San Francisco: City Of My Nativity

San Francisco is my birthplace.  A great city of progress as well as tradition.  The faces there are like a map of the world and there are microcosms of society to suit nearly every possible taste.  I have always been proud to have been born there and lived there for periods of time.  I used to feel a fierce loyalty to it in comparing it to other cities.  I felt I must never say that another city is better or the heart of San Francisco might open itself up to swallow me with all my fangs.



I've been to Edinborough, Portland, Seattle, Paris, San Francisco, Jerusalem (old), Glasgow, New York, Las Angeles, Greenbay, Detroit, Tampa, and Las Vegas.   These are the large and famous cities I have been to.  For so long I would never allow any city to compare more favorably in my estimation than San Francisco.  No matter how I might inwardly wake up in some other place to wonderment and desire.  Time changes us.  Time changes everything in the end.  If you look at that list of cities, you will find that I have ordered them to reflect which I love best from first to which I like least at the last. 

In fact, they are ordered to reflect where I most want to live.  Though I am no longer a city girl at all and the truth is that I don't want to live in any big city at all, if I did- I will always mostly strongly desire to live in or near Edinborough.  Life is not going to arrange itself so.  I feel about Edinborough the way most people feel about Paris.  I think Edinborough is much prettier and more romantic than Paris can ever be.



But back to my birthplace.  You know how when you're young you view certain people with mighty superpowers, thinking they are capable of making mountains turn into cranes that can fly away?  And then you move away from those people and don't come back for many years until you are shaped by many sobering events, changes, joys, discoveries, and then you return in a flurry of delicious reminiscence and ache to reconnect with all that awed you when you were still smooth skinned?


And then you reconnect only to find that the power of the past has atrophied into something so much smaller than you remembered it all those years?  All that remains, at that point is to replace the awe with a gentle love and compassion for the entropy that embraces us all.

That's how I feel about San Francisco.  I still love it, because it's a marvellous city, but now I see it with plainer vision and the drifts of trash hit my eyes like bombs.  The unwashed sidewalks wear blood, dirt, gum, sweat, piss, shit, glass, tickets, condoms (always used), random single shoes, and every other substance that might be spilled by or spilled out of human beings.  All of it layered across the concrete in shades of dirty and dirtier.  I see now, as I always did, the people in sharper focus than ever before and while their vibrancy and diversity delights me and makes me feel at home, there is so much city wear on them all. 


I used to own these streets.  I was mugged on them.  I walked them everywhere at all hours of the day and night.  I waited on them for friends, for jobs (not the tricky kind), and for transportation.  I watched them closely for predators.  I melted into them sometimes and sought invisibility.  I contrasted myself with them when I sought something shinier than the grates beneath my feet.  I ran, I fell, I sat on them. 

And always I loved them.  And always I love them.


I don't miss living in San Francisco and it's now fifth on the list of cities I would want to live in.  If I ever wanted to live in a city again at all.  It was great seeing it again but I'm finding myself having to adjust my view of it.  No more apologies for its grime.  It may not be dirtier than New York but what I saw of its underbelly out in the open was so much worse than I ever remember it being.

I'm home again.  A place I am increasingly reluctant to leave.  Maybe it was having had influenza two weeks ago, maybe it was traveling with a broken rib, or the short blast that a quick impromptu trip like that feels like, but I am wiped out.  I am going to go catch an hour nap before the kid comes home.