Cave of Forgotten Dreams

San Francisco: I grab a chocolate eclair from a bakery in the Japantown Mall.  Bob has a double chocolate cookie. We walk through the halls of the Mall down to the Kabuki Theater where the film festival is being held. The smell of smoked eel floats out of sushi restaurants into the halls. People bend over their bowls of steaming noodles. Japanese-American girls in lace tights and mini-dresses stroll by. We pass the Japanese bookstore with an entire floor devoted to manga. We pass my favorite stationary store, full of elaborately patterned papers sold in rolls. We pass the kimono shop and the place that advertises Taiko lessons. We pass more restaurants and shops, most with Hello Kitties nodding in their windows. We go downstairs past the store that sells paper lanterns, futons and Japanese quilts.

We exit to the sidewalk and walk down to the Kabuki where a line is stretched around the block for Werner Herzog's new film, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams." We all file into the theater and pick up our 3D glasses to watch a documentary about the Chauvet Cave in France that was discovered in the mid-nineties. Through our 3D glasses, we see prehistoric paintings on the cave's walls of bison, horses, ibex and rhinos. We are entranced by these magical animals. We applaud after the film. We even applaud before the film. We applaud at the very mention of Herzog's name because Werner Herzog is beloved in San Francisco.

We leave the theater and get in the car to drive home. A couple of blocks from the Mall, we see a line of lights flickering in the dark. It's a row of people lined up on the sidewalk with candles burning in front of them. They are all sitting down, their eyes closed in meditation. It's a vigil, but the only sign we see is in Chinese and we can't read it. Bob figures it out: a protest in front of the Chinese embassy of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. We drive across the Bay Bridge and I exclaim at the beauty of the lights scattered through the darkness -- like  the torches that lit up the cave's darkness when people drew their animal pictures on the walls.