Big Crazy Chair

This would have been back in '95 I guess, back before the great San Francisco bubble. The Museum of Modern Art had yet to be built and there were not a lot of expensive SUV's in the Mission. My roommate and I were walking down Market Street; I don't know where we were going, but we were down by 4th and Market - close to where the Virgin Megastore was being built.

Someone had put an enormous chair in the middle of the sidewalk. I mean seriously big, the back of the chair was probably 12 feet tall. It was like a prop for a movie where someone is shrinking. I assume it was someone's idea of an art installation. It was brown naugahyde, Lay-Z-Boy looking chair. There was no plaque, no sign, no explanation. I saw it and immediately thought to myself, "I'm gonna climb up into that chair". And so I did.

I perched above the sidewalk, feeling suddenly like a child; not only smaller, but somehow a little more carefree. I believe my roommate was feeling embarrassed and either walked in circles, smoking a cigarette and trying to ignore me, or he wandered off somewhere else.

Before long, as was bound to happen as I was attracting them by the boatload at this time, a street wanderer shuffled up to the chair. He looked up at me and asked me to help him up into it. As I said, I was feeling innocent and childlike, so I reached down and pulled him up into the oversized comfy chair. The chair was big enough for us both to sit in it comfortably. And so we sat, side by side, a wise ass, early twenties white boy and a middle aged, black, homeless man.

We sat quietly for a minute or two, people watching, and then he asked if I had a smoke. I pulled a pack and we both sat there smoking when he pointed away south over a fence. There was an empty lot at this time on the south side of market, and we could see the church and rectory that sits on Mission, across the street from where the Metreon now sits.

"You see that cloud hanging above that church there?" The man asked in a worn, warm voice. "It reminds me of Russia."

{Now, I don't know if this fella had actually been to Russia. It didn't matter though because this true Zen nugget was about to fall from him gracefully.}

"No matter where you go, you always see the same things."

It was just this sort of offhand comment, but it blew my head open. I thanked him for our time together and hopped down off the chair. It seems like a natural progression now, like a link in a chain, but I feel this comment started something rolling in me which produced an avalanche a few months later. As I sat in a Film History class, I heard my own voice distinctly telling me, "you don't need to work so hard to find yourself, you're right here". I busted out with a smile reminiscent of a little boy sitting in a chair way too big for him.

Sometimes you get a little wisdom dropped your way when you least expect it.