Author: chaskemp

Love and magic, the sadness, Star of David, I care about/don’t care about, courage, post-election

Love and magic
Reading each word, each phrase, each one slowly with reflection. What’s left out?
💕 Love is a feeling, where everything is right – open hearts and minds and communication and synchronicity and commitment and seeing all the beauty and hope and fragility of one another and caring for each other (caring more about the other than self) and the tenderness and discovery and sex and romance and sensuality and acceptance and clear, open communication and depending on one another and softness around one another and around the love and around this life …
💕 Magic – the love is ramped up, intensified (Sometimes talking of love for hours and hours makes sense – what else is there?), kissing caressing making love for hours and hours, intoxicated with one another, pretty much completely in synch, taking the utmost care of one another, it’s the greatest thing …
💕 How? Surrender, pay attention to one another, look for all the magic and beauty in one another, believe that magic is real and possible, put selves into magical places and activities, magical music, accept times of less magic, wide-open communication …
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Talking with a little 5 year old mermaid named Beatrice, who asked, “Do you have kissy love in your heart?” “Oh yes!”

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Getting ready to decorate Jean’s and my Christmas tree I got out my small collection of San Francisco Christmas ornaments. Opening the box/the Christmas season triggered a flood of emotion and I cried as I did in the first months after Leslie passed. It’s a hard, consuming crying that goes on and on and leaves me exhausted and sore all through my body. Jean helped me through part of it and left me alone at a good time.

Sunset from the deck

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One of the decorations we put on the tree is a Star of David (for Jean’s husband, David, who was Jewish). Jean wondered aloud about putting a Jewish symbol on a Christian symbol. I quoted from John 14: In my Father’s house are many rooms… Later these lyrics came through the speakers: In my Father’s house are many rooms.
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I care about:
Being a good person.
Feeling good given/within whatever circumstances.
Loving you, Jean; being loved cared about.
Loving David.
In Vancouver
How you’re doing.
Being close/connected/making you happy.
Being beautiful – being beautiful for you.
Just beingwith you.
I don’t know how to say this, but I care about your vision, your expression, your art (not only what you produce). I’m digging your wisdom, too.
Experiencing nature/natural beauty.
Having beautiful, loving sex – pleasing you sexually – exploring one another’s sexuality.
Suffering in the world.
Justice.
John.
Friends and men in bible study group.
Who wins the election.
La Honda – before a magic night
People being nice to one another, especially parents being nice to children.
Growing, becoming, reaching toward my potential.
Being healthy.
Having or having had meaning – as in a life pattern.
Getting high, especially with you.
Being strong.
Having peak experiences.
Having enough money.
Being respected by people I respect.
Looking good.
Low stress, no conflict.
Being around kind people.
Living life effortlessly. 
Baking and things like that – I care but not all that much about these things.
I don’t care about:
What we eat, when we eat, where we eat.
Where, when, how we go, except that want to go with you.
Under the same sky, the same moon
Where we sit, when we go to sleep/awaken.
What I wear, except that I want to look good for you.
Manifesting much of anything other than decency and safety (Haha – actually, I want to manifest cool).
Who wins the football game.
——————
In November
Falling in love in these days/this age takes courage. One will pass, one will grieve (though surely not as long, nor as terribly as before). Eyes wide open.
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Political/cultural comment
We came so close, and then we lost it. The reasons are complex, I guess. Someone else can figure it all out.
My friend, Janet said, ”…everything we worked so hard for…” And for so long. Ah, what a beautiful vision we had.
I think we may be on the threshold of a time of tribulation. I have no idea what form(s) it might take.
What to do after Trump election? (Answers evolving)
Live our normal lives, working on love and acceptance and meaning and growth… manifest these things.

Indian Path 

Now, more than ever, be a living mudra (symbolic gesture) of the potentials in life. Lift up (with energy, with money) positive forces, in my case World One Radio (http://worldoneradio.org/), my son’s high school, hospice – especially the Presbyterian hospice in Dallas, Atrium Obscurum, other entities. Be kind to others, friends and strangers.
I need to remember that long-ago boddhisatva vow: to liberate all sentient beings. It ain’t easy lol. I’m not done with myself.


