Friday morning, at the neighborhood coffee house and wireless connection. Yesterday we went to the new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and I liked it a lot. It was great to see several paintings I’ve loved all my life in the new venue, although the wonderfully massive marble piece of King Saul brooding is not on view. Started to walk to the Legion of Honour to see an exhibit there and realized I was galleried out.
I’ve walked through so many areas where I’ve had some history, and it makes me realize that San Francisco is a haunted city for me: too many memories evoke old songs, I hear old voices, remember old stories, recall old fears, hopes, dreams, victories and defeat as I pass by places which trigger old associations. They all return. The vestiges of my personal, familial, corporate, historical memories: a neighbourhood where my great grandfather was born, the place where his grandfather had a warehouse on the waterfront in 1852, now several blocks from the Bay, the church where my parents were married in 1939. Moving past places where I worked, played, had intense conversations and more with friends and strangers about various matters of great importance now forgotten: all these landmarks which mix memory and desire – Thank you, T. S. Eliot - and make me glad to live somewhere which has room for new memories, new associations, new possibilities.
It has been wonderful for be back in San Francisco, and I am glad – very glad – that I live in Melbourne now.
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