June 27th, 1967

Father comes looking for boy upstairs today. Tom drunk, Grace on toilet in their flat.

Grace screaming to Mrs. Dill who’s knocking on their door: "I'll tell you when I'm ready! I'm trying to move my bowels, for Christ's sake!"

Mrs. Dill screams so loud they finally come out.

Boy’s father says he hasn’t seen his son in 2 months.

Tom asks him if he’s going to school.

Father says, "He's only been bumming from what I can see."

Tom comes over asking advice.

Mrs. Dill wants to kick out hippies in #9. Tom wants to know if the kids are doing anything wrong, what he should do. I tell him they’re alright.

Tom talking about his eyes, afraid of going blind, accuses doctors of screwing him up, giving him wrong medicine.

"I don't want to go blind, Peter,” he tells me. “Doctors are no good. Don't do no good at all."

He shows me his 22-pistol. Big colored guy came to his door last night.

A few minutes later he's down in the backyard, staggering around looking at flowers, smoking cigarette. Gun goes off. Woman on first floor opens her window. He begins mumbling incoherently to her.

Chinese family celebrating child’s birthday in backyard across the way. Roasted pig, beautifully brown, with big spread of food on table. Butcher cuts the back off the pig, chops it into slabs. Chinese children chasing each other across concrete.

I meet a girl on Haight Street who's just taken acid:

"Goddamn it," she says, shaking her head. "How can I be so stupid? Well, some people just can't make it."

We walk along, become friendly. She asks me for a cigarette. I ask her if she wants a Newport or Marlboro. She gets excited about me having menthol.

"If only you had a Salem," she says.

I actually do. I give her one & we giggle. She says you're very nice. I tell her she’s beautiful. She heads home down Clayton Street.

Looking out my window tonight, I realize the cosmic quality of the San Francisco skyline, the total vision of a city. Because of its hills, the city is laid open, naked, honest.

Seagulls fly in from the ocean, little bird takes flight from the telephone wire. Giant palm tree in backyard seems lonely in the shadows.

Eerie quality to the chimneys & angled roofs of the Victorians against the evening sky, enclosed in a shimmering silver light.

I watch the beautiful dark hippie woman, beyond the wooden fences between the yards, sitting at her window drinking tea beneath her Tiffany lamp.

» July 1st, 1967 : Rachel's Invitation