One Too Many Martinis

I

A rose petal fell into my coffee cup this morning.

Sunlight came careening and flapping its way down into San Francisco, and I sat in it, drinking espresso and eating eggs and reading.

It was mom who gave me coffee, and dad who gave me scrambled eggs.

But mom doesn’t drink coffee anymore, and dad’s dead, so
“Teach a man to fish and…”

I just take care of myself.

II

I once slipped out into the morning, said farewell, put on my hat, and spent seven months in the wilderness.

Now I live in this city, and do all the same things: wake up, brew coffee, find a sunny spot, read, write. Just in tighter spaces and with a bit more self-criticism.

It was just the other evening that I drove over that Golden Gate, car full of all my things, with a plan to call these slanted sunlit pinnacles and house-congested hills my home.

It truly was an inviting scene.

To my right, the sky and the sea met like a pair of blue lips and held the setting cigarette sun tightly, as rosy smoke rolled in ribbons from the corners of its mouth.

To my left, Alcatraz poked up, resembling a huge, regretful barnacle, and Angel Island was the scabbed and restless fin of the greatest of the great-whites.

And all around me, the bay was every blue and pink pastel in the world boiled down and set to cool.

And I came tumbling into that city, looking for inspiration, and maybe a little love.

III

A rose petal fell into my coffee cup this morning.

You know the one; little, with spouting blue whales painted onto the speckled, birds-egg white.

I often think about happiness.

A lupine and corn lily bear meadow, or a San Francisco atrium, apparently they’re both the same as long as you’re doing what you love.

On Lincoln Moses’ birthday, after one too many martinis, mom gave me her hair, and dad gave me his nose.

I came tumbling into this world, and love and inspiration have come wearing a different suit every season since.

For now it’s scrambled eggs and sunlight, a good book and a long morning, a rose petal dancing in the eddy of my favorite coffee cup.

But really it all comes back to love and martinis, because when the best parents in the world give a little boy a happy childhood,

“You have fed him for a lifetime.”

September, 2007
San Francisco, CA