Secrets of A Semi-Fiction Writer

In case you haven't noticed, The Pondering Pig has been writing fiction lately. Or something impersonating fiction. Or something completely different. Actually, he's not quite sure what he is writing because so far he has been a ponderer, not an imaginer. He didn't really set out to write a novel or a serial. He just thought it would be interesting to add dialog and create some little illustrative scenes of his life as an original hippie in San Francisco back before the world knew about such things.

But as soon as I gave them some lines, my characters started acting uppity. Like Walrus Pemmican, for instance. As soon as he sat down in Sylvie's room I could tell he was pissed off about something, and was just itching to pick a fight with Paulie. And Paulie got carried away and imagined the Syndicate of Eternal Friendship should corner the Haight-Ashbury retail marijuana market. The real Paulie never said that!

It was too absurd. In the Haight, of course, we all just wanted to be flower children and wear flowers in our hair and listen to Donovan records, and suddenly these guys are shouting at each other and plotting dreams of empire and acting like crooks! And poor Allen Cohen.

Allen was a real person, a poet and the founder of the San Francisco Oracle, one of the first and most influential of the underground newspapers of our era. We shared a flat in the City for about a year and I got to know him well. Yet I found I couldn't give him any lines because I was afraid if I did he would start acting like a crook too! He was a man of respect in our neighborhood. And I don't want to dishonor his memory. So he ended up just sitting on the mattress waiting for his cue - which doesn't come.

You start changing people's names and creating dialog for them and suddenly anything can happen. The police may break down the door any second and the Syndicate of Eternal Friendship will have to run out the back. Or the girl on the merry-go-round might turn out to be a messenger from God. Or an Indian princess in disguise who's seeking the Lost Ruby of Khalimar. And maybe Walrus Pemmican is actually a real walrus! Just a very skinny one who lives in the Haight-Ashbury.

What I found is you start giving people dialog and new clothes to wear and pretty soon they don't like any of it and want to choose their own costumes. Flowers in my hair? Forgeddaboudit.

And then there's names. Real living people can sue you for libel if they start abusing children and robbing banks in your story. So I realized I'd better change everybody's names before I'm subpoenaed.

Now I've got a new set of problems. Take Howie, for instance. He's a minor character so far -- you probably forgot about him already. So far, he's just one of the guys who bought the marijuana and brought it back to 1736 Page. But you never know. The first time he opens his mouth he wants to know all about Machine Gun Kelly!

So my first inspiration was to call him 'Howie Kalishnikoff'. Has a certain drama to it, sort of like 'Sylvia Potemkin'. Then I thought - why not change his first name too - to, uh, 'Lennie'. Sounds like Howie, except it's Lennie. How about 'Lennie Kalishnikoff'? Trouble is, the reader is going to expect exciting things from a guy with a name like that. Is he a walking time bomb? Seething behind that smiling mask? Ready to go off like an AK-47? Or maybe he lives for his 'gun'?

Nah. And besides, Kalishnikoff is too hard to spell. I'd be looking it up all the time.

OK, then I thought, well - the guy I'm basing this character on had one of the most common surnames. Maybe a nice, ordinary name would work. So I looked up America's most common last names. Here's a good one: White. Number 14.

How about 'Willie White'? Nice alliteration - but he sounds too much like a bluesman from the Mississippi Delta. Blind Willie White. Recorded one earthshaking session in 1928. Then he disappeared into the night and my character is his kid! Except he doesn't know it! He thinks he can't even play the kazoo! What do you think?

Nah.

Onward - well, the 16th most popular name is Martin. So how about 'Mel Martin'? Yeah, that's it! Mel Martin! He's a smooth lounge singer from Vegas who's on the run from the Mafia because he was making love to Duh Capo's beautiful wife and Mickey Duh Mouse caught them in the linen closet. Now he's hiding out at 1736 Page pretending to be an original hippie.

Nah. I think my character is more of a 'Howie Morris'. Just an ordinary pussycat of a name to hide an extraordinary person.

