Weight, Mass, Acceleration
June 4, 2011“This is the ramshackle day parade
of all those lost, unborn and unmade”
~ “Ramshackle Day Parade” by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
It seems like a silly place to put a prison. An island just a few minutes’ ride from the piers of San Francisco, so close that you can hear the revelers laughing every New Year’s Eve. There’s another island nearby too. Hell if you were really crafty you could get someone to bring a boat out into the bay, and then swim to it once you were free from the rock. In theory it’s not very hard.
But it is. The water is cold, the winds are fierce and the currents interfere with even each other. A human would be tossed about like a leaf.
The true genius of an offshore island prison sinks in at the yard. I chased my curiosity down the steep stairs and immediately wished I hadn’t. The smooth gray walls rose miles above my head, completely blocking out my view and my spatial perception. Above the wall was only an expanse of bright white sky and blinding sun. It was like being left at the bottom of a disused holding tank. I scrambled back up to the door. The rows of cells brought with them something like relief. At least in a space that small no one could lose you.
Back in the city, as the weather turned cold and windy I dug out my fleece. Wearing it while the bouncy sundress stayed in my bag seemed like a metaphor for the whole trip. I came out west to chase the same thing I’ve chased to China and the middle of Vermont; a moment to stand there and feel absolutely still. The last year (or maybe years) felt like falling. Twisting and tumbling through the air without ever hitting the ground. The nervous dread became ingrained, and after a while it was hard to think. I tried to get everything done, every step finished. Maybe without those gremlins hovering the tilt-a-whirl would stop.
Or maybe it’s all in my head, and if I didn’t get so wide-eyed about everything it wouldn’t drive me nuts. It’s hard to tell when the town around you thinks anything less than spectacular is just that. Come back when you’ve invented a singing cure for cancer.
I should have known that wherever I go, I take those snide eyes with me. Real or imagined, I pick up their strings and haul them slowly forward like a horse with a sleigh. I see them giggle when I fall. So when I go somewhere new I try not to leave a lasting impression.
But there was one place where I never worried: Amoeba. The perfect place to be a music dork, which is to say, me. A real live record store. They’re pretty rare in the wild these days.
It sits in a refurbished bowling alley not far from Golden Gate Park. The “bowling” sign is still there behind the store’s own marquis, though the inside bears no traces. Instead it has stacks upon stacks of cds; on the shelves, under the shelves, in a sea marked $1 that made me never want to leave. There were eight stacks of used cds under “P” alone. In FYE that would have been the whole section. God I had fun.
The best thing I found was Streetcore. It has barely left my cd player since I’ve been home. Cranking up the volume I’m absorbed in “Burning Streets” and “Ramshackle Day Parade”. I love the way the voices rise up behind Joe’s in the chorus, like people materializing in doorways to join him for a march through cold grey predawn streets. I get up to follow and as we measure our strides we feel the impulse rise and fall with our feet, gently propelling us forward. Forward to sort this all out and turn drifting into freedom.
