Fog Sparks.

It is making me crazy that I cannot figure out the last word in this puzzle. Six letters and I cannot make them arrange themselves into some semblance of the English language. I’m hungry as well. I always go a little off kilter when I need food.

I am really enjoying this city. Diamonds in the sidewalks. Good food at every turn. That vast spread of water on all sides. Nothing but possibility, be it good or bad. From day one of the white man stepping onto these hills, it has been all about possibility. What is the one thing that always comes along with possibility? Energy. If things are headed in the good direction, the energy builds, grows to fill the space. If things are headed in the bad direction it falls away like the heaviest fluid, seeping past the continental shelf into the deep abyss. Any time that much energy is moving around you are bound to have static, and there is plenty of that here. All those little sparks flying around giving us a shock. Sometimes it feels good, other times the pain takes eons to go away.

I was walking past The Palace the other day and history, my history, fell right into my lap with a pleasant thud. Mammy had recently explained that it was the hotel she and Poppy stayed in on their famous trip here. I am always astounded when I think about this trip. They came in the fall of 1969. They were still newlyweds and the city had just gone through one heck of a summer. You ask any semi-aware person about hippies or counter culture and that summer, in this city is bound to come up. Seeing The Palace caused a little cyclone in my brain. Mammy was less than twenty-five years old. She had spent the first twenty-one of those years locked up in theology and long skirts. Poppy and his work brought her here. This place, at that time, being her age, having her background…it must have been like being hit with a tsunami of possibility.

I know they kept it tame. They went to see O Calcutta!, one of several shows playing at the time with fully nude performances. That was as crazy as it got. Still, that energy of possibility attached itself to her memory. Every time Mammy talks about that trip, tiny blue sparks fly from her eyes and her mischievous, crinkled grin.

I think I was shocked in the womb. I didn't realize this city was going to be such a big part of my life. When I was eleven I fell in love. Here I am now, fleshing out my life with work and life. Every moment here I am moving through the fog of possibility.