california dreaming

i am in san francisco in the cafe du soleil sipping cafe latte from a bowl. i just came in from having a cigarette outside where a raggedy street guy offered to sell me a pouch of weed while mumbling about the destruction in afghanistan. the sun is shining brightly. i have stepped out of the dirty snow and into the crisp february air of the pacific ocean.

i have a vague sense of being all the way on the other side of the continent and significantly distanced from my everyday stuff. i am vaguely aware of the possibility that this week could decompress me, even a little. i am trying hard to believe i am ON VACATION.

i am staying with adam. he has once again managed to find accommodation in the most spectacular of apartments. it is an airy 3-bedroom with 16 foot ceilings in the lower haight area (think infamous haight ashbury of 60's music and hippie culture). it is situated in almost the middle of metropolitan san francisco, not far from the university of san francisco and the us mint. have not yet had the pleasure of meeting his roommates: chris is a painfully underpaid coordinator of some sort of at-risk youth outreach program, and dana has a job with google that he "can't" talk about.

i did get to meet ben, one of adam's partners in sko media, a consulting venture. ben is here for two weeks from boston, where he grew up and plans to grow old. when i arrived, bug-eyed and dishevelled on the front stoop yesterday evening, the two of them were elbow deep in preparations of gnocci with asparagus and leek, fennel salad, and chocolate souffle. my famished self was super relieved to be gnoshing on such fine cuisine and sipping on sauvignon blanc after that hairy journey. instead of hitting the sack like my body desperately wanted, we went to the stud to take in the v-day edition of trannyshack, a campy drag show featuring such local legends as hecklina, putanesca, and suppositori spelling. it was great to hear those feel-sorry-for-me ballads brought to larger-than-life by bay area queens instead of in some pathetic cookie dough ice cream induced valentine's stupor, a tragic mope-fest for one.

my itinerary thankfully did not have me departing at the crack of dawn, tho' yesterday was still fatiguing. both my flights were bumpy and wearisome, yet i somehow managed to get through half of the sting memoir. my jet-lag and headacheyness have spilled over to today, so i choose to hang only in this neighbourhood. tomorrow i will venture downtown to union square and explore more of the hipness that is san fran. in such a cool town, it's interesting that so far i don't feel conspicuously uncool - at least not yet. i love the smell of this place. i catch myself succumbing to cliches and wondering what ratio of people around me are gay. i really wish i'd brought my purple sweater. i find it oddly fascinating that most everyone i see resembles someone i know or once knew. i feel very little compulsion to smoke today. i can't seem to get the theme song from the OC out of my head. i have an election planning committee report to write while here, though i wish i'd just brought more leisure reading to catch up on. i think i need more sleep.

i wouldn't say i have big plans, but i gots some plans. i needed this get-away so badly that it's necessary to sink into the escape, fully. i can never really get away from thinking about things. and at this point, there are definately things that warrant reflection. i suppose a quick trip like this is less about clearing the mind than re-organizing it. i shall hope that a bit of california dreamin' will work its magic.