RON HENGGELER

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Alan Watts

The air has an indefinable softness and sweetness—a tonic quality that braces the nerves to a joyous tension, making the very sense of existence a delight.

Scribner's Monthly

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a-gonna do
'Cause there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

Eddie Cochran

One day if I do go to heaven, I’m going to do what every San Franciscan does who goes to heaven, I’ll look around and say, “it ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.”

Herb Caen

“To a traveler paying his first visit, San Francisco has the interest of a new planet. It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world.”

Friz Hugh Ludlow

“It’s a town that is forever grabbing you by the throat and saying, ‘Look around, see what’s going on, feel it, experience it.

You don’t have to enjoy it. Just don’t turn your back on it, OK?’'

Herb Caen

Awake. Be the witness of your thoughts. You are what observes, not what you observe.

Buddha

“Some people become San Franciscans almost immediately, feeling the poetry, sensing the specialness, seeing what makes the city great and not so great, boning up on the history and walking the streets with glamorous ghosts at their elbows. Others can live here all their lives and never get the message.”

Herb Caen

For all its contradictions. . . San Francisco remains a beacon, always with that dangerous streak of insanity, built in at birth.

Herb Caen

Remember yourself always and everywhere.

Gurdjieff

"The bay of San Francisco has been celebrated from the time of its first discovery as one of the finest in the world. It rises into an importance far above that of a mere harbor. . . Its latitude position is that of Lisbon, Its climate that of Southern Italy, settlements attest to its healthfulness, bold shores and mountains give it grandeur, the extent and fertility of its dependent country give it great resources for agriculture, commerce, and population. . . To this gate I gave the name Chrysopylae or Golden Gate . . “

John Fremont

Your mind is a powerful thing. When you filter it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change.

Buddha

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Walt Whitman

“A wall of thick, dirty fog rising genie-like from the Pacific, while a finger of whiter, puffier stuff feels its way into the bay, twisting this way and that till it conforms to every contour, snugly and coldly.”

Herb Caen

Oh friends, put aside these sounds!

Let us be more civil to each other,

And speak more joyfully.

Beethoven

To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie— True Poems flee—

Elimy Dickenson

 

 

“Only in Greece and in the Sinai have I seen light quite as three-dimensional, dense, limpid, delicate, dreamlike, and clear: To say that much of San Francisco faces north over water only partially explains the effect. I have lived in Haifa, another city that faces north over water. From its hills one can see extraordinary light, but it is not like the light of San Francisco. It isn’t as rich. The light of Rome is richer, but it isn’t as clear. In Paris, the light does magical things but only in the sky and among the clouds, seldom descending. San Francisco light isn’t merely bright and glowing like none other; it engages you in its battle with the fog, makes you an ally, sweeps you along, carries you with it (when you look out over the distance) as if you were not where you are standing but where you are looking. The pellucid, enthralling light of San Francisco is like one of those huge emerald waves in Hawaii through which surprised surfers break only to find themselves on the covers of magazines.

Light is the soul of San Francisco. It is responsible for the serenity and inner freedom that are otherwise inexplicable. It energizes. It enthralls. It redeems bad buildings and jerry-built neighborhoods and makes more beautiful the beautiful buildings and their surroundings. Most importantly, it, like the laws of proportion, is an agent that perpetually shapes the city---through human intentions, but beyond them. Unlike proportion however, which underlies even the light itself, the light is something specific, active, and surprising. Once, I was walking in Fort Mason, under the shade of the trees. I came to a place on the path where the view gave out on the Golden Gate. The metal roofs of Fort Mason itself were hardly a shade different from the color of the bridge; beyond the bridge the cliffs were tinged in red; and beyond them something was in the air, an almost imperceptible glint of gold and red light. My line of sight, amplified by the resonance of the otherworldly red and gold, was like the trajectory of a rocket, which is perhaps why I suddenly felt as if I had been shot out of a cannon. The sensation was that of flight, of tremendous velocity, of moving out of the dark, out of oneself, and into gravity-less light. San Francisco is one of the few cities in the world where things like this happen not only to beatitudes and mystics but to newsboys, politicians, and donut-fryers. If it hasn’t happened to you, perhaps you should move to Philadelphia. “

Mark Helprin from THE TRUE BUILDERS OF CITIES 1990

San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.

Paul Kantner of the rock band Jefferson Airplane

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Alan Watts

 

If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper...

Evelyn Waugh

Coming home from other cities and other parts, one crosses the bay to reach San Francisco and sees first the gray silhouette of her hills, shingled with roofs and roofs and roofs; the royal fringe of masts and spars along her waterfronts; the gray fog circling and fuming softly over it all, and the gulls flying and crying. The little boats plying to and fro, sound their hoarse, sweet notes of warning, and perhaps the noon whistles and the Angelus bells take up the sound in a long chord that to some hearts say, “Welcome home!”

