Trip North
I went up north to Tamales Point.
http://tinyurl.com/3xhezw
during this trip I had one observation and one revelation.
The traffic on Golden Gate Bridge slowed down, because the right lane was blocked by a police go-around sign. There was an ambulance and two police cars parked in the right lane, but no accident. The bridge has a sidewalk; it's a spectacular walk across the bay. Three tourists were explaining something to one policeman, and another was writing in his notepad. Slowly passing them by, I noticed that there was nothing else- no injured bicyclist and no person sitting on the sidewalk. Realizing what I saw, I accelerated to 70 mph, and turned into an observation area immediately after the bridge. With San Francisco on the background, I saw police lights on the bridge, and two boats circling right under the lights. Then the bigger boat, a Coast Guard cutter sped up towards the shore, and the smaller boat followed. The Coast guard station was right underneath the observation deck, about 400ft below. People were acting fast- the coast guardsmen on the pier were mooring the cutter, while others put out something that looked like a big plastic sleigh. Then they unloaded a body on this sleigh, and two people in white coats leaned over the body, doing something that looked like pumping. I was standing on a concrete barrier, and an Americanized Aztec-looking tourist from probably Modesto, California with a huge telescopic camera climbed up next to me to take pictures of the bridge. I told him what happened. This guy had his shit together: he immediately produced two pairs of binoculars, handed one to me. Often when people are faced with matters of death or when they suffer an injury, they fixate on some little irrelevant details: I noticed that the small binoculars was of khaki color. Also, in retrospect, it was interesting how my approach to this binoculars was different from a geeky curiosity of holding a new gadget, in which I would indulge in another situation, it was "fuck, fast, how do i make this work?". It was hard to see, because the picture was shaking, but I saw a fat naked body on that plastic stretcher, with two doctors trying to resuscitate by pumping its chest. In 5 minutes it was all over, they covered the body with a white sheet. The guy’s wife came on a rented bicycle, with attached map of San Francisco- they rent them to tourists encouraging to bike across Golden Gate. He told her, she said: “oh my…”, kind of quietly. I liked that there was no further comment, she looked very upset. The guy asked me: “Why would anyone do that?” I thanked him for the binoculars, and shambled to the car.
The tip of Tamales Point is covered by grass- there is no need to walk on a trail. Right now it blossoms- there are purple flowers. I was walking on this grass, with Pacific Ocean on the left, and Tamales Bay on the right, visible at the same time. I thought: fuck San Francisco, it would be nice just to stay here, sleep in this grass, and walk every day. Then I thought that I would eventually get hungry. And then it dawned upon me that the waiters are the gatekeepers of food: when you try to satisfy your basic need to eat and if you do not have “money”, the waiters would either say no and send you off, or call the cops. Those good looking chicks in the restaurants, the Mexican immigrants making burritos, they are the teeth of the Darwinist society- they dispense the food. They are the hired police, the first line of control in the conveyor of natural selection.