“The hypnagogic is that first stage of sleep that we drift into, when our bodies jerk and we startle ourselves accidentally,” Kate wrote on Amanda’s blog a few days ago.

That hypnagogic state is the one I often feel I’m in while visiting San Francisco—not that I wanted to wake from a dreamy chocolate tart my friend Jeannine and I shared at Delfina with olive oil gelato and sea salt (we started with sardines and incredible calamari with white beans, below),

though meeting the Michelin Man Saturday morning briefly (he seemed friendly enough) hurried me on my way to the Embarcadero market at the Ferry Building. (Read the rest after the jump)

The market begins with the music outside, the steel drums here that unloose your back, slow your step,

the better to stop and smell the lavender,

gather up a regular riot of flowers,

watch for cascade of artichokes,

the peas nicely packed in paper bags.

I find all market produce beautiful,

and sometimes the vegetables point me a certain direction—on Saturday morning, toward Primavera,

where I watched a woman skillfully flipping tortillas with her fingers,

ordered the chorizo with eggs, guac, cream, salsa fresca, beans, and those tortillas, and listened to market visitors talking about their discoveries.

Wandering inside the Ferry Building, I gravitated toward the lard,

the varieties of mushrooms,

and then I went back out to where the root vegetables glow,

past where the summer squash shines,

to the Hayes Street Grill,

and ordered a soft-shell crab sandwich with Hobbs bacon on the side (consider ordering two sides of bacon, it’s that good).

My lips slick from the bacon, I paused at tomatoes crossing the color wheel,

the bell peppers of many color families,

and as I was finally leaving, I heard the poem store.

And then I saw the sign next to the artist furiously working the keys of an old technology next to some of the world’s loveliest organic food.

At the Civic Center Sunday market the next morning I saw another sign, and this one might just be the perfect description for an online dating service profile.

The morning crowd huddled around the corn, peeling back the husks to pick the best cobs, and the exposed silky threads blew back and forth in the wind,

unlike the fanciful vegetables I call green gila monsters that seem able to protect themselves.

And leaving the Civic Center, I barted back to duck into the SF MoMa for the Frida, Lee Miller, and the Chinese contemporary “Half-Life of a Dream” exhibits, emerging hours later to continue the cart food weekend.

Using Meredith Brody’s SF Weekly article as my guide, I headed into the Mission to find one of the three El Tonayense taco trucks on Harrison.

I liked the cabeza taco the best of the carnitas, sesos, and cabeza tacos I ordered; next time, lengua, tripitas, and buche–

The food moment of the weekend, though, in this city that I routinely eat my way through, was my standby Glen Park snack: raw milk from the organic market and eggettes, the Hong Kong street food of puffy oval waffles, from the store across the street.

Many of my ideas evolve from dreams, from moments where my subconscious suggests new ways of thinking about problems and pieces of my life I ponder while I’m awake.

And sometimes the ideas arrive in daydreams—sitting quietly on a bench in Glen Park, I looked down at the warm waffle in my hands and began to hatch new plans…

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Posted Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008, 6:44 am | Filed in Art, Design, Food, Travel, Video. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.