In Chinatown, the day-streets are bustling with all the wares of cultural thrift, repetition visions of cheap china-type dinner and tea sets, bamboo umbrellas, tee-shirts, backpacks, knock off electronics, the lot. Tourists with big bags full of trinkets and memories walk all dazed under strings of round red lanterns that stretch across the street from apartment windows that sit above the shops, cars nudging through crowded streets as spaced out spectators seduced by sensation walk across with cameras following their nose to the next dim sum sushi joint. We make a beeline right for this basement bar called Mr. Lees or something generic like that – the kind of place where you keep your wallet in your front pocket and you lay paper on the toilet seat if you have to take a shit, where the bathroom is further down in the underbelly of the town and was probably dug out by the owner himself.

Inside, it’s all dark and moody with little tiki decorations and old Chinatown photos in black plastic frames – we find three seats at the bar near an old sour man with crazed white hair sitting at the wrap around corner-end of the bar hunched over a glass of despair in a brooding trance, some ineffable gaze into the void in is way gone eyes – we order by way of hand gestures a round of rum drinks. I was talked into it, having never been a big fan of rum, and thinking I already started the day with whiskey and beer, and how would this mix? The bartender, an old Chinese woman who laughs at us with that kind of play along laugh people have in countries where they don’t actually speak the language, brings us our drinks in these big plastic cups that look as though she picked them up from one of the street vendors outside. The drinks are strong, however.

Bluebird goes downstairs, down into the dungeon depths of the neighborhood to use the bathroom, and I take a second to tell Seth that I’m in danger, that I’m falling madly in love with this girl. “She seems like a real gem, Ed,” he says, and I go on about how we’ve known each other all these years, but never like this, and once we started talking again, things just launched all the way to the moon, and how could I be anything but in love, what with her obvious physical beauty, but more because beneath the seductive appeal of her skin lay this great ocean of life and hunger and divine radiance, and just then, she walks up behind us as I’m gabbin’ on about her, Seth all giving me the lookout eye-shuffle with a smile, and Bluebird laughs, “Busted!”

“I was just braggin’ on ya,” I say, laughing.

“You’re funny, sweet man,” she replies, leaning in to plant a kiss on my cheek.

“We should down these drinks and get something to eat before heading into North Beach,” says Seth.

“Looks like Ed’s already on top of it,” replies Bluebird, pointing at my empty cup. “Thought you didn’t like rum, huh?”

“Who knew?” I exclaimed.

“So what’re you guys hungry for?” Seth queries. “I know a couple of good spots on the edge of North Beach.”

“Honestly, I’m up for just about anything,” I reply, the booze starting to evoke that mid-day drunk hunger in my belly, the kind that doesn’t discriminate, the kind that makes the greasy all night diners so appealing in the pre-dawn hours of long rambling nights of intoxicated madness, those nights you tend to not write home about.

 They finish their drinks, and Bluebird jumps on paying the tab, “what a dame,” I think – shuffle back up the stairs and the day outside is suddenly twice as bright as it was before, all of us reaching right away like ghouls of the night for sunglasses, the sweetest of salvation when you find yourself at the start of a bender before you’ve even had lunch. We walk up Grant St. to where it runs into the corners of Columbus and Broadway – on the corner there’s a collective of Chinese musicians playing old traditional tunes from the old country that sweep your audio-visions away to dreams of being in another place, another time – how music can transport you to the great paintings of your heart’s happy imagination, stories unfolding in the rise and fall of the tune, Bluebird all watching with dancing enamored smile, my heart surges with hunger for her divinity in that clear bright moment – Seth then takes us onwards to this little hole in the wall burger joint, and we eat hungrily and grateful – fuel for the long night ahead.

Around the corner, heading up to Washington Square, past the strip clubs on Broadway all dormant and dark in the daytime, we pass the Knights of St. Francis church, where Seth explains that in 1906, during the great fire that followed a devastating earthquake, all the fisherman made a long water line down to the bay, passing pail after pail of seawater to save the church from the blaze, and once their work was done there, they quickly moved over to this old bar called the Saloon (then a brothel), saving it too from the blaze, and then commenced to drinking in a night of wild wrap around legs and sex elation with a place to confess the next sober morning.

We make our way into Little Italy, stopping by a convenience store to buy a couple of park beers and wrap them in brown paper bags all hobo-like to sit in the sun and relax for the afternoon. Along the walk, the cafés and bistros are filled with contented people sipping coffee and reading papers and books, mulling over city maps while seduced by the fragrant aromas of freshly baked breads and coffee beans and garlic, sidewalk tables line the shops with seated voyeurs and chatting types basking in the motion of this San Franciscan micro-universe, birds hovering about in trees eyeballing the crumbs of diners, a patient game of waiting, tired delivery men hurriedly dropping off boxes on curbside routes, a spectacular scene of great surging life painted warmly by the midday light.

