DAY EIGHT

This morning was bright and sunny and found me dashing out of the hotel to a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in a
hospital pavilion on Castro Street. The cabbie got lost and had to ask another cabbie how to get there even though
the website listed the cross-street DuBois or something like that. So I was a tad late and I can't blame the
cab driver entirely as I could have left earlier. It was a last minute "Oh, I can go to that meeting if I leave
right now" sort of decision.

The pavilion itself was spacious and I took a couple of pictures afterwards of the view of the city it afforded.
The meeting was welcoming and also predominantly glbtiq folk. I began to feel a sense of community that I had been
lacking [the feeling of]. I love San Francisco.

After the meeting I walked down Castro to the rainbow pride flag. I ate br/l/unch at a place called "Welcome Home."
That is what I was feeling after all. I was soon enjoying a first-class reuben and then a piece of real chocolate
cake. I stopped at the drugstore for a new memory card for the camera and some batteries. Then I went to a
fair-trade store with international flavor and bought stuff. Earrings and notecards and stuff like that. And an
offering bowl of wood with beads pressed into wax by some indians up north or maybe it was Mexico.

Then I got on the bus that took me to Haight Street and another one to 23rd street in Golden Gate park. I
followed the crowd to the free concert and I heard Steven Marley and his band play. Most excellent. I took
pictures. I stumbled through the crowd with my walking stick [I had already fallen once on the uneven ground
getting there and that hurt my pride but nothing more. Dammit brain injury!] in order to get away from the druggie
pipes and reefer smoke that was in evidence and smelled like body odor to me. I kept not breathing and I would
stagger onward, stop, discover that more people were smoking [I was glad for the wind which carried it away], and
stagger onward again to get away from it. Mental note to self: gas mask for next freebie concert
at the Golden Gate Park.

When far enough away, I took some pics of people or people and their dogs. I found the first aid tent and got some
Gaterade. I found an earth day bag for a buck and teeshirts for five bucks. I found the Reiki practitioners and got
a treatment for my gut. It seemed to help, although I could feel the inflammation along my left side and I hope that
I don't have Crohn's. I may have to inquire medically about that possibility when I get back. Better to know then
not to know, even if it is not what I would have chosen for myself. There were some drummers drumming [not drugging]
so I hung out there for a few minutes. There was a hippie bus vintage 1947 done over by the Twelve Tribes of
northern San Diego. I wasn't real interested in their trip but since there was no drugs on the bus, I consented to
sit for awhile and observe the love bombing going on. After leaving the bus on my way to Lloyd Lake [man-made I
think] and its' pleasant little waterfall, I saw a guy with this chicken. The chicken was a male Japanese Silkie
and it had a fuller head of hair than I do. The chicken's name was Zorro. I got to hold the chicken with his feet
dangling. Zorro was very peaceful but squawked a tiny bit when the guy went off to his car to get something. I
turned Zorro to see where his human went. He squawked one more time and then he resumed his calmness. It was
obvious to my non-scientific eye that the chicken indeed had bonded with his human.

I hopped on another bus after I walked out of the park, guessing that it was headed in the direction of my hotel.
This proved to be true and once I got off and found a human being who knew how to give directions, I found I had
a nine block walk. Back at the hotel I dropped off the loot, went to dinner [mixed greens] at a restaurant named
Sears' on Powell and then had the hotel dude whistle me a cab to the Unitarian Church to the 7:30 p.m. meeting of
Narcotics Anonymous. Several folks remembered me from the morning. It was an 11th step meditation meeting.
Someone read a passage from the 11th step and then we sat in silence for 15 minutes. Then people shared. This
meeting, like the morning meeting, was only an hour long-- though the schedule indicates that there are also N.A.
meetings which are one and a half hours long. After the meeting, I felt too tired to deal with the bus and a walk
so the nice guy in the church office called me a cab.

That was all of today and now it is a bit of e-mail and bed for a long day of travel tomorrow which starts early.

Oh, and I met this dude from a band called Kosha Dillz. He has a MySpace page and I will be ordering a c.d. If
anyone supports musicians that hardly anyone else ever heard of, consider Kosha Dillz. They start their tour in
San Francisco tomorrow. They are also going to San Diego although not until May first.

sapphoq n friends