On the other hand, maybe I should give up the whole thing and write history, plain and simple. With footnotes, like this:

Chap 3, p.47: According to Ronald Palaver (op cit. p. 38), a gang of evil hippies once lived at 1736 Page Street. After cornering the Haight-Ashbury marijuana market they kidnapped Patty Hearst and insisted she go to college. Later, the FBI shot them down like dogs. Except for Walrus Pemmican, who remains missing to this day.

So much simpler.

Sylvia's Garden

I'm not sure poetry and blogging mix. I know when I'm reading other people's blogs they have about fifteen seconds to grab me. Hey, I'm a busy man. You've got to rivet me to my chair or I'll be running off to see what Aprilbaby said today.

But poetry doesn't work that way. Oh, I know - there's the occasional Milk of the Bayou, a poem that smacks you in the face like a cold fish (think Sylvester the Cat here) and there you are, transported into a Roadrunner cartoon when you meant to spend quality time catching up on the G8 conference.

But regular poetry works slower. She's shy. You've got to court her. You've got to print out that poem and take it into the garden and sit under a tree with a glass of lemonade and all the time in the world. Let the words trickle down like beads of moisture on your lemonade glass until they start to mean something.

Well, who has time for that? Might not hurt to try, though.

Hey, stay with me another twenty seconds already. I rummaged around and found Allen Cohen's memorial poem for Sylvie, the one I referenced the other day in Before the Storm Hit (read it first for perspective if you haven't already)....

I got a funny feeling this morning, finding it in my back files and looking back towards the San Francisco of my youth - those years that created me. Am I the only one of my time and place left with memory intact? Why am I still here when so many who shared that youth have gone down to Davy Jones' Locker? There must be others left - but where are they? I want to call Allen Cohen to talk about 1736 Page and after -- but he's nowhere to be found. He's down waiting for the Ferryman.

Sometimes I feel like I'm marooned on a distant planet somewhere at the edge of the Milky Way - sending out little digital signals. Is anybody there? Is there anybody else out there? Oh well, guess I'd better go build up the fire...

By the way, Sylvia wasn't the dear girl's birth name. I changed it to protect her innocence.

THE GARDEN
Elegy for Sylvia, August 26, 1994
by Allen Cohen

It is the hot night of our lives.
Our bodies limp in their misuse.
Our souls though, that inner body,
statelier than mansions, gardens
lush and orderly with serene ponds
and tropical thickets.

Many beings and so much bitterness and beauty
inhabit our labyrinthine souls.
We have tended and grown each plant.
Nurtured each being that has entered there.
There are many secret places
that no one has yet seen,
some we have yet to explore.
Everyday we are adding
gorgeous flowering plants
and making new paths
and silent spaces.

And I think of you dear heart
and your wondrous pained soul.
How it ached and yet made room
for so many to find nourishment there!
In my memory I see you at 16 or 17
with an unearthly beauty, as if there
were four or five angels within you,
each pulling and lifting you
in a different direction
with each awkward breathless step.
It was a deep and mournful joyousness
that lived within you, strange
(I don't think I romanticize here)
how every man wanted you
in order to heal their broken souls.

And you were a hippie maiden of the wind
until you finally settled in your body
and it began to corrupt your innocence
and the pain and the escape from pain
drove the angels of youth out
leaving you alone and empty.
Your destiny to reinvent your soul
To climb the ladder of light again
to let the air and rain
water the growing Eden within you.
With each act and thought
a deep compassion grew.
When such beauty born
and beauty reborn
departs our shattered world,
a vast mysterious crater
is created in the mind.
We look down into it
remembering you, looking
for the gardens of you,
stretching to reach across
the mystery of your departure.


Photos by Patrushka, except the fish.

Did Anyone Get Out of Here Alive?

Gosh, here it is my birthday again. Sixty-five!

I can't believe it. Me? Eligible for Medicare? You've got to be kidding. I never thought I'd make it to thirty and here I've outlived Kerouac by eighteen years...

Must be the love of a good woman.

Anyway, last year on my birthday I put up the following list, in alphabetical order, of friends of my youth (I've added more detail this year). They're all people I knew and loved but who were lost in the swirl of the hurricane. Most are still lost, but some were found last year. Maybe this year I'll find some more...

