Going Back to San Francisco

Monday we will be going back to San Francisco. It has been interesting looking at the different emotions that the visit is bringing about. I bought a new journal just for the trip as I want to write down a lot more of what I am experiencing when I go.

I chose a hotel in my old stomping grounds of South San Francisco. It is close to both my great-grandparents niches at Olivet Cemetery and to my father's burial place in Golden Gate National Cemetery. Going to see my father is always a bittersweet thing for me. I lost him when I was 9. Everytime I go back, I find a part of me...the little girl part of me that I so carefully bury away...coming to the surface and remembering the day we buried him there. 42 years ago and that memory is still so fresh..the sight and smells of fog and rain on wet pavement, and the loud crack of the rifles as they saluted my father. I cried then and I cry now everytime I go. This time I am taking him a cup of hot coffee and a mounds bar (two of his favorite things) as well as the red roses I always take when I go.

Going to see granny is different. There is a sense of unbelievable warmth and love where she is with my great-grandfathers, Jacob and George. It is very light there, as well. I have always loved Olivet's Columbarium. The warm dusty sunlight and smell of flowers lifts my spirits immeasurably. I go to see Granny after I have visited Dad. I always take my camera and take photos of the unusual urns and tombstones that add to the beauty of the Colma Cemeteries. I will go to the now unmarked graves in what the cemetery is now calling Potter's Field. This is where two of my grandmother's still born children were buried in the 30's. There had been small, round, cement markers with numbers on them placed at each gravesite, but they have long since disappeared since the time of my childhood.

I go to the statue of the Drowned Seamen next and place flowers there as well, as many of my ancestors were sailors on both sides of my family. On the way out we stop by the mausoleum of the lady whose ghost I saw when I was 4 or 5. I always hope that Margarite will show herself again back in Potter's Field as she did that foggy, wet morning in the early 1960's. Dark huge Cypress trees that siloutte themselves against the brilliant emerald of the grasses and the white of the headstones. That is how I remember Olivet...like something from an old episode of Dark Shadows. It is very much like that for me and still is. There is a sensing of many things.

That will be our first stop on our trip around "the City." I want the blessings of my ancestors and their guardian influences. San Francisco has become a city of the dead for me in many ways...not just Colma.
There are mysteries there that still linger for me...like my obcession with Sutro Baths and Land's End, Ocean Beach. All are places that I am drawn to in daydreams and memories.

There is anticipation along with the bittersweetness of the visits. Places of my childhood that are still there and relativly unchanged. The wharf is one of those places and the Chopinno at Nick's #5. The smells of crab boiling on the wharf is like perfume to me. Shops selling seashells, postcards and buddhas. We're going to visit the wave organ this time and walk up to Coit Tower, which I haven't done since I was 6. We'll eat lunch (a cheeseburger) at Louis' over by the Sutro Ruins. I want to take a picture of the house Janis Joplin once lived at and my greatgrandmother's house on Geary and 16th.

I guess I want to walk where Granny did. I have photos of her at the Cliffhouse when the Ohioan ran ashore, and when she had walked around Golden Gate Park and Sutro Heights. I want her to guide me around and whisper her secrets in my ear. Yes, she can be my tourguide.

My granny was wild and ahead of her time for coming to San Francisco in 1900. She was her own woman and knew what she wanted and didn't. She could scold you with a mere look. She sailed to Alaska with her second husband, Jacob, who was an Alaska Packer on the Star of Alaska (now the Balclutha). I have a photo of her standing on the beach in Seward, Alaska aiming a Winchester rifle. She was all of 4 feet 11.

Before coming to America, she had an illegitimate child in the old country. My grandmother never knew about her half-sister until she was about 57. When Granny had enough of her first husbands philandering in the Washington State lumber camps, she left him. She opened a boarding house in Crescent City, which was washed away after the tidal waves from the Alaska earthquake in 1964. She met Jacob there and they moved on down to San Francisco where she opened yet another boardinghouse in the Avenues.

I was never really sure if Granny divorced George Orkey. There are no records that I have ever been able to find. But she took the last name of Carlson, Jacob's last name. Granny must have still had a hold on George, though, as he also moved to San Francisco, following her. He stayed in San Francisco where he passed on in 1959. Yep! Granny must have been really something in her day. She did when I was two, but I remember her clearly and the wonderful old boarding house she had. She had boarders living htere until she passed away. She specialized in taking on boarders from other countries that other "respectable" boarding houses would turn away at that time...folks from India, Fiji, and other places.

I want her to take my hand and guide me. She can point at places she knew and loved or where they once were; places that were important to her. Tell me the history I long to know and will never read in a book.

My husband has gotten used to all of this. He realises I think that there are unresolved pieces and bits in my past and te past of my family...I guess as there is in most families. Tony likes hearing the stories and seeing the place through my eyes. I don't know that my children really care about their history. It's ok. I want to try and write down as much as I can so that if they have the chance they can someday perhaps explore it from my descriptions and memories in my journals and photos.

So, for the time being, I am cleaning house and getting ready for the trip on Monday. I want to look up a few places and write down the addresses so I can take photos to add to the history I am trying to write. Yeah. I'm going home.

