1978. San Diego. I’d just come out the other side of a relationship that blew up…I was angry, and disillusioned, and ultimately self-destructive. I’d lost everything I believed in …I was as utterly, completely alone as I’ve ever been
So I began going on walks
I started taking late-night walks around the San Diego suburb I was living in at the time. I’d start walking early evening, and come back close to midnight, sometimes later. Walking and thinking and chewing over what had gone wrong with my life
One night, at Fourth and E Streets, I got mugged and beaten by a street gang—sent me to the hospital with serious intimations of mortality. When the ER techs asked what my religion was, I refused to answer. I made my private peace with the universe, content with whatever was going to happen, live or die
Then something happened. I got angry. I got angry because I still had stories to tell. So I fought back
It took two months to fully recover. But two things came out of that incident. First, I have no fear of death. None whatsoever
Second…as soon as I was well enough, I started walking again
Sometimes until 3 or 4 in the morning, through parts of town that made even street people nervous
When people asked what I was doing out there that late at night, the only answer I could give was, “I’m looking for something.”
So I kept walking through some of the most dangerous parts of San Diego, before it got cleaned up, when it was still home to hookers and drunks and gangs and addicts and random violence
Finally, one afternoon, I came to the same areas I walked through at night and I was struck by the dichotomy between that corner at night, and the very same corner during the day
In the daylight, there were businessmen and kids and clerks, eager to get home to dinner and TV and family
Then, later, came the night shift, the lost people, emerging from shadows and beds of pain to walk the same streets in search of fixes, money, and bars, gradually fading away with the dawn
Two totally different worlds, sharing nothing but longitude and latitude. There was the nation in the day, and the nation at night, existing side by side but each fleeing the other
A daylight nation
So I began going on walks
I started taking late-night walks around the San Diego suburb I was living in at the time. I’d start walking early evening, and come back close to midnight, sometimes later. Walking and thinking and chewing over what had gone wrong with my life
One night, at Fourth and E Streets, I got mugged and beaten by a street gang—sent me to the hospital with serious intimations of mortality. When the ER techs asked what my religion was, I refused to answer. I made my private peace with the universe, content with whatever was going to happen, live or die
Then something happened. I got angry. I got angry because I still had stories to tell. So I fought back
It took two months to fully recover. But two things came out of that incident. First, I have no fear of death. None whatsoever
Second…as soon as I was well enough, I started walking again
Sometimes until 3 or 4 in the morning, through parts of town that made even street people nervous
When people asked what I was doing out there that late at night, the only answer I could give was, “I’m looking for something.”
So I kept walking through some of the most dangerous parts of San Diego, before it got cleaned up, when it was still home to hookers and drunks and gangs and addicts and random violence
Finally, one afternoon, I came to the same areas I walked through at night and I was struck by the dichotomy between that corner at night, and the very same corner during the day
In the daylight, there were businessmen and kids and clerks, eager to get home to dinner and TV and family
Then, later, came the night shift, the lost people, emerging from shadows and beds of pain to walk the same streets in search of fixes, money, and bars, gradually fading away with the dawn
Two totally different worlds, sharing nothing but longitude and latitude. There was the nation in the day, and the nation at night, existing side by side but each fleeing the other
A daylight nation
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