Bess Farr, AKA Lisa Farr, AKA Lisa McFadden. Dear friend and troublemaker, we were friends throughout the Sixties. The last time I saw her, she dosed me with MDA at a party. I wasn't mad at her - I was just fed up with the life I was leading. But I've always felt like I deserted her when she was in trouble. And I wish I hadn't. You okay, Bess?

Bob Gill – brother beatnik, peyote brother and card carrying YPSL. In my mind's eye, he's up on the barricades somewhere waving his ancient rifle defiantly and the Nationalists are closing in.

Bob Kaffke – diabetic Communist who rode horseback through Mexico. News: Bob is gone. Died of pneumonia in 1983 on a houseboat in the San Francisco Bay. Leo Sadorf found this link put up by his son...

Bob Kuehn - Another of the SF State peace warriors. Ban the Bomb!

Danny Rifkin - so funny and creative. The first on our scene besides me to notice the Beatles were Something New. And he laughed at my poetry (that was good, not bad). News: Danny's still out there hitting it. I found this article about him in the San Francisco Chronicle.

David Miller - Carpenter of Walrus and Carpenter. My singing partner and best friend till I betrayed him. Last time I talked to him he called to say good-bye. He was moving to Tennessee. Funny how I still miss him after all these years.

Don Auclaire - leader of our pack, the Dirty Peaceniks, 311 Judah Street, San Francisco.

Donna Conroy – Tom Conroy’s beautiful beat street wife from the Delaware horse country. Tom spent half his time fighting off the pimps who wanted to sign her up. Last time I saw here she was great with child.

Ed Ginsberg - comic peyote brother, photographer and a great heart. News: Someone told me this year he is living in Budapest.

Eva Bessie - Bess' best friend, daughter of Hollywood Ten screenwriter Alvah Bessie. She was immortalized on two beautiful Fillmore posters done by her husband Wes. Still living in the Ozarks somewhere last I heard.

George "the Beast" Howell. A legend in his own time. A friend ran into him ten or fifteen years ago in the rugged mountains of Northern California up by the Oregon border. He was on a buying trip looking for high quality virgin wool. Something about Persian rugs. He'd picked it up living in Asia.

Joe Novakovich - Fingerless Joe himself. He had warped fingers due to a birth defect, yet became a masterful autoharp player and stalwart of the San Francisco folk scene.

Johnny Chance - Saintly drummer for The Final Solution and first guy on our scene to notice the Beach Boys were cool. Funnier and smarter than anyone, yet he dressed like a Catholic schoolboy. He joined the Moonies and I never saw no more.

Laurie Sarlat - with the Long Island accent, poet Allen Cohen's consort and Wendy to this lost boy. She left town with a guy I didn't know and I never saw her again. Allen told me years later she'd joined a cult.

Leslie Hipshmann AKA Leslie Van Gelder. Most beautiful and sweetest of the teenaged hangers-on at 311 Judah (funny, I was a teenager myself!). She split for New York and I never saw her again. Leslie, I still have the letters you wrote me from the East Village.

Margarita Bates AKA The Bitch. Unforgettable. News: An anonymous tipster wrote to tell me she is alive and where she is living. Thank you.

Melanie Kinkead AKA Lamie da Kink - as dear a girl as I ever knew. I wrote about her in Famous People I Never Knew #2: Janis Joplin. News: I am back in touch with Mel thanks to the blog and she is still just as funny, and still the best.

Michael Rachoff - Page Street friend of years but we lost touch in my wanderings.

Peter Kraemer - Virgina City filmmaker and leader of the Sopwith Camel - the first San Francisco band to hit the charts.

Peter Walters – my boyhood best friend who lived at 47th and Balboa. Peter didn't care if I was sick in bed much of my childhood. He'd always come by and play games and make puzzles and draw battleships with me in bed and him sitting in a chair beside me. What a great kid!

Peter Weiss –tough kid from the Bronx who danced with Ann Halprin's Dancer's Workshop. Last time I saw Peter he and his girlfriend were heading for Japan.

