- we go out in stormy weather ; we rarely practice discern -

...San Francisco, I can write - you are a city on full burn; not embers but gold and flame and the flashing blinking colours of a rave.

Since I stepped in this cab I've been composing phrases in my head like I haven't in months: here is Mission and she is a stunning, dark-eyed stranger, but that could be the night and there are murals on the walls we pass - murals and tags, call it as you see it - and uptown mixes with downtown. East, south, turning north by west, and on one of your countless hills, the world is raiding the unknown from the trunk of an abandoned car.

But you name streets for butterflies and your highways resemble nothing so much as they do rollercoasters. You're a city with a whimsy and a deep knowing. Of what I couldn't say; wouldn't - not yet, though the horns sound staccato and the sirens call out around the edges of it. A city of earthquakes, though I'd forgotten that.

Six stories up now, I'm fine with not feeling any - not now. The air, the brick, the skyline on right angles is enough.



(verticality as an art form -
the buildings blend together
in a view without trees
and yet I am breathing)



♥ music of the moment: the way we get by
.