Last summer I was in San Francisco for a day before coming home to Canada with my boys. We had just done an 11 day, 2500mile road trip. The kids were exhausted by the distance we had covered and all we had seen. There was one more thing I wanted to see – and on that trip it was a little too far to bring everyone along…

And so I made it happen today.

I was at a workshop in San Jose until Sunday, and since then I have been following my nose around the Bay area, exploring. Today I got up to San Franscisco and got in two important things; seeing my nephew (hey Dan!) over stupendous coffee (Philz), and visiting Washington park and the Benjamin Franklin memorial.

On the left is one of my heroes; Richard Brautigan. In 1967 Brautigan wrote ‘Trout Fishing in America’ which has got to be one of the most bizarre books ever written. In 1968 he wrote ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ which is one of the most perfect. I have read it just about once a year since I found a copy in 1992.

In 1984, Brautigan died at his own hand at age 49. We never met except in a one-way conversation through his writings in which I find an infinitely deep longing for life, and a resonance below the surface of the ordinary mind and every day reality.

He writes about a world that occupies a space just to the left, 3 inches above, 3 seconds before that I normally see. He pokes his finger into the world and it bends as he gently pushes. I have no idea how he did that – how his words could encapsulate a vision of life that stretches almost minutely beyond the ordinary to make it open up into the infinitely deep. Perhaps that is my fascination; his opening up a wound in normal life through which infinity beckons.

His books are out of print. There are a few reprinted anthologies around. Thanks to gifts and an ongoing relationship with second hand book stores around Victoria my collection of original pressings of his writings is becoming more complete. I lend them out carefully to share the treasure I have found.

Today was a pilgrimage – of sorts. A place made famous (to me at least) on a book cover.  Just like millions of other humans I have stood in a place where he stood. Deliberately. So what? Well – it means something to me.

Like me, he writes. Like me – his books are hard to find – but for different reasons. Mine have yet to be written and published. His have been written, published and – at least in the mainstream – forgotten. I am 49 and have just started getting serious about writing. Seven squared. He was 49 when he stopped writing for terminal reasons. He has a weird hat. Mine is less weird. I think.

The common theme then is we have both lived. In different times, with different experiences born of different childhoods on different continents with different families, lovers, different experiences of children – of marriages, of divorces. Different careers and experiences of people, travel, friends, money, grief, loss, joy, laughter, sorrow. Different ways we have interpreted and lived with all of it. Different outcomes. I have no intention of ending any time soon – there is way too much left to do.

And yet – in his words I resonate with an experience of being human that goes beyond the normal, the mundane, the everyday world of ordinary meanings and the momentum of the surface of life. He dared to drill below the surface and find, create a greater world in which I can and do loose myself. I have started writing more seriously and am finding his imagery infecting my words and creating alchemy. I realize he has had a greater impact on me than I had thought.

So what is my pilgrimage for? I have no idea – perhaps just recognizing that none of us are truly original. We all build on each other – we learn the world and, in time learn some new notes, chords to play to add our part that harmonize with what came before from many different angles, places and people.  My thoughts are infected by characters and ways of description and metaphor that have leapt from pages written by someone I share barely anything with – except perhaps for a love of language, and using it to describe worlds that elude normal and exude extraordinary.

I am taking 49 as an invitation.

“If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: someone asked you a question and you did not know the answer – that is my name.” (from ‘In Watermelon Sugar’).