We have many stories about what a city is, but it goes ahead and is what it is anyway, without reference to our thoughts.

There were some wars, and people were not nice, and the not-niceness created more of the same.

--"I mean, they're really good athletes," he said, earnestly.
--"Athletes? Yeah," she said dismissively.

Large under the city like a whale, a creature of stone and hope is slowly rising.

Rain for which one almost doesn't need an umbrella--it's willing to make its point subtly.

I'm tired and impatient. My tiredness and impatience get together and come up with an ideafor a specific action I must take right now. If I breathe a bit, human wisdom, like a cheerleader leading a spell-out, rises up and says, "S-T-O-P. Stop! Stop! Stop!"

Near the convention center, one man talking to another said, "In this arena, it's all about them." The other man said, "I have never seen such avarice and greed before in my life."

I thought, "I wonder what kind of convention this is." I walked around the corner to look at the signs. Neurosurgery. It was a gathering of neurosurgeons. My neurons hummed, "Hmm. . ."

You can think the way you think.

You can think the way you think in the midst of people who look to be really not thinking that way.

You don't have to shut yourself up inside your own head. You can just go ahead and think the way you think.

This might lead to saying, acting, or might not.

But you deserve the comfort of finishing your trails inside yourself.

Someday, some thought you might know it's time to say, and say it. In the crowd of people so clearly not thinking that way, there might be:

Someone who does think that way, and feels suddenly stronger.

Someone who doesn't think that way, but does think non-standardly, and now can get on with it deeper.


We tend to meet each other in over-simplification. We over-simplify who we appear to be, and the person we're meeting does. Many complications are missing.

If you let some complication, thought you've thought about much out, our public space can get more complicated, more accurately like complicated like, and safer.

She was riding her bike on the sidewalk and shouting, "I'm well now! I'm well now!" in a voice that sounded tormented.

This day, in its weather and its vibe, is less aggressive than some days. I don't know if it's dispirited or gentle.

A flower born from fire.
--Loretta Hui-shan Yang

"A flower born from fire"--I thought of you.

Loretta Hui-shan Yang is an award-winning actress and an artist in glass whose work has been exhibited in many museums.

Some of her work is being exhibited at Liuli, the glass art gallery in San Francisco, in an exhibit called "Fire.Silence." The brochure for the exhibit includes this:

Silence Within Fire

A fire burns within,
Sweat dances across flickering flame,
Life illuminated by will power,
Sweating,
A flower born from flame
Suddenly--

Calm.
Silence.

--Loretta Hui-shan Yang


If you were to take a break at Yerba Buena Gardens, the park on Mission Street, and if you looked across Mission and saw the broad walkway that runs between St. Patrick's Church and the Contemporary Jewish Museum on one side and the Marriot Hotel on the other side, and if you crossed Mission and walked down the walkway, a little more than halfway down the walkway, just past the Museum of Craft and Folk Art with its current exhibit, "Volver: Mexican Folk Art into Play," you'd find Liuli Glass Art on your left, in the Marriot Hotel building but feeling smaller, making its own fire and silence space.


www.liuli.com 37 Yerba Buena Lane 415 979 9588

On the bus, the woman who just got on is taking her seat with speed between reasonable and impressively fast for someone with a cane. The bus is still stopped, so there isn't the pressure of dealing the the jostling of bus movement for her, or for the man who got on behind her.

The man who got on behind her is, however, furious and fuming. "Come on, come on," he says enragedly. I'm thinking it must be difficult for him to live as the imperfect creature any human being is.

I saw many pony tails of power bouncing as women jogged on Saturday along the course they were going to run on Sunday in the Nike Women's Marathon.

I think Mercury, the planet of communication, must be in futility or something because it seems like many more people than usual are shouting at length to people in general on the street.

When it comes to ineffectiveness and having no chance of people taking what you say seriously, shouting at length on the street can't be beat.

Sitting on the dock of the Bay with the chill wind going its way,

Sitting on the dock of the Bay watching the fog turn the sky grey,

Sitting on the dock of the Bay, feeling cold.

Hope less specifically. Let God improvise.

The very top of the TransAmerica Pyramid looms over six office buildings built in various decades, in various sizes, all shaped like shoe boxes on end and ornamented, or not, to the taste of their moment.

