THE MISSING INK STONE

A dream involving pale yellow ochre, a crimson blood hue, and various intense refractions of cerulean and lapis lazuli, as well as the emperor Hui Tsung's calligraphy. I was glad I woke up before the burglar alarm went off, and I realized that I haven't used my stone for grinding ink sticks in many years. I think that it's underneath one of my book cases. Probably the one which has the seals and unused seal stones. The seal carving blades are in a narrow box to my right on the short table underneath the computer table in the teevee room, where presently I am. I use them often, but I haven't made a seal in a long time.
They're good for various things.

The red seal ink is next to small the wooden owls.
I do not know where the black ink is.

The emperor Hui Tsung (宋徽宗 ('sung fai jung') was a brilliant painter and calligrapher, talented poet, and an ill-advised and failed leader during whose reign the Jurchen gained the ascendency that caused the dynasty's downfall. The last nine years of his life were in captivity. He lived a total of fity two years (7 June 1082 CE– 4 June 1135 CE).

His bird and flower paintings are justly famous.

北宋： 960–1127。 南宋： 1127–1279。

To the great credit of the Song Dynasty (宋朝 'sung chiu') they relied greatly on talented and educated people in administration rather than personal favourites and flatterers. Many fields flourished during their rule, and China for many years was indeed a centre of the universe.

This picture of a robin is NOT one of emperor Hui Tsung's paintings. He would probably have found it rather amusing and advised me to keep working at my illustrations, practice more, find my ink stone again, and then perhaps eventually, young man ...

And let us meanwhile not discuss my calligraphy.
It does not count in any way.



The dream also involved comfortable woolen socks. When sleep-burgling an antique store, these are probably essential. Especially while cooling your heels in a police cell afterwards.



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THE FLAGRANCY

When my mother lived in the Los Angeles area after marrying my father, she was "convinced" that to save money they took down the mountains every afternoon. Actually, the air polution would obscure them by tea time, and they'd fade into the greenish grey-haze. I did not really understand what she was talking about until after returning to the United States I lived in the Los Angeles area for a year or so. It rained overnight once, and that morning when I looked out of my bedroom window I was shocked to see mountains there.
So close I could almost touch them.

Okay, Southern California really IS cheap as blazes.
Why aren't those things there all the time?

But apparently things have improved.


It's still Southern California, though. I'm glad I moved back to Northern California, where the craziness caused by drugs and chemicals in the water is not quite so rampant. Except for Berkeley, where there are giant hairy vampire bats crawling around on the office carpet, which must be whacked with a ruler.

Here in the Bay Area you have to drive for several hours to see mountains. Fortunately I'm not very big on mountains. I have never been to Tahoe, and I don't ski.
I do not wish to disturb the bears.

As I understand it, once you go far enough westward and cross the mountains, you're in a fairy tale land where menthol cigarettes, high proof grain alcohol, and methamphetamine are all over the place. Which explains a lot about both Nevada and folks from the SF Bay Area. Many of whom pack their own vegan supplies for the journey, and sachets of mushroom coffee which you can't get there.


We banned menthol cigarettes in California eight years ago. One of my coworkers has to drive all the way to Oakland to break the law and buy cartons of them under the table.

I am shocked, shocked I say, at the rampant disregard for regulations.
No wonder people so many sneer at the government.
One would be foolish not to.



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FINE, BE THAT WAY

The dream ended up in a spartan and very clean store where there was a porcelain object with a pale blue crackly glaze. Which is what had pulled me in. It was lovely. The proprietor and I ended up talking about various things, agreeing that the educated man should smoke Taishan cigarettes (named after one of the famous mountains in China), because they are refined and elegant, slim ciggies which Hello Kitty would like, with a flavour capsule in the filter which when popped imparts a discreet jasmine tea fragrance.

