Campfire stories.

Everyone I've met here has been a bonfire of hospitality - give them your hesitation and shyness, and it'll only feed their flames as they sit you down and make you one of their group, and invite you to share the warmth. And then, they start cooking hamburgers over a charcoal grill, nestled amongst the lattice and lemon trees, and drinks are poured and songs are sung and neighbours drop by to say hello and tell you about the ghosts that live in this hundred-year-old house.

It's almost enough to make you want to move.

And yet... there's still something about seeing stars and stripes everywhere, and signs imploring you to vote for judges and sheriffs, and the bewilderment that debit cards create in cashier. These aren't bad things, but they do constantly remind me that this isn't home.

This isn't a surprise, really. Almost every trip can be expressed in the ways in which you didn't feel at home. The early Buddhist philosophers said that trying to describe Zen was like a fish trying to describe water. Much like water is home to a fish, it's similarly difficult to describe what home means to us, until we leave it.

Of course, unlike the fish, we can and do leave home, and even change it. On some moves between cities, I've been able to declare myself "home" after just a few days. I'd like to see a fish do that.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm reflecting on what it means to be home is that people here in the Bay Area have an even stronger attachment to theirs than I do. Zipping amongst the different cities in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Albany, etc., etc.), I've noticed that they all seem to have to their assigned roles within this system, even though to an outsider the difference is almost negligible.

And within this world, where they have everything they need, it seems harder for them to want anything else. Or rather, any[i]where[/i] else. I realise this is a crass overgeneralisation, but it seems like it's a considerable excursion for someone from Berkeley to brave a half-hour BART ride to San Francisco. Only twenty kilometres separate the two, but there may as well be an ocean between them. (Although, in all fairness, there technically *is* an ocean between them.)

If I ever moved here, I might lose my zeal for road trips, and for travel, and that is something that would take away from the
very heart of me. So yes, I will be glad to be home, if only so that I may leave it again. That, after all, is how I know that I'm home.

See you soon, Canada.

In which the author pretends he still has a blog.

Well, I'm in the Calgary airport once again, awaiting the boarding call which will commence another wonderful weekend in San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley/the Bay Area. (I'm still not too sure where the locals self-identify.) American customs security is as depressing as always, but the baggage handler gave me an extra wave. I guess that counts for something. The Tim Hortons' stand continues to ply its wares - for departing travelers, it's one last breath of misplaced patriotism in a Canadian myth. (Unless the Canadian myth celebrates our slavish devotion to bad coffee and half-cooked doughnuts.)

I'm not yet sure exactly what I'll be doing in California, but if I find anything out, I'll let you know.

Bay City Rolling.

All right. Home at last, with a few lessons learned on the nature of mojo -- and the duties that mojo puts upon you. I think I'm ready to start being interesting again.

But before I get interesting -- let's see some vacation photos!



What, you were expecting the Golden Gate bridge? Hey, it's a beautiful structure, but it's been photographed before.

On the other hand, I've never seen pigeons that looked like this. Check out the brown and white one! It was clearly the ringleader, too.



There must be a story behind this. I can only assume she's a costumed crimefighter, and she has to pick up her vigilante license. Why else would taping a note to a parking sign be the best way to find someone?




The lovely staff at the blood donor clinic -- just to prove I wasn't lying.



"The future is here already -- it's just unevenly distributed." - William Gibson



And, of course, the base of operations. Without its central location, its free breakfasts, and its lack of air conditioning and privacy, I wouldn't have been outside half as much as I actually was.

And now... time to go stimulate the mojo economy. But how in the world am I going to do that?

Hm, it seems that the Monarch Theatre will be playing Viva Las Vegas to commemorate the King's death, and they'll need an impersonator.

I guess it's easier than I thought.

The First Of The Unplucked Gems.

I love The Hip. I don't think this point can be argued, or even overstated. If they were playing in San Francisco, would I book plane tickets to see them there? Of course I would, without a moment's hesitation. And that's exactly what I did. When I started this mojologue, I did so with the smug foreknowledge that being at the Hip concert would push my mojo status through the clouds, and that I could return home triumphantly.

And now, here comes the twist:

I never went to the concert.

The original plan was to hit a house party, shake a few hands, meet some contractual obligations, and then take my leave before the show started. But, woe of woes... it was a really great party. And thus, I arrived upon one of those grand questions in life... and the question I usually ask in such a case, "What would Gord Downie do?", seemed rather ill-suited to the situation.

Or was it? Naturally, I've been listening to their new album, "We Are The Same", while I've been walking these city streets. Some of their songs, like "Coffee Girl", became instant favourites, but most of them took some time... but once I started listening, the songs opened up for me. "The Depression Suite" is three minutes of ballad stretched over nine minutes of strings, but right in the middle, he sings a single line which cuts right to the heart of the matter:

And I think to myself in passing,
what if this song means nothing?
Now here comes the requisite strangeness --
things always have to get a little weird.

He wants this song to mean something. So do I. He doesn't mean, "What if this song doesn't become a hit?" It won't. He means, "I want this song to inspire people in some way." Well, for starters, this song got me into San Francisco in the first place. But more than that, yes -- not going to the concert is a little weird. But things have to be like that sometime.

