Names

It was Boxing Day, 2008, and we were hunkered down beside a fire in a dune just off ocean beach in San Francisco. It was so beautiful, four or five of us, warm out of the wind, the flames lighting up the dark. We had candles in paper bags. I think there were snacks. I didn’t want to leave. But everything took longer than we thought, there were people waiting for us, we had to put out the fire and leave.

It was the day of one of our epic Christmas hunts which Don and I (mostly Don) put on for Jesse. Always, one clue led to the ferry to San Francisco, a clue on the ferry led to someone or somewhere, and so it went, all day. Sometimes we ended up at a concert and stayed all night. Sometimes our car was impounded and friends drove us home. Once, we ended up in Hawaii.

On this day, we met Jonathan on a hillside at Alta Plaza park and perfected our light-writing abilities, using long exposures on my 35 mm Pentax. We then walked further down the hill to Johnny Rockets and met Peter, who had been at his bike shop. More friends came and we all headed out on a bus to Dogpatch, to the Bottom of the Hill club where three bands were playing.

San Francisco. I can pull any thread from any number of memories, a cornucopia of delights. Years of working with creative people in architecture firms, gathering for work and parties. Groups of tai chi people gathering to practice and banquet at Chinese restaurants. Meeting Don. It was enough to know he existed! And those Christmas hunts, at which Don pulled out all the stops to introduce Jesse to that amazing city. 

Often ephemeral, these gatherings were stuffed full of ideas, bringing together people from all over, making up the essence of the city. It was the place which I came to in 1969 and Don in 1978. We each named it our city of birth. In that city the real Connie Kronlokken finally stood up and said yes, this is who I am. A poet, an amateur anthropologist and philosopher, a reader and writer. Insouciant and open, with an undercurrent of joy. And simple, too. San Francisco allowed me to be simple.

And it all took place in surroundings of taken-for-granted beauty, views of water, islands, lights. The park was always available, assuaging my loneliness sometimes. And a green belt of islands and parks encircled the city, all available by public transportation. Everything flowed into, and out of the city. My ability to get around without a car, to hunker down in simplicity, and to participate in richness with little money, was unmatched.

This is how I name my reality. As humans, we need names. We append names to the shifting collections of phenomena that places, times and people are. I am able to experience only the tip of the iceberg of a place, but I use a name for that place, so that you, with your own experience of it, can latch on to what I want to say about it. On each other, we pin names, though we may have the flimsiest sense of who each other are at our depths, of the history behind the face.

All of this gives post-modernists the sense that they can create their own reality. But nothing is further from the case. Reality is so thick and tangible, absolute in its essence, that none of us can get to the bottom of it. We used to judge art by its “thickness,” its ability to embody the many layers of emotion and recognition a movie or a book was able to evoke in us. It is still a useful way to look at things.

It could be that names are part of our evolutionary emergence, the human way we thrust ourselves into the mix. They are an aspect of the ratchet which holds things in place, even as time’s arrow drives us on. A ratchet is meant to keep us from slipping backwards. Although it may seem, at the moment, that we do!

Because we are watching the world go up in flames. “The wheels are coming off,” Don reports, almost every day. Conflict and decay are everywhere. Daniel Schmachtenberger says, “Winning at a dying game is not an interesting win.” He points to an economics beyond capitalism, and a world where a win is defined not by an individual against others, but by a victory that benefits everyone. He asks us to step back from our “business as usual” efforts and see what we can each do to help.

But Schmachtenberger is something of a dour presence and I have been much more energized by what has happened around Navalny’s death. I began by paying attention to Navalny’s Instagram posts years ago. This is an intimate way of knowing someone over time. Navalny’s was a message of unflinching courage and hope for the future. He was always joking, comparing himself to characters in pop culture, making light of the dire circumstances of his day to day life in prison. His daughter, Dasha, a student at Stanford, writes, “You gave your life for me, my mother and brother, for Russia … I will live my life the way you taught me, to make you proud, and most importantly, with the same bright smile on my face.”

Navalny is a name, around which Russians built their hope, hidden from their imperialist leader who pretends to democracy. In death, Navalny still shows us this visible peak of the deep reality he embodied. Not being Russian, I am amazed that his name carries so much weight in other parts of the world as well.

I have no doubt that San Francisco is still a place of beauty, despite the “dying game” demonstrated by the billionaires and their yachts. Don and I have moved our operations to Los Angeles, and I have found places here to continue to be simple and open. When our tai chi friends name the LA they once lived in, it has little in common with our “east side” life. Places are always changing. Life moves away from staid and static entrenched places, toward open space where it can flow. But we need names, representations, so that we can talk to each other, knowing how flimsy they are in the face of deep reality.