The Lunar Archeology of Nocturnal October

When darkness falls, the Flaneur hits the streets. Here's what he brought back from his full moon dig.

 Erratic stepping stones

Civilization is in a retrograde period 

The onset of a fake stonehenge

A neo-neolithic with monolithic designs

 Followed by a futuristic bronze age

In Jack-o-lantern light

"Now We See Through a Glass Darkly"
Old-time religion maintains its veneer

 The inside is out

the outside is in

Meditation on the spiritual is always beneficial

You can even while away your evenings

On a gazebo in the imaginary past

 But there's no actual escape,

Full moonrise in a concrete jungle

Some find solace in the primitive church

 Oakland's skyline shoulders the harvest moon

 A doorway awaits Trick-or treaters

The alien church communicates with the moon

It's beginning to look a lot like Samhain

8 October 2014

Walk Among the Tombstones

The Way of the Cross

 Fluffy white clouds lifted me off like a hippie chick in an electro-pop tune. They flanked the bright and sunny hills beckoning the Flaneur to a certain part of town.
On the way there, the marquee of the Grand Lake Theater read "Walk Among the Tombstones." This portent appeared to be an admonitory and tutelary bit of advice which he followed.

 1.

Going There

 We have been drought-stricken for quite some time hereabouts,

A small rainy front went through and the green grass returns,

that's the eastern side of the rockridge after which this area  is named

The Chapel of Memories

Today's magnificent clouds drew me

A very edible apples

Growing on that small tree in the nook,

Taboo snapped with a bite of forbidden fruit

An outstanding stained glass window,

The variegated palette of a authentic artist,

Wall paint splatters its remarkable survival

Unprotected in this open and deserted place

 2.

Irish Catholic America

A place which requires no further introduction

 We don't worship the Blessed Mother 

We venerate her and ask her to pray for us,

"O Virgin Mary,

 Please pray for abundant rain this year"

A humble Roman Catholic cemetery 

Rather free of the vanity that characterizes

The grandiose Mountain View of the Protestants

Lording over all on the higher hillside

The narrow confines of a Hebrew burial ground lie in between

St Mary's was founded by the Irish in the Nineteenth century

Thoma Foley lies here

He began life in the faraway land of Eire,

A continent and an ocean lie between

.

 "Corky Row"

Some may have been what we used to call shanty Irish

How the place has been let go,

It's a shame and a sin

Only a short hop here

from the golf course next door

with its manor house, so grand, so ersatz

Sky so blue it breaks your heart, said Jack Kerouac

A fit and fine place to await
the Glorious Second Coming of the Lord

Green grow the graves over the Irish

(County Cork, what did I say?)

What some later arrivals looked like,

Passing over into the sea of souls around 1930

Peace and rest to all the sturdy souls
who lie here 

3.

Coming Back down

Look homeward, Angel face,
Time to climb down again

through St Mary's gate

Over the rooftops

of the old Piedmont Plateau

Some ropes came in handy, 

Careful of treacherous arachnids

And down to the old sidewalk on Piedmont Avenue

Celtic Samhain seen as a California Hallowe'en

Approaching absolute orange

When the Flaneur returned home, a bugged-out emergency warning interrupted his radio program to warn of severe thunderstorms in Napa, quarter-size hail was falling from all those photogenic thunder cloud-heads he had savored.

26 September 2014

Strictly Sweetheart of the Rodeo

The great and good Emmylou Harris and her band

 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Sunday 5 October 2014

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

The Flaneur descends once again 

from the eastern sky through the great trees of Golden Gate park

making a soft landing for the closing day's events

Before settling here at the Banjo stage 

to witness half of Ralph Stanley's authentic bluegrass show,

I had lunch in some shady bleachers at the old Towers of Gold

during most of the fine set by Bonnie Prince Billie and cohort,
(same lunch as Friday but for sardines replacing lentils)
Walked in with someone I met on MUNI
  Raven a delightful herbalist from Berkeley

Following Doctor Ralph Stanley on the royal Banjo stage, 

Jeff Tweedy who is in fact a sweetie despite himself,

An enviable slot except you may have to play into the sun on a hot day

He said it's still summer here and launched into his fun time tune,

"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"

This is Jeff's band also called Tweedy

His son sits behind him on drums
The lead guitarist shows amusement

as Dad tries to bust a rock move,

Tweedy said he usually hated audiences but loved this one here,

"You are the original audience of which all other audiences are copies."

Another season winds down in blissful fatigue,

The logo of the esteemed Banjo stage and the brilliant sound pods

All watched over by green trees of loving grace

Time for some bottom-heavy honky tonk,
a touch of high lonesome gospel,

 some favorite songs she always plays,

Here it was her theme song "Red Dirt Girl"

The sun began to be filtered by the timeless fog 

coming in from the nearby sea,

For the past thirteen years, autumn starts for me

When it begins to grow dark, birds fly over the silhouettes of the trees,

and Emmylou sings for us all

The tree was all aglow as our monarch and her cracking band

Brought on the denouement of another year

Night falls over the park, the glowing crowds going home

The Flaneur indulges himself with a soft-focus image

He was dancing, in his mind with Emmylou as she danced

Playing the old chestnut  "Save the Last Dance for Me"

