i never ride this bus in the daytime

something about the afternoon sun made the landscape different and it didn't feel like home when i arrived. the city is mostly wonderful because when you walk in the city, you walk on stage, and it is a tacit agreement that no one will know you or remember your name.

it poured the day after the concert, wonderfully. it was as if only water could quell the wind and slow the frenzied roll of the clouds, hurtling in off the bay and crashing around the skyscrapers. the gutters-cum-rivers eddied at stoplights, sixteenth and church flooded heavy and dark. adobe books is mostly warm, and i read paul eluard until the rain let up. i spoke with the old man at the front desk for a few minutes, he knows santa cruz, asked about logos. "they're bigger than we are" he says. "size isn't everything" i say and the paper thin man who had been reading theater theory backwards for the last half hour laughs until he starts to cough. he is still hacking and shaking his head when i exit stage left.

a fat man with a broken and wet cigarette behind his ear walks into me. his forehead hits my shoulder. he has a tall can of steel reserve in one hand and the other one plays with the hem of his black pants. he is talking unintelligibly, his voice is like stones being rolled underwater. the blind man next to me says "uh oh" and we are otherwise silent as we wait for the forty-seven to take us north.

at the royal, it is quiet except for two students and a few regulars who come in and speak to martin (mar-teen) in whatever spanish they can muster. some are fluent. i can only understand the ones who aren't. the italians come in at half past seven, they read the paper and play chess. no one is walking dogs today, no one is carrying children. buena vista social club is playing "las gardenias para ti" and it smells like quiche and espresso. the last of the light is fading through the windows in the facade of the old spanish building across the street and people seem to move through the glass storefront of the royal as their reflections catch up to and surpass themselves before disappearing up polk street.