below

Isn't it strange how sometimes events in our lives can become such a part of the past -- seemingly so distant -- that we become detached and it feels like another life? It's almost as if we have to wonder whether or not we actually lived through that period or not.

Now, here on a Friday night at the Queens Compound, I remember the Tenderloin. It's like someone else's disturbing waking dream. But it's mine and it does not faze me. No, I will not use the term "nightmare" because the Tenderloin of San Francisco never seemed that horrific to me (though it often was). I knew the names of some homeless, some pimps, some prostitutes (at least, I knew their street handles). Once upon a time I tread its streets with caution, not fear.

There I lived and worked in a residential hotel near on Jones near the corner of O'Farrell. My room was on the top floor and overlooked the south of the city. It was an amazing view as the state receded across a hilly horizon line. The beauty of that view was also a dichotomy with the squalor below. One of the windows in my room looked straight down on the intersection of Jones and O'Farrell.

Long ago now, it seems. Distant. Could it have been someone else and not me? Do we lead lives where a foreign soul slowly overtakes what we call ours and tangible memories become illusory?

Oh, yes, even I find my speculation doubtful.

I remember.

Once, she was at the open window. I was nearby. In that room, I could not help but be nearby. I write this based upon memory, and memory cannot revive the exact words of the conversation. Thus, I improvise:

She: "Hey, come here. Take a look at this."

I wander over to stand next to her and look.

Me: "Whoa. What the hell...?"

In the building across O'Farrell a man is half out a window. From the waist down he is inside an apartment, and the rest of his body limp and dangling against the facade of the building, arms stretched downward. Unmoving.

She: "Do you think we should call the cops?"

Me: "I don't know. He's probably not dead..."

She: "But what if he is?"

Me: "Well, if he is, then there's probably not much we, or anyone else, can do about it now."

She: 'He's not moving at all."

Me: "He's probably drunk. Or drugged-up. Or both. Look at the neighborhood."

There was further exchange, but in the end we let it go. And, lo and behold, hours later, the man draped out the window in the building across the street was gone.

Maybe it was all an illusion.