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September 19, 2012

Walkin In - 9/18/12


Walkn n

Cool and cloudy with a chance of protesters
Climbing the Filbert Street steps
At home the heater is running but I'm climbing Telegraph Hill in a T-shirt
Today I'll go down the Filbert Steps
Finally a photo of a Cherry-headed Conure
Always the ripest berries are just out of reach
We picked them in summer fields as kids but the thorns seem sharper somehow
It dawns on me that i will never know these gardens. There are too many cats and birds and flowers
The police are tying off the parking meters for something tomorrow
Cop lies n says he doesn't know why
More hippie occupy protests? I ask
Who knows? It will get a lot crazier soon' he offers
A pigeon works the sidewalks of California Street
The message they painted on Battery Street is gone. Must have been water-based paint.
Dirty Hippies were very well organized. They shut down Battery Street and served a free meal.


Walkn home

Its dark and cold and not many people on the streets
I don't like it when people walk too close behind me and I keep stopping and doubling back to get them off my tail

You can't live in Stockton and stay the same person.
Wagering on the homeless takes something away from you
As the tides wash the sands from the beaches

On Sutter Street, the homeless gather cardboard and free newspapers as the cold night settles in.

A homeless woman crawls from her cardboard home and starts harassing me.
She pulls a chain from her pocket and starts threatening to beat me with the chain.
And then starts filming me with a cell phone. Which is sort of a surprise to me. Not that I mind, of course . I'm not doing anything.
But you have to wonder how someone who's sleeping in a cardboard box can afford a cell phone bill

She doesn't like that I'm standing here...
She summons one of her homeless friends from the next storefront/carboard home down the street.
"The dudes just standing there," he explains. "He's not doing nuthing. If you're so bothered by him then get in your box."

There's no battle to be fought here.

I think about the mesmerizing complexity of the Gardens of Telegraph Hill
So many flowers you could never learn them all.
I think about the parrott man and his Cherry-headed Conures.

No one cared about the birds. They fell into this little niche.
Birders saw them as an invasive species. A nusiance. But this drifter tuned them in and studied them.
And through his lens the world discovered them. How whimsical.

I wish there was something I could show the world. Something more than arcane lines of computer code.

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Posted by Rob Kiser on September 19, 2012 at 11:35 PM

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