IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate for me how our species loves to tell stories.
First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and McAllister streets where all the best 1980s’ “major ragers” took place, roughly according to the neo-Pagan calendar, for a specific group of Renaissance Pleasure and Dickens Christmas Fair(e) habitues, occasional bike messengers, poets, musicians, theater folk, and other outliers: social circles mostly (though not exclusively) centering on secretly famous Mugwort resident John Wheeler a”h [1]. The morning after one such celebration, the hard core of a dozen or so hardy couch- and floor-surfers — suitably fortified with bananas and cheap cinnamon buns (“Cinnamon was the sovereign cure in the Middle Ages,” John said, “and bananas will restore the potassium we lost last night”) — made our precarious way to Golden Gate Park for some cool late October fresh air and sunshine.
Our beards bedecked with small flowers, we wandered the park for a while by roads not usually taken. In the bushes behind the Asian Art Museum we encountered what John told us was a disassembled Greek (Roman?) temple that William Randolph Hearst had had shipped to San Francisco but never reassembled. It was a perfect impromptu obstacle course, so we climbed all over it for a while, sanctified it with the appropriate (to us) offerings, then decided to call it a morning and head back to Mugwort.
We were ambling through The Panhandle when strangeness struck — a serial visitation of successive bands of rain, hail, black clouds, wind, and sunshine, in that order, repeated for about a 15 minute interval. Due to our frame of mind, we interpreted this as some errant godling’s payback for what he or she considered our merry disrespect of his or her sanctuary; as the weather abated, we began to talk to each other.
“It was so weird, the way the weather just came out of nowhere,” one said.
“First came the rain, then the hail,” recounted another. “Then those horrifically dark clouds!”
“That wind was awe-inspiring,” quoth a third.
“The sunshine felt great,” offered a fourth.
“And then it happened all over again!” chimed a fifth.
What struck me about the whole affair was that we had all experienced the same thing. We weren’t relating to each other anything the others didn’t know; there was no new information being expressed by or to anyone. But we all seemed to feel the need to relate it anyway.
This is not an unknown phenomenon. According to encyclopedia.com, in group communication dynamics, such conversations “… whether verbal or nonverbal, are important to groups because it is through the exchange of messages that group members participate, maintain the group identity, determine goals, motivate participation, and do the many things that keep the group intact.”
I have witnessed the same thing after concerts or theatrical performances, on seeing meteors, sharing a telescope, or co-experiencing other alone-together events. It always makes me think of the Golden Gate Park incident. We are a storytelling folk; we seem to need to speak our minds in order to cement into shared reality the things we’ve seen.
One piece at a time, our social universe is built. I wonder what the final version will look like.
[1]: Today marks John’s first yahrzeit. May his memory continue to be a blessing.
Beautiful. I guess this is why folks are compelled to talk about the weather, and to point out to another person “That is a very good dog.” Reality testing.
I miss just knowing that John was in the world. He was a fascinating person.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
I was definitely part of this experience, but you remembered things that I didn’t. Thank you for keeping John’s special mythos alive. “Secretly famous” must surely be one of the best succinct descriptors for who he was.
Thank you. I do recall your participation. What part(s) didn’t you remember?
The weather events and our varying perceptions of them.
Did/do you remember anything I didn’t?
I believe I participated in this event. I resided a short jaunt away, at divisadero & fell and would often partake in the ragers. Thank you for jogging the grey matter.
I thought that was you!
We all see things through our own len’s. Our memories are clouded by the fog of time. It is with our own lens that we cut though that fog to relate the tale.
An axiom that my wife uses and lives by: “When something happens, I ask myself ‘Did I Learn Something or Do I Have A Good Story?’ The two can be independent or they can run together.”
Never sacrifice the story for the lesson. All good story tellers see things through a lens that has many more colors than the normal human. That is why they can write/tell stories and others can only give an after action report.
Neil, yours is a unique lens. You have more colors than most. You keep on remembering and relating events. They are grand.
My only regret? That I was not there. You always think that you have forever. It is like being doused with a bucket of cold water when you realize you didn’t.
Well put, sir. And thank you for your kind words.