“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 Susanna 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 an sharp eye to the stunning dichotomy (one of my old favorite San Francisco lecture topics) of the intersection 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.

My first post to the "Untapped SF" blog

 

My first post to the "Untapped SF" blog

As promised in an earlier post, I have been exploring opportunities to write about California history in a more engaging and accessible medium. Today, my first post for the blog Untapped SF went up. This is one of the newest branches of a family of blogs called Untapped Cities which looks at modern urban culture, frequently with an historical bent. I hope to become a regular contributor to this blog and to use it as forum for exploring themes in San Francisco history as well as for developing my own historical voice. In a way, I see this as an opportunity to save my dissertation from being as dull as a dissertation.

Anyways, please go check out my first post and let me know what you think:

 - A Family History at North Beach's "Gold Spike"