Riley Turner - holy tennies street kid from Lowell High School. I wrote about him in Song For Relay Tornfoot

Solveig Otvos, AKA Solveig Rimkeit, AKA Ruth Weissinger - the beautiful Latvian. Where are you, Solveig? I still hear you laugh in my dreams.

Tom Conroy - the North Beach street kid cartoonist who got me busted in Oakland. Tom dealt in Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon comic strips and could spot newspaper insulation in every blowndown ghetto redevelopment Victorian we broke and entered.

I know where too many of my early friends are today though – in the ground.
Here’s to you, Rodney Albin and Chet Helms and Allen Cohen and Wendy Norins and Tom Hobson and all the rest of you – friends forever.

I have a lifetime of stories to tell just about these guys. There they are through my window: young and sunburnt and storm-tossed - the best of the best, the San Francisco kiddos of the pre-invasion Sixties - my generation.

Whereabouts Unknown

Since it's my birthday, I guess I can write whatever I want to.
So here's a list of some friends I once had who I would like to see again, or at least find out what happened to them.
They were all pals, some for years, some for weeks, when I was young.
In alphabetical order...

Bess Farr, AKA Lisa Farr, AKA Lisa McFadden.
Bob Gill – brother beatnik, peyote brother and card carrying YPSL.
Bob Kaffke – diabetic Communist who rode horseback through Mexico.
Bob Kuehn - SF State peace warrior.
Danny Rifkin - so funny and creative. The first on our scene to notice the Beatles were cool.
David Miller - Carpenter of Walrus and Carpenter.
Don Auclaire - leader of our pack, 311 Judah Street.
Donna Conroy – Tom Conroy’s beautiful wife from Delaware.
Ed Ginsberg - peyote brother and photographer.
Eva Bessie, AKA Eva Wilson - in the Ozarks somewhere last I heard.
George "the Beast" Howell.
Joe Novakovich - Fingerless Joe himself.
Johnny Chance - Saintly drummer who taught me to appreciate the Beach Boys and Paul Whiteman.
Laurie Sarlat - with the Long Island accent, Alan Cohen's consort and Wendy to this lost boy.
Leslie Hipshmann AKA Leslie Van Gelder.
Margarita Bates AKA The Bitch. Unforgettable.
Melanie Kinkead AKA Lamie da Kink - as dear a girl as I ever knew.
Michael Rachoff - friend of years but I lost touch in my wanderings.
Peter Kraemer - the Sopwith Camel
Peter Walters – my boyhood best friend who lived at 47th and Balboa
Peter Weiss –tough kid from Brooklyn who danced with Ann Halprin
Riley Turner - holy tennies street kid from Lowell High School.
Solveig Otvos, AKA Solveig Rimkeit, AKA Ruth Weissinger - the beautiful Latvian. Where are you, Solveig?
Tom Conroy - the North Beach street kid cartoonist

I know where too many of my early friends are today though – in the ground.
Here’s to you, Rodney Albin and Chet Helms and Allen Cohen and Wendy Norins and Tom Hobson and all the rest of you – friends forever.

If any of you ever stop by The Pigsty, let me know, OK?

When I Was Twenty in San Francisco

Golden Gate Park.
August, 1962

There's a guy going to interview me tonight for his book on San Francisco rock impresario Chet Helms. I think the main reason he wants to talk with me is that I'm still here with memory intact. And I knew Chet back at the beginning - 1962, 1963.

So I've been digging around in the backfiles of my mind today turning over events of forty years ago when I was twenty years old in North Beach, twenty-two years old in the Haight-Ashbury, married to Linda Lovely, baby on the way and in my arms.

I can walk down the hallways - look in every room. I can tell you what Allen Cohen was wearing the day Laurie Sarlat blew through the front door of 1736 Page Street into our lives - but I can't tell anyone what any of it meant. Just a collection of images in my mind, some clear, some fuzzy.

Why do I bother? Because I gotta pay my debts, I guess. I wish I knew.

The writer will be calling from California at 7:30 tonight. I'll let you know.