Lions and Tigers and Beats, Oh My

I came. I saw. I wore flowers in my hair. Joan Starr’s prophecies had finally manifested to realistic fruition, the by product of interplay between psychic predeterminism and the power of vivid suggestion. I’d wandered the streets of this magical city like an old beat; as Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’ and the Beach Boys’ ‘Feel Flows’ and Thundercalp Newman's ‘Somethign in the Air’ flew through my ears, exacerbating ecstactic sensations of spine tingles and shivers that coursed electric through my awakened consciousness. I’d never felt this alive before. Never this free. And like Keroauc, never planting trough for too long and perpetually envisioning a third eye on the next adventure, this cat began to sustain an itch that desired a good, hard scratchin' some place else.

Alas, San Francisco was not to be the culmination jewel-point of four months a’globe-traipsin’ for this wandering dreamer. Instead, it was about to serve as a monumental signpost along an unexpectedly deeper yellow brick road. This, along with my documented frequentation of homosexual 80’s nights and fetching floral hair arrangement might appropriately suggest a change of name to Dorothy.

As far as luck goes, I seem to cop well beyond my fair share of the stuff. This whole trip has been nothing but smooth sailing, only a couple of heavily introspective times upsetting the mix where I felt like a marooned git adrift upon the vast existential ocean of life. But those times were fleeting, not to mention very necessary. You have to know the murky to appreciate the crystal. All in all, everything had gone my way – fluid opportunities, synchronous turns of event and encounters with some of the most genuine, amazing people I’d ever met who crossed my path on an all too regular basis. Writing gigs had fallen into my lap sustaining my ability to eat, drink and be merry. And in the final few days at the Green Tortoise, drinking at Vesuvio and Specs, eating 3 buck pepperoni and hanging out with the hippies down Haight and Washington Square, fortune managed to replenish my ailing lack of wardrobe, as four bags of premium, brand new clothes appeared on the steps of the hostel. It was a lucrative free for all in which I gained a brand new pair of G-Star jeans, Ben Sherman shirts and an Armani sweater. With a rapidly embarrassing gape materialising about the crotch of my filthy, ragged jeans, this was a highly welcome predicament.

With no clear direction on where I was off to next, this was a peripheral detail that just didn’t seem to matter. I had new pants. Life was good. And akin to the warmth freshly felt in the nether regions courtesy of brand spankin’ new threads, the warming buzz of recognition deep in the soul was an incessant reminder that everything was swell and that this Dorothy was on the right track to somewhere. As wisdom would have it, there really is no wrong track. Only a selection in which to choose, and lessons to learn according to those choices made. As the mental clouds cleared way for inspired sunshine, the time suddenly seemed extremely ripe to be pickin apples – in this circumstance a great big Emerald granny smith. With luck again on my side, I jumped on the net and swung a ridiculously cheap flight to New York City. Scheduled to take wing in a matter of days, I lapped the last of this magical place, clicked my heels and packed my sack.