deja wha?

June 2024

Here at my work table I am frequently of the illusion that I am at my old “penthouse” apartment on on Emerson Street. I had a three-bridge view there, before that big Y-shaped condo tower in Emeryville blocked out part of the City. I picture the little kitchen nook behind me, the parking lot out the window to the west, and the big redwood tree Wilson the Escaped Amazon parrot used to visit. I was there the night of the 1989 earthquake, watching the Marina burn, and the lighted tree on the blacked out hills to the east. I was there the day of the big fire, before it was a thing, I saw smoke at 8 AM, when it was 80 degrees and windy., and called 911. 

It is only 2-plus blocks, .2 miles, though thirty years away.  The sensation first came up some months ago when I suddenly realized that I was not on the third floor, in what was actually my bedroom there. The second time it happened i couldn’t dispel the vivid sense of the kitchen behind me, the memory of my little closet, and the niche that was a perfect fit for my LP’s and audio equipment at my elbow. I never actually had a table in that room.  I think the refrigerator backed up to the foot of the bed

One day I got up from the table here, and almost walked through the doorway to my current kitchen.  In my mind’s eye the bathroom was through a door to the main room and to the left. Even writing this I stop to switch tracks, the memory train wants to take that familiar option. I’ve become really fond of it, not looking up from my journal or painting, imagining myself there, another episode of timeline jumping, making a foray into the past to upgrade and heal some past trauma or imagined inadequacy.  Even now I can clearly conjure up the illusion that I am there.

That was another dump I moved into and transformed into a glorious mirage, the tall victorian windows and the fireplace with a huge mirror that reflected the moon rising over the hills, walls I painted to match the glazed green tile, circa 1906.  I had my cat Betty there; where is that drawing of the mouse-mouth? 

What is the purpose of that memory? It was a previous time when I lived alone, not the first, relationship free–after Ed moved back to The City.  I had the same sense of complete centeredness and fortune in my choice of home and surroundings, OMG to the extent that I once had my drums set up there! Poor neighbors!