Sitting on the Dock of the Bay

From my perch here on the thirteenth floor in downtown San Francisco, I can catch a sliver of the Bay.  There’s often a boat, usually cargo, floating in the water with a backdrop of a mountain range and sometimes at sunset a fantastic explosion of color streaking the sky: pinks, blues, violets, and then black.

One of the very first jobs of my adult life was in a massive building in Tribeca before Robert DeNiro made it trendy.  Leaving the subway, I would have to square my shoulders against the winds to walk to work.  What a dismal neighborhood.  My feet unused to new leather heels slipped often on the cobblestoned streets.  My window there overlooked the Hudson and every afternoon, I saw a lone kayaker crossing the river, possibly to go home.  How romantic, I thought, I envied his commute.

Boats are an endless source of daydreaming for me.  I often stared out wistfully at the boats docked at the 79th Street Marina and now at the ones berthed near Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park.  I love the noise of a boatyard: the bell sounding at intervals, the seagulls cackling at some inside joke, and the sound of the waves lapping at the sides of the boat.  Doesn’t everyone, who works a desk job and looks out onto the water, wish they were instead on the boat planning a trip to the south?  There’s also an outlaw culture surrounding boats, you have no permanent address, you are not tethered to a house and mortgage those on the land are.  You are free, 71% of the earth is accessible to you.

The partner and I are looking to put down roots, to purchase a home in the Bay Area.  It’s been rather disappointing doing the tour of available houses within our price range.  Today, the sun is slanting through my office window from the direction of the water.  The mountain range is obscured by a white mist that makes the horizon fuzzy.  I dream about living on a boat, flying a pirate flag, and chartering expeditions to explore the island geography and economy in the Pacific.

Look like nothing’s gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I’ll remain the same, yes

Sittin’ here resting my bones
And this loneliness won’t leave me alone
It’s two thousand miles I roamed
Just to make this dock my home

A new president.   First one hundred days.  Gitmo shut down.  The gag rule on abortion lifted internationally for clinics receiving U.S. aid.  2.55 million out of a job since the recession started.  The theme song for late 2008 and early 2009 is regulation, reversing thirty years of free market dominating government, business, and academia.

Once again, I am drawn to economic theory.  I have been making my way through this book by Massimo De Angelis.  How the New Deal, now enjoying newfound respectability in the eyes of Paul Krugman and others, was an attempt to silence social movements agitating for great structural change.  I’ve been thinking about military Keynesianism.

Things stay the same, despite the change.  I guess I’ll remain the same.