Mount Tai (泰山), which lends these distinct cigarettes its name, is one of the five legendary peaks. It's located in Shantung. The cigarettes are made by the same company that made the Hatamen (哈德門) cigarettes, once very popular and advertised by celebrities. Etsong Tobacco Holdings (颐中烟草有限公司 'yi jung yin chou yau haan gung si'; Etsong Tobacco Limited) formerly the Qingdao Cigarette Factory on Zhuzhou Road (株洲路), I believe at the intersection of Taishan Road (泰山路), located in Qingdao, Shantung.

To savour Taishan cigarettes is to taste history.


He accepted one of the smokes I offered him, and we admired the ceramic object in silence. Restrained and evocative, the kind of thing you would find in a sholar's residence.

It was a lovely dream. Courtesy of sleeping late. Sometime today or tomorrow I'll have to buy some more Taishan cigarettes (泰山香煙). They come in a cream-ivory hued hard pack. Understated and stylish. Very civilized. Makes the inner Hello Kitty happy.

The object in question was not, strictly speaking a Qingbai (青白 'ching paak') glaze, more tinted, and quite possibly Guan ware (官窯 'kun yiu') in style, though of recent make.
A more modern interpretation of a ruyi (如意 'yü yi')



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THE FECKLESS

The bald dog fellow expressed that he was quite tiring of the frequent excessive drinking and loudness in the backroom and presumed coke snorting in the toilet. He would say something to the leading pervert if it happened again. Which is good. Because as I see it my task is to ignore people speeding up their own flame-out, though I also find such behaviour just not done. Please, feel free to speak up.

Largely I assume that that sort of thing goes on all over Marin. I work there, and I have seen that Woody Allen film. Which in some ways was a documentary. The new York native was an innocent man then, and quite agog over what he saw while here. And cocaine has been the brainzapper of choice in Marin since the seventies to such an extent that it's a miracle they ever get anything done and don't sit around all day with their thumbs in a dark place.

Cigars, bourbon, and hot fresh coffee are all fine up to a point.
Nose candy, gummies, and tequila a bit much, however.
Damned decadent savages.
Heathens!


As someone whose great great grandparents were Calvinists, I feel it is my duty to sneeringly disapprove of all you depraved self-indulgent degenerates.
You're all frightful and karma gonna get you.

MOUNT TAMALPAIS

Many Marinites do not deserve to live in so nice a place, but we're okay with them staying there rather than here. San francisco has enough of its own problems. Tourist season is upon us, and many of our visitors are mannerless barbarians in their early twenties.

See the Golden Gate Bridge, take selfies, push onto the bus, ignore common sense and social niceties, and radiate blithering entitlement.


Act as if everyone has an onion tied to their belt.

Which has not been the style in years.



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THE MOOSE HEAD

Dreamed of Valkenswaard where I used to live last night. Not a particularly pleasant dream. High school. Which were the years when we became sort of adults, but not wise. The world seemed more open, but was still opaque. I left there when I was eightteen, and have fairly regularly looked back.

Less than ten years after that I was swilling lattes and cappuccinos in North Beach, reading books in the basement of City Lights, and developing a distaste for the Beat Poets.

That, too, was an era of change.


I am not happy with some of my past selves. In hindsight, we human beings take too long to develop. And the organism is too fallible to be a reliable vessel for all of that. But at that age one still thinks that one will live forever, limitations are temporary and unclear, and the future seems endless


Growth has not stopped, the process continues. I don't really like the person I was one or two decades ago. Hindsight is clearer than it ever was, and there is far more of it. Two constants in the past, tools for shimmering remembrance, are tastes and smells, which bring back whisps from long ago.

PETRICHOR

Yesterday Hector said something which brought back in my mind's eye and ear an entire episode of Fawlty Towers, which was a short British comedy series with many extremely painful moments if one felt for the main character.

Having heard my own voice in recordings recently, I can identify with him.
Also with The Major, retired British colonial service.

Also, some frightful English food.


Horrors of the past.



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THE CONVERSATION GOT LOST IN TRANSLATION

We both agreed that skunks are adorable, and vastly better than the stench of you know what near the dispensaries all over the place since that stuff was legalized. Which does not smell skunk. More like burning dead seagull and other marine refuse. And it lead to public nudity by people who should NOT be naked in plain view during daylight hours, think of the damned children!


