“Almost
all the residents live behind bars. That tells you everything you need to know,
right? Add in a covering of graffiti and a layer of trash and you get the idea.
I don’t see anything remotely interesting about this place.”
Palm trees,
Jehovah's witnesses preaching with hand held megaphones, a long line of drunks
and drug addicts, Latin girls laughing loudly and shamelessly, a fat white man
in a dirty button up shirt dark with sweat. I pass by three black men with a
boom box blaring the sound of 70s soul music. I feel tempted to tell them that
I used to listen to that very same music in a place very far away, a place they
will probably never see in their lives, a remote place full of legends and
violence. But they’re busy talking to each other so I let the thought pass by.
The whole place
smells of urine, especially close to the walls farthest from the BART entrance.
A sign says: “This is not a bathroom.” Too late for that.
Ahead of me on
the BART escalator I see a young girl in a dirty white t-shirt and gray sweat
pants. The pants are nearly falling off her, showing the crack of her ass a few
inches away from my face. The skin of her lower back is soft, white and covered
in tiny nearly invisible blond hair. She leans against the handrail in a
gesture of exhaustion. A flier on the wall reads: “The Black Mass… delicious
cumbias, hot rhythms…”
Later, on 16th,
I see the same girl walking next to an older black man. She stops and turns
towards him.
“We’re here. We
might as well go. Right? We might as well go. He’s been waiting for a long
time.”
She holds up
her sweat pants with her right hand while she talks. I imagine a passionate
love story and a climax about to happen. Most likely it’s only a drug deal.
“Mission street
itself is dirty, noisy, busy and enchanting. It’s almost like going somewhere
else, somewhere outside.”
I see thousands
of purple dots spreading over black and white shapes, surrounded by larger
purple circles with black and white faces in the middle of them. “One dot
represents a housing unit served with a no-fault eviction. The actual number of
displaced people is significantly higher…”
A curving
transparent banner answers with the words “Only God.” Underneath someone has
added in black marker: “…holds grudges.”
A psychedelic
death apparition rises from the asphalt. She has tall purple hair, blank white
eyes, a bright red heart over her third eye, white fangs tattooed over her
mouth and cheeks. Two small pink wolves float around her shoulders. A bright
star trickles down from her bright white right eye.
Her mouth opens
and she speaks to me in a soft seductive voice:
“Here is the
final resting place where one can still find a love that transcends all time.
But you must
keep your eyes wide open, you must have your ears ready to hear.”
A
middle-aged drunk man in ripped jeans and a ripped half open flannel shirt
looks up at me from the sidewalk. “Change?” he says in a demanding voice. When
I look down at him, he repeats in a louder voice: “Change?” Then he pushes an
upturned yellow hat towards me. He points to the hat with his index finger,
skin wrinkled, dirty nails, tattooed forearms. “No, sorry.” I say. He turns
away to look for the next potential donor.
Next to him I
see a hopeful twist of words: “We’re not divided. We’re just not together…”
I’ve heard this
was once known as the street of the witches – “la calle de las brujas.” Maybe
some time in the past women practiced some kind of witchcraft here. Maybe they
were just pagan healers. Maybe they were just Latin women who inspired both
lust and fear with their dark eyes. Or maybe they were nothing at all.
Maybe this
street of witches becomes more mysterious when night falls, maybe it becomes a
dark alleyway with an aura of arrivals. Now, in the daylight, a sad blue robot
stares at a bright red flower. Plumes of pink smoke spill out from its joints.
A poem calls
out to me, black letters over a green background.
“The people
Live, then fate
Obey. Darkness
Dissipates and
must
Give way…”
The poet is the
City itself. And the audience is the City as well.
A lonesome
creator talking in an empty room full of oblivious ghosts.
“It's a little
surreal, like being in the middle of a zombie movie.”
A simple white
sticker reads: “Smart phone. Dumb head.” But another sticker reaches out to
give a response: “It’s too late. I’m addicted to the game.”
A blue bear in
a yellow shirt instructs me to “hella resist!” His mouth is open in rage, his
left fist is raised in brave defiance.
Then I see a
single message - a white background surrounding letters made of absence. “We
Will Not Be Silent”
“This is the
real San Francisco. Not the Financial District, definitely not Fisherman’s
Wharf.
This is the
real thing. This is what I wanted to see when I came here.”