–>

Lay it all on the line at the right time. No need for fear… we’ve all faced at least this much before.
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And the bodies move and we sweat
And we have our being
Van Morrison, Daring Night

Light in the Grove, Esalen magic, Nouwen quote, magic, my last patients, beautiful night

Esalen campus

It’s been awhile since I posted – much of my writing has been personal.

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We went to Light in the Grove, the 25th anniversary benefit for the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. http://www.aidsmemorial.org/ We got there early and sat in the car talking – a sweet time.
Light in the Grove

We made the most beautiful entrance I’ve ever made – when people arrived they were each given a glass of champagne and a candle in a glass vase and then walked down the switchback path to the Circle of Friends area – like an endless line of people, of lights. The path was lined with lights and every 20-30 feet there was a person standing greeting everyone warmly. The redwood grove below was beautifully lighted and there dancers in the glade (I think on this night the faeries were on the side of the hill). At the Circle of Friends everyone placed a candle in memory of someone (for me, Rueben). Then down a path at the edge of the glade where names of people who died projected in a moving, never-ending list on the trunks of the redwoods.

It was all deeply moving.
Esalen campus – class 

At the end of the path was a huge tent where there was a nice buffet, wine, drinks, etc. David and Charles got there a little later and sat with us for a bit and then they were off to connect with friends. We left not too long afterward. We sat on a bench beside the path – what a night!

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The next day we drove south on Highway 1 along the magnificent coast into Big Sur and to Esalen (http://www.esalen.org/). Here, hidden from the world, giants of the counter-culture had walked, studied, meditated, taught, opened… Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Fritz Perls, Allen Ginsberg, Virginia Satir, Joseph Campbell, and countless more.
Esalen showers

Our room opened onto the headlands above the Pacific rolling, crashing against the rocks below. We unloaded the car and headed for the hot springs baths, where we watched the sun set over the Pacific, blue water, white foam, crashing strong.

We talked about a time six years before when Jean had scattered her husband’s ashes by “David’s tree” beside the path to the springs. We talked about how the night before, less than 24 hours before, we had been at the place where my son and I had scattered my wife’s ashes less than a year before. What a life we lead!
Room at Esalen

In the morning we made love (“Open your eyes. See the sky! See the ocean!”) and later went for a massage. Like everything else, the massage rooms hang above the Pacific. A timeless massage with the waves rolling and crashing below… and then to the baths, where we made love (not physically) for three hours with the waves crashing below. Late lunch, nap on the lawn, drive to Carmel Valley for a glass of wine with Steve and Susan, then the long drive home.

I’ve dreamed of Esalen for half my life. Although there was a little weirdness in this trip with the presence of too many web developer millennials (a little too much loud talking, some even wearing swim suits in the baths – eww), still, the magic and beauty were there. We just created a cocoon around ourselves and opened to the magic, the love, the beauty, dreaming our dreams.
Esalen baths

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When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. Henri Nouwen
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Last patients, last day of work

These kind of things keep happening. I need to remember to record them. Jean texted that she was on the way home. I texted back that I would put a candle in the window. Less than an hour later this song came on the radio: Put a Candle in the Window. Home to this warm home, to this temple, the walls, the walls, the…

“walls with hangings rich,
of many strange designs”
(Robin Williamson).
—————–
Listening to U2’s New Years Day live, thinking of my work, about how I was there deep, deep in the richness and difficulties of the flow until the very end. I wondered what was the last photo of me at work? I looked and here it is – on my last day, my last patients. Taking the photo was the Mom’s idea.
Thanksgiving 2016

I met the woman on the left years before, very shortly after she got here from Mexico. We were in an apartment (a typical refugee/immigrant apartment) with some people, maybe her husband and someone else and two students, and somehow it happened that there was a modesty issue and I looked away without lingering. I always had the sense that she appreciated that. I took care of her and her daughter (in pink) for years. When I saw them that last time (photo) her daughter was about 13 or 14, wearing a shirt that said, Why Not?