We get to Washington Square and make our way onto the grass by the trees that sit in the center. The towering Saints Peter and Paul church hovers above in a magnificent scene of architecture and dogma, the bells ringing out to call in the hour of the devout – inside a wedding is in session, and soon the cavalcade rolls out in a great joyous celebration, everybody all cheering and throwing rice and hollerin’ the big congrats of a lifetime’s endeavor of love, and then they move on to the park-grass for photographs with the church as the background, strangers all watching with glistening smiles, as happiness is contagious in spring afternoons. Love is surely alive today.

In the park is a mix of people and pets – of doomsday prophets, those refugees of the ghost-light sermons of the night, the makers of the wailing lost rambles you hear echoing down the streets when you’ve been out all night and make your way back to your room after a bar-hop or party stop, now lounging in the grass without a care – and there’s the couples reading poetry or eating picnics and napping in sweet lover’s cuddles on blankets, the hip kids with the beer bottle game, where they drive sticks into the ground and rest their beer bottles on top and take turns trying to knock each other’s bottle off with a frisbee – and we get all into the game watching them while drinking our beers, laughing like fickle cheerleaders as we hoot and holler for each team on their turn – and there’s the Chinese meditators walking in slow steps in some deep trance, the dog walkers with pups chasing after balls and each other, and the pigeons who coo for crumbs as people eat their take out sandwiches on park-side benches. This great big fuzzy mutt comes running up to us, all shaggy and soft and brown – Bluebird decides she’s going to dog-nap the pup and take him home, all laughing out, “If that woman doesn’t keep a close eye on her dog, I’m gonna run away with him, he’s too cute to not be mine.”

Just as we’re getting good and drunk and running out of beer, Seth’s pal Pedro shows up after stopping by a corner store to pick up a case of PBR tallboys, the beer of hipsters and grifters alike. He comes from Chile, studying in the states and working at a marketing firm. He’s a handsome fellow with a straight standing nature, dark perceptive eyes that sparkle in the light, dark hair, and that kind of voice that girls fall in love with right away, his accent and articulate nature, even when he struggles to find the right words to communicate his thoughts, always with a big smile on his face. I liked him right away.

We sit around all lazy-happy, drinking beers and people watching. He and Seth talking about having gone to see Bon Iver a few weeks back, about the neighborhoods they live in, how expensive it’s getting to live in the city. Around us, the swells of people surge in a great moving contentedness – day shoppers, photographers, and bums – all one big family in the park, nothing to worry about in the great suffering hunger of the world when you have a place to sit and while away the time with friends.

Liz shows up in all her radiant beauty, laughing as she walks up at us rolling around in the grass making merry talk about all the commotion of the ocean in the park. I can see right away why she’s the perfect match for Seth – a tall, blonde beauty with the kind of cutting smile that makes guys go all gaga in the head, she’s got great piercing eyes wrapped in a gentle face, and this graceful demeanor that tells you she’s got the compassion of a saint and the sense of humor of an unmentioned sister of the Marx Brothers – all wry, witty and concise. She’s a sharp chick, and can certainly stand her ground with a madman like Seth.

“You guys look like you got started early,” jokes Liz, as she walks up.

“Well, figure today’s as good as any to celebrate,” replies Seth. “This is my friend, Ed. And this is Jasmine.”

“Ed,” says Liz, “I’ve heard a whole lot about you.”

I always shudder inwardly when people say that to me, knowing that I’ve always been a train wreck and wondering what kind of details have been divulged. “They’re all lies, I assure you,” I say.

“I’ve got proof of everything, brother,” laughs Seth.

“Shit,” I mumble, laughing.

“So Jasmine,” Liz goes on, “how did you get lassoed into this merry band of madmen?”

“Oh, well,” replies Bluebird, “this guy over here,” pointing at me, “started writing me love poems and seduced me into a trip out here. Figure he’s cute enough, I guess,” winking at me like the sex siren of my dreams, “to at least spend a weekend with. Figured if anything, it’d be good for a laugh and some beach time on the Pacific.”

“A regular Casanova, huh?” jokes Liz.

“All lies, I tell you,” I say.

“So how do you guys know each other?” she asks.

“We’ve been friends for years,” explains Bluebird, “and just reconnected recently. Found out there was more to our friendship after all these years than what we used to know about each other. So here we are in San Francisco. And what a great time, this place is beautiful!”