Each to his own city. But do you love them as we do, I wonder, you whose cities are not steep and narrowed streeted, scented with the spices of the Orient and the good tarry smell of ships and fishing, lulled by the deep rushing of ocean surges on a long beach, the lapping of the bay waters against piers?

MY SAN FRANCISCO By Kathleen Norris 1932

Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!

Walt Whitman

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Alan Watts

I question not if thrushes sing,
If roses load the air;
Beyond my heart I need not reach
When all is summer there.

John Vance Cheney

Since everything is a reflection of our minds,everything can be changed by our minds.

Buddha

“The city is like a snake, shedding its skin, changing constantly, moving about in unexpected directions. However, if it is a great city, which San Francisco forever is, it retains its basic qualities---a sense of adventure, a delight in its own history, an air of freedom and a rare tolerance for divergent views and actions. The city dances on its hills and unashamedly enjoys its own beauty, which has survived many a long night of excesses, both joyous and tragic.

San Francisco, a great writer’s town---tantalizing, just out of reach in its misty aloofness. A city so small and yet so varied, from block to block. Cross a street and enter a different world. Every writer about San Francisco strives to capture its essence and, on occasion, feels he has succeeded---but the city is always one step ahead, laughing, disappearing into the fog.”

Herb Caen January 25, 1992 From HERB CAEN’S SAN FRANCISCO 1997-1991 Published by Chronicle Books 1992

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

Langston Hughes

You wouldn't think such a place as San Francisco could exist. The wonderful sunlight there, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at you shoes. . . The lobsters, clams, and crabs. Oh, Cat, what food for you. Every kind of seafood there is.

Dylan Thomas, in a letter to his wife, Caitlin

In summer, the song sings itself.

William Carlos Williams

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

Wallace Stevens

It's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine ... it's summertime!

Kenny Chensey

One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.

Jennette Walls

 

San Francisco. "That City of Gold to which adventurers congregated out of all the winds of heaven. I wonder what enchantment of the 'Arabian Nights' can have equaled this evocation of a roaring city, in a few years of a man's life, from the marshes and the blowing sand.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

William Shakespeare

I fell in love with the most cordial sociable city in the Union. After the sagebrush and alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was paradise to me.

Mark Twain

 

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

Walt Whitman

Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.

Pablo Neruda

“San Francisco is a city where people are never more abroad than when they are at home.”

Benjamin F. Taylor

Do not think lightly of good, that nothing will come of it. A whole water pot will fill up from dripping drops of water.

Buddha

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.

Mark Twain

 

 

Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty. It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other, incites one to dream.

Georges Pompidou

 

This is the season in which I like San Francisco best; although we’re normally a Californian city, there’s a certain dreamy quality to the place that’s often at odds with the matter-of-factness of sunny day after sunny say. After all, aren’t we supposed to be the cool grey city of love?

Laurel Wellman

“....this marvelous city. Bazaar of all the nations of the globe, (compares) with the fantastic creations of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ ”

Edmond Auger, French gold hunter seeing San Francisco in 1849

 

"When you're in love with a city, you grope for shadows that vanish at first touch."

Herb Caen

Oh, the summer night, Has a smile of light, And she sits on a sapphire throne.

Bryan Procter

“There is no stupidity great enough to ruin the majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge. It has been the subject of terrible poetry and worse paintings, but it rises easily and grandly above the mundane, its towers poking through the fogs, natural and man-made.”

Herb Caen

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them quite away!

Lewis Carroll

 

It's your road...and yours alone... Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you. No matter what path you . . .

Buddha

If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance.

Bernard Williams

First in rapture

And first in beauty

Wayward, passionate, brave

Glad of life God gave.

The sea-winds are her kiss,

And the seagull is her dove.

Cleanly and strongly she is--

My cool, grey city of love.

George Sterling

 

 

All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.

Ada Louise Huxtable

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

John Keats

 

 

"San Francisco is the genius of American cities. It is the wild-eyed, all-fired, hard-boiled, tender-hearted, white-haired boy of the American family of cities. It is the prodigal son. The city which does everything and is always forgiven, because of its great heart, its gentle smile, its roaring laughter, its mysterious and magnificent personality. There are no end of ways of enduring time in San Francisco, pleasantly, beautifully, and with the romance of living in everything. Eat any kind of dish the races of the world know how to prepare. Drink any kind of wine you like. Go to the opera. The symphony or a stage play. Loaf around in the high-toned bars, or in the honky-tonks. Sail the bay. If you are alive you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life. San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure. It is a city in which the spirit can know refreshment every day. “ (circa 1891)

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer.... Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow