Comments on: Events Surrounding the Quake of ’89

By: Fax Sinclair

Fax Sinclair — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:50:07 +0000

Aloha Marc,
I enjoyed reading this. I was living in Foster City with the quake hit. I had just gotten up and went into the bathroom and threw up. Got myself rinsed out and stepped into the hall and it hit. Heard it first, thought a plane was coming into sfo on a low and Wrong(!) approach.
I was standing in such a boring place. Couldn’t see anything but it was the first quake that tried to put me on the floor.
Ran to the phone and called My Mom and said “I’m OK! There was a quake. Said she knew because the baseball game went off the air and she saw the light fixture swinging (in Morro Bay!)
Writing is still a love for me, but I’ve since become a photographer. You can see my work at fax-sinclair.com

By: marc

marc — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:18:34 +0000

Uneasy Street appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction many years ago and is long out of print. I did a quick bittorrent search and don’t see it having been piratically scanned and uploaded anywhere either. Someday I hope to get some of my old stories back in print, or at least online. Maybe right here at this site.

By: DemonGithara

DemonGithara — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:59:26 +0000

Thanks for the feedback. Your views of neo-paganism are a sober reminder that we must grow up and put down our toys. But there seems to be things about the universe that make so little sense as to encourage ideals that make up eastern and western views of magic. I respect the Asian views of magic more so than European, but I still have grave doubts about the claims I’ve heard. I am no expert in the subject, in any case. Magic just seems so real because there is a kind of benevolent force guiding some aspects of my life, out of my control.

To explain it is a dubious chore, because it can never really be substantiated by mere words. Also, I need to cut back on pot smoking, hehe.

Oh, and the TL is still full of crackheads and beggars that do very little to help themselves, and that’s what I was hinting at in regards to the “Deadheads.” I suppose cid was more popular back then.

I want to read “Uneasy Street” soon. Do you have it anywhere? If not, I’m fair at finding things and will search if you don’t. I will also look for The Rainbow stories, as I am somewhat of a descendant of rainbow children. I wouldn’t mind being past age 30 myself, seeing things a lot differently than I do now…

You’re awesome Mr. Laidlaw XD

By: marc

marc — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:59:08 +0000

Also, I didn’t edit the journal when I transcribed it…I might use the term native American if I were cleaning it up, but that’s not how I wrote it at the time, so I decided to leave it. Yes, in that passage, it sounds a bit like I’m picturing something from a Hollywood western; but actually I think I was casting back much earlier than that, to ancient indigenous people, who would certainly have been much more sensitive to earthquake-induced uneasiness, and interpreted it differently. These days I believe a lot of the so-called neo-Pagan beliefs are largely a wishful and wistful modern concoction that serve as a kind of asphalt to hold together fragments of anthropological knowledge and archaeological survivals that are usually poorly understood, and usually filtered through pyschedelics. But 25 years ago I saw things differently.

By: marc

marc — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:51:10 +0000

We lived around Haight and Masonic; in the years I lived in SF (1980 to 1997) there was never a time when it wasn’t full of druggies. Sounds like the Haight and the Loin have swapped populations if there are more deadheads than crackheads in the TL. A lot of the Tenderloin population changed after this quake, by the way–many of the tenements were condemned, and the residents shifted toward 16th & Mission. You might enjoy The Rainbow Stories; Vollmann wrote quite a lot about the Tenderloin. I was very fond of it when I worked there, grim as it was. There used to be a store called Fantasy Etc. at the corner of Larkin and O’Farrell where I bought many books and even worked for a time. Last time I was in SF there was a grocery store on the spot; also, it had just rained and the streets didn’t smell like piss. If you ever find my story “Uneasy Street,” it’s set in the Tenderloin, and has some key scenes in the little park at that intersection. (Assuming it’s still there.) Fritz Leiber lived right around there as well (I put my essay about Leiber here on the site too).

By: DemonGithara

DemonGithara — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 05:29:50 +0000

This was a joy to read, Mark (or Marc?). I actually live in the loin, and I really appreciate hearing about an instant of your life in SF, where I live a lonely life in a busted up SRO called the Hartland Hotel. I wish I could feel those feelings you had that day, to sense what it was like to see civilization taking a backseat to mother’s strong hand.

Here is some more thoughts in context of your article:

Magic is real to me, however, understanding it in my own base humanity or taking notes from pagans is not useful to this one. Who really knows what nature is all about?

I also like the part where you contemplate the Buddhist philosophical view of desire, which has always confused me for some reason, but I like their ideals a lot, and their form of humanity.

I want to go tour this place you lived. You lived around Haight? That place is full of druggies these days, whom I don’t actually like to be around, with my pot smoking. Deadheads abound in the loin, but I’m just barely “alive” my self. I just read they used to segregate the Japanese American school kids in china town in the 1942 era of internment camps, which I tired to explain to my black girlfriend, who doesn’t understand a word I say most days. I see you also call the Natives “indians,” but I don’t mind as much, because I like you

What’s up with the reference to Octopus beaks…