At 19, just out from under my father’s roof, I was in an antique shop, a secondhand shop really, eyeing a copper teakettle. “Sit!” the owner said sharply. I sat. Then I saw a large dog, a Standard Poodle, behind me. The owner had been talking to his dog. I began to shake. My father was so menacing that when he gave an order if you didn’t follow it, his big fist would … [Read more...]
Marshmallow Forest
Mud hardens on my combat boots as I step behind my sister through the sickle of woods dividing her property from her neighbors. The son of the previous owners, born intellectually disabled and fond of motors, rode a four-wheeler across this pathway several times a day. Since he moved with his parents to Tampa for their retirement, however, the path has atrophied. It has invited … [Read more...]
Dearly Beloved, Part I: Growing up in 1950s San Francisco
In San Francisco, a handsome old Lutheran Church is for sale. My "Beat Generation", progressive, bohemian, intellectual, Jewish, left-leaning, scholarly, non-conformist, art professor parents, Leonard and Helen Breger, are deeply devout prolific artists. They buy the church. It promises walls galore for hanging their growing bodies of artwork. The basement Sunday School … [Read more...]
Sleevelessness
My mom’s job is to sit on a stool in our basement. Thatʼs where her art studio is. She has a drawing table there that has a square leaned-up top and ink stains all around the edges. When she’s not making her own art, my mom draws fashion illustration ads for the San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper, and for the Joseph Magnin Department Store. She makes pictures of all the … [Read more...]
On Painting On
“Why are the paintings going away?” Mommy explains: ”Your dad is having a very important one-man show at a big fancy gallery across from The San Francisco Opera House. We're going to get all dressed up and attend the opening.” I get to go and not wear my pajamas with feet. The grown-ups that belong to my friends will be there, the City Lights poets, the artists we … [Read more...]
El Condor Pasa
All my life I’ve been surrounded by paintings of cowboys. Longer still, I’ve been surrounded by people who wanted to be cowboys. Sometimes I count the paintings, the cowboys. There’s my grandparents’ acrylic that hung above their couch of a man, close to death slouched on his horse, reaching towards the mirage of water in the horizon. There’s the man with broad hat and bolo tie … [Read more...]
From Motown to Mowtown
An obsession with polished aspirational black music finally carried me to Detroit. I had come to rediscover the heartbreak of first love and unearth a few last Okeh "cover ups". Poking my nose against a high window in the MGM Grand Hotel I survey this strung out city constructed on the lands of the People of the Three Fires. Michigan Central looms in front of me, the morose … [Read more...]
The Poetry of Walking
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” ― Mary Oliver Would you like to journey down a path that will help conjure creative insight? A common premise in Taoism is, in the literal sense, that Tao means Path, a road that … [Read more...]
With Crooked Legs of Hackberry
At 21, I traveled through India for six months. My world-view had been scrambled, and writing about my travels helped me unscramble it. I had never seen people starving on the streets, their limp bodies scooped up in the morning by a front-end loader. I had never been surrounded by large groups of beggars or lepers. Nobody had ever pushed into my face a live cobra curled in a … [Read more...]
Irishry
When I moved to San Pedro one of the welcome signs was learning that an established family of iron workers with my name lived here. The rumor was that one of its younger members hung at Walker's Café out on Point Fermin and had my exact name. My mother, a devoted gene-tracer, never mentioned a strain of our family that thrived in these parts. So I was very curious. And … [Read more...]
This High
My first attempt at rolling a joint was rather pathetic. It looked more like a small turd covered in paper than something to be smoked. And not knowing to remove the twigs and seeds — of which it had many — the loosely rolled number disconcertingly popped and crackled each time I took a hit of it. Was there something wrong with the pot? Had I been ripped off by the dropout with … [Read more...]
London 1966: I.T., the Camel, and a Song Named Me
The camel’s unexpected appearance saved me. The raggedy texture of his fur, his massiveness, and his breath were all undeniably real, no matter how bizarre the setting and cast of characters. Snaking black power cords connecting reporters to brilliant artificial light, long-armed microphones and BBC television cameras did not trip his feet as they did mine. The night could not … [Read more...]
Becoming Jill Kerouac
It all started with the word. Not THAT word. But a word — or a string of words, rather — that struck me: [quote]There are no Jack Kerouacs or Holden Caulfields for girls. Literary girls don’t take road-trips to find themselves; they take trips to find men. (Kelsey McKinney)[/quote] As a freshly-minted English major with a semester’s study abroad, a few recreational trips … [Read more...]
Jenny Lynn
Cold wind is building and ready. It is not understood the pent feelings that have suddenly surfaced after long and even further back and then along the slow moving world and probably before the long awaited return of a Gypsy night. She said her name was Jenny Lynn. WAIT. Let me think. It was in the south section grid just beyond the usual spot where did we usually wait … [Read more...]
Hear That Lonesome Whistle
I started drinking while the Wyoming sky was pink and you could still see forever. Earlier that day I found just enough smack to keep me from being sick. It got me moving. It got me out in the sun. It was the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, my mom’s birthday. I met John for drinks at the Albany, by that time the sky became over-ripened and the stars … [Read more...]
