“You’re meant to see the whole world, and this is such a small part of it.”- Charlie

The only thing I knew about San Francisco before I moved there was that I would be living near the ocean. It happened rather quickly, the decison to move there. For a few months, I was so sure I was going to move to Portland, where I had visited months before, where I had fallen in love with the flowers and the rain and the trees. But I couldn’t find a place to live, and it seemed more frustrating than I had imagined it would be. And there was something about moving to Portland that didn’t feel right, though it seemed appealing and wonderful to go there.

One afternoon I was at home talking to my roommate Charlie, and she was telling me about her trips to San Francisco. We sat by the window while she told me about the trains and the trolleys. She told me about how she took surfing lessons and how the fog always seemed like it was taking over everything there. She said it in a way that made it sound beautiful and interesting and I wondered why I had never considered moving there. In less than a week after that conversation, I had found a place to live in San Francisco, a roommate who sounded reasonable and nice, and most of all, I had made a decison that was all mine. I hadn’t discovered it yet, the meaning and importance of finding things that belonged only to me.

A month later, I had a going away party one week before I was set to leave Austin. In the quiet of my room that night, after cleaning up paper plates and plastic cups, the house still and silent, I sat on my bed to think. Charlie knocked softly on the door to my room, she came in and sat next to me. I listened to her call me brave, but I felt like a fraud. I felt scared, and nervous and delighted at the prospect of leaving, and terrified that I was actually, you know… leaving. I wanted to tell her this, but she already knew. She told me it was big and scary and she knew. Our decade long friendship was always bridging the gap of all the things I was thinking but could not say.

She said to me, You’re meant to see the whole world and this is such a small part of it.

I took a breath, let it fill my lungs. Let it go.

She told me that on lonely mornings, I could always visit the ocean, a bright scarf
and my journal as company. As always she knew, color and words would be the thread that kept me together on the difficult days. What we didn’t know was that I would find something greater than both of those things to counteract the loneliness that came with moving 2000 miles from anything I’d ever known.

The first place I lived in San Francisco was off 47th avenue, the ocean and my new home separated by only two blocks and the Great Highway. Often times I would walk barefoot to the shore, rinse my feet in the salt water, my shoes dangling by my fingertips. In the time that I lived there, I wrote pages and paragraphs about the ocean. I took hundreds of photos. I could never get enough. I took photographs of the waves, the way the sand clung to my skin, my feet standing on the shore before being swept away by the water. Most things I could not capture, the way I carried sand home in my shoes, beneath my fingernails. Anytime spent at the ocean meant walking home with the taste of salt on my lips and I relished the breeze that felt like silk on my skin. These are the things that belong to me, these days and months I spent by the sea.

There are so many layers I keep peeling back when I realize I am going back to San Francisco. Before I moved there, I had a most distinct thought, and I realize that even though it first applied to Austin, it has now become relevant to San Francisco. San Francisco is my history; No longer a part of where I am, but now transitioned into who I am. It’s been almost two years since I lived there, and there’s something extraordinary about going back. Despite all the wonderful and terrible things that have happened between then and now, I can still go and make something new of myself. Something that belongs only to me.

July 2009, Life before San Francisco

I’m listening to ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by The Beatles on my record player. It’s summer of 2009 and I’m in Austin. I’m listening to the crackling between the lyrics and I can hear my roommates dogs playing in the backyard through my open window. I’ve got packing boxes stacked high against my wall, and five day old flowers dried up on my desk.

I’m not ready.

I’ve been ready.

I made the decision, and feel like it can just as easily be dismantled. I know that leaving is something I have to do, even if it burns. Even if it’s lonely. I think that I am strong, so I stare at my brown boxes, trying to convince myself that this is happening. I hear the sliding door open below me, someone’s letting the dogs inside. I brace myself as I hear pounding on the stairs, and moments later am greeted with puppy love. I hug both dogs, and duck my head to avoid slobber. I’m hiding my smile but when I look up, they are both smiling back. I can never win with those two. I’m happy while I am sad, and sometimes I wonder how both can be. They leave and I am left alone again, in a pile of things that are being left behind.

The song has changed, and now its Yellow Submarine. I turn around and watch the needle raise slightly, and touch back down again up on the record. I hear Charlie saying, new people, new places, new experiences. But it’s scary doing what you want sometimes, because it’s what you want. I have doubts sneaking up on my shoulder as I sift through drawers and imagine what it would be like to leave here, and start new. To see only unfamiliar faces. I sit on my bed and am sad to give it up. I reach over and touch the suitcase from the 40’s and think you’re coming with me. All the things I want to take with me have history; this place is my history, no longer part of where I am, but now transitioned into who I am.

When fall turns into winter, He will pick up his camera again. He will take photographs of bare branches, of symmetry. You will go with him on these walks, point to buildings and stare at lines, wondering what he sees that you don’t. You will forget the answer to your question as he grabs for your hand, fingers laced together in the cold.

He begins to disappear, at first in the afternoons, where silence fills in the gaps of where sharing and laughing used to be. You talk this away; explain to your friends, his work is important. When you are alone in the apartment, you walk past the counter you made love on, you hold onto a belief that nothing has changed. When he comes over in the evening, he will hold your face in his hands, callouses on cheekbones. You will say, remember the time the flowers you bought me lived for a week?

He will smile.

This is when you will begin to miss him.

You will go into a bookstore, fingers grazing shelves and titles and covers, paper and wood. You do not call him when you find your favorite book of poems. This is when you know something has changed.

At first, you will find his restlessness endearing. Admire his travels, his adventures of new places, the stacked photographs in boxes. When you are holding a picture of the ocean, he will put his fingers to your lips.  

You will ask him, why don’t you take pictures anymore? And you will watch his shoulders lift and drop like heavy weights. Things change, he will say. You will accept this answer. It is the only one that makes sense.

One weekend he will take you on a trip to the coast, where you will go camping along the shore. You will make love at midnight, the smell of the ocean on your skin. The next morning he will say your name in that way, the way where you feel like you’re the only one. That you’ve only ever been the only one all along.

Life in long sentences

A customer at the cafe complimented my earrings. The conversation turned to birds, and my love for them. He was so surprised, and the upturned collar of his shirt reminded me of something familiar I hadn’t thought of in a long time, and when I told him about the bird feeders my grandmother keeps in her backyard I realized his way of listening reminded me of my grandfather, the one I loved more than anything. The one who died when I was nine. I began to feel a deep ache, the most fierce kind of ache that springs itself on you, when you think you’re okay, but suddenly you’re not. The last time I had missed him that much was when I was living in San Francisco, sitting by the sea, at Baker Beach, watching the waves crash into sand. What is it about the ocean, I just don’t know- sometimes when I am by the water I think of all the things that I have lost. Yesterday, I felt the most overwhelming ache of missing my grandfather all because of a gray haired gentleman, who wore his shirts the way I remember my grandfather did, and it all started with the birds, my earrings, the coffee. The smell of coffee in the air as I wished it was my grandfather asking me about what I liked most, that he was still around to want to know me at all.