Readers of this blog should be aware of the fact that in my time i am only able to provide a sliver of the goings on around here though in those nuggets i hope can be found the essence of the whole. There are many layers to this lifestyle. I take care of kids ranging from 1-9 during the day time. At night i live in a house with six women. In our free time we go running around the Oakland/Berkeley/San Francisco area. Whenever possible i try to be a good host to friends visiting the west.

Living out here makes the world as i know it a whole lot smaller. Every Tuesday on our way to buy groceries in the morning we pass by 'Pixar' animation studios, (the fine folks who brought you 'Toy Story' 1 & 2 as well as 'Finding Nemo'). A stone's throw from my house is the birthplace of the Black Panther movement. About 1 1/2 hrs. north is a funny little village in the hills called Santa Rosa where the likes of the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin used to hang out. A friend of mine lives there and we had coffee across the street from the small-town theater where they used to play. This is to say nothing of the great countercultural landmarks that are the Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley Campus and the Fillmore theater to name but a piddling few - all about three train stops away from me.

One modern boast of this city is its celebration of Halloween, a raucous event in which the freak capital of the states comes out in all its plumage to take the streets in hordes with DJ booths spinning dance music and projecting huge screens with outlandish, psychedelic imagery. So naturally, we had plans to join the swell that would be oozing downtown this night even though our schedule permitted little time for pre-party primping. This because we were asked to head into the city ('the city' around here always meaning 'San Francisco') and help out at the homeless shelter where our director used to direct. We drove across the bay into the dusky city where the streets were already peppered with pirates and ghouls and found the shelter downtown. We were lead through the lobby and up onto the roof where, in the panorama of the city, we would help run the show. The roof was set up like a mini carnival with orange and black streamers and balloons draped over the wooden beams built to keep kids off the edges. Each corner and the spaces in between were arranged with games ranging from 'eat the donut off the string w/ out using your hands', to ring toss, the 'fishing' game (throw a string behind the blue blanket and see what you get) and 'pin the tail on the donkey', which was my station. We waited in the chill of night and munched on coldish pizza and soda waiting for the stampede to arrive. At the signal of our leader, a middle-aged woman rotundly dressed in her bright orange pumpkin outfit, we all took to our stations and waited expectantly. When the elevator door opened the bubbly excitement of a little troop of costumed children filled the air with chatter and vibrant energy. The cold night was lit with the hot breaths of a sea of miniature super heroes and dinosaurs and princesses. Ninjas hopped to and fro, one kid strode by who i could swear was dressed like Kim Jong Il. Slowly, a child approached us with a longing in her eyes. She wanted to pin the tail on the donkey, and she wanted candy as a reward for it. Well she got what she wanted, and so did a fairly non-stop onslaught of half-pint supermen, witches, robots, gypsies and fairies. The energy level was through the roof (which was appropriate, us being on the roof) and suddenly the distinct cold of the night was alight with the body heat of kids at the homeless shelter on Halloween, and the moon hung low over the city.

I was dressed as a cowboy, tight blue jeans and pointy black shoes with a most raucous black cowboy shirt and hat. The shirt is beyond obnoxious. Think: embroidered golden cowskulls set against an embroidered goldish desert. This on a honky-tonk black button-up. And to top it off: leopard-print cap, painted black but not completely concealing the print. We then had the privelege of a mini-concert of singalong songs leading up to a visit from the 'real' Mother Goose. Something about the sound of all of those virtually homeless children singing 'the wheels on the bus' with such shatteringly pure enthusiasm - i was looking out the big rectangular windows in the well-lit activity room on the roof as the sound of their voices shone in the dark of that city night and if you told me then that all is going to be well with the world, i would have believed you. Somewhere in that sound was the assurance that even if we fall and fall hard first, we will make it through this night.

So then in a totally different direction we were off with sufficient thanks from the coordinator and pocketfulls of candy as we piled into the mini-van: a ladybug at the wheel, two cats in the back with a bee and a fairy and me the cowboy, ridin' shotgun (of course). They pulled over at the corner store to buy big bottles of beer which we drank pretty promptly, (no mom, not the driver). We then headed down into the thick, where you could see throngs of disguised bodies pumping into the main artery, the intersection where it all went down, the All Hallow's Eve HQ....(to be continued)