San Francisco, 7.2017: Gandhi and Knishes — A Photographic Essay

Allée of Trees

San Francisco 9.6.1990: Running the Gauntlet and Nurturing Hope

Flying back from San Francisco to New Orleans. Attending academic conferences always stirs up a terrible mix of feelings . . . .

Seeing classmates, some of them cool, others risen far on little merit (these often synonymous with the cool), a few genuinely warm and interested. The Catholic Theology Society of America itself is so stultifying. Everything must be couched in a way that makes sense to the aging clerics who are still the 2/3 majority of the group. Their dead hand clutches hard. I feel tired, so out of sorts, so dispirited at the end of it all . . . .

How to nurture the flame of hope inside? How even bring it to life, when all conspires, breathes together, to blow it out? I feel as I’ve always thought, written, spoken against the threat and counterweight of forces that now are simply too much for me.

I heard little at CTSA that inspired me. Except this: in her presidential address today, Anne Patrick cited a book by Elizabeth Fox Keller re: gender in science. She spoke of the apparent maleness of the notion that nature has laws, and the way in which this notion militates against reflectivity. I think this is a profoundly useful insight to critique the idea of natural law, particularly as it impacts on homosexuality.

(Enroute to) San Francisco 6.6.1990: Great Meteor Craters and Theological Gabfests

Writing enroute to San Francisco, having just crossed over what the pilot tells us is the “great meteor crater” on the New Mexico-Arizona border. I’m going to the Catholic Theology Society of America meeting to be on a panel discussing the bicentennial history of American Catholicism series.

The College Theology Society meeting just occurred in New Orleans. Bulletin—we’re approaching a rim of the Grand Canyon. CTS: I gave my paper on public theology as civil discourse. It was well-received—almost too much so. Audience packed with friends, including Stephen and Hilary S., her sister Rebecca C., and John M.

Speaking of whom: we all spent Sunday evening together, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, it was a very up experience. Sitting at Café du Monde and drinking coffee and talking, talking. About Bush, politics, church, theology, Stephen’s father. I felt a real sense of shared struggle, of community, that I often don’t feel with my American colleagues. Canadians are just more well-read (on the whole) and more tolerant in a genial, worldly-wise way—particularly re: homosexuality.

San Francisco 24-27.11.03: Mary's Blue Cape, Swooping Gulls

In San Francisco now, or, to be exact, Oakland. We’re at the Dominicans’ house of study, which is perched on the rim of the mountain behind Our Lady of Lourdes church. . . . And here I sit. That lull that the day after Thanksgiving is, for the non-shopper. Outside, the spire (? Is it, or does a shape of this sort have another name?) of Lourdes church blue on blue, dark blue trim on light, with a Mary symbol, a capital M with a cross inside it, and 3 fleurs-de-lis beneath. It’s beautiful atop the white tower.

I don’t know what else to do today, except try to capture some of the flux, try to be the negative on which light leaves its fleeting photographic shadow. Below, the slatey brown-blue lake relatively unruffled, except for here a breeze, there a V a swimming duck leaves behind, amazingly larger and larger, for such a small thing. Where trees are, on the banks, dark smudges in the water like smoke, like bruises. Gulls alone serene in their ceaseless swoop above the lake, but they, too, self-involved, a predatory search.

Nothing stays the same: not the wind throwing its words away on the water’s nameless scrawl, nor the light that glances between scudding clouds on the face of the lake and is gone forever.

Buddhists would find here a life lesson. I find it simply, sheerly, appalling. How to be incarnate, incarnational,and see the flesh as mere flux? How to love at all, if one does so?

San Francisco 28.5.01: Old Haciendas and Exotic Flowers

Another story told to me by Mike F., partner of Steve’s cousin Chuck B. Mike taught first grade, and says he loved it. Says the students called him Mommy.

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More plants, plants everywhere: did I mention the very handsome bottlebrush? I think I did. I’ve seen it only in New Orleans, where the yard at Galvez and Esplanade had a specimen in a summer corner. There, it grew as a shrub, perhaps because of the humidity? Whereas in Oakland, it’s a tree. I remember Stanislaw C. telling me either that it’s a native of Australia or that it grows well there. This made me think it prefers a dry climate. I seem to recall Stan saying there’s a yellow variety.

