Chinatown

I walked to Chinatown this morning, thinking I might get some cheap Chinese breakfast of whatever it is they eat for breakfast in Chinatown. Apparently they don't do breakfast. They aren't big morning people in general, by the looks of it. At 8:30 a.m., there was barely anything open. So I just walked up the street and looked in the windows.

Then I turned down toward the water, where there was a lovely view of the Bay Bridge. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't warm, either, and the mist lay on the water like translucent cotton, making silhouettes of the hills and the huge ships in the bay.

So I turned back around to Chinatown and the hostel, thinking maybe now something there would be open. I was getting hungry.

And I passed several Chinese women in a grassy area doing what looked to be Tai Chi. And I thought, how great that they just go out and do that. They are not embarrassed. They are totally focused on what they are doing and they don't care what anyone thinks. I wanted to keep watching them. Actually, I wanted to do Tai Chi.

So I walked up to the older woman and I asked what she was doing. She said, haltingly, that she didn't speak English. But I managed to communicate that I wanted her to show me what she was doing. So she did, and she let me follow her movements. And I knew with each thing we did there was some kind of reason for it. And I guess if I knew Chinese she could have explained to me exactly what we were doing. But at the same time, I figured that just by doing it, it was going to effect me because facial expressions and gestures do effect how you feel.

So I felt like I was clearing the space around me. I felt like I was becoming more centered, like I was gathering something out of the ground and maybe that would make me feel more solid. Some movements didn't need explanation. There was one that was like the American Sign Language sign for "power," holding two fists at your chest, which actually makes you feel powerful when you do it. It's the same way some words make you feel a particular way. And it occurred to me that that is a fundamental part of language, the way a movement or a word makes you feel.

I liked the non-verbal communication this old Chinese lady and I had. I have no idea what she thought of me. She might have thought I was strange, but she didn't show it. And if I hadn't asked her to teach me, I would have always wondered what it was like to do Tai Chi in the morning in San Francisco, and she never would have had the chance to show me.

Pacific

Maybe now I know why they call it the Pacific.

I had planned to stay in the near vicinity of the hostel where I am staying this afternoon. I was going to go out, find the place where I am going to meet up with someone tomorrow, get some food, pick up toothpaste at Walgreen’s (to replace the Tom’s of Maine toothpaste that security confiscated at the airport), and go back to my room for a quiet evening.

I did, in fact, accomplish those things, in precisely that order, but in between the food and the toothpaste, I had an added, quite unexpected adventure.

It all happened because of this artist photographer here that I was hoping to meet up with. Incidentally, it turns out he is headed out of town, so he didn’t really have time. But just in case, I decided I should check out the Haight-Ashbury area, since that, I believe, is where his studio is located. I also saw on my map the Golden Gate Park was out there, and I thought it might be nice to walk around, maybe even see the Golden Gate Bridge on my first day.

So I got on the 71 bus and headed out that way. When we got into the Haight-Ashbury area, I got off and walked so I could take in the shops better. I didn’t go into any, but I enjoyed looking in the windows. Then, toward the end of Haight Street, I spotted Amoeba records, which a friend of mine had told me about. And there was Golden Gate Park. As I crossed the street, there was a couple headed out that way. The girl made eye contact with me and asked if I wanted to do something. I don’t know what it was. Some kind of slang for some kind of drug, I don’t know what. Anyway, I politely declined. Then it occurred to me that rather than being a nice family-friendly park, maybe this was the kind of park where people came to do drugs. It did kind of appear that way, and I mostly felt out of place. It was so beautiful, though, with big, majestic trees in the haze of the setting sun. There was a playground, however, and an art studio, and several joggers. So it wasn’t all people with bongos and glazed looks.

And that’s when I got the idea that maybe if I just walked through the park, I could catch the sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge. It looked simple enough on the map. And when I got through the corner of the park and looked down the main road, I could see the Pacific right there. All I had to do was walk. I probably didn’t even need to get on the bus.

But that road was a lot longer than it looked. A lot longer. And when the map I had said that this particular area of the city was “not to scale,” what they apparently meant was that for every block they showed, there were at least ten – maybe twelve – in real life. So I did get on a bus. The 16XB or something like that. And that was good. But then it started going up this hill and I didn’t know where we were going. So I got off. And I kept walking toward the water. And walking. And walking. And walking. The street seemed to never end. And then I thought I might head uphill and maybe I could see the bridge from there. No dice. I kept walking west, toward the sunset. And I could see it was getting later. I picked up the pace because I didn’t want to miss it, and I knew the later it got, the darker my ride home.

