APRIL 13, 2014
I LIKE YOUR HAT
So anyway, why on earth would anyone convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism? That is like changing your suit from formal tux with a nice boutonniere to a gaudy harlequin's outfit that seems fun at first, but which features a barbed wire chastity belt and explosive dingle-balls.
So anyway again. People always think it is going to be somehow better over there on the other side of the fence. The high population of California has this sentiment for which to thank.
The high fogs have rolled in, which is for the Bay Area the sure signal that things are about to change. The box elders have sprouted out, and now the clouds of midges that will become the swarms under your deck are circling about. Fat squirrels lumber along the fence. Cherry blossoms are erupting in all the strip mall parking lots and bunches of golden poppies now glow at every corner. The Calla lilies, the Calla lilies are in blewm again.
Denby had to get over to The City to handle some business at the Federal Building there and he elected, because it was a light day of Spring air to take the Blue and Gold Ferry from the old Landing where the new floating wharf sits guarded by chainlink fences and an automatic gate at the pierhead, which was not there some ten years ago. The old landing pier juts out dangerously with fallen timbers and rotting piles to the left. Naturally kids love to scamper all over the thing despite the most strict warnings about something bad sure to happen as punishment. As it was a windy, chill day, despite the sun, he put on his dustcoat and his travelling hat from Ireland.
The ferry, a trifoil, scudded over the waves to Babylon where Denby debarked and entered the vast swirl of humanity that is now the Golden Gate, a teeming metropolis that still bursts with extraordinary energy, despite all the degredations. It was late as he boarded with a throng of the initial rush hours crowd the return ferry , which turned out to be the older, sturdy three tier ship called the Encinal. He made his way to the aft cabin area and found a place to stand while ernest dot-commers and Google employees and traders from the PSE remained riveted to their laptop screens. It being a Friday, some people were sipping glasses of wine from the bar, chatting among themselves.
As was the custom on this ferry, a band of musicians had collected to play jazz, each performer remained on the boat through a roundtrip as another bandmate got off work to join them. On this trip, after the group had done something Coltrane, the keyboardist performed a Chopin Nocturne with the sun setting behind the hump of San Bruno and the lights coming up all down the peninsula as they steamed toward the estuary mouth lighting up to left and right now with the arc lamps of the port and the old Navy Base.
A woman stood there, dressed in black tights and a short skirt, Her black hair was cut short the way artists do so as to avoid the fuss and she looked to Denby to be starkly beautiful there leaning against the rail, and when she turned her head her eyes caught Denby staring at her and she stared back, then looked away. There are rules about staring in public.
He moved his eyes and studied the tattoos that covered her right arm.
He imagined that she was listening to the music and hearing the same things he heard, because even though he was a trained musician, it was clear she was a trained dancer of some kind. Yet again, most long term relationships and marriages are packed with such imaginings.
Does she hear what I am hearing? In that is all the heartbreak of men and women throughout time.
"I like your hat," she said.
He nodded. "A gentleman never goes out without his hat. Someday I hope to become a gentleman."
Something made him go to the bar and buy a couple roses there, but the commotion of the landing arrival enveloped him in a sea of faces.
At that moment the horn sounded and the rush for the exits began and she was lost in the swirl of humanity seeking the warmth of home and sanctuary. He paced around looking for her on the landing and then searched the main parkinglot, trying to also scope the overflow lot for movement. But all the passengers had left and pretty soon, the ferry cast off to head over the estuary to Oaktown. And he was left there on the dock, a man in a dustcoat, waiting upon the landing with a handful of flowers, a seed feeling the ache of Spring's longing to become something.
Although he did not know it, the woman had skipped her stop, remaining on the boat, expecting the man with the hat to find her waiting at the taffrail. She saw him on the dock and called out and waved, but the ferryman let loose the big horn, drowning out her voice.
In the Offices of the Island-Life Newsroom, the Editor relit his cigar. His advice to Denby would be this: Do not fall in Love for it will stick to your face.
Outside the Blakean clouds scudded past the face of the waxing moon, the moon who surveys all at all hours with an impassive watch.
A bunch of roses floated down the estuary where someone had flung them in frustration or despair. The Iranian spy submarine, El Chadoor, lowered its all-seeing periscope after the men had breathed the scent of lemon verbena, and recalled each to his own, the distant and longed-for gardens of Qom, not seen or felt for many years during this strange, long, perhaps forgotten mission.
Many years ago the men had been sent out on this spy submarine to keep an eye on the activities of one of the world's busiest shipping ports, but as time had passed, the sensation that their mission had been administratively lost, shuffled into the wrong folder, misfiled and miscategorized so that all they did counted for nothing any more save the chunk of the bureaucrat's official stamp upon papers authorizing resupplies that were provided only because nobody ever had thought to issue an official order to terminate the mission which had long since lost focus.
Nevertheless Commander Abram remained steadfast in his duty and adherance to original orders and he would pursue his mission until High Command or God should command otherwise. The periscope descended and his men and his sub with all of its terrible longings for home and the the rites of Spring ran silent, ran deep, beneath the great arch of the Golden Gate out to the ocean.
From far across the water where the gantries of the Port of Oaktown
stand glowing with their sentry lights, the long howl of the throughpassing
train ululated across the waves of the estuary, the riprap embankments, the
grasses of the Buena Vista flats and the open spaces of the former Beltline.
It keened through the cracked brick of the old Cannery with its leaf-scattered
loading docks, its ghosts and its weedy railbed, moaned between the interstices
of the chainlink fences as the locomotive click-clacked past the shuttered doors
of the Jack London Waterfront, headed off to parts unknown, leaving behind the
lugubrious City of missed opportunities.
