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I just returned from San Francisco, the land of plenty, bounty abounds everywhere you look from brains to tchotchkes, it’s all going on there. And yet, I haven’t seen so many homeless people in a long time. I watched a man fixing his cardboard box shelter and thought of Managua in the 1960s and the people sleeping in cardboard boxes. During that period Somoza reigned as if landless peasants were no different than rats in the streets – they were offered no support whatsoever. What differentiates San Francisco 2011 from Managua 1960s?

I walked by Le Central and there in the window as if frozen in time sat Willie Brown and Wilkes Bashford (minus Herb Caen) and they laughed, and raised their glasses, and I wondered if either of them was thinking about the guy in the cardboard box? Years ago, an architect, Donald MacDonald designed a pop-up shelter to be put under expressways to give the homeless shelter – he was chastised by city government:

… San Francisco architect Donald MacDonald designed the “city sleeper” in 1987. The shelter was boxlike, made entirely of plywood construction and raised off of the ground by inverted car jacks. It was large enough to house one homeless individual, it could be secured from the inside and it couldbe fabricated for less than eight hundred dollars. Although the proposed solution was conceived with good intentions, city hall denounced the plan for the design did not account for running water nor did it meet several other building codes (Fantasia, Isserman, 57). “The Sleeper provides [the homeless] with shelter – while supporting the belief that everyone has a right to a home” (MacDonald). McDonald’s design emphasizes individuality at its core. The homeless individual can be self-sufficient in this solution with complete control over his or her shelter environment.

I snapped a photo of Willie and Wilkes and wondered if in life I had followed the Browns & Bashfords or the MacDonalds – the problem is the answer was clear without finishing the question – I have divided my heart and my head – and this sorely needs remediation.

Went to Cafe de la Presse for one more of those bowl filled decaf lattes before I’m off to SFO to hopefully make my way home. Why is it that this time of year – Southern Decadence – that a storm is threatening Louisiana. It’s like it’s Ground Hog Day every Labor Day Weekend. Meanwhile, I went out with my boyfriends here in San Francisco for a night of Western Decadence and we found ourselves in the wee hours at a Bear Bar where it was interesting to see men with guts so much larger than mine trying to kiss when bellies were in the way. What’s a bear to do?

I read a funny article while waiting on my bagel with lox, yum yum yummy, by P.J. O’Rourke and thought about my journey here to San Francisco – it’s been almost a week since I left home and what I thought I was coming to do has very rapidly changed into something else. This has been an exciting week which has found me with renewed hope of having my vision match the vision of a company’s. Very exciting stuff at this Dreamforce conference. Very exciting.

At the same time, I have a lot of irons in the fire. Although the bridges are calling me, the bayou awaits me. I have already saved the url for the Conservancy I want to start – my vision to see the bayou yield fish to feed the poor in New Orleans and my desire to walk across the grass and dive into it for the sheer pleasure of being in water. That vision will be reached. But while I am meandering towards it, duty calls in the form of commerce and therein I see very bright possibilities on my near horizon.

To the world I say thank you for always putting my boots on exciting paths and for introducing me to unique, game changers in my life.

Oh, and one noteworthy remembrance of last night – 2004 Distant Bay Merlot, Washington State – I won’t even get to the gypsies we visited who wanted $150 to remove some curses (I had a similar thing happen to me in 1989 here), that’s another story.

I was reading a NYT article about a film about an adopted son called “I’m Glad My Mother Is Alive” and of course, like any adopted parent, I read with hesitation as it described the son’s turmoil and anger over having been given up for adoption. Yes I cannot know the future or for that matter Tin and how he will be with himself and his situation. He has a lot to digest when he comes into awareness that he is our child now, the son of older white lesbians in New Orleans. For better or for worse.

But what also made me catch my breath was the final quote by Lao Tse that you could be good your whole life and then have a moment of madness. Funny how being here in San Francisco for such an extended period of time makes me remember however awkwardly that I had another life at one time or rather several lives here, the one where I arrived in 1989 newly married to my second husband and was going to start anew. The one where I met my third husband. The one where I returned with same from a stint in New Orleans and endured panic attacks over having left my own journey to follow his – the realization that I was marching to my grave unauthentic as I woke from this panic in Marin one day as I looked out over the lush yard that is caused by having 30% more rain on the backside of Mt. Tam.

Yes, I had my moment of madness, where I undid all that I had done and unraveled a life so intricately woven around my own self-deception that I could forgo my destiny, that I could live in someone else’s dream. So when that one day arrives when Tin perhaps rejects that I took as crooked a journey to become his mother that he took to become my son, maybe we’ll meet right where we are, who we are, and be.

And that will be that.

Last night in the lobby while my friend was getting her tarot cards read, I opened a fortune cookie offered to me and it said, You have a basic need for solitude some of the time.

True that.

I’ve been away from home for nearly a week now and attending a conference with 45,000 others doesn’t sound much like being alone, and having work related dinners or events every night doesn’t sound much like being alone, but the truth is that solitude comes with my strolls to and fro the conference and when I lay my head down at night.

We are living in a digital world and I am a digital girl. This Dreamforce conference has all me all riled up – it’s like the best cure for the zombies:

Meanwhile Skype is not as good as the real thing, but at least it is close – here’s my digital boy

I think I wrote a few weeks ago about being referred to as a caucasian recently during a cocktail chat I was having with someone I didn’t know. It sort of made me flinch in the same way that black does now that I have a dark skinned child who is not black, but a honeyed, caramel gorgeous brown. And yet I struggle with calling him African American because no one is calling me Spanish Jewish American. Oh yes, I’m white, and paler than most, but my skin isn’t anymore white than Tin’s is black if we are going to be color clear here. And semantics aside, I’m not white since I’m descended from Sephardim – Spanish Jews – the darkest skin of the race.

I sat next to a charming woman yesterday out in the sunshine in Yerba Buena gardens who is from the Ivory Coast. She said a friend of hers from Antigua wants to have his DNA tested so that he can adopt a child with the exact same background. I said my neighbor has a pit bull dog and had her DNA tested and the dog has everything else but pit bull in her. To what end I asked her – when I wanted a child I didn’t specify what kind, and I got perfect, I aopted my son, the child I was destined to parent.

So today while listening to Ram Dass as I was doing yoga in my hotel room, I liked when he said Maharajji didn’t see people via a lens of gender, race, or religion, but instead as souls. It made me think of Langston Hughes’ poem, My People:

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
So, also, are the souls of my people.

I sent the following link to a friend today for his birthday – it’s a scene indelible in both of our minds – the one in which Tom Hanks’ life is turned upside down and he is left with only the open road ahead. It’s a scene that is near and dear to my heart because unlike a child who is starting school, or the kid going off to college, or the young adult walking down the wedding aisle, this is a scene of a man who has lived a life that is being left behind while a whole new world awaits him. It’s magic.

Sleep is eluding me on this trip despite the fact that I am more relaxed than ever. It’s a mystery. I lay here in the stillness of the night listening to the mosquito buzz in my ear. At 4:30 am you can’t get coffee anywhere in San Francisco. Damn. No dreams only the waking thoughts that intersect – I’m here at this conference, it’s the first one in a long time that has me intrigued. It’s as if the dreams I have had for my real working life are all crystallized here in what this company is doing – the cab driver said to me, “This conference is always so big, it reminds me of Microsoft’s conferences in the 90s.” You gotta love these cab drivers in San Francisco – poets, writers, artists.