City
of the Winding Mists. My first thought: Chicago. No, that's the Windy
City isn't it? Oh, San Francisco. Of course, the fog. I should have
known that.
The
mornings were certainly misty and the evenings chilly when I visited
in April 2008. But when that mist disappeared, oh, the days were
beautifully bright and clear, for the most part as sometimes there
was a bit of haze or a few perfectly formed white clouds. Funny how
some memories of places stick with you, seemingly forever, as I'm
sure they won't have dimmed in another ten, fifteen years, although
possibly only because I won't ever go anywhere outside England on my
own.
As
I've no doubt moaned before: I don't like lone travel. Perhaps that's
why it remains so vivid in my mind...my senses were heightened and
therefore retained internal photographic-like sensations. I stepped a
long long way out of my comfort zone, but didn't in many ways make
the absolute most of it. Still, you live and learn, although not
necessarily how to do it better. Yet now it has a nostalgic feel, how
strange.
Come
to think of it, I don't recall hearing San Francisco ever called
that: City of Winding Mists. Oh, it's not. It's just the name of some
new exclusive apartments in Philip K. Dick's novel The
Man in the High Castle.
Hmm, but I think I'd rather refer to it as that than as San Fran or
Frisco. Maybe I just like the Asiatic sound of it...I'm somewhat a
sucker for that type of thing: names and titles that are almost
poetical yet also literal in their description. Perhaps Philip K.
Dick thought the same?
It
took me a while to come round to the man as I have to do everything
in my own time and not when it's trending - that has the opposite
effect - and so I only came round to reading his most celebrated
(and probably most normal) science-fiction novel last year. I was
quite prepared not to like it (although why I thought I wouldn't when
I like J. G. Ballard I don't know) but the attraction was instant,
like noticing someone as soon as they walk into a room, and let's be
honest, how often does that happen? In my case, not very, but then my
days of going out, as in going
out to mingle, are
long gone. I much prefer the company of books, minus the small talk
and fizz. Yet to get the same magnetic pull (from a book) you have to
first make the decision to read it and secondly to open it; you won't
get it from an author photograph if there is one, and if you did
that, it would, in my view, be fairly shallow of you, although I do
have to say, in order to be completely transparent otherwise you'll
never trust me again, there was a picture on the back (of this Modern
Classics Penguin edition) and I did think he was bit of a looker.
As
you may have gathered, if a novel rises questions (and by only the
second page) then it's got me. I'm invested in it, regardless of how
it continues to unfold or the eventual outcome, not that I'm one for
neat tidying-ups, which is another irony because in the home I like
things spick-and-span. Move something an inch and I'll know it, and I
do mean if I wasn't there to see you do it. I like order but I don't
mind if it's not there in stories; there, I prefer things a little
messy, a little undone like a piece of clothing with a busted zip or
missing button. It's not perfect, though it could easily be made so,
but then such repairs are usually put off until they're either worse
than they were or beyond saving. Sometimes when you do nothing,
nothing to rectify something, you then continue to fulfil the
prophecy by doing precisely nothing. That nothingness becomes
routine. Do I know what I mean? No! Do you??
Is
that philosophy 101? Certainly not! Whose anyway?
What
a load of rubbish I'm sprouting! Plant by name, plantlike nature.
Why
does it always turn out this way? And why don't I scrap it, start
over? Because I can't; I can't go back to the start. I won't be in
the same space. A thought captured can't then be recaptured with the
same degree of intensity or interest. It has to change. Its echo
can't be the same. Even the echo itself can be discordant: it echoes
back something different to the thought freed, instead of reaffirming
what I was thinking or what I wanted answered.
Picture credit: San Francisco, 1917, Xul Solar (source: WikiArt)
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
