My last friday night in San Francisco was spent first by going to the Cafe International winter solstice poetry reading. This reading punctuated itself as my final San Francisco Poetry Scene appearance as a resident. Scheduled for the evening were some other poets of formidable status: Ramu Aki, Phillip T. Nails, and Q.R. Hand, Jr.--my favorite. The evening was punctuated with strong performances, and a general sense of giddiness. I read Zeppelins on the Empire, to a good response.

Later that night, Q.R. Hand and his girlfriend came back to my apartment in the Lower Haight and we poked some smot, and talked up the unknown future. Q.R. is somewhere around sixty-eight years old and has seen more of the grime and dime than I can ever know. Throughout my three and a half years in this city, I've regretted not giving my self the opportunity or gall to spend quality time with the people I like--instead, leaving the entangling of paths for random chance to meet and unite.

I hope to start letter correspondance with these individuals. I'm going to miss this city, but its time to get out, find something else. Places change, people stay the same... or not. Depends on whether you believe in a theory of identity that allows an "I" to exist, one that states that there is a constant that belongs to the person walking in the shell. Sometimes I'm losing it.

I've been trying to write a novel that takes place in an alternative form of this city, but while located within its stomach I have not been able to finish or approach it in the right light--as its very messages and themes are that of leaving the city to overgrow itself, to outgrow itself, to be retaken by nature and flooded. I can't do this while I'm in the city. Must be without.

To Portland, I go now. A different scene. A different time. I know no one, and no one knows me. I can choose to blend or stand out, I can be one with the city, or one dot in its many pixels.

There will always be everything.

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