4-12-01 Th 3:??

I typed fifteen minutes this morning from a Motel 6 in Santa Nella. We went over to Denny’s for a cholesterolfest. Loaded the car and drove a couple hours through the hills of Livermore into Oakland. I couldn’t figure out why the windmills weren’t going. The aqueduct ran through verdant farmland and almond orchards, evoking a sense of an idyllic utopia. Our room has a balcony overlooking the harbor, but it’s all sort of industrial blight with no view of the bridges or of San Francsico. So, much for utopia. We had a few bloody Marys and an Anchor Steam, and I read the Chronicle while Rochelle and her mom put on makeup. I put some Miles Davis on the computer and called Hosebag and got Barf’s number off the internet. Hosebag and his girl are going to meet us in the bar of the Waterfront, and we may see Barf’s rugby game in Golden Gate Park on Saturday before we go home. We saw the Potomac, FDR’s presidential yacht on the wharf, and we walked around the block. Jack London Square doesn’t seem as promising as it did when I espied it from the dining car of the Coast Starlight a few years ago. 6:38 PM Back at the room. I sit on the balcony and listen to the lines bang against the masts of the boats berthed in the bay. Little moves besides the flow of the water and the flags flapping on yardarms on the dock. A pair of ducks land in the pool. No other living soul stirs until an old gent leans out of the starboard door of his yacht for a smoke. A couple passes by on the boardwalk below and then there is nobody but the gulls a flying v of cormorants. Baby and Grandma are asleep in the room. Rochelle has been feeling affectionate. I feel distant. I don’t know if it’s the writer in me, but she doesn’t deserve it. A hotel worker shoos the ducks from the pool. We may go up to the jazz joint Yoshi’s tonight. It’s right around the corner. I had read about it on the internet, and also the skipper of the Potomac recommended it to us.  Rochelle took my picture next to a statue of Jack London in the square. The inscription at its foot read that he would rather be ashes than dust, to flame out brightly than disintegrate in dry rot, to have the brilliance of comet than the permanence of a planet, to spend life living to live, not living simply to prolong it. Writers spew such nonsense.