I unfortunately didn’t get to the Basic Meditation class at the San Francisco Zen Center, because I pretty much got lost after I stepped off the bus at Van Ness Station. It was at least 9 am by the time I found Page Ave, and you’re supposed to be there at 8:45 for the class. So I started my walking tour of the Haight, with help from pages I photocopied out of a travel book, and I took quite a few photos. The tour included an apartment where Janis Joplin lived in 1967 (it was an upstairs apartment in a grey Victorian house, and she had a curving balcony), and the Grateful Dead house, which was a more festively painted purple Victorian house. I also passed the Free Clinic, which dates back to the hippie era, and a café/peace activism center the name of which I’ve forgotten. On one slanting street, as I passed the Buena Vista Park (which looked quite beautiful and extremely green) I actually saw the mist appear, floating through the air as if it were some sort of spirit. Before that, I had noticed rather more normal fog, which seems to be norm in the morning here.
Toward the end of this tour, I came to a store called Tibetan Style, which of course I had to visit. A Tibetan ma and pa store, that is, it was run by a middle-aged Tibetan couple, and the woman wore a green brocade chupa and green silk striped apron rather than a homespun one. Inside, the traffic was muffled, a recording of monks chanting was playing, and a feeling of tranquility came over me. It was very pleasant, therapeutic.
There was clothing on sale (mostly shirts like the one for which I made a pattern off the import a friend Jill gave me after she cleaned out her closet), lots and lots of jewelry, and meditation supplies such as colorful brocade cushions and prayer wheels and dorjes. I lost count of how many prayer wheels I spun—I must surely have improved my karma quite a bit. There were a couple of antique portable shrines and a silver-and-turquoise antique needle case, and ritual items like dorjes and bells. Lots of jewelry—I saw a mandala pendant made from silver, coral and turquoise, and a Tara pendant made from the same materials plus some sort of green stone that I didn’t recognize but that reminded me of Egyptian faïence. There were many many Buddhist pendants, countless. Also necklaces made from dzi beads, and malas. I picked up a prayer wheel pendant to purchase (it was $19 and spun really well). I eventually made my way to a far corner full of ritual items, including bigger prayer wheels that I spun, and there were tiny tiny statues, very detailed although only about one inch tall, and selling for $5 each. I bought several—a medicine Buddha, a particularly detailed Green Tara, a yogi, and a deity riding a peacock that I’m sure I can look up in the handbook of Tibetan symbols.
The Tibetan store also included a larger and heavier figure (all of them were metal, probably bronze) about two inches tall that I’m thinking is a dakini—actually, she rather looks like a Sheela-na-gig! And I purchased her also. Now I wish I’d been less timid and had asked whether she was a dakini. (While typing this: now that I’ve gotten home and have taken her out of the box, I think she’s the most intriguing thing I brought home, and that she may be a dakini or something from the indigenous Bon religion rather than Buddhism. Also, the Asian Art Museum has on display a whole bunch of little metal things that Tibetans think fell from the sky—things that farmers and nomads found in the dirt, and I wouldn’t be surprised that she’s one of those, which would suggest that she could be really old.)
I walked into Golden Gate Park and after much wandering got to the Japanese Tea Garden (as did many other people—this was a Saturday). It was very lovely and pleasant with winding paths around a pond containing coi and crossed by Japanese-style bridges... and very compact compared to the Japanese garden at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
The Japanese garden includes an outdoor café, where I bought three bags of cookies (fortune, sesame, and almond) and had a cup of jasmine tea with a snack of rice crackers and cookies. That was lunch. I’ve decided that I prefer jasmine tea to traditional green tea. After eating, I wandered around and took pictures. Lots of tourists did the same thing. A group of Indian (as in India) tourists, mostly children, stood in front of a big beautiful Buddha (made in 1790 in Japan), and the guy with the camera asked me if I’d take their picture. I said, “Sure, if I can figure out the camera.” Well, I did. I also used my own, simpler camera to take a couple pictures of the Buddha, one close up and one through a gate.
Near the cafe is a tourist shop, or teahouse, and although it was very crowded I went in and shopped. I’m taking home a cute Asian boy! I mean I bought a doll. He’s made in a Japanese style, but he’s actually dressed like a Chinese (Mandarin) emperor rather than wearing a kimono (this kind of doll is usually female, wearing a kimono, and sometimes in a glass box), and he sits on a blue and white porcelain barrel. I also got something that reminded me of Jill: wooden Japanese nesting dolls, since she collects both Japanese dolls and Russian nesting dolls.
After I got out of the park, I headed down Haight St. to go to the Anarchist Book Collective, which was the only store I had meant to shop in. But hey, it’s an adventure, and it’s not like I frequently come to San Francisco. I did a lot of window shopping, and before I got to the bookstore, I came to a store with big Buddhas and Ganesh in the window. Fascinated, I just had to go in and wander all over the store. I spun more prayer wheels and saw many many statues—that was the specialty of this store—including more Tibetan Bodhisattvas (like a Manjushri that was probably a foot tall. I didn’t look at the price on most of them, in part because I’d spent so much on the doll. There was really cool Indian music playing, like a cross between traditional and techno, and I bought the CD. I put the change in the hands of a four-foot wooden Buddha statue. Oh, yes, there was also a four-foot Ganesh in the middle of the store, on which people had placed both American and Indian money.
