Monday, July 18, 2016

Love Wins!

Dyke March - Love Wins!

Originally posted June 2016. Re-posted July 2016

David and Charles, and Jean and I started Pride weekend with a birthday dinner for David at my apartment, including the last bottle of champagne from their wedding. There were tears for the 49 people murdered in Orlando. There were stories of David’s epic John Muir Trail trek, reminiscing, Berkeley, San Francisco, music, good food, just being together. It was a beautiful evening. 

The Dyke March started at Dolores Park on Saturday afternoon – a huge gathering of Shiny Happy People dancing, loving, laughing, being, and sweet, sweet vibes – including Jean and me. I’m blown totally away by this freedom and love vibrating through so many people. An unimaginably beautiful repudiation of hate and negativity and judgment. And an all-time great party! Jean pointed that this was a be-in. It was – a fine and true Human Be-In, a Love-In!

Dolores Park - Dyke March
We left the park before the march started. People were still just pouring into the park. We went back to my apartment, then met David and Charles on the corner, where we talked for awhile and a half block away Market Street was packed with marchers. We tagged on to the end of the march (Bom!) and I couldn’t stop dancing onward to Castro where these/us truly shiny happy people blocked the intersection of Market and Castro to dance and talk and BE and the police stood back and gradually the crowd dispersed. It was intense.

The end of the march
Sunday we went to a Pride Parade viewing party above Market Street. There were lots of people and drinks, food, music, two men in brief briefs dancing on tables. On the street below the parade kept coming and coming and coming. We went out to the street to be closer to an endless stream of people saying again and again “No!” to oppression and fear and prejudice and all of that.

Saying again and again Love is Love is Love is Love – there were Dykes on Bikes, SF Lesbian and Gay Freedom Band, Cancer Survivors (one sign said “Fuck Cancer” and another said, “I Don’t Have Nipples” – cheers of love all down the street), Transgender Veterans, Age On (“Life’s a Stage”), Oakland Fire Department Stands United With Orlando, Naked and Sacred, Google, Apple, “Eat me – try Vegan,” Facebook, Oracle, (“Be proud of who you are”), all the tech companies, Walmart(!), a gay couple who had been together 50 years, Lesbian and Jewish/Gay and Jewish/Bi and Jewish, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue (“Muttville Pride”), and so deeply moving – all the flags of the countries of origin of the people killed in Orlando. And more and more and more…


And as they kept on coming, there was a growing sense of overwhelming power and Love is Love is Love is Love is Love!

On the train (N Judah) back to the apartment a bunch of people piling in at the Montgomery stop and it’s getting very crowded and one of the people who just came in has a cool little music player with decent bass and the music starting and 4-5 people dancing on the other side of the couple kissing and kissing next to us and the guy with mental illness getting really excited, laughing and yeah, me too. This IS the train. (Everything happened exactly as described, but it's also allegorical.)

Charles Kemp and Jean Cacicedo
The Sunday afternoon at the end of Pride, Jean and I went to Duboce Park a half block from the apartment to take a nap, lying on sarongs under a tree in shifting sun-dappled shade with a background of happy voices, laughter, N Judah train rumbling past, music somewhere up the hill, leaves in the wind, bouncing ball, opening my eyes seeing four people playing a gentle game of bocce – “O00hhh,” they were saying when someone made a good throw – and 20 feet away a woman dancing barefoot in the grass, breastfeeding her baby.







Duboce Park



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