The Evening Chimes: San Francisco Nights

This evening fell fast. I have not done much today. I have bad nerve pain in my leg and am hobbling around trying not to fall over. I hobbled to get some tomatoes to throw into a tuna salad. I hobbled to my bed/desk/office to write poetry, and got caught up reading old letters from Billy. I think I needed to remind myself I didn’t always hate him. I was not always so disappointed and sad and wanting him at arms length. Having read some old letters, and looked at some old photos, and put away the box that memories of the dead should be contained within, and pressed play on some Steppenwolf and collected the mail, I sat here feeling stunned. People really shouldn’t die. It is a design flaw.

Outside there are no cathedral bells to chime. No call to prayer. No sound of street preachers. Even the hole diggers have finished making a mess. All the noise is the white noise of the cars, the occasional bit of road rage and one very vocal drunk fighting with his shadow on the wall. He hates himself. I know how he feels I hate myself too. I am forever reeling at windmills, and I ain’t been drunk for quite some time. I envy him. I would love a bottle of Courvoisier and a glass filled with a large chunk of ice. Three shots and I bet this leg would hurt less. I can’t. Not after everything. I just. Can’t. The guy outside can though, and has. “Mothergrrrrrrr! Git! Arrrrggg!”….He staggers down the road, pissing his pants and scaring the normies. I wish him good health. He looked like he could do with a bit of good will.

It feels as if someone has turned the city off at the source. I see all these reports of ‘looting’ and it doesn’t even feel like it is happening in the same city as the one I live in. I feel no extra danger on the streets. To be frank it feels like an over egged storm in a teacup. San Francisco is seen as this place that is failing to protect people, which is ridiculous. It is a narrative pushed by those who don’t even live here or understand the city. The only thing that puzzles me is why anyone would willingly rob Louis Vuitton, it is so bourgeois and ugly. It is easier to victimize the poor, and point fingers towards policies which reduce suffering, while the rich rob and rape us all on a daily basis. I would be surprised if any of those involved even live here in the City, to be honest. Any excuse to smash down on people who are trying just to survive in the Bay Area. It is a literal dog and pony show up on Union Square right now – they have bought in the cop horses to protect the ugly bags. Animals had to die to make ’em…and now they want to use animals to protect ’em. I don’t like humans very much sometimes.

The real ‘looting’ of belongings is the City taking the personal belongings of homeless people away from them in their brutal sweeps, but I hear relatively little outrage about that happening. No one really needs one of those purses, but when you are homeless, losing your suitcase or bag and its contents is a disaster. It seems like only the rich are allowed to have belongings which are theirs and to steal from the poor is state sanctioned and perfectly legal.

Don’t believe the hype, things are quite peaceful in San Francisco currently. There is no revolution in the air that I can perceive. I am a peaceful soul and believe that our problems as a society are best solved by talking, not fighting. We need a revolution of kindness and compassion quite desperately.