There are both dispensaries and children in my neighborhood. I'm with the kiddies on this. Which is exeptional, because most little brats haven't learned modulation and think they're bog's gift to mankind.

But if the choice is nudists or kids overrunning the neighborhood, the choice is not that hard. No one wants poncy middle-aged bozos with beerguts and back freckles strolling around and shopping in local stores. Good lord. We'll put up with any number of little monsters oh so precious instead of the naked ugly people stoned on formerly illegal substances.
Quite irrespective of gender. Many of them are female.
Banned from local yoga classes.


As you can see, legalized pot is a mixed curse.

Even without the alternative being spongy white flesh in freckled flabby rolls invading one's field of vision, skunks are a clear winner. Soft fur, racing stripes, inquisitive natures, and incontestably cute as the dickens. More skunks, fewer naked crazies!

There ought to be a law!



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ABSTRACTED, NO PISANG!

When she left for work she forgot her banana on the counter. It lay there, half eaten (eh, plus or minus 70%), abandoned and forlorn, exuding its bananish odour silently like a killer with a can of mustard gas. I am not a huge fan of bananas. Cooked, they're fine. Flaky pastry crust, sugar, butter, and perhaps a drizzle of chocolate syrup while it's still hot from th eoven, or fried like a beignet with a heavy dusting. Great with coffee that way as a snack in the evening. Pisang goreng à la mode de Batavia.

But raw? Not a fragrance one wishes to wake up to. It's a rude uncouth smell.

She must have been in a hurry.

I am not.


Normally on Friday I'm the one rushing out, as I wish to catch the early bus in, so that I can get things done before my coworkers arrive and the crusty old geezers wander in with their inane rightwing prattle, or the neurosurgeon arrives, so I can unlock the door for him and exchange the odd intelligent pleasantry.

Today, exceptionally, I have off. But I got up far too early.
Chalk that up to programming.

It wasn't squabbly oriole noises that woke me up this morning, though one could be excused for thinking of that immediately. I am not a young wife dreaming of her husband at the frontier in Liaoxi and the barbarians have already taken the capital. That boat has fled. Parts of it. Wrong image, wrong era, wrong gender. No Jurchen tribesmen.

[Reference: 打起黃鶯兒，莫教枝上啼。啼時驚妾夢，不得到遼西。By Jin Changxu (金昌緒 'kam cheung suei').]


Quatrain (絕句 'juet keui') by Dufu (杜甫 'dou fu'):

兩個黃鸝鳴翠柳，
一行白鷺上青天。
窗含西嶺千秋雪，
門泊東吳萬裡船。

['leung go wong lei ming cheui lau - jat hang paak lou seung ching tin - cheung ham sai ling chin chau suet - mun paak tung ng maan leui suen'.]

Paraphrasis: A couple of orioles sing in the green willows, a line of herons ascends to the sky; my window contains the western ridges snow of a thousand autumns, my door faces Eastern Wu's myriad mile boat.

The Chinese text shows a balance: Couple or pair in the first line balanced against the line of birds in the second, the yellow of the orioles and the white of the herons, the jade-like hue of the willows versus the crystal clarity of the sky. Window against door, western pass-ridges against eastern Wu, thousand against myriad (萬 ten thousand). It is cleverly done, and elegant.



Second cup of coffee. I have lit up one of the delicate Hello Kitty style cigarettes (貴煙 'kwai yin') that miss A.A. likes, later after visiting Chinatown I shall smoke the Peterson sandblast pipe that Karl has seen every time we've worked together.



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BOY GENIUS BELLYACHES ABOUT WEATHER

When I stepped out to do some errands, I thought I might be overdressed. As, yesterday, had I been so I would have been. Two hours later I wished that I had dressed much more warmly. A young woman on her cellphone was saying that she couldn't understand how, if her apartment was comfortably in the seventies, it was only sixty degrees outside.
Which it was actually less than because of breezes from Siberia.

