“It’s not much,” he says about the floor of his room, “but you can have it.” I’m grateful for it, and spread my father’s scratchy green army blanket out on the wood and wait to fall asleep while the longshoreman snores in his single bed. It takes me a long time to sleep, tired as I am; I am thinking of the Buddhist chant, saying it to myself while the biggest cockroaches I’ve ever seen scuttle across the floor. In the morning my gray benefactor tells me I have to get better at the nomad life: “Your duffel’s too heavy,” he says, and he’s right. I’ve brought the things I thought I needed for the Summer of Love: a few books of poetry, my new tarot deck, that homemade dashiki, my best hand-patched jeans.

I walk to City Lights Bookstore in North Beach with the heavy duffel. I sit in the basement and read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, cover to cover; I love the part where Siddhartha sees the river of human lives and faces, every visage like a bit of foam, a ripple on the surface of one water, all of it streaming onward through time, ancient, always new, never still. Back on the street, adrift, I suddenly feel completely like what I am: fourteen, too near the wild heart of things. I don’t have an inkling about how to take care of myself, where to go next, what to do. I call my parents from a pay phone, and I can tell they’re relieved to wire me the money for a bus ticket home. When my mother picks me up at the Greyhound station, I know that she’s actually glad to see me.