It's up an down, this city. After a long long week of work work work, I kick back with Molly the old friend and roommate and her student cadre. Art school kids, priceless company; talking communes and cutting hair and playing music late after a turkey feast. I got lost on my way over, climbed a few hills I didn't need to. But no matter, the exercise is good. Ditoto on the way home with a head full of red wine, certainly lendeding a maniac edge to the downhill capers and a kind of grim solderly attitude to the climbs.

One lady pulled over to ask if everything was kosher -- me taking up a whole lane with my swerving -- so I had to explain how crosscutting makes a steep hill easeir to climb. The best was near the peak, cutting on a long shallow downhill grade and letting go of the handlebars, looking up at the giant radio towers and feeling the closeness of the streets, the sea-tinged divinity in the breeze.

Once I had a girl on rocky top,
half bear the other half cat,
wild as a mynx but sweet as soda pop
I still dream about that

I used to listen to that blazing little bluegrass ditty projing over the w-burg bridge in the late spring sun; a golden time back east. After a night -- a week -- of pushing hard here in the Bay it makes me think of all the people I love and miss back in Brooklyn, of Nick and his old-world W.C. Fields vaudville senabilities, of Julia and her balsy comic truth, of Frank and Jeremy and Alex and Wes and Kev and John and Joe and the thing that is the Meek, of Sasha, of Brendon and Sarah and Brandy and Carrie and Archie and Hugo and the rest of the friendly faces at the lyric, of Emily and Kate and Chris Kam and Frank Boudreaux and Christine and all the people I aught to have seen more often.

I seem to have traded a life of great social comport and little substantive purpose for something approaching the polar opposite. I'm just observing, not complaining. For the moment it's contrast, that grand and holy waltz which is the essence of life. I notice things. I learn. I grow. This is good.