And I've no regrets.

The other discovery I made while skipping the concert was this. It may sound like sour grapes, but bear with me: Seeing the concert, and being exposed to Hip mojo, would not have done much for my mojo status anyway. It's not what you receive... it's what you give. It's not a real goal to get your mojo to maximum capacity. That's the life I'd been living for the last few months. Good job, good friends, good life -- what part of that doesn't say my mojo was at 100%?

Nope. For mojo to have power... the mojo must flow. You must be aware of all the mojo around you, and try not to battle it, or surpass it, but simply to go with it. Not to be the shining star that blinds all others -- but simply to shine.

That is the secret of mojo. Thanks, Gord. Thanks, San Francisco.

mojo status: 75/500

The World Ends With You.

Is there any greater delight in travelling than being able to shrink the world? The very act is a Zen counterpoint to itself -- the easiest way to shrink the world, of course, is not to go anyway. But the very act of finding the similar refrains in different worlds is impossible without achieving a greater understand of just how large the world is in the first place.

But I didn't dance the night away in a seafood restaurant just to put my interpretations of Zen koans to the test. I danced because when you're eating crab legs in San Francisco with two other friends from Medicine Hat, that's cause to celebrate.

Alas, they declined to join me in dancing. Maybe that's because everyone on the dance floor was a waitress... or maybe they were just tired from all their sight-seeing. Yeah, that's probably it.

mojo status: 50/100

Yes, that's really my city's name.

I was wondering around Haight and Ashbury today -- birthplace of the "Summer of Love". Alas, most of its retail nowadays are sadly similar to that of "San Francisco", the novelty shop (a.k.a. mall blight). But, it's still worth the visit.

Then, on the way back, I was wandering through the surrounding streets, and I passed a Boys and Girls Club, where the Red Cross was holding a blood donation drive. I stopped there on the curb, and thought about it for a moment.

I walked inside, and the construction-paper arrows directed me to the gymnasium. The volunteers were warm and friendly, and only a little surprised when I asked if Canadian citizens could donate. It took them about five minutes to figure out how to clear that in their screening process, but they let me in. Then I told them I'd been to Greenland in the last twelve months. That was another five minutes.

Eventually, I got hooked up to an apheresis machine, which extracted my blood, separated out the red blood cells, and returned the plasma to my system. It took 400mL of undiluted cellular matter from me in this manner. That would weigh about a pound.

Can you see where this is going?

That's right. True, it was a Reverse Shylock -- the blood was lost, and the flesh remained. But the point stands, inarguable and undeniable, that my blood's going to be put to good use in a San Franciscan hospital, into a San Franciscan patient...

Hear me now, you merchants of metaphor, and hear me well: I HAVE LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO. And I've got the cookie and orange juice to prove it.

MOJO OVERDRIVE!

mojo rating: 45/100

This is my Sabotage.

Wow. They tell you about the hills here. They warn you about it, even. But it doesn't really sink in until you come across a street where the sidewalk literally has a staircase cut into it. Uphill, downhill, cresting four peaks walking eight blocks... if you see someone riding a bike in San Francisco, they're either a tourist, or in peak condition, or mad.

I am not in peak condition. By that fourth hill, I was puffing and wheezing like a steam engine, barely able to maintain my co-ordination. I must have been a bit worse off than that, actually, because I finally failed to clear a curb. A simple curb, no more than an ankle's height, but it nearly did me in. I lurched forward, and my hat flew off. As any good student of comedy will tell you, it's not a fall until the hat comes off.

However, I managed to get my feet ahead of my momentum with a little two-step. One quick lunge, and I grabbed my hat before it fell, and tossed it back on my head. Then, I looked up and saw a young lady who had seen the whole thing. I smiled, and tipped my cap to her, as if to thank her for playing the audience. She smiled back.

mojo status: 13/100

Setting Right What Once Went Wrong.

It was going to be beautiful. A cross-country road trip. Restaurant with strange misspellings of French words. Gothic wrought-iron nightclubs that played 80s pop hits. Accidentally offending German tourists. Losing a $2000 diamond in a bag of toiletries. The world's biggest blueberry.

And yet, in spite of such strange and wonderful inspirations... there was no blogging.

A more rational man might point out that upon the week of my return, I bought a PlayStation 2 and Persona 3, and that the "total time played" counter in that game tells me no lies and does me no favours. But I think there's another answer here.

New York City stole my blogging mojo.

That must have been it. So much to see, and yet so little of it that didn't look "just like New York City". Behold the final, cruel achievement of rout entertainment industry: the city's soul has been laid bare, by anyone with a Netflix account.

(And that goes double for you, Sesame Street.)

The solution is obvious, though. America stole my mojo; I have to go get it back. And if there's one place in the U.S.A., if not the world, where you can find mojo, it's San Francisco. But how can I navigate such a maze of cultural energy? I'll need a guide. A link to the life I knew, and a door to the world beyond. Who could serve such a role?

If you said The Tragically Hip, then you just guessed where I'll be on Saturday night.

I shall return on Tuesday. And I shall return... with MOJO.