The Fourth Sunday in Advent

The Splendor of Saint Peter and Paul

1.

The Setting Street

The Flaneur resumes his pilgrimage

to mock-Renaissance North Beach,

The abundanza of Columbus avenue

How about an imaginary double-decker bus ride

to a Christmas Candyland?

 Some fresh-ground black pepper on some fresh pasta?

Life al-dente under a Tuscan sun

 Maybe a masterfully-made coffee in a colorfield cafe

 We're almost there,

As free from postal code envy as little Lorde

 2.

The Church Itself

 These doors lead to the awesome,

Don't neglect the holy water,

The sign of the cross

Self-evidently epic,

The don't even imagine front altars like they used to, 

 This creche awaits the entire Holy Family,

A starry backdrop for exquisite Italian fabrications

 The Advent wreath,

A candle for every week 

Until Christmas on earth

 Jesus the Sower and his cousin John
(Note hobbity feet)

 Christ knocking at the door,

Jesus the Good Shepherd

 3. 

The Sacred Sculpture Grotto

 Our Lady of Lourdes,

John the Baptist in three-dimensions

 Mary the Queen of Heaven,

Saint Theresa meets her in Eternity,
Remember that elderly church-lady
Who 'touched-up' a fresco in Spain last year?

A saintly nun and poinsettias
At the foot of the Cross

Christ in a saint's heart,

A rather large club in his hand

 4.

The Apotheosis

 The Annunciation

My Soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
The Magnificat,

 The Nativity in Bethlehem,

Attended by angels and shepherds

Under the wandering star

Philip Lamantia, a poet I knew for over twenty-five years, was Italian by birth, a native of San Francisco, and a life-long resident of North Beach. In our conversations about my reconciliation and what was essentially his conversion, he had much praise for the Shrine of St Francis where he attended Mass. When I told him I also loved Mass there and occasionally found myself at Mass at St Peter and Paul as well.  He was somewhat incredulous that I could get in the spirit there; it was too grandiose and it represented something other than what he had found at the Shrine. I understood his point to an extent but the basic epiphany of the Mass is always available to me and while I'm not just an "aesthetic Catholic," I do maintain a very avid appreciation for the traditional beauty of churches such as St Peter and Paul as old-fashioned as it may seem. I am spellbound when I contemplate the symbology of the artifacts as well as of the ritual.
That said even I was a little tenuous when I traveled over to North Beach from Berkeley one Christmas day and went into Mass at St Peter and Paul. I had already been to midnight Mass and received Communion at St Albert's College but I was early for an invitation to someone's pad on Telegraph Hill who might not enjoy an early-bird showing up, so I went to Christmas Mass again. The place was packed, largely by families with kids. Some of them held balloons on strings floating in the sacred space. Behavior in general bespoke folks who went to Mass on Christmas and Christmas only. The priest soldiered on without altar boys or any other assistance. Then when Communion time came, he asked for several individuals to join him in distributing the hosts.
I'm old school Catholic and really prefer to receive the sacrament directly from a priest myself. But when no one else volunteered I knew I had to do it. Nervous and unprepared, I started off by saying "God bless you," as I handed over a host, rather than the proper, "The Body of Christ." A girl laughed but I got through it and actually heard my correct line after a while and began to say, "The Body of Christ," and tried to be "the perfect image of a priest."*

A Christmas blessing to all from the Flaneur

* This phrase occurs in both Jack Kerouac's novel Desolation Angels and in Bob Dylan's epic song "Desolation Row," both of which were published in 1965. Kerouac used it to describe his friend and colleague, Philip Lamantia. Dylan copped the words and a number of others from Jack's book.

22 December 2014

Oakland This Week

Security wreath with cameras, microphones, 

loudspeakers and taser cannons

Monday morning the Flaneur became aware of helicopters overhead as he slept.

It was unusual. The customary experience is for them to begin in the late afternoon when the demonstrations get rolling. This had been the case for at least the past week in Oakland, ever since a trifecta of crooked district attorneys, crooked judges and rigged grand juries had yet again decided to get behind a trigger-happy cop who killed yet another black young man.

Sunday night I had ventured outside my chambers though I have gotten a bit more cautious. I waited for the police helicopter noise to subside, as protests venture out on the freeway while the California Highway Patrol troops shoot "less lethal" rounds into the crowd and undercover thug cops, when somewhat stressed-out by discovery, pull guns on the unarmed.

As I made my cautious way toward an ATM, the downtown scene, usually quiet on on a Sunday night, was nearly deserted but with a pervasive air of impending trouble. Right on cue a cop car burst into sound and light and made a wild U-turn stopping around the BART stops near 14th street. Instantly it was joined by three other police vehicles also hitting the jack-pot. They were the recently-popular SUV-style black-and-white cop cars-- looking like bloated ticks clamped on a dog's neck.

Mornings after, we awaken to a downtown whose more corporate windows remain boarded-up day by day. The Old Oakland grocery mart installed removable wooden window coverings after it was twice raided for beer on nights of thirsty riot. The battle will get hotter, and you won't get no supper. Just enjoy it.

