7/9/06

This was one of those I’m-not-sure-what-I’m-doing-today sort of mornings, since I totally ditched my itinerary.  I had originally planned to attend group meditation at the San Francisco Shambhala Center in the morning and visit an African-American history museum in the afternoon.  However, I didn’t feel like having any more bus experiences this weekend!  Gee, would that have something to do with the bad-tempered bus driver who bit my head off just for asking if this bus goes downtown to Post St.?  Surely not.  And considering how much trouble I had getting to the Zen Center on time, there’s no way I’d be way out at the Shambhala Center by 9 am—it’s at least as far from downtown as San Francisco State University.  Also, I wanted to get to Chinatown one last time and get 1) more mooncakes and 2) another Japanese doll.  I also thought I might finally get to the Chinese Cultural Museum while I was there.

I first went to Union Square to check it out.  I’ve been walking past it every day and only get glimpses of the center.  It turned out to be less than interesting.  Based on signs I’ve previously seen, sometimes Union Square has art shows, and that would have been cool, but when I got there it wasn’t yet 10 am on a Sunday morning, and I saw no art on display.  Either I had bad timing, or the art shows are sporadic rather than daily.  I saw a couple of little shops, including a café in front of which people sat presumably for a late breakfast or just coffee. 

The column in the center of Union Square, it turned out, commemorates the barbaric and oppressive behavior of some military dude named Dewey, during the Spanish-American War.  Knock it down!  John Dewey, as in the Dewey decimal system, was a pacifist.  The Square includes beautiful plants, in particular tall palm trees and big purple flowers, around the edges.  But the square was primarily a plain concrete surface, and I wanted most of the concrete to be jack hammered and replaced with more plant life.  I walked through Union Square in disappointment and headed up to Chinatown.

In Chinatown, I didn’t get distracted and wander into shops as much as I had last Sunday, since of course I’d already been there and knew that a lot of it gets repetitive; that is, some stores are a bit redundant with each other, selling many of the same products. The first store I visited was full of figurines at low prices, and I got a white porcelain Quanyin, two one-inch-tall horses (one white and one blue), one little monkey, and a tiny wooden laughing Buddha.  (Technically, fat laughing Buddhas are based on a Chinese monk called Hotei, not on the historic Buddha Siddhartha Gautama).  All the statues I purchased, except the five-inch-tall Quanyin, were extremely small.

I visited the doll store, where the friendly staff recognized me, and I purchased not only the Japanese doll I was seriously thinking of getting (an old grey-haired man in pale silk, and he looked quite old), but also a small and whimsical girl doll.  The clerk who helped me asked if I collect Japanese dolls, and I explained that including these I now have five antique Japanese dolls, and I explained that I’ve collected dolls in general, mostly during my teen years. 

I also bought the smallest of figurines at various places.  The big place I had previously explored, with the spiral ramp and the huge hovering dragon, has the tiniest mud figures in the galaxy, and I spent $9 on some—not only human forms but also architectural.  I have a nine-room federal-style dollhouse, and not only would the mud figures be appropriate for my dollhouse, but additionally I bought dollhouse miniatures at another store.  Besides dollhouse miniatures, a major theme on this shopping spree was cats, cats, cats!  I picked up many of cats, but not any that need to be fed or have their litter changed. 

I stopped and stared in front of a shop where a cage was crowded with about a half dozen beautiful pure white doves.  The cage was up on top of something else, in front of the store.  I stood and looked at the birds, and they looked back at me with eyes that seemed frightened, as if to say, “Let us out!”  A guy in front of me expressed the temptation to buy all the doves just to set them free, which sounded like an excellent idea.  The other items this store sold were dead, skinned birds.  Um, it’s time to change the subject.

The AIDS walk took place while I walked up sidewalks in Chinatown, so there was a lot of honking, shouting, and singing off and on throughout the day, as walkers used the middle of the street, not just the sidewalk.  It was festive and campy and flamingly gay and fun.

I didn’t find the Chinese Cultural Museum, but the travel books that I checked out from the library date to before 2000, so it could have moved.  Or I could have, who knows, walked right past it.  After I walked up Broadway and didn’t see the museum, I decided to go have lunch.  If I were more outgoing, I could of course have boldly asked someone where the museum was located.

I have undergone the dim sum experience.  I much prefer stir fry and spring rolls, but I kind of thought I had to try dim sum as part of the San Francisco experience.  It was a bad sign when I got up the stairs (the restaurant was above a store) and the place was noisy and crowded.  They set up a small table against the far wall so it only had one chair, and as I sat down, I saw a roach or beetle scurry up the wall, and it wasn’t Ringo or George.  I expected the dumplings to be firm—something like bean buns—but they have an outer wrap that is like transparent rice noodles, and when you try to pick a dumpling up with chopsticks, they squeeze the dumpling and it can pop open, oozing out onions, garlic, and mushroom.  After discovering this, I picked up the bamboo container, even though it was hot, and dumped the dumplings onto my plate.  Maybe that’s why they’re called dumplings.  The tea was OK, tough weak, and I drank a whole pot myself.

I returned to the hotel room really early this time, three o’clock, and took a nap.  That was after I found the Marines Memorial Theater and bought a ticket for the musical Love, Janis.  At the hotel, I took a bath and a nap before going to the theater, which was a very short walk from the hotel.

The play was marvelous!  One actress playing Janis spoke the letters and the interviews, and the other sang songs in between the monologues—and she was quite a Janis Joplin impersonator.  The band was visible on the stage all the time, upstage.  I’m thinking I’ve got some groovy ideas for clothing and jewelry.  After the play, someone next to me cheerfully said, “I wonder how she can do that without going hoarse.”

Janis Joplin died about a month after I was born.  According to Tibetan Buddhism, two incarnations of the same person can have overlapping lives.  A bit off the topic—I think just about everyone else in the audience was old enough to remember Janis Joplin.  That sure made me feel young.

Despite the nap, I’m feeling sleepy….