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The City was Electric
By Dennis Neal Vaughn (San Francisco)
There were many ways that I could have begun. There were many points along the way that would have worked. I chose to begin with a blank page, as fresh a start as I could possibly make. My own proverbial clean slate as they say.
So, I sorted through and packed up my meager belongings into 5 bags. I had sold everything off or gave away all that which did not fit into one of my five assorted cases. None of the luggage matched at all which was ironically appropriate for my circumstances and me.
The bus groaned to a stop in the small mid-western college town, which was a good twenty miles from the very tiny farm where I had grown up. It was a dark and chilly start to this early May morning. Each breath that I exhaled billowed forth in a shivering plume as I had waited on the stark wooden bench for the buses arrival. The creaky worn bus was the only means of transport I could afford to get me to the airport just south of Chicago. However, at that moment it was of greater concern to me that it meant that I had twenty dollars less in my pocket. I boarded the nearly empty charter bus with each of my clumsy bags in tow and settled down as best I could next to a window.
The sun's first rays began to spill over the vast prairie's horizon and split the night in half as the bus lumbered North on the tarnished silver colored cement highway. Dawn began to mark a new day. It was the hour of the pearl as Steinbeck described it in "Cannery Row" where time stops and examines itself. It was my favorite time of all. I often would awake at this very hour and I enjoyed it more than any other time of day. There was a certain hush, a stillness to it, which had a calming effect upon me despite what else was happening all over the world or to me in my life. It was the only time of day that I truly enjoyed a cup of hot coffee with sweet vanilla cream. I felt one with the world and the world was one with me in return. The world was all mine to myself despite the havoc and the chaos and the destruction and the emotional turmoil.
My life was a mess. Truly and utterly it was a mess. A beautiful mess that was all mine. I embraced it. I claimed it. I rejoiced in it. I loved it. It was the only life I had. It was either I get on that bus and then on that plane in order to live or my life as I knew of it would drain into the deep bowels of the black prairie soil that my father had tilled as a farmer all those many, many years.
I had decided to leave behind all that I knew and move to the edge of the earth, where East meets West, where land meets water and the sun kisses the sky. To be able to tell where one realm of the world began and the other ended was often indistinguishable. The money I had been able to literally scrape together had bought me a one-way plane ticket for San Francisco. I knew no one who actually lived there. San Francisco was a mythical and mystical Siren. It called to me without ever uttering a word. It echoed to me it was home, so I went. Hours later the plane touched down and I began to feel it at that very moment.
The city was electric.
The unique street cars, from cities all around the world, each gave off sparks from the wires overhead that propelled them as they marched up and down Market Street through the very heart of San Francisco. Their steel wheels polished the steel rails they rode on and both blazed brightly as the sun and sparks glinted off them. I have come to realize that this was neither a beginning nor an ending. Instead it was simply one great unforgettable moment in time and place in my life. Familiar, yet, it was a total stranger to me. It was old and new in the very same instant. San Francisco was both an old world European city as well as technologically futuristic as any city in the world ever hoped it could, would, and should be.
A year and a half would quickly pass after my arrival. Then I would come to face it. Twenty-five years of AIDS in America. December 1, 2006, World AIDS Day. I was but one of many, and many were but one. The five precious bags I had moved with were now replaced with five precious pills a day to keep me alive, at least for now. I had decided soon after beginning to take meds that my voice needed words, so I wrote. My hands needed action so I began to draw. Together with my voice and my hands my eyes began to unveil the energized mysteries that had both surrounded me and eluded me in the many cracks and crevices of my brain. I needed to speak up, to speak out, to stop hiding and end my shame and embarrassment. No, I must let my one voice become many, and many one. To hear a voice is not to listen, but to be heard is invaluable. Who would hear me? All it took was one. One was enough to start with.
So I started with myself. I listened to myself. I quieted myself and listened to the voice of my soul from deep within me. I heard the old cries. I heard the distant pangs of pain. More importantly and overwhelmingly, I heard the joy and the laughter and the resounding bells that love had given me. Love that no one could ever take away from me or diminish for me. It was a love that I needed to learn to share and spread. Be it even so small as a smile when I passed a stranger on the street. Once more I thought of what was said to me by Anthony, my beloved partner of nineteen years who had died from heart failure a year before I had moved to San Francisco.
Anthony's voice rang forth deep within me, "pennies make dollars." It was the little things that mattered most. The most meager of sums that made the greatest differences in ways that I had only begun to embrace and believe in. "Pennies make dollars." Literally and figuratively, this simple phrase kept echoing and building and growing within me. It had always been there and secretly rewarded me time and again. It was time I be good to myself. This was my time to be alive, even if it were only for a moment. I found myself at the center of the universe. I smiled at the strangers on the street as I passed. They smiled back. The city was electric. << Back
By Dennis Neal Vaughn (San Francisco)
There were many ways that I could have begun. There were many points along the way that would have worked. I chose to begin with a blank page, as fresh a start as I could possibly make. My own proverbial clean slate as they say.
