Sophia

The only thing I got out of the poetry was ringing ears from listening to loud eighties music with headphones, having never heard of the possible ramifications in those days. My memory does not recall adjectives, which is really what poetry is, and so I would use the music to jack myself up into states of adjectival ecstasy, like Jack Kerouac used diet pills I have read.

At some point Sophia took a job in Berkeley, which lasted a number of years as an editor. After a couple of years they gave her the job of editing Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk poet and peace activist. I quite frankly was never much enthused with him, probably because I have never been all that enhanced with Buddhism, although it advances two or three of the most important principles in philosophy, as the concepts of duality and compassion. But then I was developing my own philosophy of which she never took all that much interest, so perhaps I was a bit jealous. She liked being an editor and it was something she long wanted to do.

Of another period we would go to a big coffee house down on the north side of Sixteenth Street, about a half block west of Valencia on Saturday mornings. Lot of characters there and it was great atmosphere. I liked these places for the characters, like in North Beach. Not sure, since they brought in the smoking ban, that there are any characters left in these places. Characters almost always smoke, especially intellectuals. Quick minds have a tendency to need something of sedative affect. There are probably only yuppies now, but I don't know - haven't been to any of these places in many a year.

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