San Francisco

Last night I opened the back door and liked the way the lights on Lovers Lane looked in the fog. So I took a picture.

This morning, I could hear bass lines from the Outside Lands Music festival being held in Golden Gate Park. I looked at the clock: only 9 a.m. Maybe it was a sound check. Neil Young and Crazy Horse are playing sometime today.

Yesterday, I asked Dan DeVries if he was going to the festival. We were playing in a golf tournament at Lincoln Park. On the seventh hole we heard bass lines and some drums from the park. He said the festival was 'big bucks.' I told him I'd looked into seeing Bob Dylan when he comes to town in October, but that they wanted $150.00 a seat minimum and I'd passed.

I saw Dylan in Long Beach a couple of years ago. The Kings of Leon came on first. I liked the name of the band and tried to get into their music. Their set passed ponderoulsy, but I waited it out. Maybe I needed a beer. Finally Dylan came on. He sat on a stool and played electric piano. I left after a half hour.

Romney's choice didn't surprise me. I have more than my share of conservative friends and they've been talking big about Paul Ryan for a couple of years. I told M., a conservative who loved Ryan the moment he first bought out his budget proposal, that I thought Ryan combed his hair a little like Ronald Reagan, implying that Ryan's made himself from the Reagan mold. I still don't understand why Reagan's so venerated by Americans, mostly by the right but often by the middle, but that's another issue.

For a Party that likes to claim they own 'fiscal conservatism,' conservatives sure like to gamble. Ryan's no Palin, but he's close. The Republicans are an interesting Party, far more intellectually challenging than the Democrats, a Party that purports to support limited government and the sanctity of the individual while denying the right of women to control their own bodies.

I was in a men's group once with a bunch of successful, rich guys from the westside of LA. We'd all turned 50 or were about to. Doug, the faciliator, had a nice line; he said you had to build a bowl large enough to hold all the aspects of your life. I was running an ad/pr agency at the time, trying to write poems at night. I told Doug that I had trouble reconciling those very different parts of my life, business and art. He said, why can't you consider your business an art. It helped for a little while, but then just became a bunch of words.

I like San Francisco because I can think and say just about whatever comes into my mind. Not really of course, but close. I like fog in August and the idea of having to wear a sweater in late summer. I don't mind hearing bass lines being played a mile away at 9 a.m. in the morning. I like that a festival is happening closeby, and that I'm not there.