So, I sorted through and packed up my meager belongings into 5 bags. I had sold everything off or gave away all that which did not fit into one of my five assorted cases. None of the luggage matched at all which was ironically appropriate for my circumstances and me.
The bus groaned to a stop in the small mid-western college town, which was a good twenty miles from the very tiny farm where I had grown up. It was a dark and chilly start to this early May morning. Each breath that I exhaled billowed forth in a shivering plume as I had waited on the stark wooden bench for the buses arrival. The creaky worn bus was the only means of transport I could afford to get me to the airport just south of Chicago. However, at that moment it was of greater concern to me that it meant that I had twenty dollars less in my pocket. I boarded the nearly empty charter bus with each of my clumsy bags in tow and settled down as best I could next to a window.
The sun's first rays began to spill over the vast prairie's horizon and split the night in half as the bus lumbered North on the tarnished silver colored cement highway. Dawn began to mark a new day. It was the hour of the pearl as Steinbeck described it in "Cannery Row" where time stops and examines itself. It was my favorite time of all. I often would awake at this very hour and I enjoyed it more than any other time of day. There was a certain hush, a stillness to it, which had a calming effect upon me despite what else was happening all over the world or to me in my life. It was the only time of day that I truly enjoyed a cup of hot coffee with sweet vanilla cream. I felt one with the world and the world was one with me in return. The world was all mine to myself despite the havoc and the chaos and the destruction and the emotional turmoil.
My life was a mess. Truly and utterly it was a mess. A beautiful mess that was all mine. I embraced it. I claimed it. I rejoiced in it. I loved it. It was the only life I had. It was either I get on that bus and then on that plane in order to live or my life as I knew of it would drain into the deep bowels of the black prairie soil that my father had tilled as a farmer all those many, many years.
I had decided to leave behind all that I knew and move to the edge of the earth, where East meets West, where land meets water and the sun kisses the sky. To be able to tell where one realm of the world began and the other ended was often indistinguishable. The money I had been able to literally scrape together had bought me a one-way plane ticket for San Francisco. I knew no one who actually lived there. San Francisco was a mythical and mystical Siren. It called to me without ever uttering a word. It echoed to me it was home, so I went. Hours later the plane touched down and I began to feel it at that very moment.
The city was electric.
The unique street cars, from cities all around the world, each gave off sparks from the wires overhead that propelled them as they marched up and down Market Street through the very heart of San Francisco. Their steel wheels polished the steel rails they rode on and both blazed brightly as the sun and sparks glinted off them. I have come to realize that this was neither a beginning nor an ending. Instead it was simply one great unforgettable moment in time and place in my life. Familiar, yet, it was a total stranger to me. It was old and new in the very same instant. San Francisco was both an old world European city as well as technologically futuristic as any city in the world ever hoped it could, would, and should be.
A year and a half would quickly pass after my arrival. Then I would come to face it. Twenty-five years of AIDS in America. December 1, 2006, World AIDS Day. I was but one of many, and many were but one. The five precious bags I had moved with were now replaced with five precious pills a day to keep me alive, at least for now. I had decided soon after beginning to take meds that my voice needed words, so I wrote. My hands needed action so I began to draw. Together with my voice and my hands my eyes began to unveil the energized mysteries that had both surrounded me and eluded me in the many cracks and crevices of my brain. I needed to speak up, to speak out, to stop hiding and end my shame and embarrassment. No, I must let my one voice become many, and many one. To hear a voice is not to listen, but to be heard is invaluable. Who would hear me? All it took was one. One was enough to start with.
So I started with myself. I listened to myself. I quieted myself and listened to the voice of my soul from deep within me. I heard the old cries. I heard the distant pangs of pain. More importantly and overwhelmingly, I heard the joy and the laughter and the resounding bells that love had given me. Love that no one could ever take away from me or diminish for me. It was a love that I needed to learn to share and spread. Be it even so small as a smile when I passed a stranger on the street. Once more I thought of what was said to me by Anthony, my beloved partner of nineteen years who had died from heart failure a year before I had moved to San Francisco.
Anthony's voice rang forth deep within me, "pennies make dollars." It was the little things that mattered most. The most meager of sums that made the greatest differences in ways that I had only begun to embrace and believe in. "Pennies make dollars." Literally and figuratively, this simple phrase kept echoing and building and growing within me. It had always been there and secretly rewarded me time and again. It was time I be good to myself. This was my time to be alive, even if it were only for a moment. I found myself at the center of the universe. I smiled at the strangers on the street as I passed. They smiled back. The city was electric. << Back
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