A
heavy set girl leans back on the passenger seat of a parked car. Her head is
only barely visible, her eyes scan her surroundings with a tangible sense of
paranoia. She alternates between scanning and looking at her cell phone which
she holds in her right hand. When I step close to take a photo of some fliers
pinned up on a pole she looks up at me with blatant distrust. I turn away from
her and point my camera at the pole.
A post office
label, upside down, words written in black marker, barely legible: “King Baby:
Remember to Forget”
A hand sized
band sticker announcing its single message in black letters crisscrossed with
white lines: “Boom!”
Below it, a
command: “Paid advertisement. Do not remove.”
Another band
sticker establishes its philosophical and practical commitment: “We only play
music we have never played before!”
I look at the
girl in the car one more time as I walk away. Her eyes are still scanning,
still unsure of my intentions.
A black sticker
with large white letters: “Jesus. The way, the truth, the life.” A large fat
Buddha squats to the left, a serpent skull tattooed over his heart. A smaller
sticker with a single disembodied hand gives the whole scene the finger. “Fuck
off Jesus! Fuck off Buddha! Fuck off serpent! Fuck off heart!”
There’s a hole
in the window of a restaurant. I look through it. A man stares out at me
suspiciously from inside.
“We walked down
16th in the morning and a vagrant was lying on the ground. We walked back in
the evening and he was still there, motionless. Was he dead? Everyone just
ignored him. Ultimately, we ignored him too.”
A large black
woman with a sullen angry face stands before me, there’s a necklace with a
single pearl around her neck. She wears a bright green shirt with two buttons
on her right breast: “Defend Freddie Gray” and “Save Mumia”
I take a step
and I find myself in the middle of a cemetery at night. An angry demon with red
eyes of fire stares at a living skull vomiting gray serpents from its broken
mouth. The whole of the night is alive with purple serpents with red eyes and
hungry mouths. The demon has only a few words to say to me: “Here is the final
resting place where one can still find a love that would transcend all time.”
I look around
me. Four angry dogs burst with ravenous hunger. Blood and saliva fly in all
directions, away from their open jaws.
“We felt
perfectly safe at all times. We usually do. Not that easy to scare us. There
were homeless people, but there are homeless people everywhere. You just get
used to it. We’re used to it. It’s fine for us. No problem.”
A middle aged
drunk man looks up from the floor and talks to me.
“You want to
shoot these ones behind me?”
“Yeah… I didn’t
want to bother you.”
“No bother.”
He stands up
and turns around to look at the figures painted on the wall behind him.
“Man, these
look like men dressed as nuns, no? Transgenders?”
“Yeah, it said
something over there about them being the original spokespeople for transgender
rights… something like that.”
“Really?” He
rushes over to read the text I’m pointing at. His mouth falls open. “Holy shit!
It really does. I didn’t know… I didn’t know.”
I smile at him
and point my camera towards the nuns.
This is one of
the few streets in this city that still preserves a sense of time, a sense of
place. A street of spells, for those who know its history; maybe when night
falls, it becomes a dark alley with an aura of mystery.
Meanwhile, in the daylight, here are some spells that are still remembered,
spells that meant something to someone: “The Ultimate High Rise” “The Barbary
Coast” “A Terrible Anger” “The Octopus” “Nineteen Eighty Four” “Brave New
World” “Reclaiming San Francisco” “City for Sale” “The Grapes of Wrath” “Virgin
Soul” “You Can’t Win”
Everything must
go? Yes. Everything must go!
From the left
side the Virgin Mary looks on. A single white ghost floats over her head.
“At times I
felt scared. I became convinced something was about to happen. Nothing ever
did, but still. I felt like it was about to…”
A man I once
knew has now become a mural - on the wall he looks more like a mythical cartoon
than an actual memory, like something that jumped out of a old black and white
Mexican comic book and now looks down at me from the wall. The artistic spaces
he created are listed, so are some of his other accomplishments. Graffiti has
already tainted his face, a younger face than I remember, a face to remain
young for eternity.
His mouth opens
and he speaks:
“You seem like
you’re ready to move on. But wait! Before death can take me away She will come
to save me…”
She will come.
She must come. Maybe She is hidden behind more than one face that I’ve already
seen around me - maybe She flows in and out of them when needed then slips back
into the walls when the danger fades away.
A few steps
later a frightened boy stares at me in black and white. Black letters surround
him like a swarm of bees: “Enough enough enough stop killing our children stop
killing our children enough enough enough” She may be powerful, but She may not
be powerful enough. There are cold places where Her power can’t reach.
