1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I drove down to the Santa Cruz Mountains after practicing at the studio to catch the Leonid meteor shower. It was spectacular. I saw several on the drive down, just past midnight. When I got up into the mountains, I knew when to stop when I saw cars lining the side of the road. I stayed until past 3 a.m., and I saw more than 600 meteorites in that time. Hardly a minute or two passed without seeing one. There were probably hundreds of people up there to see them. I was probably the only one up there alone.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Fiction played a gig last night at the Voodoo Lounge. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great. We had our share of people coming up afterwards and raving. We always do and they sign our mailing list, and we never see them ever again. That's the story of the music scene here.

We have a gig at El Rio in September. After that, I want us to find another drummer, and I want to move back to bass.

Voodoo Lounge

They were a cool all-girl band. I liked them, but never heard anything about them again. We played after them.

The Stork Club gig, Oakland, CA

By the time we played, it was after midnight.

Series IX, Roll 3 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

China Basin, San Francisco: Under Rte. 280


Frame 2 - Under the 280 freeway

The Tempest Gig, Soma, San Francisco

Lisa on bass.


I swear I don't usually look like that when I'm playing.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I rode Critical Mass this evening. Fiction met at 8:00 for drinks and dinner to celebrate the completion of our CD. Lisa and Denise spent last weekend burning, printing and assembling the package and I was so impressed that I suggested we celebrate.

I also wanted to find out where everyone was at, and it turned into a pretty involved discussion and airing laundry. I told them how I was ready to quit in March; Chris expressed frustration and non-involvement with the band's sound now; and Lisa broke it off because she was feeling sick. A real downer for what was supposed to be a celebration, but it brought out our true faces.

Denise and Rosalie both got laid off from their .com jobs. Rosalie left for L.A. for the weekend. She's taking the month off.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

New lows. I'm wasting so much money these days going drinking with Ritu after work. That really has to stop, there has to be more to life than that. The band is on extended hiatus. The other two are going on vacations that take up most of this month.

New lows. Life is so useless. I'm stuck between knowing that there is a truth to life and reality to pursue and being stuck living the life of someone who knows of no such truth.

New lows. I'm ready to leave San Francisco. I'm sick of it and its weather. If I'm still around by December, I'm moving somewhere else. I don't care where, I am out of San Francisco by next year. San Francisco has given nothing to me. I've lost the two loves of my life while living in the Bay Area. I've also floated through a lifeless, uninspired, and depressing relationship, and a relationship that was so traumatic that it destroyed my desire to be in one at all. I can't say that the Bay Area has been good to me.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Happy Fucking Millennium! Again that urge to assess my entire life when I write in here. It hasn't changed from last month. There's no one really significant in my life and nothing really significant happening. I live a life none so significant.

What I'm doing still alive is still a mystery to me. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing still alive, and if I don't find an answer, I see no reason for staying. Really! I'm more and more convinced that I'm done and I should start living my life like I'm wrapping it up, wrapping up loose ends. Yea right, when have I not felt that way?

I was out on my bike for the new year. It was actually quite uneventful and anti-climatic. I did Critical Mass in the evening. It was smaller than usual, but it was the only hint of a party in this city for most of the night. It was fun and a little more boisterous, but there wasn't a whole lotta traffic to disrupt, it being a holiday.

At midnight I was on Twin Peaks with hundreds of other people. So much for being alone. The fireworks were visible, but no big deal. July 4th displays are typically more...more. I was heading down before the fireworks ended and after that I just rode around the city. It was basically a big fat nothing. People were off the streets by 12:30.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I had the greatest night tonight in years. I can hardly remember the last time I felt such wonderousness as I felt tonight. It was a rare reasonably warm day that melted into a rare reasonably warm night. I smelled Summer in the air, a scent that has occurred so rarely that I can’t even remember when I smelled it this Summer. Tonight was the full moon, the night that should be celebrated as the Moon Festival and being thankful for good fortunes. I felt I wanted to celebrate in my own way and find a way to be close to the moon.

I took off on my bike this evening for the Marin Headlands, doubting that I’d actually go all the way there, because whatever distance you go on a bike you have to be aware that you have to go that same distance to get home. I figured at some point I’d realize that if I went any further, the return trip would be too daunting to continue and I’d probably end up somewhere like Twin Peaks to watch the moon.

But I went, listening to the New Radicals CD that I recently got, and which turned out to be a perfect soundtrack for the ride. I headed down Church St., following the J Church tracks, did the zig-zag through the Duboce triangle area into the Haight and through the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park. I took the 10th Ave exit and cut all the way through the Richmond District to Lake Street, turned left and then right into the Presidio on 15th Ave.

It was absolutely gorgeous, but then it started becoming glorious. There was a section in the Presidio where there were no streetlights and tall redwoods overhanging and enclosing the road. I couldn’t see the road and I only knew where to go by the clearing up ahead lit up by moonlight. Not a soul in sight and I felt like I was flying through space.

I kept going, down Lincoln to the Golden Gate Bridge, to the catwalk where I had to go through a gate that they close after 9:00 except for bicycles. I crossed the bridge, pausing briefly to watch the moon and its reflection rippling on the bay and the San Francisco night skyline. Right when I got to Vista Point at the other end of the bridge, the CD ended. It was glorious.

I watched the moon from Vista Point for a short bit, but it wasn’t very satisfying. There were too many people, too many cars, too many cameras. It was too low, too far away from the moon. There was only one place to go from there, so I headed up into the darkness of the Headlands.

There were cars going up, but not many, not enough to be disturbing or distracting and my fears that it would be too dark to see the road were quickly allayed by the moon. All the roads were as clear as day and it was soothing to watch the shadow of my wheel spokes whizzing in the moonlight. Then at the final ascent, the road was closed to cars and from there I was completely alone. I got to the top of the Headlands, well, pretty darn close and the spread was unbelievable. And it was all mine and it was only me.

