The Zebra plant I bought and thought I killed has made a comeback. It’s green leaves glow in the morning sun. The sky is clear and blue and I’ve curled up on the edge of the sofa where the sun is the brightest. I’m listening to an old jazz album, Whims of Chambers. Steam rises from my second cup of coffee. This is the quiet build up to a slow morning after a late night.
Last night at a bar, a woman asked me if I knew where she could get some coke. I said I was new in town and I didn’t, but even if I was old in town I still wouldn’t know. Earlier in the night a man, quite animated and a little drunk, made me to promise to be nice to his wife who was on her way. They had been having a good week which he defined as her being happy with him. It might be nice if more of us defined our best weeks as those when the people we love are happy with us.
A note on my phone, written prior to both of those encounters reads, “we’re all begging for something.” I wrote the note while scanning the titles of books in the poetry room at City Lights. I was probably mashing up the title of Ellen Bass’ book Like a Beggar while looking at a title that began with “we’re all…” maybe it was We Were All Someone Else Yesterday by Omar Holmon. I had been looking at the G’s and H’s where a few of my favorite poets reside: Hoagland and Hass, Gibson and Hirshfield.
I put the jazz album on because I had the horn riff from the song “Omicron” buzzing in my head. Last night it was the song “White Men in Black Suits” that was stuck in my head as I turned the corner from Columbus St. on to Bay. Specifically I was hearing the lyric, “Yes I moved to San Francisco just to see what I could be.” So many of the people I meet here are from somewhere else. This is the allure of the west coast, the California sunshine, the dreams of reinvention, people chasing sunsets down wide and sloping boulevards.
The coffee has gone cold and the music has ended – which feels like it could be the title of an autobiography or a book of poems… we were all someone else yesterday, we’re all begging for something.
My computer tells me it’s 56 degrees and sunny. My body tells me I should go for a run, or at least get outside. All the while, Dr. Bluespire from a James Tate poem leans over my shoulder whispering, “You look like a god sitting there. / Why don’t you try writing something?”