So then I was on Jonah Street, heading downhill. And still walking. I could swear the ocean was just one giant mirage that kept moving at the same pace that I was going as I went forward, like a rainbow. You could keep chasing and chasing and never catch it. And the sky was getting darker and darker. I was sure the sun was below the horizon now. And the streets were mostly deserted. I wondered if I should feel unsafe. But I just walked confidently on, and the further I got, the more determined I was to reach the ocean. I had come this far. How could I give up now? Sure, I could cut my losses and get home early, but where would be the satisfaction in that? And I thought maybe I should because my knee started to hurt, and I worried, briefly, that it would give out, and I would be stranded in a remote corner of a strange city and who knows what would happen to me. But I pushed that thought aside and adjusted my gait so that my knee didn’t hurt so much on the descent downhill.

I probably walked forty or fifty blocks. I don’t even know. When I saw the train cars turning around I knew that I was nearly there. And I saw cars crossing perpendicular to the road I was on. Yes. This was it. I was approaching the “Golden Gate Recreation Area.” This was a yellow strip on the map. When I crossed the street, I found it was a beach.

And the sunset was still there, an intense swath of vermillion and rose with an aura of green and a crown of purple, veined with purple-orange clouds. And beneath it, there were waves like I have never seen before. And I stopped only to remove my shoes and feel the sand between my toes as I walked straight for the water. I was going to touch it. I was going to stand in it. This morning, I got out of bed at 3:00 a.m. in cold, gray Boston, and tonight, I am standing in the Pacific, surrounded and swallowed by color. This is what I saw.



So as I walked toward the water, as if there were a magnet drawing me, I let the cuffs of my jeans drag in the wet sand. And I didn't care when the lip of the next wave swirled around my legs to mid-calf. I was so enthralled and alive, it didn't matter.

I drank in the sunset for as long as I could, watching the waves until another one sopped my jeans and I decided that was the ocean telling me: enough, it’s time to go home. So with my shoes and socks full of sand and my jeans wet practically to the knee, I headed back with that spectacular sunset indelibly printed on my mind. That, to me, was peace.

Project On

The San Francisco project is officially underway.

I was thinking before I came here that I was going to let the city tell me if I needed to move here.

That is what it seems to be telling me right now, loud and clear, without a doubt and very unmistakably.

It's good. This is very good.

60 degrees and sunny. There are big palm trees right next to the Christmas tree in front of Macy's. The air feels different. It's alive. I am liking this. I am liking it even more than I thought I would - and I've hardly seen any of it yet

We will just have to see how this goes...

Going to town

I. Am going to San Francisco! Um....tomorrow? Yes! Not moving there quite yet. Just a little trip. My flight leaves at 6:00 a.m., which means I need to call the cab at what? 3:30? Maybe four. Things are slower at the airport in the morning. But on the other hand, I'm a little nervous, because I don't think I've been on a plane since I got back from Ireland. Except when I went to Florida for my cousin's wedding somewhere in there. But that was a family trip. I am so looking forward to this...

Caveat

I have to add a caveat to Project Moving to San Francisco, kind of like some people don't say they are going to go anywhere or doing anything without qualifying it with “God willing.” Or if you are writing an obituary, you can’t print, “Memorial services will be at” such-and-such a time and place, because what if a hurricane blows in and knocks down the church? You say services are “scheduled for…”

So I just have to acknowledge that there is always the possibility that I won’t go to San Francisco. Like John Lennon said, Life is what happens while you are making other plans. Maybe that's me. I don’t plan to stay in Boston, but here I am, and maybe I will end up going to some other city. Who knows?

I guess what this project is about is discovering where I am going to go. I have San Francisco in mind, and maybe that’s the place. Maybe I will discover that it’s not. In either event, I think it’s the process that will prove to be most useful. And anyway, the process is the part you live.

Time

So I was able to speak with the artist who was looking for a manager, and we had a pretty good conversation. But when it came down to it, I decided I should really be looking for something full time, rather than dividing myself between multiple small jobs. That's my usual MO, and recently it sort of backfired and turned into a scheduling nightmare.

Right now, I think the theme of my life is focus, and right up there with it would be stress minimization. I'll probably be working on that for the rest of my life. But anyway.

And along the lines of stress minimization, I think I have decided to take my moving plans as slow as they need to go. I don't want to force it, and I don't want to rush it, because moving myself across country is going to be stressful, no matter what. Throw into that mix that I am still recovering from little head trauma, which means I get stressed out that much more easily. So it is just a matter of not overdoing things.

And speaking of overdoing things, living with my family is pretty stressful. I mean, I love my grandparents, and they love me, but it's their house and not mine. Meanwhile, I feel like I need some personal space, which is frustrating, and they probably feel like I'm intruding on theirs. I think it's cramping both our styles. I tell myself I'm doing this for the greater good - saving on rent so I can move. Hopefully that is true. And anyway, they leave for Florida soon, so then I will be staying there on my own, which I've done a couple of times in the past. Still, I think I would be more comfortable in my own space. In the interests of Thanksgiving, I'll have to say that at least I'm grateful that I have such a supportive family. Or at least I try to be grateful. Mostly I just feel lazy. Sigh.

Getting through it. We're getting through it.