It was prayer and homage to the moon. It was being on the top of the world, it was being out of the world and looking at my life and what it has been. I used to live there and there and there. That’s Sutro Tower, I now live down the hill on the other side of it. There’s the entire stretch of Golden Gate Park; I ride that entire length to the ocean. Ocean Beach and the Seacliffs, stomping grounds? My whole life in the Bay Area was spread before my eyes.

The ride home was a little hard, but rewarding. I felt like I had touched something I hadn’t touched in a long time. It is a feeling that I love so much and it feels like I’m living my life for that feeling. It’s a feeling of vastness and being part of the entire universe. It’s almost always on Summer nights that I feel that. I wonder if it’s a feeling from a past life. Maybe like in the Japanese movie, “Afterlife”, you take one memory with you from this life into the afterlife.

Not a great movie, but I can take that basic concept and run with it. You can take a memory from this lifetime, but not into the “afterlife”, but into the next lifetime. Well, kinda the same thing. In the next lifetime, you’re always striving to touch that memory, that feeling, again. Perhaps it’s not the same stimulus that would trigger the feeling. But when you feel it, it resonates and you know it’s something much bigger than all that your life is.

That would also be a part of the “life is suffering” notion of Buddhism. Because the feeling is momentary, it’s like an intense deja vu that happens and then disappears without trace. When you have the feeling, you feel like you’ve attained something, but then it melts away into something you can’t even describe, much less share with other people. That to me is true suffering.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

The most pressingly frustrating thing that is characterizing this period of my life, which I’m hoping means only this Summer, is that I don’t have a job and I don’t have a strategy for finding one. I did go to a job fair on Tuesday and I signed up at a temp agency and I’m hoping they will call me sometime next week. If they don’t, I have no idea what’s going on.

Actually, the weather qualifies as a close second to the most pressingly frustrating thing characterizing this period of my life. This Summer has been absolutely miserable cold and it has even drizzled several times. It’s been cold and windy, and frustrating is the only way to describe it. Of course this is the first Summer I’ve been in San Francisco in three years.

I like where I live now. It’s not ideal ideal, but it’s more than satisfactory so I should clock my appreciation for that. This end of Noe Street is quiet and sees a reasonable amount of sun. The ceiling of this apartment is really thin so we can hear just about everything going on upstairs and that could be annoying, but I think we might be just as noisy to them.

I’m a little uneasy describing the physical space as comfortable, because I’m uneasy with physical space overall. There are times when the physicality of my surroundings seems so very arbitrary, and I know that most people don’t question such things. Physical surroundings are indisputable facts, they are not up for discussion or debate. It is such a basic thing that I’m struggling with, it’s kinda pointless, but not to me.

And in stranger times I feel that intangible things like dreams and hopes have less abstract forms and they feel more like fabrics, but just in my mind. Well, that’s self-contradictory, but I’m questioning what anything means to be “in my mind” because theoretically, everything is in my mind, or everything is my mind. So I’m sorta re-defining tangibility for myself, too.

So a final bit of confusion is in questioning what it means to be inside me and what it means to be outside. I’m supposed to be looking “inside” me, but where is that? Not a question to be taken lightly, but often done so.

Series VIII, Roll 16 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Japanese tall ship, sailing into San Francisco Bay: shot from the Golden Gate Bridge


Frame 33


Frame 35

Series VIII, Roll 16 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 17 - Pacific Ocean from Seacliffs.

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 32 - China Basin, San Francisco

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 25 - Construction site, maybe in SoMa.


Frame 26 - Mission Street, Mission District.

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Construction of the new Ferry Building plaza area on the Embarcadero:


Frame 11


Frame 12

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Diamond Heights, San Francisco:


Frame 2 - Close to where I moved to in Noe Valley.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

The Breakup: It has only been three weeks, I can’t expect myself to recover in that short a period. It’s still painful and my heart breaks every time I think of Josephine. There’s a nice balance between these journal entries and my actual memories of her. These journal entries chronicle our problems, but my memories of her are mostly fond ones.

I responded to an email and re-iterated my conviction that we stay away from each other. She responded saying that only then did she realize that we were finished. Once again I felt my heart shatter. But I guess that proves that the Relationship couldn't go on. For me, we broke up when she called to say goodbye forever. I heard “forever” and attached immediate meaning to it. She thought she could heap such abuse on me and we'd still get back together in a few days.

The Band: I like Fiction. They are good people. There’s a lot of sincerity and talent in the group. We play together fine, but I feel something missing. Sounding together isn’t enough to establish a groove. It’s fine that we’re playing together, but eventually something needs to be done to tighten it up.

The Apartment: I’m finally moving out of here. My current housemate got a flat in San Francisco with another woman named Rosalie and she asked me to fill the third room. I have no idea what the near future holds, but that’s OK. I’m hoping this will be a settling move. I want to move in with the feeling that this is my home, I’m settling there. I’m buying furniture and making the space comfortable for me and make me think that this is where I’m staying, I want to make it a place where I’m staying. I’ve never done that before. I’ve always assumed that I’d be moving on eventually. And this move to Noe Valley may not be permanent, but moving in, I want to treat it like a permanent move.

Series VIII, Roll 13 (Pentax ZX-5n, Tri-X):

Chinese Cemetery, Colma, CA: Maybe Hoysun Cemetery or Golden Hill Cemetery


Frame 31

Series VIII, Roll 13 (Pentax ZX-5n, Tri-X):

Beach at Fort Funston:


Frame 12


Frame 13


Frame 21 - high tide and stormy conditions.