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Esalen!

On a rainy day we went to visit a friend who lives in some mountains not far from San Francisco. The plan was to have dinner, have a sauna, and spend the night. He wasn’t home when we got there, so we got around the gate to the road to his wife’s studio (she is Jean’s good friend, traveling ATM) and walked down the road to the studio. The door was open and we went in and built a fire in the wood-burning stove (first photo) and put our feet up. Our friend came home a few hours later and we went to the house.

Nice dinner, great company, good sauna, back to the studio. It was cold and rained all night long. We set up the wood for the night, got the big air mattress set up on the concrete floor, then our new two-person sleeping bag, a bowl, a glass of wine, up every two hours to add wood to the fire, lot of bathroom runs, re-inflate the mattress a few times. One of the best nights of my life.
With John Kemp at Indian Rock

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Walls with hangings rich,
Lisa’s studio – cold, rainy day
of many strange designs


Just the facts, Yosemite, an ancient forest, illness, twilight, the way it is

Above the fog, above Golden Gate
There is zero embellishment, exaggeration, or anything else other than reporting the facts here. Driving across GG Bridge in the fog and then up into the Marin Headlands and when we were close to the end of the Headlands, parking and walking a short trail to where we sat/lay on a sarong in the scent of chaparral, in the place where fog and sun meet, at the edge of the world, around the bend from Shangri-La, and across the bridge from paradise – going home in paradise with the moon floating in misty beauty above. Paradise, where yesterday we lay naked and beautiful in the warm afternoon sun streaming through the temple door.

At the edge of the world
Yosemite: Beneath the Royal Arches, Washington Column, and Half Dome we lay cozy and comfortable beneath the trees, by the river and then walked quietly on soft pine needles in ancient forest with mossy rocks in faery circles and playgrounds in soft mist in these sacred groves, this “Sanctum Sanctorum” (John Muir).
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She said, “I honor you.”
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Three basic questions about serious illness:
What is it?
What does it mean to me (e.g., treatment, suffering, disability, dying)?
Can I do this?
Things that add up in the time of dying: First and always, good control of symptoms such as pain. Sharing heart space, all. Sacred meals shared, even if less than a bite. Drinking from a sacred vessel. Sleeping together. Opening a window. Music. Reading the old prayers. Whatever is possible…
Mystic forest
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From a slow train Moulmein to Rangoon, 2007
Mountains above,
Padi fields below,
Andaman Sea in the distance!
In mystic light.

Through a village in a forest,
A beautiful, graceful girl,
With thanaka on her cheeks,
And a basket on her head,
Walks out of a dark path among the trees.
Then another!

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Yosemite Valley, rainy day. Left to right:
Royal Arches, North Dome, Washington Column, and Half Dome
The night before I left Berkeley we had dinner on the deck – the Turkish entry in our ongoing ‘round the world salad challenge – and watched the sun go down behind Mount Tamalpais across the Bay and The City beginning to sparkle and we can still see GG Bridge and Alcatraz. Then Indian Rock at twilight – twilight, the mystic time of day in the mystic days we share. There were maybe 20 other people on the rock, their murmuring voices around, behind us and we’re sharing the cherry cherry wine, drinking from the bottle. These are the days!
El Capitan
“It’s getting dark – maybe we should go down.” We laughed at the unintended double entendre. Awhile later we decided to go down and whoa, it was really dark! We got down fine (slow) and sat close and warm on a park bench in the darkness…
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More facts (the bottom line):
Walking down by the river over the bridge through the trees and meadows and mountains and the soft forest floor with faery rings mossy boulders everything felt so right and so good walking along the street in markets in coffee shops in stores a café and a band playing dancing in a meadow so high in the sunrise in the eternal moment on the beach in the sand saying all the ways of loving and being talking of myth of art of mourning of euphoria of dancing of our generation of truth laughing in the golden light in the mist in the wind sea breeze in the fog in the sunlight making love in the forest in the temple fixing coffee breakfast dinner listening to WorldOneRadio wine on Indian Rock in the park in the dark on the San Francisco Bay kites flying dogs a man performing ritual a man playing a trombone on the highway telling the stories of our lives I feel ancient beautiful reborn prayer ceremony bliss love living a blessing crying dancing laughing serious happy sexy goofy singing loving …