“Cheers to love,” exclaims Pedro.

“Jah man,” adds Seth, “many blessings to love and people and life and all the little creatures too, to everything under the universe and outside and inside even, let’s drink to all of it! Pull up some grass, babe,” he says, handing Liz a beer.

“So what’re we getting into this evening?” asks Liz.

“There’s supposed to be some jazz band playing up in the Haight tonight at the Club Deluxe,” Seth replies. “I was thinking we could go up there, get a slice of pizza and have some drinks. They’ve got this really great drink called the greyhound, where they squeeze fresh grapefruit and mix it with vodka. It’s glorious!”

“That sounds fantastic!” exclaims Bluebird. “We should go there, and live jazz to boot!”

“You know I’m always down for live jazz,” I reply. “I was in New York City earlier this year, hanging out with a friend for a couple of days, and we ended up by chance in this little basement bistro, French type and all fancy like with a cover charge, but turned out to be amazing. It was a three-piece band, stand up bass, drums and a trumpet player. I think they were from the south somewhere, and this guy on trumpet could wail like Miles Davis, I swear. We got good and drunk, and I got all lost in the music, took me to that place where there’s only you, the observer, watching and listening to somebody communicate with the divine. Love me some jazz, after all, and when it’s near perfect, you can’t go wrong!”

“Yeah man,” Seth replies, “sounds perfect. And you gotta be as good as Miles if you’re gonna play that town, I imagine. Tough crowds there, they know their jazz. I’m sure if you aren’t any good, your time on stage won’t last very long in that scene. That said, I can’t promise this is going to be a session of Bitches Brew or anything, but between the greyhounds, the pizza, good company, and live music, I’m sure we’ll be in the gloriously good hands of the universe, yeah?”

“I’m in,” replies Bluebird. “I especially like the sound of those greyhounds.”

“Of course I’m down,” I say.

“Me too,” says Pedro, “but we should finish these beers before we head that way.”

“Ha!” laughs Seth, “good thinking. Best to not let the beer get warm. It’s the sin they forgot to write in that book, after all.”

“So how long are you guys in town?” asks Liz.

“I’m leaving tomorrow on an afternoon flight,” Bluebird responds, “heading back to Georgia.”

“I’ll be in town for a couple of more days,” I add. “I want to take some time to go looking for my old friend, Joshua, that disappeared years ago.”

“Is that the guy you told me about,” asked Seth, “the one you lived with in Colorado and then hit the road together?”

“The one and the same,” I reply.

“So what happened to your friend?” asks Pedro.

“Well, it’s a bit of a long story,” I say. “We used to live together, as Seth mentioned, years ago. I guess it was around ’96. In the late ‘90’s we hit the road, following Phish around the country and traveling about. We were just madmen on the road those days, taking all kinds of psychedelics and pushing our minds as far out as we could go. We were like those high-speed rocket cars you see breaking land-speed records on the salt flats in the desert, the turbines of our minds and hearts on afterburner going full blast right through the void of the world, all the travel, the music, the people, the sleep deprivation, the paranoia that eventually came out of it, all the cops shaking us down in the ’71 VW camper we were traveling around in, a group of about four or five of us. And then one day, we both went barreling down the roads of our psychological limits, and at the end of the flats was the great cliff of the abyss looming on the horizon. But our ride was so fast and mad and full of questions and craziness and wonder that we couldn’t slow down, and in the last minute, I got terrified by the world and ejected right out of the ship and Joshua went right on over the edge full blast. It was madness man, acid trips in the mountains where suddenly you feel like your reality is this hellish joke being played on you, all the world a great sinister fabrication and everybody is in on it except you, the synchronistic connection of all things, how everything started to seem connected, like there was an invisible design to the unfolding of space and time, and suddenly we could see the actual blueprints in every conversation and moment, in the mountains, in strangers’ eyes, as though we by happenstance peered through the illusion of our world and saw the will of all creation, heard its language, saw it in the process of unfolding. And it was like seeing into that design, as if we could suddenly predict things, like the things people would say, how they would act, all the events of the world were just little scenes in a great big movie, and suddenly we could read the script as it was being written. But it got to be too much, who could know anything like that, right? It’s too much for a singular point, almost like in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, how Zaphod Beeblebrox was sentenced to death on that one planet with the disembodied voice in the ‘total perspective vortex’ where he got put in that box, and in an instant, the entire universe was in there with him and there was a little arrow pointing to the planet he was on and had a sign saying ‘you are here.’ Something like that would destroy the human ego, making you realize how small you were in the face of the endless expansive everything. It was a terrifying place for my mind to go, and I had to come down, get my life back in order, remember that I’m just a human being and I live a life in this world. I was born of flesh and some day I’m going to die. And honestly, I don’t know what trip he’s on now. He flipped out years ago, hit the road on his own and just disappeared. The last time anybody saw him was somewhere around ten years ago, here in San Francisco. They said he was living on the streets and he wasn’t doing well. And so every time I come here, I spend a couple of days looking for him, hoping to find him, to know he’s okay. I feel, in some way, somewhat responsible for what happened to him. I mean, we all choose our own paths in life, but I was there when he was slipping, we were on the same trip, but I managed to get off the ride, and he just kept on going, and I wish I could have helped him ground himself, you know?”

