George Trow

I'm re-reading 'Within the Context of No Context.'

I'd taken a sabbatical from it, which was a mistake as it's a book that could be read once a year, containing as it does the same wonderfully written sentences of the original text while somehow managing to leap ahead to predict the cultural future Trow foresaw.

Reading it I always begin to see things differently.

I see that San Francisco wears a mask. That the city's reputation for literacy, progressiveness, tolerance, freethinking etc. etc. is nothing more than a cover-up for its blatantly military past and present. The joint's a fortress--The Presidio, Fort Mason, Fort Funston, Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, a paean to military might.

The mask is large context. The large context makes room for the smaller, newer context – Silicon Valley--the latest version of the older, smaller context, the California Gold Rush.

The picture above looks out of a window at the venerable California Book Club on Sutter Street. The window's propped open by a book. The scene is what San Francisco used to look like when it was wearing just one mask.

To re-read a good book like 'Within the Context of No Context' is to put it to its best use.

More context: the wounded I saw yesterday sitting in the sun in wheelchairs, outside the VA Hospital at Clement and 42nd.