When I got to the bookstore, I realized that I had passed it that morning without even noticing. But it had been closed then, and I wouldn’t have wanted to carry a bunch of books around all day. The store was smaller than I pictured, but packed with cool rad books. The employees are all volunteers, they don’t have a computerized register—they use an adding machine—and they only take cash.
After the bookstore, I kept walking down Haight—I got to be back in the residential area—when I came to a bus shelter and looked at the map. The first bus that came along did indeed go to Powell St., so I didn’t have to do nearly as much walking as I expected. But from the time that I got off the bus that morning, I had done a great deal of walking.
Toward the end of this tour, I came to a store called Tibetan Style, which of course I had to visit. A Tibetan ma and pa store, that is, it was run by a middle-aged Tibetan couple, and the woman wore a green brocade chupa and green silk striped apron rather than a homespun one. Inside, the traffic was muffled, a recording of monks chanting was playing, and a feeling of tranquility came over me. It was very pleasant, therapeutic.
There was clothing on sale (mostly shirts like the one for which I made a pattern off the import a friend Jill gave me after she cleaned out her closet), lots and lots of jewelry, and meditation supplies such as colorful brocade cushions and prayer wheels and dorjes. I lost count of how many prayer wheels I spun—I must surely have improved my karma quite a bit. There were a couple of antique portable shrines and a silver-and-turquoise antique needle case, and ritual items like dorjes and bells. Lots of jewelry—I saw a mandala pendant made from silver, coral and turquoise, and a Tara pendant made from the same materials plus some sort of green stone that I didn’t recognize but that reminded me of Egyptian faïence. There were many many Buddhist pendants, countless. Also necklaces made from dzi beads, and malas. I picked up a prayer wheel pendant to purchase (it was $19 and spun really well). I eventually made my way to a far corner full of ritual items, including bigger prayer wheels that I spun, and there were tiny tiny statues, very detailed although only about one inch tall, and selling for $5 each. I bought several—a medicine Buddha, a particularly detailed Green Tara, a yogi, and a deity riding a peacock that I’m sure I can look up in the handbook of Tibetan symbols.
The Tibetan store also included a larger and heavier figure (all of them were metal, probably bronze) about two inches tall that I’m thinking is a dakini—actually, she rather looks like a Sheela-na-gig! And I purchased her also. Now I wish I’d been less timid and had asked whether she was a dakini. (While typing this: now that I’ve gotten home and have taken her out of the box, I think she’s the most intriguing thing I brought home, and that she may be a dakini or something from the indigenous Bon religion rather than Buddhism. Also, the Asian Art Museum has on display a whole bunch of little metal things that Tibetans think fell from the sky—things that farmers and nomads found in the dirt, and I wouldn’t be surprised that she’s one of those, which would suggest that she could be really old.)
I walked into Golden Gate Park and after much wandering got to the Japanese Tea Garden (as did many other people—this was a Saturday). It was very lovely and pleasant with winding paths around a pond containing coi and crossed by Japanese-style bridges... and very compact compared to the Japanese garden at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
The Japanese garden includes an outdoor café, where I bought three bags of cookies (fortune, sesame, and almond) and had a cup of jasmine tea with a snack of rice crackers and cookies. That was lunch. I’ve decided that I prefer jasmine tea to traditional green tea. After eating, I wandered around and took pictures. Lots of tourists did the same thing. A group of Indian (as in India) tourists, mostly children, stood in front of a big beautiful Buddha (made in 1790 in Japan), and the guy with the camera asked me if I’d take their picture. I said, “Sure, if I can figure out the camera.” Well, I did. I also used my own, simpler camera to take a couple pictures of the Buddha, one close up and one through a gate.
Near the cafe is a tourist shop, or teahouse, and although it was very crowded I went in and shopped. I’m taking home a cute Asian boy! I mean I bought a doll. He’s made in a Japanese style, but he’s actually dressed like a Chinese (Mandarin) emperor rather than wearing a kimono (this kind of doll is usually female, wearing a kimono, and sometimes in a glass box), and he sits on a blue and white porcelain barrel. I also got something that reminded me of Jill: wooden Japanese nesting dolls, since she collects both Japanese dolls and Russian nesting dolls.
After I got out of the park, I headed down Haight St. to go to the Anarchist Book Collective, which was the only store I had meant to shop in. But hey, it’s an adventure, and it’s not like I frequently come to San Francisco. I did a lot of window shopping, and before I got to the bookstore, I came to a store with big Buddhas and Ganesh in the window. Fascinated, I just had to go in and wander all over the store. I spun more prayer wheels and saw many many statues—that was the specialty of this store—including more Tibetan Bodhisattvas (like a Manjushri that was probably a foot tall. I didn’t look at the price on most of them, in part because I’d spent so much on the doll. There was really cool Indian music playing, like a cross between traditional and techno, and I bought the CD. I put the change in the hands of a four-foot wooden Buddha statue. Oh, yes, there was also a four-foot Ganesh in the middle of the store, on which people had placed both American and Indian money.
When I got to the bookstore, I realized that I had passed it that morning without even noticing. But it had been closed then, and I wouldn’t have wanted to carry a bunch of books around all day. The store was smaller than I pictured, but packed with cool rad books. The employees are all volunteers, they don’t have a computerized register—they use an adding machine—and they only take cash.
After the bookstore, I kept walking down Haight—I got to be back in the residential area—when I came to a bus shelter and looked at the map. The first bus that came along did indeed go to Powell St., so I didn’t have to do nearly as much walking as I expected. But from the time that I got off the bus that morning, I had done a great deal of walking.
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