City Lights Pilgrimage, Summer 2012

Forgive me Ferlinghetti, for not buying a book
But I enjoyed the upstairs rocker
and the collection by Auden I read from.
I nearly spent money I didn't really have
on a collection by some Cincinnati writer
I haven't heard of – until I saw
he teaches at Xavier to the entitled and the pitied.
And then I read the poetry. And I was not moved.

Though the chances of running into you were nil
I nonetheless hoped to find you skulking behind
Bukowski, or perusing Corso.

The bookstore is as much a museum
as it is a library where people buy books.
Reminders everywhere if a time
when poets spoke words to lightening
rather than hid behind them
like thin, tepid grandmother's skirts.
No worries now about losing the poet
to pop culture, since  poets are either
college professors or mechanics
and neither of those is interesting enough
for a reality tv show.

(Wallace Stevens was the last lawyer  worth trusting.)
(William Carlos Williams was the last doctor worth listening to.)

I wanted to buy a book. Really I did.
But San Fran on the cheap
really isn't, though it's a great city to wander in;
and if you can't get by, there are shady places on the sidewalk
to sleep where passersby do not gawk
because they do not pay attention.
Market Street is for the suits,
the neighborhood bars around Little Saigon
and up and down Mission Street
are for those
who do not have the right attire to be seen
at the Embarcadero. There are no contenders there, anymore.

But I digress, Ferlinghetti.
I simply wanted to apologize
and to thank you for the chair,
and the nice cozy corner to read Auden in.
And to ask a simple question –
but I have forgotten what it was.

Homo Viator (At The World's Edge): Ferlinghetti's Gambit, Part 2

Part 1 HERE

[I'm in transit, on a 15 hour burn to Phoenix. The bus, as far as L.A. anyway, is the first bus outfitted with electric outlets and WiFi since St. Louis.  Thank GAWD. Sometimes, Dear Reader, the universe is kind. Take care to keep that in mind, even when it's not.]

The poetry section didn't disappoint. A lot of familiar names, like Montale, Vaca, Auden.  The  names you'd expect: Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso.

Corso. I taught Corso in writing workshops at the drug and alcohol rehab at the Cincinnati VA. Those crusty old bastards ate him up. Couldn't get enough.

The rocking chair looked entirely too comfortable not to sit in. Those old rocking chairs are like that; they get some wear and tear. Some love, some care. They take on a character and a personality all of their own; they can become a defining factor in any space they inhabit or any space they are removed from. That it was labeled -- perhaps sardonically -- "Poet's Chair" added to the look, but didn't scare me off. My feet were starting to scream from inside my boots and a few minutes repose with a little bit of poetry seemed in order to me.

And besides, I thought. If there's some stupid rule about not sitting in the chair unless your Ferlinghetti -- perish the un-egalitarian thought, but hell, it's his shop he can piss in the non-fiction section if he wants to -- then it was a good start to achieving my goal.

I chose a collection by Auden -- As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse -- and flipped through to "Letter to Lord Byron, Part 1." Auden is one of those poets I came to only maybe in the last 10 years or so. Formal, disarmingly and deceptively light, he gets passed over often. It probably helps that he's not only a Brit, but something of a Socialist... and since we don't even like to read our OWN Reds, Ballad, let alone those from across the pond, Auden is continually ignored in a culture that prefers to ignore homegrown poets regardless of their politics. 

Such a funny poem. The speaker is a young poet, writing contemporarily, to Byron. And since Byron is, of course, long dead, the speaker is able to imbue the Romantic Bard with all sorts of characteristics... including making him a bosom buddy: someone with whom  the speaker can relate, pontificate, and try out his ideas on. 

In short, Byron is in artist's hell. 

While I was sitting there, reading, resting my feet, enjoying a cozy corner next to a small window with west coast light pouring,  another person perusing the shelves asked in what I thought was a British accent "Do you charge tax for books in America?"

"Yes," I reported grimly. "They do. Why do you think I'm sitting here reading it?"

"That's a good plan." he said, taking his prospective purchases downstairs.

There was another person up there, an older, balding man in a blue shirt and tie. He stuck to the poetry criticism section. I wanted to smack him with Leaves of Grass, but the copies weren't handy, being on the other side of the room.

After a while, though, it occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything. There was some office kid sliding in and out of a nondescript door between the stairwell and the bookcase of Beat Poetry anthologies. But no grumbly old poets. The closest I could get was thumbing through one of his books -- a newer collection published by City Lights as part of a series on San Francisco poets.

As I went back downstairs, I quickly pondered my options. I could cause a ruckus and run the risk of the sourly bald register jockey calling the cops... who would, I'm sure, arrive promptly and not trample my civil liberties. Or, I could leave defeated.

I looked around one more time to see if I could catch some glimpse of the man. I noticed a closet under an alcove, it was open, full of books yet to be stocked. There had been a hand written sign in large black letters:

END CORPORATE OWNERSHIP OF BOOKSTORES

Couldn't have said it better myself.

In the end, I didn't get to be told to fuck off by one of my few living* literary heroes. 

But I got to read Auden, and sit in a comfy rocking chair, and breathe in the same space as Corso, McClure, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and  Bukowski. And, of course, Ferlinghetti... who remains as much a mystery to me as, well... most mysteries.

EPILOGUE: "CITY LIGHTS PILGRIMAGE, 2012

* Update: Lawrence Ferlinghetti died February 2021 at the age of 101 years. In 2012 he wasn't one of my few living literary heroes. He was the only one. 

Homo Viator (At the World's Edge): Ferlinghetti's Gambit, Part 1

2012

It was a simple yet elegant plan.