Letter to the editor: I wish to register a complaint! How is it that it feels like an early March outside, as March used to be, not this year's March which felt like May should feel, about which I am not happy either, and it sure doesn't feel like May should feel? What we need to do is vote the Republicans out, and revive the old custom of tying onions to our belts as was the style years ago. Just one onion can keep a man warm for hours in a snowdrift!

While I was eating lunch it turned arctic.

In merely one hour it dropped ten degrees Fahrenheit. Which is beastly. All I can think of is those folks in tee-shirts and shorts, which in early afternoon had seemed ideal, currently freezing to death on the tundra surrounding Nob Hill, Chinatown, and North Beach.
Perhaps we'll discover their shivering corpses tomorrow morning.
As well as the fat people they used for tauntauns.

Suffering. Humanity!

In any case, I've mailed off payment for what was still owing on the dexter lower extremity angioplasty, which came due this week. So I'm clean on that score. And the leg does feel buckets better. It no longer bitches.

The magpie is considered a harbinger of happiness. Understandable, given that it is perky and seems quite even-tempered. A very upbeat bird.


Lunch was okay. I'll have something else next time.



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NOTHING BUT DOOM

While doomscrolling this morning I came across the news about a Florida man using a frozen squirrel as an offensive weapon in a Waffle House brawl. Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot get any more red state than that. It's the epitome of red stateness, it goes up to eleven.

Waffle Houses and dead wildlife are what a large part of our country is all about.

If instead of visiting parts of Europe during our vacations we had visited the states were interracial marriage used to be illegal (the red states) it would have been both mind expanding and traumatizing for life.


"Let's go to Waffle House and fight while waiting for greasies!"


Sounds like a plan. The entire fraternity house piles into pick-up trucks and roars off down the road, past the holler and the sherrif's moonshine still, over the dirt path through the meth lab trailer park, waking up the entire home for middle-aged diabetic bubbas, till they get to food heaven. Where they'll get into arguments about Nietsche and Kant with precisely the people they would never want their sisters to marry. Hairy butch dykes named 'Lulu-Belle'.
Who wears stained overalls and still smells like cow manure from her job at the combo hospital and veterinary clinic where they turn juveniles into space aliens.
Which is forbidden across the state line in Alabama.
Because the Bible!

I'm convinced that the main reason European tourists visit the United States is so that they can see things like that. There's probably a ride at Paris Disneyland that gave them a taste. Tonnes of Europeans will be visiting the U.S. during the World Cup, so be on your worst behaviour. They expect it. Remember, as the hosts, it's our duty to be disgracious.

Do all women there dress like Daisy Duke? Or just the ones under sixty?

Doesn't matter. And as long as the waitress who brings you the ice tea with that cup of extra sugar does, no one cares. And if Scarlet and Melanie are behind the grill slinging possum patties and burgoo, everything is fine. Want some Jack with that, hon?

Can your pet alligator do tricks? Sit, boy!


Years ago some good old boy lost his head when a support wire for an utility pole snapped it right off while he was leaning out of the passenger side window of his friend's pick-up truck. It's still roaming the swamp looking for a body to attach itself to, so don't go out after dark.




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MANGO MAYO TEA TIME

Do not put the mayonnaise on the mango. Yes, they were bought during the same shopping jaunt, but they aren't meant to be savoured at the same time. At least breathe between the two. This is sound advice. And it's free.

After I finished smoking my pipe I did my shopping, purchasing a net baggy of lychees for the elderly Indonesian Chinese woman downstairs in addition to Japanese mayonnaise, veggies, throat lozenges, and the mango. All of which stay in this apartment. It is a truly lovely mango, which will not be improved in any way by the addition of mayo. That's something that only a deviant would do. Neither my apartment mate nor I are deviants.

Tea time was fabulous. Quiet, restful. Nice pastry.
A long pause that refreshes.
Good beverage.


