Strung Outbound

Instead of concentrate on where I am right now, I’d rather concentrate on where my backpack’s been.
This bag has had quite a run. It was given to me by a friend who got it for free at work- luckily she worked at North Face. I started using it on a day to day basis because I had no other decent bag to go to and from work with- that was in San Francisco about 4 years ago. Since then I’ve used it practically every day… and in the meantime it’s been around the world. Like a close friend, I’ve trusted it with my most important possessions, and it‘s helped me carry the load hundreds of times.
It’s been throughout California and Oregon with me and my bike, trekked through Yosemite, flew to New York, Chicago, traveled to Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and now to Indonesia.
It was the sole bag I used on a 3 month trip through the Middle East, barely fitting all my clothes, a laptop plus all the random things you need and pick up on a trip like that. And it’s carried loads of groceries, laundry, tools, and many other things way too big and heavy for it, but it always fits in there somehow.
And this whole time, with all the abuse it has taken, it has held up, albeit with a few minor repairs and stitches. So I thought I should write about it, because nothing, and no one else has accompanied me as often for the last few years, weird as that may seem. It has helped me, and I’m grateful.

Native String

A string tied to home has been let out. As if tied to a kite, it becomes taut or slack in the wind. A small tug here or more string let out. Perceptions change, and the string fluctuates from old fishing line to sturdy cable- but for sure, that string is tied to home, held there by people, places and feelings; and memories of people and places, feelings.
...the kite stays aloft because of that string, tied to home.

Gravity

Cold... colder than you last remembered.
Your frigid mood betrays even your most guarded fear.
You might as well befriend it, cause it has already done much worse, and can hold you at it's mercy.

No logic guides it, and it is as much caused by the warmth and comfort you reveled in yesterday.

The string is held from above and is pulled down, but everything has it's opposite. For some it seems unbearable, and inconceivably long. For others, laughable.

Hawk Medicine

A spiritual motivation. Words fail, left behind to do their damage.

To cry out, only one can hear.

For no reason a joy surfaces, the sounds that spurred it take on new meaning. The ability to reach beyond presents itself. But the choice is always there.

Let all pervade and I lose myself. Let the past present and future pull with their temporal powers, I am here no more.

To have tasted it after so long fills the void that was there. It seemed unending, now it is vanished. I will know myself when I am there.

Every time it washes clean, it grinds down the filth I put there. Every time I renew and see the lies and the truth, the possibilities, the endless choices. The only solace lies in that moment.

Born in the U.S.A.

Strung Out

San Francisco

It's the street after street filled with damp cars parked outside all night -- streaming ships of the city unable to find a harbor . . . It's the dreamy silence of Pier 44 on a sunny mid-afternoon -- where customs officers, white-capped longshoremen and shipping officials quietly play cards over a counter to prove that men can get along with each other . . . It's the endless rows of cabs lined alongside the places where people gather -- Yellow feet for the ones tired out in the work of having fun . . . It's the 7:30 p.m. flurry of humanity around the tiny neighborhood movie houses -- tinsel palaces of escape for those who slave by day in the temples of Big Business.

It's the smoky, all-night pool parlors of North Beach -- fraternity houses for the lonely brothers who've been black-balled by life . . . It's the Saturday tea dansant at the Palace -- where the most beautiful girls in the world gather under one roof not to be admired, but to admire Artie Shaw, who only looks the other way . . . It's the Old San Francisco restaurants -- with their ancient waiters serving the same old food in the same old way because tradition is their master and an increasingly cruel one, too.

It's the cold, refined handsomeness of outer Pacific Avenue, which picks up its skirts daintily and stares haughtily in another direction as the street swings into a less correct district . . . It's the frenzied burst of activity on the city's playgrounds each Sunday morning -- the people joyously breaking their backs on the Day of Rest, losing their heads in an escape from six days of headaches.

It's the parade of Willkie buttons in the noontime eating places -- men wearing their political hearts on their sleeves . . . It's the blind, hatless banjo player feeling his way smilingly along Post in the afternoon sun -- making tinny music for the ears in the midst of women making silky music for the eyes . . . It's the indescribable conglomeration of beauty and ugliness that makes San Francisco a poem without meter, a symphony without harmony, a painting without reason -- a city without an equal.

-Herb Caen