Jean – Washington Column to left, Half Dome on right

Sacred space, sacred dance

Oh!
We danced in the meadow with all the shiny happy people at Flagging in the Park in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. We danced and danced and danced – in the flow – sacred space, sacred dance. David, Charles, Jean, me in the grove in the grass in the flowers in the people on the soft grass dance floor. Jean and I walking into the quiet and majestic redwood grove where faeries watch from the underbrush, to the side of the hill to dance in the sun on rocks, in love, in beauty.
As the party wound down, slow-walking up and out of the grove, past the greens, and as Hippie Hill comes into view we hear, as a hymn, Attics of My Life, the choir singing slow, no instruments, just voices in reverent joy. 
In the secret space of dreams
Where I dreaming lay amazed
When the secrets are all told
And the petals all unfold…
In the AIDS Memorial Grove

We played this song at Leslie’s service 18 months ago and I’m hearing it now, slow and stately, re-visioned. I shared this with Jean, as we’ve shared so much with one another – somehow in relation to my wife (whose ashes are in this grove) and in relation to Jean’s husband (today, Jean is wearing a talisman with some of his ashes in it). These days…

From Golden Gate, every bus and train back to Berkeley came with just moments of waiting. When we got home, the radio was playing Buffy Sainte Marie singing God is Alive, Magic is Afoot! How can things like this happen?

From the deck the sun sets behind Mount Tamalpais – an incredible thing when you think about it.

David Kemp, Jean Cacicedo, Charles Kemp, Charles Binkley –
Shiny Happy People
Here is a nice gift from me to you: http://worldoneradio.org/– it’s a radio station that plays gamelan music, Buffy Sainte Marie, rock and roll, EDM, chamber, all sorts of things all carefully thought out.









To David Bank

A little background music from Bob Seger (Roll Me Away): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXhxVjlJyQE
After 20 years as a New York police officer, David hit the road across America on his big two-wheeler. New York, down south, across the southwest, up the coast of California. Twenty years in the streets (of a runaway American dream), and now seven weeks into the trip, stopping off in Berkeley to have dinner with Jean and me  – the fellowship and the trip elevated me. Yeah!

From Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. Golden Gate in the distance.

Sitting on a rock wall near the top of Grizzly Peak above Berkeley (photo) – Jean, David, me – and far across the bay, San Francisco in in the afternoon light. In the evening, dinner outside looking across the bay into the sunset. America!
Roll me away.

From the deck the sun sets behind Mount Tamalpais.

San Fransisco to Berkeley

From the bedroom, through the temple door
Sitting in the front window above the Noe Street sidewalk listening to Van Morrison. I’ve been sorting and packing this morning (moving from San Francisco to Berkeley). It’s not easy – boxes of memories, of sadness, what to keep, what to discard (not much of the latter). Listening to The Healing Has Begun.
And we’ll walk down the avenue again
And we’ll sing all the songs from way back when
And we’ll walk down the avenue again and the healing has begun
And we’ll walk down the avenue in style
And we’ll walk down the avenue and we’ll smile
And we’ll say baby ain’t it all worthwhile when the healing has begun
I realize I’m sitting in the window, crying. Caught in the beautiful strands of the past. A few days ago, I told my friend Kristina that in the last months of Leslie’s life it was like there were shimmering falls of love and beauty coming down on us around us through us. Now, just short of 18 months later, I’m grateful I’m transfigured with love past and present.
At farmer’s market in Berkeley
There went two Dads with a beautiful baby wearing a rainbow jacket. Now an old Asian man and woman holding hands, walking slow. A pretty Mom and pretty baby. Oh Oh Oh!
And now I see a future. I always knew there would be some kind of future, but had no idea it would be beautiful like this. How can it be that I’m loving two women? Mourning one, making love with one. The love’s to love the love’s to love the love’s to love… Yes, I’m walking down the avenue again with a fine woman and a sense of wonder.
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In the early morning with the doors open to the fog and cold and the bed so warm. Oh! So warm!
The sky, the hill in the small distance, Golden Gate Bridge hidden in the fog (how it sparkled last night), the BART train going and coming from/to the station half a mile below and a few birds flying by, and somewhere a bird singing, and we’re talking of the past, the future, sacred space, this sacred space we’re in right now… 
With my cherry cherry wine (at Indian Rock in Berkeley)
Yesterday morning before we left the San Francisco apartment where Leslie and I had lived we were in bed I cried and cried and we made love and cried and drank our morning coffee and talked and I will never, we will never grow so old again I am so naked.
Yesterday we walked to Indian Rock and climbed up 50 or 60 feet and sat in the sun and drank from the bottle of cherry cherry wine – the same brand that Van Morrison sang about (could there be more than one brand labeled “Cherry Cherry Wine”) in Cypress Avenue: 
I think I’ll go on by the river with my cherry cherry wine
I believe I’ll go walking by the railroad with my cherry cherry wine
And that’s exactly what we did.
  