By the way: Do NOT tell anyone that hamsters and fried oysters taste different. They will naturally ask "how do you know?". Let them panic instead, do not reassure them.
This childcare advice is provided free of charge.

Fried oysters are crunchy on the outside.

A phone call to the pharmacy earlier took care of refills, which I will pick up tomorrow, and I also managed to postpone my jury duty availability dates by a week, so that I don't have to do that during my next doctor's appointment and optometrist's appointment. Serving justice takes a necessary back-seat.

While reading before lunch I ran into a famous quatrain (五言絕句 'm yin juet keui') by Jia Dao (賈島 'gaa dou') which almost everyone knows. It's often quoted.


松下問童子， 言師採藥去。
只在此山中， 雲深不知處。

['chung haa man tung ji - yin si choi yeuk heui - ji joi chi saan jung - wan sam bat ji chü']


"Amid the pines I queried the servant, who answered that his master had gone picking herbs; but in these mountains, with this deep fog, it's impossible to know where he went."


Such short verses are very easy to memorize.
As one does.



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SUNLIGHT, CRUST, AND CHOPSTICKS

What pulled in the customers, mostly cleancut younger Hong Kong Chinese desperate for a semblance of edible food, was the fact that it was a spacious dim sum restaurant, and looked remarkably clean and familiar. All the right decorations. Fu pasted on a wall. Scrollpainting of a horse. Lucky bamboo. Other potted plants. Red things. A small collection of familiar porcelain statues with wine cups before them, and a beckoning cat figurine.

What attracted the very few Caucasian customers was that there were condiments on the tables. Including the most miserable selection of hot sauces on the planet. The bottle that looked the most promising was encrusted with dried gloop from the top down. One table actually had Sriracha, which I snagged when the guest there was abstracted.

As I said: it was a very clean restaurant. Sparkling surfaces.
With thoroughly disgusting hot sauce bottles.

Somewhere in the Midwest.

Altogether a fairly nasty dream from which I'm glad I woke, but other than my plate of food which I had barely tasted I enjoyed being there. Nice crowd just as baffled as I was by the dissonance of location, strange attempts at familiar dishes, clean sparkling, and that large horrifying collection of smeared drippy crusted hot sauce bottles that the local truckstop would be proud to own.

As dreams go, it was quite baffling. Firstly, the chances of myself visiting an "inviting" restaurant for breakfast are extremely slim. My idea of waking up is a cup of strong coffee followed by a tromp around the neighborhood smoking my pipe and barking at dog walkers and joggers. No solids. Then a second cup of coffee while doomscrolling and cussing about Republicans and the most corrupt regime in Washington since President Grant.
And the chances of me ever being in the Midwest are less than zero.


Perhaps it was the allure of a familiar type of environment where both lutefisk and grits, or ghastly church suppers (I've heard about those no thank you) did not threaten anyone with gastric trauma. My idea of the vast centre is mounds of bland protein and hot grease with melted American cheese on everything, sometimes even the dining surfaces.
People saying "ya sure" and "pass the sugar, this food is too spicy".

There are good people there. Large pale pink good people.
Diabetes is their favourite spectator sport.
Jeepers Creepers.



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FOOT AND MOUTH

My feet hurt enormously after being at work all day. Where I had heard all about gay sex among senile delinquents without intending to. It is not my favourite subject. Also paranoid conspiracy horse pucky. Also not a favourite subject. I would far rather put my ear to the ground and listen to the earthworms.


This evening there were too many people underfoot. So the karaoke bar was out of the question, what with being screamingly loud, and jampacked. Some crazy white woman's intended hook-up with a drunk hunk, which went kablooie, while I was on the last few minutes of my pipe, neither interested nor entertained me.

Apparently she proved too crazy. And though staggeringly blotto, he just wasn't drunk enough.

My role in life is to sometimes be an unwilling witness.

I am essentially a prude; people should be civilized in public. Even if the public is after sundown long after business hours and there is only one witness.