Somebody has
written “Get off sacred land!” They have written more underneath but someone
else has covered it with purple paint. A third someone has come along and
roughly, imperfectly, covered the purple paint in black scratches.
Here is a final
communication. Sacred means nothing. No love transcends all time.
“I felt very uncomfortable, very ill at ease. I was unnerved by the frequent,
threatening drooling crazies. I'm not trying to be offensive or insulting. Many
of the homeless were literally drooling. My son pointed out the long globs of
spit spilling over their chins. He couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even want to
look!”
A
very drunk white man talks to a young black man with the body of a bodybuilder.
The drunk man talks in an endless river of slurred words which I find
impossible to follow. A kind of slippery meaning emerges and I try to fill in
the gaps.
"I hope
there is love for those who are in trouble, by the power of the City that loves
them. The consolations of the City are neither small nor few, they can never be
diminished, however great the number of those who share in them.”
The
bodybuilder, his back straight as a tower, listens and responds every few
sentences. A nod here, a “yes”, a humming undertow of affirmation. His hand
goes to the drunk’s shoulder in a gesture of kindness.
“I believe it.
I believe that the City is pleased to love those who are in trouble by means of
its people who themselves have been hurt. Hurt people helping hurt people.
Various important purposes are served by this wise law. Order is achieved
through our subjection to this higher authority. The ultimate authority that is
the City.”
As I walk by
them the bodybuilder turns towards me and greets me.
“How are you
doing sir?”
I respond: “I’m
doing well. How are you?”
“Fine…” and he
smiles to complete the interaction.
Later they walk
past me, the drunk man is still talking in an endless blur of slurred words. He
turns towards me and says something I can’t understand. I turn and lean my head
in to try to make out the words.
“Don’t bother
me. I’m here to take photos!” the bodybuilder says for me and smiles.
I nod and smile
at him.
“Many are very
hurt; they walk around with heavy hearts. Their pride makes them scorn this way
of obtaining love from the City. But the City is ready to offer its heart, the
City is ready to offer its love. The City is the final place where one can
still find a love that transcends time.”
A young woman
with purple hair closes her eyes. Her eyelids are bluish gray. She is
surrounded by many colored flowers, of all shapes and sizes. She opens her
mouth and speaks to me in a voice full of melody and color.
“This street
was once known as the street of the witches. Once there were many women like me
who lived here. Women of dark powers, women of subtle ways. At night the street
would always be closed at both ends so that nobody could approach the women and
ask for some kind of spell. Today this is just an alley off of Valencia. But
when night falls, I speak to others as I speak to you now. And every night I
tell a new story but all my stories are lies.”
A family of
Mexican farmers sits to have lunch outside on a rough wooden table. A strong older
man with short black hair stares out at nothing, his face stoic and blank.
Soon he will be
drunk and he will have a lot to say. But for now he only stares in silence. His
adult daughter sits to his right, a smile of gentle contentment on her face.
His adult son sits to the right of the daughter, smiling with a tortilla in his
right hand and a full sombrero on his head. To the left of the middle aged man
are his young daughter, maybe around 6 years old, and his wife, who also smiles
contentedly as she prepares another tortilla. Only a single sheep stares back
at me, the only denizen of this world aware that it is being transported into
eternity by invisible eyes.
A friendly
green penis with a faded pink head raises its hand to say hello to me. While it
greets me, over on its left side it teaches the ABCs while tiny fluffy clouds
tease him into a playful partial erection. A sleepy vagina with a tiny pubic
black hat looks at us both with half closed eyes. It opens itself to the world
out of sheer exhaustion, too tired to remain sealed and alone. Its secret
mission is to teach the numbers, the sequential division of events and digital
objects which is the basis for stable understanding. It is in this way that the
world was first divided into language and mathematics. For most of the day, so
it must remain.
“My sister went
to school in this neighborhood a long time ago. This is back when we lived with
my father. She was a bit out of control, right? She did some crazy dark things
that I definitely would not recommend, some things I would be scared to try
myself.”
The young woman
with purple hair tells me a story:
“Once there was
a young man who lost his wife because of a fever. His family was very sad
because they couldn’t afford a funeral. Since there was no money to bury her
properly, the wife was buried in a mass grave, along with many others who had
died that week, that month, that year. The young man then stole some money for
himself. In the process of stealing he killed the rich man who was his victim.
