185 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
185 lines
6.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2009-07-11T04:51:23.000Z'
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title: The Spiritual Center Of the Earth (1999)
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url: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/23/DD78283.DTL
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author: mariorz
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points: 42
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 26
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1247287883
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_mariorz
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- story_698823
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objectID: '698823'
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year: 1999
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---
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# The Spiritual Center Of the Earth
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ONE MORNING SEVERAL years ago, at a bus stop in front of the [American
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Embassy](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22American+Embassy%22)
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in New Delhi, an Indian man wearing a turban and rubber flip-flops (plus
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what might once have been someone's draperies) asked me where I was
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from.
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"Oh, how lucky you are\!" he fairly sang, when I told him I was from San
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Francisco. "Everyone knows that San Francisco is the spiritual center of
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the world."
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Really? This assertion would jolt any American who'd drifted to India
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seeking, well -- something better.
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"Oh, yes-yes," the Indian man said. "The earth's spiritual center shifts
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every few hundred years or thousand, maybe. It used to be in India, but
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now it is San Francisco. All our gurus are moving there to open
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ashrams."
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The arrival of my bus cut short our talk, but during the next couple of
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months I ran the man's thesis past several other Indians I met.
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Surprisingly, every one of them regarded my conversational tidbit as old
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news. All unquestioningly accepted San Francisco -- not India, not
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Tibet, not Mecca or Jerusalem or Rome -- as humankind's new spiritual
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center.
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You are scoffing right now, of course, and so did I -- initially. But
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that first night, when I asked the desk clerk at my hotel in New Delhi
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to define "spiritual center of the world," his response wiped the smirk
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right off my face.
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"Oh," he said, as matter of factly as if I'd asked directions to a chai
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shop, "that is simply the place where new ideas meet the least amount of
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resistance."
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Voila\! I have circled the globe four times, and if there is some place
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where new ideas meet less resistance than they do in San Francisco, I
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have neither seen nor heard of it. If you can't be what you want in San
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Francisco, you don't have a chance elsewhere.
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MY INDIAN FRIENDS had differing ideas on the boundaries of the earth's
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spiritual center. Some said it was limited to the area burned by the
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post-quake fire of 1906 -- the purifying flames having left behind an
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environment as fertile as the field in which Jack grew beanstalks. Most,
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however, included the entire Bay Area in their spiritual maps --
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although one woman in Calcutta drew hers from the tip of Baja to the tip
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of the Aleutians. Regardless, all agreed that spiritual San Francisco
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did not follow trends, but -- like the San Andreas Fault -- unleashed
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movements. Harry Bridges seized the waterfront and galvanized the labor
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movement. The first television was invented at the base of Telegraph
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Hill, unleashing whatever you call that. The United Nations convention
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was held and its charter was signed in [Herbst
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Theatre](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Herbst+Theatre%22).
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The beats, the hippies and the Free Speech Movement burst from the hills
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and the bay as though they couldn't help themselves. When [Jack
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Kerouac](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Jack+Kerouac%22)
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hit the road, a nation of readers took it as a given that he would wind
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up in North Beach.
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THE MUSIC BLASTING out of San Francisco -- the Jefferson Airplane, the
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[Grateful
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Dead](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Grateful+Dead%22),
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[Janis
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Joplin](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Janis+Joplin%22)
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-- forever changed the world -- with help from Owsley's LSD. Harvey
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Milk, the "Mayor of Castro Street," became America's first openly gay
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elected official. The American Indians scored their biggest victory
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(since Custer, and before casinos) on Alcatraz. Oakland's [Black
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||
Panthers](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Black+Panthers%22)
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awoke a complacent nation -- some say two. And the human potential
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movement leaped naked and quivering from the hot tubs at Esalen. Now the
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world's economic engine throbs in Silicon Valley, while the creative
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heart of the Internet beats south of Market Street. North of Market,
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Charles Schwab leads a brokerage assault that rocks Wall Street and
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mints millionaires at a rate not seen since the first Gold Rush.
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India had its run -- giving civilization the zero, infinity and the [Taj
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Mahal](/search/?action=search&channel=entertainment&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Taj+Mahal%22).
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Now it's San Francisco's turn. That shaky ground under your feet may be
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as good as ground gets. Throw down the best you've got, and stand back\!
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