And above all, I should not be able to see a nipple and half plus nearly an entire boob. Warm weather brings out too much the slut in some people. Think of the children! For the love of gob, will no one think of the children?!?

It's been a rich full day. As a means of distracting myself from the energetic gay sex among senile deliquents we discussed sebaceous cysts in great detail, and in the evening over food, pink hair and eighteen boxes of books and a drag show were mentioned. Frat boys came in, were carded, and wandered out again. Tat Yee explained to someone that to learn Chinese he should have a girlfriend. An emergency face mask was proffered. The public bus is of course a rolling Petri dish, but tonight was nearly empty.

In a Chinatown doorway the biggest cat I've ever seen stared out at me.
No, it wasn't a mountain lion. Maybe a mutant.
A baleful entity.




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WHY SOME OF YOU ARE STILL ALIVE

Counted a dozen whack jobs in Portsmouth Square yesterday. Near the old biddies playing gin rummy. Whom they were exceedingly careful to not disturb. Because if you bother a Canto granny with a pocket full of nickles she won gambling, the gates of hell will open up. She ain't breaking San Francisco law with her cohorts just to spoonfeed you nickels, boy.

The neighborhood fellows will gladly scrape up your messy remains and feed them to the local coyotes. They can find some Chick-fil-A sauce to make you palatable.
Because that's what it's for. Corpse improvement.

Plus, of course, there are the police.
Some of them have relatives.
Who speak Cantonese.


An elderly Cantonese lady on a nearby bench dropped all of her ill-gotten nickles accidentally while I was cleaning the pipe I had been smoking. I am very glad that one of her friends and fellow card sharks helped her pick up all the coins.
Profoundly grateful, in fact.


I am too young and pretty to die.


And, speaking of sauces, I now know where I can buy Kewpie Mayonnaise. Discovered it yesterday. This is important because I owe my apartment mate a bottle of Kewpie, having accidentally left hers out too long. Last year.

This too qualifies as civic improvement. Cantonese women who have Dutch Americans as apartment mates have suffered much, but fortunately condiments partially make up for that.

If that were not the case, this city would be a meaner uglier place.
Cantonese women mayhem is always a distinct possibility.
We Dutch Americans are peace-loving.
Condimentalists.



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COMPOUND IT ALL!

While browsing through the Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty (a book put together a couple of centuries ago showcasing a minute fraction of what was written over a millenium before the present era, during what was a golden age), one word stood out that the poet had used merely because he could: 藁 ('gou'; a variant of 槁 meaning "straw, withered, hay, an old dead tree", used metaphorically to mean household implements and wifely tasks).

The poet was 柳宗元 ('lau jung yuen').

Mr. Lau was a poet and prose writer of the mid-Tang, whose life in many ways follows the customary path of several Chinese intellectuals. Initial scholarly success, and great official appointments, then falling afoul of the powers that were, followed by internal exile to some provincial backwater or hellhole, often so far from civilization that the buses didn't go there, with the unstated intent that he should perhaps die of a tropical disease and thus cease being a nuisance.


There's a county named 藁 in Northern China, as well as a city district (藁城區 'gou sing keui') that was already in existence two millenia ago. 藁城 was founded during Western Han (202 BCE – 9 CE).

Other than that, the word has scant use or usefulness.
If I'm ever in that area I shall have to visit.
It's now on my bucket list.

The list of obscure words that I cannot use in conversation without sounding like a stuck-up sticky wad is not as long as you would imagine, but it contains stuff from a number of different languages. It's greater than my swear-word vocabulary.
Which also includes several languages.


This is approximately and precisely as it should be.



昨夜裙帶解， 今朝蟢子飛。
鉛華不可棄， 莫是藁砧歸。
['jok ye kwan daai kaai, kam jiu hei ji fei, yuen waa bat ho hei, mok si gou jam gwai']

It's circumspeechily about a woman waking up in the morning after whompities and looking at her table of powders and make-up with slightly renewed enthusiasm. Google translate turns it into gibberish with a crawdaddy.