My intention was to find the City Lights Bookstore, bask in the literary mecca of any and everyone who has read The Beats, and in the process, get Ferlinghetti to tell me to fuck off. The chances of that aren't nearly as far off as you might think; after all, City Lights Bookstore has been in the same location at the edge of Chinatown since it opened in 1953. In addition to being a fully functional bookstore -- where one can still go in order to buy books -- it's also a place where literary things continue to happen. It's also the home base for City Lights Books, which continues to publish interesting stuff even though it's been suggested that people don't really read anymore.

And in addition to that, City Lights Co-Founder and literary juggernaut Lawrence Ferlinghetti is almost as famous for being a crank as he is for being a poet/publisher/ independent book store proprietor.

Almost.

Before striking out from the hostel late in the morning this morning, I asked the girl at the front desk about the best bus route to City Lights. I had a pretty good idea, having done a little research before I hit town, but I wanted to make sure my thinking on the matter correct, that there wasn't some change in the bus schedule that hadn't made it to the internet, and that I could find it without getting too lost.

She recommended that I walk there. She assured me she did it all the time and that it usually took her a half hour. Her directions took me straight through the heart of Chinatown. Naturally, I assumed it would take me longer to walk up Larkin to Geary, and then up Geary to Stockton... which would lead me through Chinatown and eventually to the mecca.

Let me point out that today was a beautiful day. I didn't mind the walk, and it would save me money not having to pay for bus fare.

China town was an amazing experience, a cacophony of smells, and people. The produce markets had people sometimes 3 or 4 deep, and all kinds of chatter. Crowds of people moving, or not moving. At one point, even before I walked through the Stockton Street tunnel that was the official boundary for Chinatown, I wasn't sure I had even the slightest clue where I was going. And I had a map, kindly provided by the very polite desk person at the hostel. Between that and the fact that San Fran is an easy city to walk around in, and an interesting one, too. All of the rail stations I ran across had easy to read maps with YOU ARE HERE red dots on them.  In addition, because the city is, in it's heart, an old port city -- the grand version of the river towns I grew up around -- it's not as economically or racially segregated. (Note: NOT AS.) In Little Saigon and the surrounding neighborhood, where the hostel is, there are countless residential motels, slums, dives, and shops, all buttressed up against high class hotels meant to attract tourists. Workaday people, artists (usually identified either by mod black attire or some version of Goodwill Hippie throw back), tourists, street folk, hookers, druggies, pimps, and various Others all share the same space... mostly by ignoring and occasionally sneering. Particularly at the street folk. The warm weather and the hope of secretly class conscious tourists make the city a natural haven. Some people blame the 60's. I blame the wind off the bay.  Walking through anyplace is the best way to get to know a place, and San Francisco is a romantic city to wander in...romantic in the way that only something old, something new, something ugly, and something beautiful can smash together and create.

After I found City Lights, it took me a minute or two to catch my breath before I walked in.  The neatly put together San Franny behind the register didn't acknowledge me. I walked in started perusing books. I found the Bukowski right away... in several languages.  That was all fiction, though.

What I wanted, what I needed... was poetry.

I had long wearied of trying to find a respectable poetry section in any book store anywhere.  I knew that if anyone would have a poetry section worth slowing down and looking into, it would be Ferlinghetti -- the man, the myth, the poet, the publisher, the rank asshole among living poetry legends.

I'm going to have to finish this on on the road, Dear Readers. My time in the city that inspired Dashiell Hammett is done. I'm heading east again, towards The Valley of the Sun.

Part 2 HERE

Homo Viator: (At The World's Edge): San Francisco Lines

It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world. -- Oscar Wilde

San Francisco from the bridge

To no one's surprise, it rained copiously the day I left Eugene. Even though it was temperate and mostly warm for the entire week, the weather gods chose Monday, the day of my departure, to unleash a minor torrent.

Take that, road ready traveler. See if you can stay dry for that.

This leg of the trip was one with the buses mostly crowded. I was able to stretch out and enjoy the adjoining Only once between Eugene and Sacramento. A lot of people are on the move, I've noticed, as I've gone further and further west. And while I have run across a few nomadic souls here and there, mostly I'm running into people who are on the move because they have to be. Like the guy behind me who boarded in Medford who was headed for L.A. to attended a funeral for a bouncer friend of his who had been beaten to death. There have also been more than a few who are on the road because they recently got out from under parole restrictions, and some who are choosing to run in spite of them.

That shouldn't overshadow the large number people I run into who are looking for work... or who are just looking. Not vacationing... though I'm sure in some other place, say an airport terminal, or even on an Amtrak, I would find people who are off in search of that perfect hyper-real experience, that photo-fury experience of standing in front of things and moving from standing in one line to standing in a dizzyingly similar one.

After a four hour layover in Sacramento, I  made it to San Francisco around 9:30 in the morning, Left Coast Time.  After getting turned around, and then figuring out that the city is painfully easy to get around in on foot... there are maps at bus and subway stations that provide a Big Red Dot signifying You Are Here... I found my digs for the night... a friendly looking hostel located in Little Saigon.... which required me to walk through Little Harlem and The Little Latin Quarter (neither of which were provided lamp post banners to signify or make them stand out. Imagine that.) That allowed me somewhere to leave my rucksack and gave me a chance to wander around the neighborhood a bit, where, not surprisingly, I found a nice little bar, The Brown Jug, that maintained a goats head above the mahogany back bar, a nice broken down 1950's atmosphere, and a $5.00 beer and shot special.

After two those, Dear Readers, I found my legs a bit more solid, even if my feet were on the sore side.