Principles for being, conversation, San Francisco, destiny

Jean at Marcia’s

Several of these photos were taken in Jean’s friend Marcia’s house in Berkeley.

Some of the more vicious FB posts about Hillary Clinton started me thinking about how we communicate and what responsibilities we might have in communicating. I looked up something I wrote in 1999 about ethics related to end-of-life care, especially the part about being honest. The fundamental moral or ethical principle is respect for people. Within this respect are these principles:
In Marcia’s garden
  • Respect for autonomy – the right of self-determination.
  • Beneficence or benevolence – doing good, meeting needs; a moral obligation to practice mercy, kindness, compassion, and charity.
  • Nonmaleficence – doing no harm.
  • Veracity – truth-telling.
  • Confidentiality – respecting privileged information.
  • Fidelity – keeping promises.
  • Justice – treating fairly.

Of course these don’t apply only to end-of-life care; they are ultimately serious and high organizing principles for life and how we betogether and within ourselves. (Thanks and a tip of the hat to Tom Beauchamp and James Childress.)
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Conversation with Guy, the man who sells flowers on Noe:

It looks like I may be moving to Berkeley.
What about your son?
Well, I’m retired, so I’ll just commute – lunches in SF, Golden Gate, all that.
Marcia’s bathroom

You’re lucky.

I know.

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San Francisco
Several years ago my son-in-law recommended the Tales of The City series by Armistead Maupin. I think Charles thought that reading these books would help me better understand San Francisco, the city I’ve fallen in love with – especially gay San Francisco. That’s exactly what happened. I just finished the last book in the series – The Days of Anna Madrigal. What a soaring, beautiful book.
My apartment on Noe. Window by alarm is/was mine.

My apartment is very near David and Charles in Duboce Triangle, between the Castro and Lower Haight. Leslie and I lived here happily – most of the time. After she passed away (I almost wrote, died) I stayed. Like our home in Dallas, I’ve loved and been loved here, made love here, been happy here, mourned here – I’ve lived here.

This is the city David gave to Leslie – and she embraced it fully and was embraced by it. Leslie in the Haight! Market! Castro! Cole Valley! She’s on the bus, on the F-Line, she’s in the streets, she’s interacting!


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To be born again.
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We were studying Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:26-36) in Bible study (about groans too deep for words, searching the heart, predestiny – all that in ten verses!) and I was thinking about the

View from Jean’s house – Mount Tam

day before when I spent several hours at a coffee shop with a young friend and was blown away by the fact that with open heart and well-acquainted with groans too deep for words, she’s walking tall into her destiny. It’s been a long road and she’s stayed true to the call. She and I have had some of the same visions. This was a very affirming time for me.