At the old Perralta hacienda (the original large grantees of the region), I snipped a piece of what J. calls potato tree or shrub. It’s a shrubby tree or a tree that also grows as a shrub. One source I consulted at Barnes and Noble identified it as the potato vine, a Solanum. But another garden book indicates it has been removed from the Solanum category. It has inconsequential leaves a bit like Ligustrum vulgare, and purple flowers like flattened dark morning glories, with crinkly edges and a dark yellow throat. I fear it won’t do in our less-than-tropical climate.

J. also pulled up for me a bit of some curious shrub-like perennial with the square stems and opposite leaves of a mint. It is aromatic when crushed, and has a dark red small flower, tufted like a honeysuckle or shrimp plant.

San Francisco 25.5.01: Bowers of Jasmine, Syncretistic Brew

In San Francisco. And I dreamt last night of some plants in my garden. They were thistle-like and had gone to seed. They were disfigured, smutted over, by some black fungus.

Yet atop them were goldfinches, three of them. I got down at eye level to the birds, where I could see right into their eyes. One looked back uncuriously, unafraid.

I couldn’t even see if it were a goldfinch, since all I could see were its face and eyes. I had to back away and stand up to see its color. I was afraid to do that, for fear I’d scare it.

I did so. It—nor the other two birds—didn’t move at all. I see that it is a goldfinch.

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I didn’t even remember this dream until today, at Cody’s bookshop. I picked up a book of poetry and opened to a poem about goldfinches.

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The gardens. One I saw yesterday in front of the Franciscan friary at St. Elizabeth’s church, an old German—now Hispanic—church in Oakland, was absolutely stunning. The colors in the clear California air seem to leap right through the eyes to the brain. As that happened, a rush inside, warm in the chest, bringing tears of sheer joy.

The flowers were foxgloves of all hues of lavender, with a bell-shaped flower in front I should know, and can’t recall, blue, white, pink, purple.

So much else to note. Agave with its mottled serpentine-looking leaves and strange canopy of orange tubular flowers. Bougainvillea/mandevilla trained to tree shape. Bowers of nutmeg-scented Confederate jasmine. And roses roses roses, everywhere, especially in old gardens, growing so abundantly that they seem almost to outgrow themselves.

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The syncretistic brew, always fermenting, that is San Francisco and its environs: here in this old German neighborhood in Oakland, that was a ranch into this century, people are now black, Hispanic, Asian. And plop in the middle a Greek Assembly of God church. Where there are no Greeks at all, that I can see. A Hawaiian eat-in restaurant (as opposed to a take-out one; and what would Hawaiian take-out food be?). Taco Bell and KFC in the same fast-food outlet—are the people driving through seeking burritos or hot wings? Ads for sex therapy and tantric healing in the daily newspaper cheek by jowl with Pogo.

San Francisco 26.5.01: Tall Tales and Hedges of Lavender

Line overheard at Steve’s cousins’ party last night: his cousin Treecy S.—“We call him Japanese Frank, since there are so many Franks in the building. I asked him, ‘Are you the one who pastors the Korean Presbyterian church?’”

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Steve’s cousin today, stories: someone in his wife’s family from Tabasco locked his daughter, who had a child out of wedlock, into a bedroom with the child, until both starved to death.

Another story: J.’s (Steve’s cousin’s) brother-in-law, who practices voodoo and folk magic from Tabasco, had an argument with J.. J. sat down and wrote the brother-in-law a letter after the latter stormed out of the room.

J. thought better of the letter, tore it up, flushed it down the toilet. Brother-in-law returns, walks into the bathroom, makes the sign of the cross over the toilet, and proceeds to tell J. everything he had written in the letter.

J. also says he slept with Rock Hudson in the 1960s (’60 or ’61). Didn’t know it was Rock Hudson till afterwards. It was an orgy, and Rock Hudson was surrounded by a bevy of beautiful naked boys, to whom he paid attention while in flagrante delicto with J.

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The wonderful flowers here—hedges of lavender, rosemary four feet high and blooming profusely, a purple and red althea covered in blossoms. Beautiful beyond compare. What must be bottlebrush trees sculpted into ovals and covered in red blooms.