The WInd and the Rain II

And with you comes the rain
the winds and
the waters of the sea

Gentle
always gentle in the moment
tea and thunder
lightning
and the rain
with and
without you
and

always

always the scent
of wet pavement in a Windsor summer
decades ago

powerless against the tide of flooding memories
half forgotten bits
of torn photographs
carried on the waves from the sand
drifting

yes

smells of dust and diesel
wisteria and fallen leaves tangle
in the ocean tang

roar and boom
the gulls call
fallen angels against the fading phantoms
of yesterday's amusements
strings of smoke blow
from a lovers cave
hidden in the rocks
rimmed edge of ruins
laid tretcherous on the wind and rising tide
black with the waves and dark grey against
the sky

the fog horns blare

leaving me alone
and restless
hopeful in the wind and the rain
and always the waters
and that you
will come

Do You?

Dark. Muggy and no clouds in sight. Languid, but tranquil in the dusky light as I lay across the sofa.

Thoughts of the wind and the rain and the water. Always the rain and the green grey sky of a September afternoon from years ago. Wind howling and the lightening scattering like cat scratches across the dark and troubled sky. You remember...

remember it like it was yesterday...moments ago and the thoughts pour down just like the rain did that dry day...we hadn't had rain for months and were praying for it....

Ocean waves, the muted green silk frothed with water lace rippling on the rocks at the back of the Sutro cave rippling as my skin in the cold of the fog splintering my nerves on tiny skewers. The shell, pink and white and oh, so fragile, lay in your hand as you thought in the dry, white heat of the desert....you couldn't say a word...not to anyone...but I knew....

knew like the lines that cross my palm or the hunger at the end of the day...hunger coming in waves...the heat of the day rising in mirage from the asphalt...making you think...

wonder.....

why the spirit dances in the dead of night when no one but the stars see...whirling under the branches to the scent of roses and leaves crisping in the summer heat...you are a voyeur, aren't you ...I've said that before , but it's true...like it or not.....yards of cloth sway in breezes and body movements that leave you drunk with desire and longing to touch...you won't...won't allow yourself to do that...and she knows...can feel your breath on her neck down her arms...the breath that is the wind carrying her in the dance...your heartbeat marking the tune as her feet glide and she twirls leaf-like in your heart...is alone and will be so through time...so close you can feel her, smell her scent but never touch her...make her yours...she pulls off the veil to reveal your own face looking back at you and you flinch and then realize she is a mirror and you are the mask...forever hiding from yourself and from her....and you believe in your safety and you believe you are untouched by your desire.....alone in a confessional the little panel slides back to reveal...what?

...staring at the screen only shadows beyond and you still won't reveal it...won't tell you the truth until finally the desperation drives you dizzily down the wire and YOU tell her what you have longed for...what you wish and what you fear...and there is silence greeting you...is she listening...eavesdropping to what is said between the lines...and she softly tells you to light a candle for her soul and say 3 Hail Marys..because surely you are driving her to a hell of your...her own creation clawing at the bedsheets and howling into the dark...unheard

what is this thing that makes you think

you are so civilized?

Saturdays

Saturdays I revel in the early mornings.....my husband still asleep, the cats and dogs drowsing around my feet. There is a feel to these early mornings that is mine alone. I am almost possessive of these times. I can sit and think....planning the magickal herb garden of my back yard. There are notes to be written, art pieces I wish to make and just quiet moments of contemplation. I study during these times or come up with a new beading project. In Spring and Summer I sit with the window open and let the Virginia Zephyrs breeze through cleansing my home. The early morning light will hit the glass bottles, shimmering through the room and painting the walls in blues, greens and yellows. These are the moments of life that have profound yet unspoken meaning.....something so simple as stained glass in sunlight on an early Saturday morning.

Midnight Rose

Onyx

against pale skin

she

glows

into the room

gold chain shackled

to ivory ankle

Wrapped in darkness

it is her design

diamonds on black velvet

she

purrs

She

is her own creation

Grab her

you clutch thorns

She

alone

is in control

Slight turn

her head tilts

A whisper...

m e l t i n g

she turns to go

"Midnight..."

Dreaming

Dreaming

Sandalwood scent

and candle wax

swirls in dream wisps

of warm promise

mysteries

enchantments

from times long past

Savoring sherry

and a good book

with the close intimacy

of the evening

Rustling of robes

on cobblestones

I thought I heard...

drawing drowsily awake

with the sudden rush of Autumn winds

whipping the pages

bourne through time

I fly with the leaves

in the deep night

clinging like Summer incense

on everything I touch

just a

faint

scent

as I raise my head

from the book

where I've been sleeping

Each grain of sand drops down. I look to the stars and see they are there ...constant...grasses green going golden in the heat of days. Like the grasses I, too, am parched and growing brittle with time.

Breezes turn to blasting winds, pulling up the grains of sand and wearing everything smooth and hazy in my soul. Cycles of wind and rain and brutal sun paint my days in canyon colors. Wearing down the harshness and wild insolance of my youth to a deep, mellow humour.

Something in the dark of the cave beckoned me, and yet I was frightened. I couldn't go yet; couldn't plunge into the cool depths escaping the blazing sun of late spring. Going below ground is a sacred thing for a Druid. You are travelling to the land of the Underworld and all the blessed dead. It is a trip not taken lightly, for if you emerge you are returned to the living world forever changed.

It wasn't what was in the cave that struck me with fear. It was myself and the doubts ... unworthiness. I have learned wisdom and abused power all in the name of love and passions that drove me nearly mad. Power is returning now and I am afraid of not it, but myself. Barren of it by choice for so many years, I come back to the world of true magick and find myself more a novice than the sorceress I was.

Be careful what you wish for...holding crystal to the moon...I realise my time has come. There is no death only cycles moving into the next phases of our eternal lives. Childlike, I will take my offerings and enter the cave.