The Problem of Three Hundred Years

I could tell you that three hundred years isn't a very long time
When set up against the full thread of human history,
Or weighed against the so-many tons of biological material
That has evolved and bred and been returned to earth and elements;
But truthfully, three hundred years is more than enough
For outlasting family and any touchable now-ness.

It has taken three hundred years to get to where we are now:
Where there are thirty-two language options for the California DMV Class-C licensing test,
Where professional historical interpreters are paid by the state to teach schoolchildren how to pack adobe bricks,
And where plausible plans are afloat to build a naturally-banked river out of the concrete drainage channel LA River which, mind you, was itself built out of a seasonally-subterranean riparian spit.
You see,
               when Governor Brown the First pumped Shasta water over the Tehachipis
And decided that the state could educate the Cold War's main-frame foot-soldiers,
He didn't foxtrot around the idea that he was the proud father of a newly-dreamt civilization -
Nor did the Marin County back-to-the-land-ers, nor the soap-boxing Kearneyites, nor the Azusa street surveyors, nor the Theosophical Society-ites, nor the Palm Desert cocktail tanners nor their golf-club-swinging seasonal lesbian neighbors -

No, new dreams and odd-meetings are quite old in this place,
And the truly reality-warping woof of this whole place
Is the staggering antiquity of this millennia-long market day.
Yes, three hundred years was enough time to build a casino in Temporarily-Humboldt County,
But, think way back beyond Alcatraz and Ishi
To the five-score languages spoken up these mountains, down these valleys and out into the surf.

There is a spot (I will swear you dead on it)
Where, for who-knows-how-long, fairy shrimp eggs have laid dormant in the dust waiting for winter rains to birth vernal pools so that miniscule, see-through crustaceans can breed in basins carved into rock by centuries-slow scraping Tongva handi-work -
And did I tell you that this is all eight-stories up on the top of a mesa?
Surrounded by stucco-tracked-homes-turned-miniature-movie-studios in the world's pornography mecca?

Shrimp! Ontop of the desert mountain backdrop of a Zorro set!
Who can explain this?
What timeline can contain every detour and borderland of it?
What estuary could sustain it?
What tomolo'o could cross it?
Which test pilot could man it?
Which restaurant could serve it?
Every queer, multiethnic, bearded, jangling, coastal, ravine-spanning highway lane of it?
How can I hitchhike, Bracero, box-car-hop, bud trim, Reno elope and Tijuana divorce across it all,
 - From Angel Island and Mussel Slough to K-Town and Ranch Santa Fe, by way of the Modoc County Wars, Tule Lake and Gam Saan Dim Sum -
Without simplifying, essentializing or telescoping,

Without just giving up and telling you
That three hundred years really isn't all that long,
Not as far as the Redwoods and Tufa Columns are concerned -
Just a few rings and a handful of carbonate layers,
Just a light breeze of sunsets at the raw end of the continent,
Just three centuries by Pacific's rolling waters.

 - January and February, 2012

“give me more fire, love”

You said,

“give me more fire, love”

And I promised to breath in Summer

and shiver-out Snow -

There would be no moment I hadn't known.

I've set up camp in a stone hollow

Amid the rocks and grass of

Santa Susana Pass;

I make soups from the wild herbs

and quail I catch with my hands,

On occasion I bound across the cliff faces

naked and let the air run through my chest hair;

Stage coaches, trains and interstates have

come to accept my presence.

One Spring, after many,

I will present you with a bouquet of seeds

Carefully shaken out of several seasons' wildflowers,

And a Conejo rabbit,

His stomach kept warm by a stone I have laid inside him

after pulling it, hot, out of last August's sun;

And through my mass of beard and hair

My eyes will shine at you with

Fires in my heart and mind

And it will be all that you can do to take your gifts from my arms

And keep my gaze from setting these mountains to flames.

 - 3/27/11

Between

There are trees growing inside of buildings in Los Angeles -

Tall, clear, glass atria lit up in the night -

And they are surrounded by damp, spongy lawns

Which are plush like carpet trying to be mattress.

When I move through this city I walk down

Boulevard galleries of pastoral ideals,

Down raccoon paths through traffic dividers and

Roads that end out at Fashion Fair mall in Fresno.

The problem that my girl and I have here is

That I keep on looking for two extremes, see:

One holds me far back in rural exile,

Scolding my work ethic and asking

(And demanding) that I live in cold and silence,

While the other pushes me in deep and ties me

To roiling humanity - in, happening and living.

Two "livings" - that's where I get stuck in LA

Over and over, caught dead between

Two livings - that's what this city seems to promise:

Mile by mile of almost, not quite, half of

Wendy McNaughton's "Meanwhile: 5th and Mission"

Today was the first time I ever read Wendy McNaughton's "Meanwhile" comics (sketches? art? meditations?) on the City and I was completely blown away.

In this piece on 6th and Mission she managed to cover so many of the topics in San Francisco history which I've been leaning towards writing about in my dissertation: the destruction of low-income, working-class, mixed-race neighborhoods starting in the 1950's and the marginalization of entire (often older and historic) areas of the city as they succumb to gentrification, redevelopment, and the corporate take-over of public space.

This comic has it all: the destruction of the Western addition, SRO's, the International Hotel, South of Market Residential Hotels. Plus she brings a sharp eye to the stunning dichotomy (one of my old favorite San Francisco lecture topics) between the intersections of 5th and Mission and 6th and Mission.

It's so good, I'm spinning in my head again and so ready to start researching back up in the Bay this summer. Prospectus here I come? Perhaps? Let's see what the archives have in store.