In the streets

Apartments in refugee neighborhood
Cambodian children – cold in the apartments
The way it worked was I would take clinical groups of community health nursing students into refugee communities. There were nearly always 8 students/group, so initially we had 4 teams of 2 students and me. Later as our reputation spread, we had volunteer and then paid translators and community health workers, like promotoras de salud. Still later in the process we developed clinics with medical (primary care, psychiatry, gynecology, pediatrics, etc.) and other services, which were integrated into the district health scene. But for now, I’ll describe the straight district health end of things.

We started in one apartment building (about 40 units), where a lot of refugees lived (as well as other poor people). We went door to door, finding health and related problems. On the first day, two of students helped deliver a baby – so we knew things were going to be interesting. Every time we’d find a problem, one of the student teams would stop to help the people solve the problem. Some problems were straightforward and readily solved, some took semesters to solve, and some were never completely solved. Often, one thing would lead to another and we’d work with the people over time. And Leslie was working with us (what an education for students that was!). It was never, ever about referral. It was always about helping the most underserved people be served – solving problems (pregnancy, primary care, depression, hunger, family violence, cancer, and on and on and on). 
In the day we sweat it out in the streets
of a runaway American dream
Community garden outreach
Agape Clinic waiting room
When we got through the first building, we left a team in that building to continue working through problems and went through the same process in the next building. Then we left another team in the second building and started working through the third. And so on. Over time, over semesters we had all the buildings covered in about an 8 block area (which was a lot). And we also had classes and other outreach (health screening, vaccinations, etc.) going on in schools, churches, and community gathering places; for awhile we were doing intake assessments for children who had been removed from their homes because of abuse; and we added the medical, etc. and expanded clinic hours.
Estevan Garcia, MD and Charles Kemp, FNP
Much of what we accomplished was through partnerships and cooperative relationships with community organizations, from grass-roots groups like the Association for Salvation of Cambodian Refugees to Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas County Health Department, National Council of Jewish Women, Dallas Police, and a number of foundations, churches, and religious organizations – and of course, the Agape Clinic.
We said we would take responsibility for this community and we did that. Far out vision, isn’t it. With dignity and justice for all in the real world. What an education for students it all was!

It lasted in one form or another for about 30 years and parts of it (East Dallas Health Center, Agape Clinic) continue through today

Refugee children on Carroll Street

and are seeing more patients now than ever before.

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We didn’t have a TV in the waiting room. Instead we had books – especially children’s books and a children’s play area.

Vancouver, Big Sur, the girl with far-away eyes, Anna Madrigal

Redwood from our bed. At night the stars!
If you’re downright disgusted
And life ain’t worth a dime
Find a girl with far-away eyes
(Jagger/Richards)
—————–
Anna Madrigal at age 92: “Help me up, dear. Just for a second. While we still have the light.”
—————–
It’s been another almost indescribable time.
David and Charles flew Jean and me to Vancouver, BC. We stayed in a boutique hotel, the Opus in Yaletown, two blocks from the harbor. It was my first time flying first class and first time in a hotel like the Opus.
We walked all over town, visited some of Jean’s colleagues on Granville Island (island like a tribal gathering place – my tribe), went to the brilliant anthropology museum, hung out in good times at the botanical garden, visited a great little market (Vancouver is a seriously friendly place), hung out at the New Amsterdam Café, had meals beyond belief (I’ve never had a tasting menu before – Ay Caramba!), Had a lovely birthday dinner for Jean, and had wonderful, wonderful times together. I am deeply grateful to David and Charles for this. What an incredible thing to do! What a beautiful time!

