew where this restaurant was! and Why on earth can't we just go home? we found it, a Belgian beer and appetizers sort of thing.

3 orders of French fries, 12 kinds of dipping sauce, 6 different beers, and a couple of salads later, we stumbled home in an exhausted fug.
That was yesterday.


Number 8., by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It was a face which darkness could kill
      in an instant
a face as easily hurt
      by laughter or light

  'We think differently at night'
      she told me once
lying back languidly

     And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
    'whom I am constantly shocking'

  Then she would smile and look away 
 light a cigarette for me
    sigh and rise

and stretch
 her sweet anatomy

         let fall a stocking