It was cold and rainy Monday as I emerged into the fore-noon. The protest in front of the Oakland police headquarters was in full swing. Brave youngsters had chained themselves to the front doors and blocked traffic on Broadway. Sorry cops, we came to spoil your day. Someone scaled the flagpole and flew the flag of anarchy--hip hip hooray!

I couldn't hang with the ice water falling but my heart was warmed by the voluble refusal to cower before the militarized police state's criminality, its swagger and its impunity as it fulfills its mission as the army of the plutocracy.

A Legend of the Solstice

Berkeley, California 94701

I've heard it said though I'm not sure it is true,

That some people have more cash 

than with which they know just what to do.

Xmas in the Elmwood

 

 

Last year we waited for rain in December

It really looked like it was about to start raining

 That means that Santa's on his way,

 From his pad at the North Pole

But the rain didn't show up last year

December 2013

2.

This year,
 in another part of town...

 

Old house in North Berkeley,

One day last week there wasn't a lot of sun,

A big storm was on its way

 Funky decorations in front of an impressive tree,

Along the Ohlone pathway

I did my rain dance,

The sky opened over our heads

Over night

December 2014

The Third Sunday in Advent

 

 The Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi

Last year the Flaneur continued on his Advent Sunday of one hundred photos.

Returning to a holy venue that I first attended in its original role as a parish church. North Beach was a quite different place then in the last years of the nineteen-seventies.
Everything was, of course, very different than today. Local parishioners fall away,

The place was closed by the Diocese for some time. Its steeples cast  a lonely silhouette in the dusk.
Then the relics of St Francis and of St Clare arrived salvifically. The order of St Francis brought the church back as a national shrine with a liturgy and an outstanding music program. A minor miracle.
After a few years of its success, local Italo-American pride kicked in the funds for a precious re-imagining of the small chapel Francis and his followers built so long ago: the Nuova Porziuncola. It is a place for meditation and prayer and, I think perhaps rarely, a Mass.

Masses in the Shrine itself are well-attended and classical music concerts take place there regularlyas well.
It seems visitors are present at the Shrine whenever I'm there; sight-seers respect the prayerful atmosphere and get a spiritual contact high I am certain.

 The approach on bountiful Columbus avenue,

It's a good time to go in and say a prayer.

 1.

Measuring the Nuova Porziuncola

 The entrancing goodness of the entrance,

Dig the window
like a Renaissance Magritte

 The inner porziuncola,

Re-enter the sacred
like a spacecraft air-lock

 

 Kneel and pray in solitude,
Forget about the passing time,
Unburden your circuitry

 Your own true mind may emerge,

A larger self may manifest in you

 The bread of eternity within reach,

A sandwich from Molinari can be good too

 2.

Inside the Shrine

The bells had been rung,

Vibration still quivered in the rafters 

Like winter birds come inside

 

 The boys choir had finished their program,

The buoyancy of it had lifted all vessels,

 A member of the faithful lights a candle

Extends the feeling in her heart,

It illuminates her day after she leaves

 The figures in the manger
await the coming of the Christ child

 Open throughout the day and throughout the year,

All are welcome and all are blessed

 The mystical light of the sun of Solstice,

Reaches through the stained glass,

Onto a mural of the death of Francis

 An old friend of mine, the poet Philip Lamantia had his funeral Mass here,

The tendentious and misleading introduction to his Collected Poems,

Attempts to portray him as a desultory convert who finally said phooey,

It ignored the fact that a funeral Mass with the music of Messiaen

Doesn't just happen for any merely nominal Catholic who passes away,
It is the decedent's last and most profound profession of faith,
After a coke habit and the bug house Philip swore
The Relics and the Franciscan brothers redeemed his soul and his life

Narrow careerists would rob him of his redemption

Once someone has experienced the Sacred Heart
 Through the Blessed Sacrament,

He exists in relationship to it for eternity

22 December 2013

Grant Avenue Crawl

Ah the Flaneur savors December in San Francisco.

One finds oneself in the mood
To lift up some ponderous tome
 Unshelved at the Mechanics' Institute Library

 A fine day to kick out of one's pied-a-terre 

in brand new tassled loafers
on a lark, alouette!

Pause to consider a saucy bauble along the way

Seems like there's a Santa hat band on every block,

 It's down to Grant Avenue to lead us today,
 Stylish and svelte

 Shadows fall early on the Chinatown gate 

this Solstice time of the year
Blue umbrellas over Falun Gong live mannikins

 A time to turn inward,

To contemplate polarities

 San Francisco is a splendid

and accommodating spectacle

Adler alley aka Jack Kerouac street

The famous bookstore on the corner of Columbus

Published his Book of Dreams,

They should make a 3-D poster of him too,

 Historical Beatnik district in Italian North Beach,

Gregory Corso was an annoying fixture years ago,

Among the poets who passed through the Trieste

22 December 2013