It looks like one vast complex, built over time by a person of changing taste and vast wealth. The TransAmerica Pyramid bit looks like a steeple over it all, making it all be a rambling temple of the religion of office work.

Someone says something and acts like it's a story that matters, and you realize that you have a story that matters, too--that you can say it.

I do so want to be omniscient, but it would be hard to think with that much to think about.

Right here now, nothing is wrong, and several things are beautiful.

A man I knew who had been in the US Air Force, on the ground, said that people who had worked in bombers realized what they had done bombing about 7 years after they did it. They realized it first at night, and then in the daytime.

About now would be a wise time for me to open my heart, but I'm so scared it's difficult for me to even remember that I have a heart.

Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.

Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

Bored yet?

Even if the object of hatred has some genuinely bad stuff going, the hater will be drive to make up more bad stuff because the process of hating is boring.

Of all possible bad things the hater might make up and say are true of the hatee, the ones the hater chooses to say and believe say a lot about the hater, what the hater personally is scared of and ashamed of.

That which is made up about the hatee often seems very real because it is real--but it isn't a true statement about the hatee but a true description of a hole in the hater's heart.

[added last sentence]
Every month has multiple prime numbers, numbers that can only be divided by one and themselves, because that state of being is easier to achieve for numbers that are small. All months start with a prime number--one--and lots end with one--twenty-nine, thirty-one.

The pebble I'm standing on is always turning. The great gob of widely dispersed everything I'm living amid is always expanding.

I could adjust the assumptions in my mind so their light and shadows could move around. I could let there be more space between the things I think I know.

Perfect and beautiful handwriting of the perfect set of words, sent at the perfect time, would be inaccurate because I'm not perfect. Hi.

The excellence of her guitar playing matches the excellence of her voice, which is saying a lot.

Usually I think it's kind of too bad that the Mission Branch Library doesn't have a meeting room like many branches do. But today it means one woman's gorgeous voice filling the space and another woman mid-song from the audience dancing briefly and it's A-okay that that is happening here in book and computer land, and not off somewhere else.

I like words, writing them, reading them, but the best of words are slow, when written and read, compared to a naturally great voice that has been cherished and taken care of, that is sharing right. With one note of that voice, we are there, in the great place we dream of, now. Right now.

I was going to the library to whatever, whatever, stare, maybe read some more of the pretty mystery I started reading yesterday, maybe to read more of the library's excellent books in Einstein in hopes that one of these decades I'll understand the special theory of relativity and the general theory of relativity more than I do now.

But because it's Hispanic Heritage Month and because Mission doesn't have a meeting room for events, I walked in on one of those great voice great notes, followed, of course, by many others.

Diana Gameros has been tending her gift well, and I got to be surprised it.

I have a tendency to read the caption and then look at the picture. So it's good, in a way, for my voice appreciation, that she wasn't singing in my one and only language, but in Spanish, which helped me, probably, take in the awesome vocal quality and the emotion, without getting distracted, as I can get, by the words.

The lady in the audience who dance danced simply with basic grace, from village beauty, I think. A little kid next to me seemed to be learning at this performance about clapping. He kept looking around to see that everyone was doing it--an adult approved way to make noise. He also got into the idea of dancing to the music. He started going for that as she started a slow sad song. He didn't know it's tough to dance solo to slow sad songs--he scampered away happily. She go to sing slow and sad and really let her voice out on some long-held notes. Wow.

People have great voices, and some take care of them, and some use them generously and are just there making gorgeous when not expected. Happiness happens.

--Diana Gameros sang at the Mission Branch Library's celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month on the afternoon of October 2, 2010.


Diana Gameros performs


Every Friday and Saturday, 6 to 9:30 Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, 2817 24th St. between York and Bryant

www.dianagameros.com includes music to hear

Watching the little kid watch the dog. She sees more than I do. There's detailing in her eyes--all the different browns in the dog's coat maybe, or how the muscles work together.

Artist training herself, maybe. Veterinarian. Alive-to-life type person, if not interrupted.

It would be felt more often as beautiful if it were not so common.

I am deeply in touch with what one particular group of privileged people thinks is important. I am delusional.