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Foggy morning rewrite.
Nov. 20th, 2017 07:25 amThis is an expansion of something I first wrote in 2001. I was inspired by walking home to our apartment in the Sunset on a very foggy morning.
--
It's a foggy morning in San Francisco.
The kind of fog that wraps around you like a jealous lover and tries to isolate you from the world. Someone has stolen our hills and replaced them with a grey wall that undulates like a living thing. For all any of us know, the world has vanished, leaving just the City by the Bay remaining. With every step, you inhale it, you are immersed in it, and you become part of it. For we are San Franciscans, and the fog is in our blood.
Long before the first men ever trod on the peninsula, long before it bore a name in any language, the fog claimed authority over this patch of land. Scientists can show why the fog is so powerful here, but that's not the whole story. We are blessed by a god of the mists, who seeks out worshippers who appreciate the powers he brings in his grey cloak.
This fog didn't come in on little cats' feet, it slid in. Rolling around the hills, swallowing the Golden Gate Bridge, mocking the tourists waiting to take pictures. For the fog is not to be upstaged by the mere works of man! No, today there is only room for one diva in the City by the Bay. From Land's End to Candlestick Point, soft tendrils reach out to embrace us all.
Somewhere out in that swirling gray cloud of probability is your San Francisco, but there are other ones lurking as well. Out there Sam Spade is tracking down the black bird, trying to find out who killed Miles Archer; somewhere on Divisadero a lone vampire walks with unaccustomed ease back to his lair, spared the cursed rays of the sun by the city's blanket; dogs bark at things just beyond the range of human perception or understanding; a thousand stories walk down each damp street, and always the fog acts as both director and stage master, letting us catch the rare glimpse of another's solitary life. But be aware: as you observe, so then the rest of the City is watching you. Take a bow, before the fog brings down the final curtain.
Those figures across the street . . . could that really be Shanghai Kelly and Emperor Norton? Is that Anton LeVey walking his dog while in deep conservation with Joe DiMaggio? Over on Market, you think you hear the cheers of the first raucous Forty-Niners Superbowl parade still going on, but somehow you know that this parade is being led by Mayor Harvey Milk. Down at Seals Stadium, the 1958 Giants are still led by Willie Mays, playing through the swirling mists of time. It's hard to tell, the fog muffles the sound to the point that you can't hear yourself walk. Are you really still here at all? Or has the fog carried you off, a sacrifice for the services offered? No, there's the cracked pavement under your feet. A break in the mist reveals the Herb Caens of a thousand worlds comparing notes and trading stories.
Listen! somewhere close by, the Grateful Dead and the Airplane jam with Coltrane and Monk, can't you just hear them? Is that Kerouac spinning free verse at the Hungry I while Lenny Bruce heckles from the audience? Maybe they're down this alleyway. . . Or maybe that leads to a Chinese dragon, coiled and waiting for New Year's Day. If the firecrackers on Chinese New Year drive off the evil spirits, what of the fog? Our guardian and guide; we leave our hearts in San Francisco deposited carefully in a fog bank until we can return. It is part of our collective soul.
You can tell the natives, we revel in these mornings. We walk a little slower, absorbing each tendril as it caresses us. We love the city, and she loves us right back. Let the tourists shiver in their hotel doorways. We know that this is the time when all the possible San Franciscos come together as Larry Niven pointed out in his short story "For a Foggy Night." The kind of morning where just walking down your street can shift you to a maze of gaslit wooden buildings or uninhabited sandy dunes. Or even to a San Francisco under a dome, or a place where the oceans have risen and left us as a new Venice.
On a morning like this, the natives know what to do. Put on a trench coat, grab your fedora, and walk out into the swirling mists. And be sure to lose yourself there.
It's a foggy morning in San Francisco.
--
It's a foggy morning in San Francisco.
The kind of fog that wraps around you like a jealous lover and tries to isolate you from the world. Someone has stolen our hills and replaced them with a grey wall that undulates like a living thing. For all any of us know, the world has vanished, leaving just the City by the Bay remaining. With every step, you inhale it, you are immersed in it, and you become part of it. For we are San Franciscans, and the fog is in our blood.
Long before the first men ever trod on the peninsula, long before it bore a name in any language, the fog claimed authority over this patch of land. Scientists can show why the fog is so powerful here, but that's not the whole story. We are blessed by a god of the mists, who seeks out worshippers who appreciate the powers he brings in his grey cloak.
This fog didn't come in on little cats' feet, it slid in. Rolling around the hills, swallowing the Golden Gate Bridge, mocking the tourists waiting to take pictures. For the fog is not to be upstaged by the mere works of man! No, today there is only room for one diva in the City by the Bay. From Land's End to Candlestick Point, soft tendrils reach out to embrace us all.
Somewhere out in that swirling gray cloud of probability is your San Francisco, but there are other ones lurking as well. Out there Sam Spade is tracking down the black bird, trying to find out who killed Miles Archer; somewhere on Divisadero a lone vampire walks with unaccustomed ease back to his lair, spared the cursed rays of the sun by the city's blanket; dogs bark at things just beyond the range of human perception or understanding; a thousand stories walk down each damp street, and always the fog acts as both director and stage master, letting us catch the rare glimpse of another's solitary life. But be aware: as you observe, so then the rest of the City is watching you. Take a bow, before the fog brings down the final curtain.
Those figures across the street . . . could that really be Shanghai Kelly and Emperor Norton? Is that Anton LeVey walking his dog while in deep conservation with Joe DiMaggio? Over on Market, you think you hear the cheers of the first raucous Forty-Niners Superbowl parade still going on, but somehow you know that this parade is being led by Mayor Harvey Milk. Down at Seals Stadium, the 1958 Giants are still led by Willie Mays, playing through the swirling mists of time. It's hard to tell, the fog muffles the sound to the point that you can't hear yourself walk. Are you really still here at all? Or has the fog carried you off, a sacrifice for the services offered? No, there's the cracked pavement under your feet. A break in the mist reveals the Herb Caens of a thousand worlds comparing notes and trading stories.
Listen! somewhere close by, the Grateful Dead and the Airplane jam with Coltrane and Monk, can't you just hear them? Is that Kerouac spinning free verse at the Hungry I while Lenny Bruce heckles from the audience? Maybe they're down this alleyway. . . Or maybe that leads to a Chinese dragon, coiled and waiting for New Year's Day. If the firecrackers on Chinese New Year drive off the evil spirits, what of the fog? Our guardian and guide; we leave our hearts in San Francisco deposited carefully in a fog bank until we can return. It is part of our collective soul.
You can tell the natives, we revel in these mornings. We walk a little slower, absorbing each tendril as it caresses us. We love the city, and she loves us right back. Let the tourists shiver in their hotel doorways. We know that this is the time when all the possible San Franciscos come together as Larry Niven pointed out in his short story "For a Foggy Night." The kind of morning where just walking down your street can shift you to a maze of gaslit wooden buildings or uninhabited sandy dunes. Or even to a San Francisco under a dome, or a place where the oceans have risen and left us as a new Venice.
On a morning like this, the natives know what to do. Put on a trench coat, grab your fedora, and walk out into the swirling mists. And be sure to lose yourself there.
It's a foggy morning in San Francisco.