The young man then managed to bribe a priest to recover the body of his love
from the mass grave in which it had been placed. Before the police took him
way, the young man took the body of his wife to a proper cemetery and lay her
to rest. Thus their love found a resting place, a place of peace outside of
time.”
On a thick
stripe of blue paint there is an announcement for a website in thick black
letters. Underneath it there is a broken red slash with the word PARTY written
over it. Two zombies with missing arms and blank eyes stare out at me from
between the pink letters.
“All I saw was
a dirty and scary ghetto area. Not a place I would let my kids walk home by
themselves.”
An
old Mexican man, black mustache, black combed back hair sprinkled with white.
He stands in front of his vegetable stand: peppers 2 for 1 dollar, corn 8 for 1
dollar.
“I will tell
you the rest of it. Not everyone gets to hear it. This is the truth of the City
spoken by one who has learned from the street. The hearts of all inhabitants of
the City are knit together in love and their mutual understanding is increased
whenever we speak. Those who are loved
by the City through others like them are brought under strong obligations to
enduring friendships and sincere gratitude.”
“Improve, then,
all your experiences, for the benefit of your fellow City inhabitants. In this
way those who ought to love those who are hurt will be well prepared to do the
work assigned to them. The street is an excellent teacher. The street gives
great confidence to one who learns how to speak. It enables him to speak with
more certainty and boldness than he would have spoken otherwise.”
“Is the City
truly the Mother of all homeless? The Father of mercies? The City of all love?”
Over a dirty
white ledge, I see the simple command: “Believe only in falling” Nothing else.
“I guess it's an interesting place if you’re into that sort of thing. I
wouldn’t go back. But that’s just me.”
Over bright
orange paint strokes, in light blue letters: “Free the people of Palestine.
Boycott Israel.”
Next to it is a
small blue and white flier. A young white silhouette represents “modern white
youth.” Modern white youth is being attacked through its right ear by a web of
words and ideas: “Cultural Marxism, White Guilt, Communism, Equality, Hate Your
Race, World Immigration, Feminism, Racism, White Privilege, Degeneracy,
Homosexuality, Colonialism, Drugs” Out of its left ear blood spills out, bright
red against a light blue sky.
Two girls walk
ahead of me. Both of them are Latin, in their twenties, dark hair, brown skin.
They stop in front of a restaurant that specializes in tacos.
“Is this the
one? Ah wait, no, this is the one we came to before, right?”
The other girl
nods. There is a streak of blue in her hair.
“Yeah, it was
good though.”
I sidestep
them. The girl with the blue streak apologizes for standing in the middle of
the sidewalk. Her eyes open wide for a moment. Maybe she remembers something
that was better left forgotten.
“It felt
threatening to walk by so many homeless, drunk and drugged people on the
street. For us it was clearly not a pleasant place to visit.”
The
disembodied voices have multiplied and I can hear them coming at me from all
directions.
“Why are some
of you feeling excluded, after all the loving things you have read in your
newspapers and heard in your TV news? Why do you go to the rivers and neglect
the fountain? Would you accept the true love that the City has for you? It rose
from your pain and it knows where you come from.”
Two women stand
in front of the police station. Their thick old backpacks are in front of them,
temporarily placed on the sidewalk. They are rearranging things inside of their
backpacks in a rush. I know that one or both of them have just gone through a long
ordeal. I also get the sense that they have left someone behind inside the
station and the ordeal is not over. This is only a brief respite before the
pain begins again.
The older
woman, with unruly blond hair and kind eyes, looks at me. I feel that she wants
to ask something of me, she wants me to help her in some way. I have an urge to
help but I restrain myself and just nod. As I walk by her, she is still looking
at me with an air of recognition.
“Consider
attentively what are the particular diseases you currently endure. Think of
your mistakes, think of the worst of all the evils you have committed. I hope
you don’t misunderstand me. I hope you don’t hear me say one thing and think I
said another. Strong consolation will be provided for those who flee for refuge
to the Law.
The police may
be cruel at times, they may even seem unfair. But they are ultimately your
caretakers, your lovers, your passage through birth and death. They are an
extension of the love that the City has for you. But there can be no true love
to those who continue with their mistakes. Once you have recognized these
mistakes, you must forever put an end to them or the City will claim its
debts.”
An army of
bright red ants fights an army of bright blue ants. They fight over a terrain
of black waves and gray hills. On the hills it is written: “love each other out
loud…” On the waves no words will stay in place. The water exists beyond the
reach of language.
