san francisco

[jochen stremmel]

For those of you who are still listening, three more paragraphs:

After I put the $25.000 in old bills in my safe deposit box, I called an
airline just for the hell oft it, I told myself, and asked what flights
there were from Swankerton to San Francisco and if there was a connecting
polar flight from there to Geneva. When she said that there wasn't, I
thanked her and lied about how I would make other arrangements out of New
York.

I'm still not sure what I would have done if I could have made connections.
For a few moments I had been on my way, gone from Swankerton and heading
west, the only way to go when flight turns into the final solution. It had
happened too quickly, of course. That was most of it, if not all. The body
went through its normal functions. I ate and bathed and talked and made
love, but the mind still wandered around and waited for the key to turn in
the lock and for the thud of the bolt as the guard slid it back. I went
over to the mirror and took a good look at the man with the too pale face
who only four or five weeks before had been dining on fish and rice and
amusing himself by counting the number of lice he killed each day. It
wasn't exactly a stranger's face, it was just the face of someone whom I no
longer knew very well and whose renewed acquaintance would require too much
effort. I waved at him and of course he waved back. it was not a wave of
greeting but rather of vague acknowledgment, one that admitted existence,
but nothing else.

Gloomy persons like gloomy weather. They like foggy days and rain and
sleet. They can understand those and cope with them. But it's on those
shiny, bird-singing days that they order up the two-fifths of vodka and
take the sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet, or crawl out on the
ledge of the building, or go out to the garage with a length of hose and
tape it to the exhaust. I went over to the window and stared down at the
girls in their sunglasses and short summer dresses and wished it would
rain.

Enjoy!


2013/7/28 rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>

> I get your point, jochen. It's just that I wonder in future when people's
> pasts are available in crystal clear digital, how that will affect their
> memories. maybe i'm a middle age tweener but there's something to me more
> poignant in old photos of family, places, friends than live action video.
> I'm thinking visually, sparking of memories not other impressions like
> smell and the like. who knows, maybe in future we'll be able to smell our
> memories, too (though someone will use to torture someone no doubt)
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 27, 2013 at 8:45 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I think it's still there, the mystery. Perhaps more for us, the old ones.
>> The smell of cabbage in the staircase of an apartment building, and the
>> pictures it can conjure up ... not for you growing up in the suburbs or the
>> country. There was an entire Uncle-Scrooge-Story about the smell of
>> cabbage, really great, one of the first of Carl Barks, if I remember
>> correctly. The Beagle Boys and an island were involved. Books without
>> pictures can do it as well, of course, if not better. The medium should not
>> be too hot. The cooler the better.
>>
>>
>> 2013/7/24 Rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>>
>>> With instant video, all consuming digital documentation, we are killing
>>> off our eventual and much needed longing for the past since we have such
>>> easy access to it.
>>>
>>> Can anyone tell the difference between recent years? Everything is
>>> leveled. All those mysteries have become certainties, our despair.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 24, 2013, at 3:42 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Nearly everything.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2013/7/23 Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>> Nostalgia was better then.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 5:22 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Stumbling over a short passage in a polit thriller from more than 40
>>>>> years ago, I remembered a short thread here about the gentrification of SF
>>>>> (mildly put as memories like to do). Here is the paragraph:
>>>>>
>>>>> I signed the bill, adding a 20 percent tip, which made the bellhop
>>>>> happy or at least less morose. After he left I mixed a drink and stood by
>>>>> the window gazing out over the city with its bridge in the background. It
>>>>> was one of those spectacularly fine days that San Francisco manages to come
>>>>> up with sometimes in early September: a few quiet clouds, an indulgent sun,
>>>>> and air so sparkling that you know somebody 's eventually going to bottle
>>>>> it. I stood there in my room on the seventeenth floor and sipped the scotch
>>>>> and stared out at what was once touted as America's favorite city. Maybe it
>>>>> still is.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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