David and Tommy invited me to the Monet exhibit at the Legion of Honor today. It cost $15 to get in and it was overcrowded. I saw several paintings I really liked: one of a hay stack, one of a obscure winter scene, a quite abstract painting of a wave, and another of a seascape at sunset. In the regular collection, we saw a painting titled “Love and the Maiden” (1877) by John Rodham Spencer Stanhope (1829-1908), that included the words “Cor Cordium” over and over again on the cupid figure’s clothing.

A google search turned up this lovely poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne (thanks to David for help with the research on this stuff!):

Cor Cordium

O heart of hearts, the chalice of love's fire,
Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom;
O wonderful and perfect heart, for whom
The lyrist liberty made life a lyre;
O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desire
Dead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb,
And with him risen and regent in death's room
All day thy choral pulses rang full choir;
O heart whose beating blood was running song,
O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were,
Help us for thy free love's sake to be free,
True for thy truth's sake, for thy strength's sake strong,
Till very liberty make clean and fair
The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.

We hung out at Cafe Flore afterwards, then I went to a celebration of Mitcho’s retirement from as the director of the city’s queer youth outreach program. I chatted with many of the guys who were at the Covelo camping weekend and of course congratulated Mitcho. The Sisters of Indulgence helped Supervisor Bevan Dufty announce that the City of San Francisco named the day after Mitcho. Mark Leno and other notables were there, but the most poignant speakers were the kids who had come to the youth center. Some described how Mitcho persuaded them not to commit suicide or helped them off of meth. I met two interesting new people: Ariel, a writer and biological female whose crazy doctor father at Harvard reassigned her to be a male in an incident of abusive constructive intersex status, and Aaron, a young fellow who drinks, smokes tobacco, and plays guitar.

After that, the gang walked over to Moby Dick, then walked over and picked up Indian takeout to Johnny and Brian’s place in the Haight. I found out Mark of Mark and Onyx went to Senegal for two years in the Peace Corps and we agreed to meet up again to discuss his experiences there. I got tired before midnight and headed home.