Blue Jay Cafe
Ate with Lea Ann at Blue Jay Cafe yesterday where the mirror in the men's room poses as a piece of art. She had to go on to Berkeley and I just wanted to go home and sleep, so we each went our own way from there.
Walking home alone on Divisidero, I started thinking about the differences between San Francisco and Los Angeles, where I'd just spent a couple of days, seeing friends and playing golf.
LA is far more modern than SF. LA is TV, SF a book. LA is a place of no ideas and thrives on having none, while SF lives like it might possibly have a few but the ideas it has might all be in the past.
I made a right on Sacramento, looking in the window of Sue Fisher King's store to see if any of Lea Ann's pottery was being displayed. I saw some of the plates and cups she'd made, now on sale. Her work looked so good in there, every piece seemed to be smiling. I'm really proud of her and happy that all her hard work is starting to be reocognized, admire the way she goes about it, doing the work and letting the business part of it flow from there.
Crossing the street I remembered that we'd seen a movie together the night before I left for LA. I'd had to go back to the house to get my iPhone "in case I had an idea and wanted to write something down" and she said, "I'm lucky, I have no ideas."
Driving down to LA on The 5, I tried to have no thoughts. It wasn't that difficult; the difficulty these days is actually having a thought. The miles passed as I listened to Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde and Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, each at least two times. Driving up to SF, I tried to think but nothing happened. So I turned on the radio and settled on a Christian talk show until the signal faded somewhere near the turn-off for Hanford.
It's sad to think that I can no longer think. Stevens has this great injunction--either in The Necessary Angel or in one of his letters--that "a man should think at least two hours a day." I read Stevens when I was young and just starting to write and that statement has stayed with me ever since.
Maybe knowing your own mind is no different than knowing a neighborhood. San Francisco is still new to me, I still get lost here, maybe I shouldn't try to think and let what comes to me come, like a poet. Trying to think is like walking in San Francisco on a nice day and thinking you have to rush because two young girls behind you are walking closer and closer, which is what happened as I walked up Lyon, almost home.