Ordinary Time

Over at Mainbrace, Joseph Mailander waxes nostalgic and philosophical:

By the way, it’s good to see Rodger, after a considerable hiatus, is now busy reminding people that there’s not much to Ian McEwan. Rodger isn’t a guy who goes to cocktail parties to do business.

My local blogosphere from even eighteen months ago is almost unrecognizable: Cathy Seipp has left us forever, Mack Reed gave up LA Voice, Rodger is in San Francisco, and I am doing other things as well. Why do I have the sneaky feeling that we’re all in quieter, better, more peaceful places—each one of us? Ordinary Time is a good place to be.

My initial sarcasm-laced response to this was “Well, I can guarantee that Cathy is in a quieter and more peaceful place but as for the rest of us …” And then I temepred that with “What the hell are you talking about, Mailander? I’m living in poverty in North Beach. The Barbary Coast. I live above a strip club and a tattoo parlor in a run-down hotel where it’s rumored that Jack Kerouac once stayed, probably crashing on the floor in a sleeping bag in someone else’s room because God knows those Beats never had money for their own room or their own booze, for that matter.”

And then I reconsidered what Joseph had to say, took a look at the bigger picture, if you will.

I would be hard pressed to say that I’m spiritually better off than a year ago or at least in the nine months since I moved to San Francisco. My resources are low, my health is poor and getting worse, I can usually only afford to eat once a day and my biggest challenges today were (1) Trying to figure out how to make $20.00 stretch as food money until Friday night when I get paid for my new part-time gig as a doorman at Vesuvio, and (2) Trying to figure out what I’m going to do on Friday when I do not have the rent that I’m told must be ponied up or, well, get outta Dodge.

But you know what? I probably am better off in many other regards. I live in an actual community up here. A bohemian community, to be sure, of artists and writers and mad poets, strippers and boozers and merchant seamen, junkies and the homeless. And within the social circle that I won myself into since arriving in North Beach, we watch each other’s back. We have actual friendships and care about each other and we’re bonded by the fact that we are all, each and every one of us in this community, living with one foot off the curb.

That’s more than I can say for any community I ever lived in down in Los Angeles.

Just yesterday I was sitting in Vesuvio having coffee and a friend asked me how far behind in the rent I was. Technically, I told him, three weeks but they were willing to take one week of $270 if I could produce it that day. He nodded, sipped his coffee, then quietly excused himself. He returned ten minutes later and thrust a wad of cash in my hand.

“There’s two hundred,” he said, “Figure out where you’re going to get the seventy.”

I might add that this man, like myself, is on disability and can hardly afford to be throwing money around.

That’s the kind of neighborhood North Beach is, a bunch of souls clinging to life rafts and keeping their fellow floaters from drowning. I never saw that kind of humanity displayed in any community in Los Angeles — or maybe I just lived in the wrong places.

And — oh, books! Yes! People up here actually read! They carry books with them down the street, into bars and coffee shops and on the bus and train. I have more intense literary discussions over a pint at Vesuvio in one week than I ever had with any one soul in the entire 20 years I lived in L.A. Hell, I see Lawrence Ferlinghetti walking down Columbus Avenue almost every day. How cool is that to be standing in Jack Kerouac Alley, having a smoke and waving a good morning greeting to Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

So, Joseph, you are right. Ordinary Time is a good place to be. Now if I can just figure out how to hang on until Friday …

(Artwork: Cynthia Davis. cynthiadavis.com)