7/1/06

I unfortunately didn’t get to the Basic Meditation class at the San Francisco Zen Center as planned, because I pretty much got lost after I stepped off the bus at Van Ness Station.  It was at least 9 am by the time I found Page Ave, and I was supposed to be there at 8:45 for the class. 

I started my walking tour of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, with help from pages I photocopied out of a travel book.  On one slanting street, as I passed the Buena Vista Park (which looked quite beautiful and extremely green) I actually saw the mist appear, floating through the air and downhill above the sidewalk, as if it were some sort of spirit.  Before that, I had noticed rather more normal fog, which seems to make an everyday appearance in the morning here.  The tour included stopping in front of an apartment where Janis Joplin lived in 1967; it’s in a three-story grey Victorian house and the apartment in question has a curved balcony.  I came to the end of the street, saw the long park called the Panhandle, where in the sixties Jimi Hendrix performed to a huge audience; now it’s a dangerous place.  On a slanting street, I stopped to gaze at a purple house from the same era that was the Grateful Dead House.  I passed many shops and even the Hippie-style free clinic.

Toward the end of the self-led tour, I came to a store called Tibetan Style, which of course as a Tibetophile I had to visit.  A Tibetan ma and pa store, it was run by a middle-aged Tibetan couple, and the woman wore a green brocade chupa and green silk striped apron rather than a homespun one.  Inside, the traffic was muffled, a recording of monks chanting was playing, and a feeling of tranquility came over me.  It was very pleasant, therapeutic. 

The store had clothing on sale (mostly shirts with little round buttons that button on the side), lots and lots of jewelry, and meditation supplies such as colorful brocade cushions and prayer wheels and dorjes.  I lost count of how many prayer wheels I spun; I must surely have improved my karma quite a bit.  There were a couple of antique portable shrines and a silver-and-turquoise antique needle case, and ritual items like dorjes and bells.  The store has a plethora of jewelry:  I saw a mandala pendant made from silver, coral and turquoise, and a Tara pendant made from the same materials plus some sort of green stone that I didn’t recognize but that reminded me of Egyptian faïence.  There were countless Buddhist pendants, and also necklaces made from dzi beads, and malas.   I eventually made my way to a far corner full of ritual items, including bigger prayer wheels that I spun, and there were tiny statues, very detailed although only about one inch tall, and selling for $5 each.  I bought several:  a medicine Buddha, a particularly detailed Green Tara, Shiva as a seated and long-haired yogi, and a deity riding a peacock that I’m sure I can look up in the handbook of Tibetan symbols. 

Amid all these tiny figures, I came across a larger and heavier figure (all of them were metal, probably bronze) about two inches tall that I’m thinking is a dakini—actually, she rather looks like an Irish Sheela-na-gig!  And I purchased her also.  Now I wish I’d been less timid and had asked whether she was a dakini.  (While typing this:  now that I’ve gotten home and have taken her out of the box, I think she’s the most intriguing thing I brought home, and that she may be a dakini or something from the indigenous Bon religion rather than Buddhism.  Also, the Asian Art Museum has on display a whole bunch of little metal things that Tibetans think fell from the sky—things that farmers and nomads found in the dirt, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s one of those, which would suggest that she could be really old.)

I walked into Golden Gate Park and after much wandering got to the Japanese Tea Garden (as did many other people, since this was a Saturday).  It was very lovely and pleasant…and very compact compared to the Japanese garden at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

The Japanese Garden includes an outdoor café, where I bought three bags of cookies (fortune, sesame, and almond) and had a cup of jasmine tea with a snack of rice crackers and cookies.  That was lunch.  I’ve decided that I prefer jasmine tea to traditional green tea; it’s like drinking liquid flowers.  After my snack, I wandered around and took pictures.  Lots of tourists did the same thing.  A group of Indian tourists, mostly children, stood in front of a big beautiful Buddha made in 1790 in Japan, and the guy with the camera asked me if I’d take their picture.  I said, “Sure, if I can figure out the camera.” Well, I did.  I also used my own, simpler camera to take a couple pictures of the Buddha, one close up and one through a gate.

After I got out of the park, I headed down Haight St. to go to the Anarchist Book Collective, which was the only store I had meant to shop in.  But hey, it’s an adventure, and it’s not like I frequently come to San Francisco.  I did a lot of window shopping, and before I got to the bookstore, I came to a store with big Buddhas and Ganesh in the window and loud Indian music playing.  Fascinated, I just had to go in and wander all over the store.  I spun more prayer wheels and saw many many statues—that was the specialty of this store—including more Tibetan Bodhisattvas (like a Manjushri that was probably a foot tall—I didn’t look at the price on most of them, in part because I’d spent so much on the doll).  There was really cool Indian music playing, like a cross between traditional and techno, and I bought the CD.  I put the change in the hands of a four-foot wooden Buddha statue.  In the middle of the store stood a four-foot wooden Ganesh, on which people had placed both American and Indian money illustrating the face of Gandhi.

When I got to the anarchist bookstore, I realized that I had passed it that morning without even noticing.  But it had been closed then, and I wouldn’t have wanted to carry a bunch of books around all day.  The store was smaller than I pictured, but packed with cool rad books.  The employees are all volunteers, they don’t have a computerized register but instead use an adding machine, and they only take cash.  That didn’t stop me from spending $84 on books and pamphlets.

After the bookstore, I kept walking down Haight.  When I was in a familiar-looking residential area, I came to a bus shelter and looked at the map.  The first bus that came along did indeed go to Powell St., so I didn’t have to do nearly as much walking as I expected.  But from the time that I got off the bus that morning, I had done a great deal of walking.

It was almost five p.m. when I got to the hotel, and I was so footsore that I haven’t gone out since—not even down the stairs to use the computer.  That will have to wait till tomorrow evening.  I took a hot bath, a nap, washed socks and underwear in the sink, counted my cash, and otherwise have done some reading and of course this journal.  Oh, yes, I also munched on cherries, snack mix, and sesame cookies before my nap.