In a rather impressionistic state of mind--

Two jars of brandy, one funny cigarette, and two days of music,

Riding the wind

Hardly Strictly Speaking

The Flaneur still has enough game left in him to join the burgeoning populace in Golden Gate park again this year for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 14
Friday 3 October 2014

San Francisco

 I spent my first few hours at the Towers of Gold stage where no bands were playing and the sound crew did the finishing touches. There at a shady picnic table I had the lunch I had brought while it was still cool after hiking in ion what turned out to be the hottest day of the year. Even out here a stones throw from the usually wind-turbulent Pacific there was the weakest breeze and ninety degrees heat. I circled the far half of the asphalt race track to reach this spot and it was a fitness and endurance test in a pizza oven.
My simple picnic is always half the enjoyment of making the trek. Today lentils, cherry balsamic vinegar on raw cauliflower, broccoli, orange bell and slender fresh carrot, hard-boiled organic egg, Monterey pepper jack, whole heat bagel with almond butter. Other delights included Fuji apple, fig bar, organic Thompson raisins, preserved ginger cubes, and last but far from least, cannabis infused brandy.
The Towers of Gold stage, as identified by by the three coins of gelt with the likenesses of Jewish bankers on them, backs against the Star stage on which The Get Down Stay Down performed. I heard it at an agreeable volume while avoiding all but a few agreeable visitors to my glen, met John and  his bud Kevin from Ireland and we hung out at the table a while.

 the lawn gets heavy

dragon and butterflies land

multitudes hover

Then I lay in the grass for Dave and Phil, the Alvin brothers, with the Guilty Ones, performed on the Star stage. Their sound was as brawny as a tractor truck barreling through Bakersfield. I was happy to dig it from where I was but the excitement grew so by the time they were into "The Fourth of July" and "Marie, Marie" I came around to there side of things decamping to a hillock over the stage. Into the crowd world of everybody high and most were rocking.

 

The golden hour with Lucinda Williams

Her massively talented guitarist looks on,

 he spotted me way back on the hill. 

We shared moments of cacophony and rapture,

Lucinda's so literate that her lyrics can be often almost primitive, 

always both tough and affecting.

Ryan Adams shaking up the Banjo Stage

He's still hot stuff in tight jeans all right

He's really a top shelf big league rocker though

 that Tom Petty level of success seems to elude him

When a band is really hot the great stage-side tree glows red

That tree is red from the bottom to the top

underneath that old harvest moon,

Ryan Adams and band close out the night

His banter had been very amusing making mild fun of people 

 in the audience for yoga posturing during his bad ass rock

Then composed a plausible b-side on the spot 

about a guy with "Three Fucking Balloons

Midnight Walk in Another Direction

Into the mysterioso, the Flaneur ventures into Chinatown after midnight to get not only darkness but some elusive calmness as well in his imagined image captures.

 "Legendary" I think it's also called the "Forbidden Palace"

They always use that hype

Then you get in and see why it should be called forbidden

stir-fried water bugs in black bean sauce

 Tunnel to Alameda

Lone figures were wrapped in sleeping bags

A pow-wow of the displaced took place nearby

The Lord is my savior and I bless these men

The Foreboding Pagoda

Happily there were no lights on this at night
A strange location and a odd presence

Tunnel from Alameda

Continual traffic here most of the time

Unidentified particulate mist becomes evident

 This building over the tunnel is named

The Portal of Oakland

Abandon all hope, ye all

Post urban warnings

For all you hazardous needs

in our American way of life c.2015

The constabulary facade stares back

Theatrical lighting

Our benevolent protectors

Pink neon on voodoo semiotics

Tattoo parlor after hours

You can't ink ghosts

1 October 2014

Watershed Poetry Festival

The Flaneur put in an anonymous appearance at this annual ecology poetry gathering in Berkeley.

 There was naturally the predictable hot and a usual buffalo stuff.

I had been had quite a few of these and read poems from a collection entitled "Ghost Nature" one year in past. Lovers of poetry reading seem destined to go the way of the buffalo. Fortunately the weekly farmer's market brings in the unexpected attendees. Joyce Jenkins is the prime mover and shaker; she edits Poetry Flash a long-standing bay area tabloid featuring a thorough schedule of plentiful readings. It is still somewhat published these days but only on line.
For decades there was a vital happening poetry scene here that it served. Now it appears that what remains are thought-they-were-big-fish poets in a drying-up pool of sparsely-attended book shop readings and gladiatorial spoken-word slam contests. The careerist academic lap-dogs pant along as ever happy for scraps offered by the greater vampire-squid of higher education. Did I mention that this festival was started by former US poet laureate Robert Haas a UC professor who was oddly non-commital when it came to the desecrating slaughter of the Memorial Oak grove on campus. Would Frost or Sandburg been so timid as to have made no comment and taken no side in the matter?

There was deep thought as well.

Last year I was there for a fine reading by the fine poet and great man Gary Snyder. In his late seventies he clearly  still possesses the big sky mind and the affecting voice of a major poet. Great to see him again here in Berkeley where he influenced Kerouac. Snyder inspired the character Japhy Ryder in Jack's book the Dharma Bums. When he said we were patient to wait for his segment, as I lay in the grass before him I raised my arm to him in a sincere salute.

27 September 2014