David Kemp and Charles Kemp at Hawksworth in Vancouver

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Back to Bay Area, we spent the night in The City, then drove south toward Big Sur – driving along the highway listening to Astral Weeks, crying along the highway.
We stopped for Jean to say a prayer at Esalen where her husband’s ashes were placed six years ago.
In another time, in another place.
Big Sur
Then Jean and I met Steve and Susan, Andy and Marita, and Bob and Ann at a secret hollow space in Big Sur, where we slept two nights outside among the redwoods by a mountain stream, watched the shimmering light on the leaves, saw an incomparable sunset in good fellowship, had lovely meals in a clearing in the forest, hung out around an old table cross-cut from a huge redwood (it was cut long ago – the people who invited Jean are serious about preserving the wilderness), sat on a beautiful beach watching the sea otters, walked in the redwood forest, and became younger and more beautiful.
Golden land sunset over the beautiful Pacific
A woodland-nymph with far-away eyes
Lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again
To be born again
In another world
In another world
In another time
Got a home on high
Ain’t nothing but a stranger in this world
I’m nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
Way up in the heaven
Way up in the heaven
We are goin’ up to heaven
We are goin’ to heaven
In another time
In another place
In another time
In another place
In another face
(Van Morrison)

While we still have the light



Love Wins!

Dyke March – Love Wins!
Originally posted June 2016. Re-posted July 2016

David and Charles, and Jean and I started Pride weekend with a birthday dinner for David at my apartment, including the last bottle of champagne from their wedding. There were tears for the 49 people murdered in Orlando. There were stories of David’s epic John Muir Trail trek, reminiscing, Berkeley, San Francisco, music, good food, just being together. It was a beautiful evening. 
The Dyke March started at Dolores Park on Saturday afternoon – a huge gathering of Shiny Happy People dancing, loving, laughing, being, and sweet, sweet vibes – including Jean and me. I’m blown totally away by this freedom and love vibrating through so many people. An unimaginably beautiful repudiation of hate and negativity and judgment. And an all-time great party! Jean pointed that this was a be-in. It was – a fine and true Human Be-In, a Love-In!
Dolores Park – Dyke March
We left the park before the march started. People were still just pouring into the park. We went back to my apartment, then met David and Charles on the corner, where we talked for awhile and a half block away Market Street was packed with marchers. We tagged on to the end of the march (Bom!) and I couldn’t stop dancing onward to Castro where these/us truly shiny happy people blocked the intersection of Market and Castro to dance and talk and BE and the police stood back and gradually the crowd dispersed. It was intense.
The end of the march
Sunday we went to a Pride Parade viewing party above Market Street. There were lots of people and drinks, food, music, two men in brief briefs dancing on tables. On the street below the parade kept coming and coming and coming. We went out to the street to be closer to an endless stream of people saying again and again “No!” to oppression and fear and prejudice and all of that.
Saying again and again Love is Love is Love is Love – there were Dykes on Bikes, SF Lesbian and Gay Freedom Band, Cancer Survivors (one sign said “Fuck Cancer” and another said, “I Don’t Have Nipples” – cheers of love all down the street), Transgender Veterans, Age On (“Life’s a Stage”), Oakland Fire Department Stands United With Orlando, Naked and Sacred, Google, Apple, “Eat me – try Vegan,” Facebook, Oracle, (“Be proud of who you are”), all the tech companies, Walmart(!), a gay couple who had been together 50 years, Lesbian and Jewish/Gay and Jewish/Bi and Jewish, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue (“Muttville Pride”), and so deeply moving – all the flags of the countries of origin of the people killed in Orlando. And more and more and more…

And as they kept on coming, there was a growing sense of overwhelming power and Love is Love is Love is Love is Love!
On the train (N Judah) back to the apartment a bunch of people piling in at the Montgomery stop and it’s getting very crowded and one of the people who just came in has a cool little music player with decent bass and the music starting and 4-5 people dancing on the other side of the couple kissing and kissing next to us and the guy with mental illness getting really excited, laughing and yeah, me too. This IS the train. (Everything happened exactly as described, but it’s also allegorical.)
Charles Kemp and Jean Cacicedo
The Sunday afternoon at the end of Pride, Jean and I went to Duboce Park a half block from the apartment to take a nap, lying on sarongs under a tree in shifting sun-dappled shade with a background of happy voices, laughter, N Judah train rumbling past, music somewhere up the hill, leaves in the wind, bouncing ball, opening my eyes seeing four people playing a gentle game of bocce – “O00hhh,” they were saying when someone made a good throw – and 20 feet away a woman dancing barefoot in the grass, breastfeeding her baby.







Duboce Park