I sneak photos inside City Lights Books when I can. Afterwards, I’ll purchase their books in appreciation for their letting me photograph like crazy inside their store. I buy the ones they publish because it’s a good way to discover new authors and poets or rediscover older famous ones. I like the upstairs Poetry Room because it is secluded and angular and I don’t know 2/3 of the poets whose books fill wall to wall shelves in the room but who cares. I like the cool photo postcards they sell of Beat poets too. Mostly, I like the table and chair near the window that’s always open no matter what temperature it is outside. Sounds of North Beach fuse and collide with sounds of Chinatown, bounce along the murals in Kerouac Alley before winding up inside the upstairs Poetry Room. Freakin’ inspiring.
Last weekend, amidst car horns, dapper couples, tenants arguing about laundry in Mandarin and the college football radio broadcast, I took advantage of being the first one upstairs and propped my camera on a stool near the 50th Anniversary On The Road table display to shot this picture you see here. Okay, so I’m going for the artistically backlit look here. It seemed fit for the mood. Afterwards I browsed around for a while before selecting an anthology of e.e.cummings poems and the children’s novel King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak before heading out.
I have armloads of books to read for this coming Winter. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje, Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud, The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, Matt Haig’s Dead Father’s Club, and my newest crack: short story collections. Among these are
Raymond Carver Where I’m Calling From
Ellen Klages Portable Childhoods
Kelly Link Magic For Beginners
ZZ Packer Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Yiyun Li A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Mark Jude Poirier Naked Pueblo
Haruki Murakami The Elephant Vanishes
Aimee Bender Willful Creatures
The Complete Short Stories of Truman Capote and
Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Obviously, I select from just about everywhere.
Coming up next month is the 8th annual S.F. Litquake festival. Loads of local authors and poets will be there. Both the known and (relatively) unknown. It’s gonna be a blast. This year’s festival will carry more meaning for me since this is the first time in seven years that I’ve taken a major leave of absence from writing to pursue other activities. Every now and again, like my last entry here, I’ll find something to write about. But for the most part it’s been locked up and set aside. I’m in a study mode right now and Litquake will fill that need quite nicely. Plus, I’m so stoked to learn that one of the new guys at work does spoken word – something I’ve never tried but always admired. It’ll be fun to watch him perform when he finishes his latest cd.
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Last Sunday my brother and I took the dog and our cameras to UC Davis, where we both graduated, two years apart, a long, long time ago. The campus was deserted because the new quarter doesn’t begin until later this month and the bright sunshine made me rethink my decision to load ASA 200 film into my AE-1. We walked around most of the central campus, from the Coffee House to the Silo and back, shooting along the way. Although the campus has grown and new facilities have been built, most of the old halls were still there and the memories kept springing up in my head as I passed a table here and a bench there along my favorite hangouts. It was as if each blade of grass on the Quad could tell me a story about my university years. Where I sat to study. To hang with friends. Listen to live music. Exercise my right to free speech.
In all my years at Davis I think that this was the first time I have ever seen the campus so quiet and deserted. There were a couple students milling about near the library and several families with incoming freshman sons and/or daughters exploring the grounds. But for the most part it was the calm before the storm. To think that in three weeks the circle by 194 Chem will come alive with a mass of students on bicycles pedaling from class to class. That the couches in Wellman will soon bear the weight of many a sleepy-headed late night crammer. That a certain mischievous school band will serve up a rather unwelcome 5 a.m. wakeup call at a certain dormitory on the first day classes are in session. New memories being born out of the silence in the wind between the giant sequoias, lawns and bike paths of my alma mater. Images worth keeping like photographs from an old camera.