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EXAGGERANT

There is too much to do. But after tomorrow I wil have a four day weekend before going back to the salt mines, so it should be smooth sailing if and when I get off my duff today. In the meantime I'm enjoying the silence. My apartment mate has gone off to work, so I do not hear the creatures in her room squabbling or arguing about fatty inner thighs, so hungry, so very hungry, who is a nice juicy meatball, and "big guy is not as stupid as he looks". Which naturally gets the small she sheep objecting, because she thinks I'm quite intelligent.

An amazing coincidence. I think so too.

Big guy is smoking an old Charatan in the teevee room while wondering if he should look inside the Romeo y Julieta box and see which briars he put in there when he changed the rotation a while back. I have too many pipes, but only slightly over three dozen are in the rotation at any time. So there are boxes with others in various bookcases. It's a welter.


The tropical jungle with howler monkeys starts only a few hundred yards from here. On the other side of the ramshackle service bungalow the muddy river flows, vibrating in the hot moist air, sluggishly toward the gulf and the Java sea, where Admiral Doorman (of blessed memory) still roams the waters fighting Admiral Takagi's forces in perpetual conflict, not knowing that the latter died in battle in 1944.


Okay, so it's warmed up a bit (mid seventies). Which naturally makes the big guy think of malaria, typhoid, skin fungus, do I perhaps need to change out some pipes for others which speak to me, and the plantation economy. Blame the second cup of coffee for all of that.

It is far better to think of gibbons, and small spotted forest cats hunting in the high canopy, than fentanyl addicts several blocks away bent over in that zombie crouch as if kissing their back-ends goodbye. The DMZ starts only a few blocks south of here, then shades into the Tenderloin just below Post Street. Ocassionally one of them wanders north before the drug takes hold, and I'll see them when while waiting for the bus to Marin. Which is mostly cocaine territory. Both Marin and the stumbling druggies make me think of the speed freaks in North Beach years ago. Before the programmers started living in the residential hotels there and lamenting the sad absence of chai and samosas in the ruins of the beatnik paradise.

It's only a matter of time before Jimbo flames out. Which will be spectacular. I fully expect him to be shooting adenochrome by then, or experimenting with psychedelics. With a bit of luck I will not be a direct witness to the flaming descent, but will hear about it via via.


The older I get, the more I appreciate people who maintain their sanity.



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GREEN SPECKLED

None of the disgusting fellows in the back came in costumed or naked. Very disappointing. Neither did the members of the pipe club. Which disappointed me, as I'm always in favour of theatre, drama, and embarrassing decisions by other people. I myself naturally don't do any of that stuff. Which is why I do not own any extrovertly bad taste briars, and don't have to brazen it out. Good pipes, good tobacco. Sound decisions.

And of course pâté. A sufficiency of. So from my point of view, in that regard the pipe club meeting was a splendid success. And both Neil and Bernard were there. Neil has been a bit poorly of late, and Bernard is often travelling in ghastly parts of the world as well as exotic refugee camps. So it was almost miraculous to have both of them present.

Nick was also there. He has been described variously as an elderly hobbit, the troll under to bridge, and an impossibly hot hot hot old fellow why heavens I need to stick my tongue in his ear! That young lady got thrown out of the bar minutes later, by the way. I ascribe her passion to the fine tobacco he was smoking at the time. Virginias, touch of perique. I smoke very similar blends, but so far I have not aroused any reactions of that type.
Possibly my ears aren't sexy enough.
I am not alone in that flaw.
Nick is unique.


The experience did not leave any lasting trauma.

All active members were present. In addition to meaty products there was single malt Scotch. Myself, I was high as a kite on caffeine, having been drinking tea since I got in hours earlier.

Let me also clarify, even though it probably hasn't even crossed your mind, that none of us in the pipe club is a beastly old fart. We are all young and vibrant. Including the three gentlemen previously mentioned, who are all retired.


