Back to California / normal

I am quite happy to be home and back in California. Since I grew up in the New York area and also spent some time in my youth in Boston, I couldn't help making comparisons, during my visit, wondering what it would be like to be living in those places. I liked my friend Dennis's neighborhood in Brooklyn as well as Manhattan, and I liked Belmont, Cambridge, Wellesley, Arlington, Somerville, and downtown Boston — all places I'm sure where I could live happily. But San Francisco definitely feels like home. Even on miserable wet days like today, the light is different; there's a sense of openness from the Pacific being out there. And people are more diverse here than anywhere, living more or less amicably, with some sense that we're all in this life business together.

Maybe I'm crazy and imagining all this … But anyway, GO GIANTS! During yesterday's SF Opera dress rehearsal (standing room only because of the presence of Placido Domingo), there was an undercurrent of excitement about the game, and, during the intermission, people turning on their phones frantically to find out the score. Of course, the Giants did not clinch last last, but that's just typical Giants. Winning in a clean sweep would be too easy. They have to drag it out and make us sweat!

I should say the readings in NYC and Boston went well. Attendance was a little underwhelming, but then I'm hardly a headliner. Those who did come seemed to like what they heard.

Next reading is Beyond Baroque, Friday, November 5th, at 7:30 PM. We are more than broke right now; we are in deep debt, definitely up a creek though perhaps not yet without a paddle. But I'm flying down for this reading, because it was planned in the hopeful days of early summer. I'm reading with two fabulous poets, Millicent Accardi and Rick Bursky. So come on out!