Joyous homecoming

By the time I get to San Francisco I've given up on the idea of writing in the style of Donald Trump, posing as a woman in order to call Hillary Clinton a man, resigned to a history of only ever being offered candidates I don't want to vote for, candidates who only represent the angry right or the disappointed left. In other words, I love America more, having been away from it for several months, and see from a distance how poorly it's being represented, which I take personally, the only way I can.

San Francisco's built a wall of fog around itself since I left in May. It's the first thing I see from the bridge, this white curtain draped over the city to keep the riffraff out.

Once I'm back inside the city, it's still a pretty nice place to live. Yes, there are petty disruptive irritations--the German from Germany who lives next door and insists on flying an American flag 24/7 from the porch we share; the traffic along Geary; the price of salmon at Bryan's Market--but nothing I can't live with, or without.

Unpacking, I read a few poems from Alejandra Pizarnik's book, "Extracting the Stone of Madness", and enjoy reading them much more than I imagine she enjoyed writing them. Her poems are like little pieces of cut glass that look so beautiful you can't help but want to pick them up and hold them in your hands, even when you know they were made by a woman who made poems that bled her to death.