And despite liking them, it is a jolly good thing that none of them ran the Bay to Breakers. also, if they were to hypthetically in fits of insanity do so, they would be wearing sensible clothes. The very first picture of the race I saw today featured two untrim middle aged dudes in the buff, seen from behind. One of them has a back tattoo all the way down to the sunset. Now I am severely traumatized.

No one in the building was dressed in any way that might raise an eyebrow. Well, other than Bill snoring in the back room, wearing shorts and exposing his rather educational legs. But we're used to that. It is Marin, after all. And high seventies.

I asked one of the members to be sure to bring along the Charatan with the horribly green-speckled mouthpiece which I had seen at the previous meeting. It needs a bit of buffing.
He had smoked it outside during inclement weather.
So it's quite oxidized.




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GOOBER TROT

A few years ago I suggested to the local pipe club that they participate in San Francisco's zaniest event, as a themed unit. Naked pipe smokers in the dense fog. As they laboured up the Hayes Street hill I would be there in spirit, giving them moral encouragement, cheering them on. Not in the flesh, mind you, because sadly I alway work on Sunday. They took the matter under consideration, where it still is. And might, unfortunately, remain a little longer.
If I were to join them in that endeavor it would have more of a chance.

Naked middle aged men in the fog is what it's all about.

They fail to appreciate the gestalt.

The paradigm escapes them.


I am actually very glad that I will not be there today, as like them I shall not participate in the joy and radiant cheer of thousands of thematic joggers going from the docks near the Ferry Building to the beach all the way across the city, at whatever speed and in whatever state of dress. The serious runners will be in the lead, Kenyans probably, and the flobbly-wobblies will take several hours more, probably discarding items of clothing as they overheat from exertion while trotting through dense mists righ around the park, finally arriving at their destination hot, drenched, panting, shirtless and pantless, aching in every pore.
Oh it will be such fun!

The pipe smokers among them will be elsewhere instead. There's an open tin of Escudo which I really should sample before I forget. As well as several teabags with my name on them. These are important details.


Or I might have another bowl of Fourth Generation Black Dot. Which is quite good. Very comforting when dealing with either civilized pipe smokers or the rowdy senescents in the backroom. Either tobacco. Washed down with several cups of tea. And snapping like a turtle.
Fondly imagining several absent people flapping their old wattles naked in the fog just after dawn, possibly pushing a beer keg at speed past the appreciate onlookers lining the route.

Jeffrey, we saw you on the news. That beer keg would probably not have rolled back and crushed your testicles if you had emptied it first. Wear a cup next time.



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THERE THERE, LITTLE WOOZUMS

Remember to use your most comforting mother-like voice. Extend your hand in a soothing wavy patting gesture, and softly say "there there". Trust me. To Helen, who has been batty for years and claims that Willie Brown stole her Nob Hill mansion and evicted her, "there there!". To Jake who was convinced that the police replaced his hands with these lobster claws that keep dropping his beer, "there there!" And always remember to also make the gesture of benediction. Be the pope of reassurance!

There there.

When I got in there was evidence that the old geezers had imbibed too much alcohol the previous day. The sink was absolutely filled with whiskey glasses, and two coffee cups.

I knew precisely who the instigator had been.
He's obviously back from Malibu.


It is quite likely that it won't just be the enormous quantity of booze that does him in.
Lines of nose-joy will play a part. Think of the movie Cocaine Bear.
Precisely so. Educational.

Speaking of 'educational', one of the rarely there regulars showed up and bent my coworker's ears pointlessly for nearly an hour. My coworker is really not interested in the workings of ancient lighters other than the silver Dunhill from the pre-butane era in his own pocket.
Which he made the mistake of taking out and showing.



There 'Little White Nipple Dude' will be, in his favourite easy chair in the corner, adjusting the flame heights of his lighters so that they are equal, readjusting them, then refilling them and repeating everything. For hours. "Mommy, what is Daddy doing?" his imaginary daughter asks. And his imaginary wife responds "shhh, it's VERY important!"


My coworker should have simply said "there there" and made the gesture of benediction.
It would have been better. More peaceful.
Restful, even.



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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================