Dangermond.org

I walked in and around downtown San Francisco, catching up with clients and stopping by to see a few colleagues. Their city, I marveled, was running like an efficient machine – streets cleaned, people sporting professional yet hip attire, businesses open, goods displayed for all to see and come in and buy. The contrast to here was startling. As I went inside One California and stepped into the elevator, Linda Ronstad was singing “Blue Bayou” and it made me smile and lifted my spirits.

Saving nickles saving dimes
Working til the sun don’t shine
Looking forward to happier times
On Blue Bayou

I’m going back someday
Come what may
To Blue Bayou
Where the folks are fine
And the world is mine
On Blue Bayou
Where those fishing boats
With their sails afloat
If I could only see
That familiar sunrise
Through sleepy eyes
How happy I’d be

I arrived in SF to see a mugshot of Gavin Newsom splashed across the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle – a troubled look on his brow. Soon found out that he has been having some alcohol and rehab issues. Day after next, I was having lunch with Steve and asked him what goes on with da mayor and his drinking problem. Steve said, you don’t know? Turns out Gavin was sleeping with his best friend’s wife – both who were active in his campaign.

Steve said, “Hell, it made me drink.”

The woman with the purple hair at the Sav-A-Center had to hand me some paper towels because I am still bleeding from my attack this morning by Rusty. I went to get 50 assorted Hubig Pies to bring to the San Francisco office – they love pralines there – well they love anything sweet from here there – including me, of course – so she helped me wind the paper towels around my bleeding fingers and arm and told me she wanted to hug me and that that is why she hates cats.

This morning I went to pet Rusty and he viciously attacked me – and then I had to try to get him in the cat kennel to take him to the vet and he basically ripped my arms and hands to shreds (and I was wearing heavy duty gloves and polar fleece). So when I finally got him in the cat carrier, I took him right downstairs and walked across the street to the field across from the Can where the deserted hospital is – and I opened the cage and set the mother fucker free.

Adios, good riddance, I don’t need any assholes in my life.

Ran into Bob and Bayou Girl this morning walking around the bayou – can I just say there are so many stone foxes on my bayou – anyway but he said the fundraiser has been postponed to March 8 between 5 and 8PM and that he himself has procured many a “deal” as he calls them for the auction. Also he said Terranova would be supplying 500 linkes of Italian sausage to be split open, filled with red gravy and topped with parmesan cheese and put on French bread. Yum!

We saw Doug off working on a house and both waved – he said he’s known Doug for 28 years. Isn’t that something?

Can I tell you how much I love this city and my neighborhood?

I told Bob to come by my house on the 25th to watch the marathon and drink mimosas. He said a few years ago he was at Roy’s house (my neighbor) drinking mimosas and watching the runners and then Chris and Joe went and got remarried in City Park afterwards.

Apparently some guy is crawling under people’s houses in MidCity and stealing copper by sawing off pipes. How lovely is that? Do we also blame our impoverished society on what drives someone to tear up someone else’s house who probably has just gotten back into their house 20 months after Katrina?

Today’s New York Times Quote of the Day:

“You can put a cop on every corner, and you will not stop the murders. As long as you have a large population that is uneducated and has no job and no hope, what else is there to do but sell drugs?”
ERIC E. MALVEAU, on New Orleans, the nation’s per capita murder leader.

I dropped G at the airport and the Bean and I went and had lunch with mom today. She is thankfully looking and feeling much better than she has been. This seems to be a pattern with her – one slip on her health-a-meter leads to a downward spiral that looks like it might keep going, then she bounces back and goes back to her normal state – which isn’t great, but it seems to have an amazing capacity to endure.

Our lunch talk centered around work – she never feels as if she is doing enough. I told her by virtue of the fact that she gets up every morning and drives one hour to take care of 150 geriatric patients who are verbally abusive or catatonic is in and of itself heroic. She doesn’t believe it. She just sees so much that needs to be done, so much she didn’t accomplish, and she drives an hour home feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders.

And I wonder where my neurosis comes from.

Poem Without Forgiveness

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt’s stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn’t it
electricity’s blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup. So in the meantime: epoxy,
the dog barking at who knows what,
signals mixed up like a dumped-out tray
of printer’s type. Some piece of you
stays in me and I’ll never give it back.
The heart hoards its thorns
just as the rose profligates.
Just because you’ve had enough
doesn’t mean you wanted too much.

Dean Young
The Paris Review
Winter 2006

It is nigh impossible to find antique hardware that was once so common in New Orleans – the way the doors latch, the hinges, the transom pulls, not to mention window locks – all of these fine metal pieces are victims of Katrina – no one salvaged anything – they just threw cypress doors away with the brass and iron ball hinges, they chucked transoms with the brass rods, asbestos roof shingles tossed into piles. So sad – if you knew that New Orleans is all about its finery, the fact that you could have gone down Orleans Avenue and rented a shotgun for under $500 a month and been living amidst cypress floors and carved brass hardware and now – what?

The American Can has a flea infestation – this has led Arlene to have a full blown allergy problem – my vet said it is epidemic in the city after Katrina – the vet said, “I hate fleas.” So after I bring Rusty to board at the vet and Arlene to board at the kennel I have to set off bombs because the Can has been remiss in trying to address this issue. It’s a bandaid – you can’t treat one of 500 apartments for fleas!

We are trying to salvage a life down here and pieces keep getting destroyed.