Fault Lines - John Knoop

he came to San Francisco in 1906 as a young engineer to help rebuild the city after the
big quake. There’s a DVD duplicating machine sitting on top. Lighting stands and a
square Halliburton case on the floor next to the fireplace. Cobwebs in the corners.
Books, DVD and VHS copies of films on every shelf and surface. It’s a mess, but it’s
mine and I know where to find everything. The kitchen is dirty but I can’t be bothered
with keeping it clean. It hasn’t made me sick. Outside there’s an unkempt herringbone
brick terrace under a white Acacia next to a Monterey pine.
In the second room I weave my way through a disorderly pile of lights, an SQN
mixer, a 16mm Éclair camera and a collapsed Vinton tripod to a drawer stuffed with a
dozen battered notebooks and leather bound journals I started writing in my teens. I’ve
hung on to them for years to prove to myself that I’m a writer as well as a filmmaker.
They have sustained me through more than one identity crisis, and now I’m going to see
if I can use them as a skeleton to hang my story on. The journals will serve as ribs and I’ll
see if I can flesh out the parts between with some of my thoughts now, sitting here in El
Cerrito. Maybe I’ll start with some fairly involved journals I wrote about a motorcycle
trip to Argentina, when I decided to drop out and dive into a serious effort to be a writer,
after a strange freshman year at Columbia College.
Moving to my computer I crack open a musty folder to begin reading the journal I
started writing after I left New York and headed for Argentina.
Paoli, Indiana, June 27, 1958
Thank god, we’re on the road at last. Our BMW R-69 is parked outside a Main Street
café, leaning against the curb, resting on the crash bar that protects its two horizontally opposed
cylinders. It’s a bizarre looking load: a surplus duffel bag on each
side of the rear wheel and another on the rear luggage carrier with a
spare tire draped around it. People slow down to stare as they pass.
There are three boys circling it right now with their chins out,
pointing at the engine. Who knows? It could be the first of its kind
ever seen in these parts. It’s not a Harley or an Indian, so what is it?
Naren Bali and I are having a sandwich. This is the first entry
4