“The smell of
urine is everywhere you go. Can’t these people find a fucking bathroom?”
A large white
poster is pasted to a pole with thick dark green tape. The tape is broken and
twisted and placed at random intervals. The message is written with various
different letters, cut out from magazines and newspapers, in the style of a kidnapper
writing a ransom note. It reads: “Too Many Bums in this Town”
I see young
blond girl laying naked with a black young man. She spoons him from behind,
rubbing her nose against the back of his neck. Their nude bodies are partly
covered by thick blue blankets. A fire rages behind them. Math and language
intertwine through their sweat, semen and blood.
A beautiful
young Latin woman looks sideways at me. She is surrounded by blue waves and
yellow tentacles. A sign on her nose reads: “Warning: Security Cameras in Use”
Her mouth opens
and she speaks in a smooth low voice that crackles with ancient life.
“I will tell
you their story so you can tell it again. Once a young man lost his wife
because of a gang war. She was not the intended target but she died
nonetheless. He couldn’t afford a funeral so her body was taken to the city
morgue. The devastated husband tried to steal from a liquor store but the owner
had a gun and shot him. The wife’s body was never recovered. But the young man
joined her at the morgue. That was the final resting place where they finally
found a love that could transcend time.”
Over a yellow
and red fiery background, someone has written in bright green letters: “Listen
to the …. Of the Poor” After “the…” someone else has written the word “Tongues”
A third someone has written in rough black marker: “As you wish”
A giant bee
stares out at me with a huge white human eye that opens up from its back. Made
of scratchy stripes of yellow and black, the body is covered in bloody
splotches. Violence is everywhere, blood is the seed from which all beauty
takes life.
A family runs
away in black silhouette. Father leads, mother follows, young daughter holds on
to mother’s hand. They run desperately towards a young dark-haired woman
wearing an open leopard jacket, slim black panties and nothing else. Over her
head is the word “Persona.” Under her barely covered crotch is the word “Lust.”
Further away,
another dark haired young girl looks on. On her face is a satisfied smile; her
mouth and chin are covered in black blood. Around her are the words: “Pure
Lust”
She turns to me
and clarifies: “Not just violence, not just blood.”
“It was run
down, just one big dump. I’m sorry I don’t mean to be insulting, but that’s how
I saw it. I saw what appeared to be gangs just hanging out on the street. I
mean… somebody should do something when you see these people hanging out like
that.”
Two
girls stand at the corner by an old bank. They are both smoking, one seems a
lot more confident in her movements than the other. The confident one is
dressed in dark gray pants and a loose white sweater. The younger one has
hesitation written on her face; she is dressed in white jeans and a white
t-shirt. They are both smoking pot and the younger one is self conscious about
doing it in public.
“It’s all the
same, you know? All the same…” the older one says. Then she brushes her black
hair out of her eyes.
This street was
once known as the street of the witches. Back then women with secret powers
lived here. At night the street was dark so that nobody could go in search of
beauty. The darkness would hide it, the darkness would make them believe that
beauty didn’t exist. This place becomes pregnant when night falls, a dark path
with a vibrant sense of an endless departure.
A simple
message is written with black marker, the ink is already fading under the sun:
“Do What You
Want. Love How You Want. Make…”
A floating
black and white mask sprouts black and white mushrooms from its head. A single
number one sits on its closed third eye; two white flowers are on either side
of its white wide open eyes. It opens its mouth to speak to me in a dark deep
voice full of memory:
“For many
years, the young man brought flowers and cleaned his wife’s grave. His
obsession reached such a degree that he married a young girl that looked just
like her. When that girl died, he married another girl that looked just like
her. Eventually he came to see that all girls everywhere, all women of all
kinds and in all places were her and had always been her. Thus all bad things
that could happen had already happened to her. And all good things would
certainly happen to her as well. It was only when he saw this final truth that
he was finally happy. But he had been dead many years by the time that final
recognition arrived.”
“The only thing
I’m left with is the dirt, the dirt and the trash and the dirty people living
on the streets. Don’t they have a place to go? They should have somewhere, I
don’t know, some kind of shelter or something. What I saw was a kind of village
for the homeless. Why is this happening?”
A hand drawn
butterfly rises into a world of deep solid colors, waves upon waves of green
and red and yellow. The scene is signed by “the gang of tears”
If I close my
eyes, I can hear the flapping of its wings. Soft, heavy, subtle.