“It sounds like you really love the guy,” adds Liz.

“I do,” I reply. “He means a great deal to me. There’s always been this ache in my heart for him, because when I was young and all crazy from how I grew up, getting tossed out on the streets by my dad as a kid, I was so angry then. Joshua came into my life somewhere around that time, and when I moved to Colorado with him and some other friends, he showed me how to love, a different way about life. He really changed me for the better, and I feel as though I owe it to him to find him and make sure he’s doing well. In way, he saved my life, and to think that he’s suffering out here on the streets just breaks my heart.”

“Joshua was always such a kind person,” adds Bluebird.

“You knew him too?” asks Liz.

“Yeah,” replies Bluebird. “We grew up in the same area of Georgia, and he was always such a nice person, so full of life.”

“And a brilliant musician, too,” I add.

“What was his axe?” asks Seth.

“He was a trumpet player,” I say. “I remember one time, speaking of New York, where I ran into him at a show in Tennessee, back in ’99, I think. He had been up in New York and sat in with some jazz musicians at one of those clubs. If I remember correctly, he said those guys played well above his head, but he said he learned a lot by playing with people on that level. I also remember a time when we were at a Phish show in New York, and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters showed up at the show in the Further Bus on their way up to Canada for some kind of festival, and Joshua ended up playing with some of the musicians in that group on top of their bus while everybody was hanging around in the lot. It was amazing, listening to him improv with people like that, the whole vision of it is clearly embedded in my brain forever. I wish I had been a photographer back then. What a sight!”

“So what would you do if you found him?” asks Pedro.

“I don’t know, honestly,” I say. “Give him a big hug, tell him I love him, see how he’s doing I guess.”

“You’re a kind person, I can tell,” adds Pedro.

“I just love people, man,” I respond.

“Then we drink to people, and to your friend Joshua,” he replies, raising his beer to the bright afternoon hovering above.

“Here, here,” boasts Seth.

And we drink to all the lovers and sufferers of the world, for all the people who walk around with a glassy countenance for life and time, to all the strange and mystical precessions of human endeavor, to all the wondrous manifestations of the mortal coil, all of us a great troupe of seekers and hopeful wanderers in the great abyss, reaching like flower petals all bright and vibrant in the light of mid-afternoon on this great grassy field encased in the walls of old buildings and people and roads with mid-day traffic, to the dogs and pigeons who play obliviously in the contentedness of pure being, to all the sights and sounds of existence, and the dream, always the dream of life that pulls us through the great and overwhelming shuffle of motion and intentions and goals and apathy even, to the perfection of life even in spite of the terrors of mankind.

Every time I think about Joshua, I think of him as one who thinks about ghosts – all those memories we harbor that we replay over and over again in our heads and our hearts in life, the ones that never fade with time. Some of those memories are born of affliction, of the painful circumstances that inflict upon us through the course of our lives the notion of suffering in some kind of context – but then there’s all the wonderful joys and moments you recall too, all of them a slideshow in your brain-visions projected out on a big white wall in your heart, one that doesn’t have any cracks or imperfections, as though the visions themselves were preserved like flawless slides of film – and you sit down in the darkroom moments of your contemplations and play through those images, reconnecting with the moments as though by thinking about them, they in some way continue to live forever. The people and places and events and loves and even pains, all the things in life that shape you and have a great impact on who you become through the years. And in these visions of Joshua, I always see his great fireball of shaggy red hair and his prophet’s beard, the kind you see on the kind of wise old men who were never able to grow a full beard, the kind that covers all of their face all grizzly like, almost subtle but full enough to not look like a college kid turned hippie. But mostly, I remember his laugh, and how it was wise and soft, yet it always had a maniacal tone to it – that even before all the drugs and strange experiences, he was always a step or two closer to the abyss than the rest of us, and I always wondered what the world must look like through his eyes, especially now.