another observation Then next to me, an older, wizened women sips a martini while sitting in that bar stool with some elastic, and contrived posture. Upright and uptight she gazes into the mirror, the glass and some man. But pretense is spilling out everywhere. The glass is curled between her wrinkled fingers and her face reads like mud. Ruse, farce and regret. The man she was with – husband? Acquaintance? Colleague? Affair? Who the fuck knows or cares. He was speaking authoritatively about some San Francisco history. Or at least with a brash, cursory, cheap-wine understanding of it (as i think to myself, i don't know much of it either. or care that much the same) — “yes. The beats. They got they’re notoriety here. Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. They were the Beat generation. They were from here.” It sounded like jerky, lacking, hearsay and fragmentation. Appropriation. A variety of spewing out old, regurgitated conversations. Like mice collecting pellets of their own feces beneath 12-layered bridges in sophisticated, apathetic cities. Down there rotting under the decay of life. Really just some such balderdash that faded like the outside din of faces, noises and lights. But I was still, momentarily, intrigued. michael j tino 2006 back