City Sickness
The chord of basic realization has been struck or picked or strummed. I have been having moments, usually in the late afternoon when the sunshine is at eyebrow level, wondering how on earth I ended up here. Here being San Francisco and working a job that takes place Monday through Friday from nine in the morning to five in the evening. The part that gives me the major kick in the pants is that I used to be a flight attendant (random) and that is why I am here (for now). I was unsure as to what to write this week, but I had been missing looking at Palm Trees and driving through neighborhoods with names like Hollywood. I looked through things I had wrote and found this:
So now as I sit on my remaining days in “Seattle”, counting down future days until I move to San Francisco I think about cities– the cities I’ve been to and loved or didn’t, and how some are made for certain people and how some people aren’t made for any city or person in particular and how people in California are prettier than people everywhere else.
Almost a year ago, I was living in an airport hotel learning how to be a flight attendant (which mostly is about never being late, missing friends’ birthdays, and giving people cans of coke thirty five thousand feet up in the sky) and completely ignorant to the fact of how drastic life (mine) would change. Anywho, upon the study and return to previous words, I remembered how much I love a city, especially the one I am living in now. But I also loved Los Angeles, so much so I only read books about or around it. And maybe it has something to do with reading the third volume of Maupin’s Tales of the City, and how two characters take a trip to Los Angeles. Thinking about another city while living in another feels like a jezebel state of mind, because how could I possibly be capable of loving two places full of people and things that are four hundred miles apart?
I’d like to apologize for the diary entry tones at times, I am a twenty three year old girl who has been waitlisted for three MFA programs–perhaps for good reason. So, thanks a lot and bear with me. (also feel free to be snobbish about the Joan Didion quotes throughout. I think they are great, and I am sorry you have heard of her).
“In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later.” - Joan Didion
Because you can only walk uphill in the San Francisco sun, in San Francisco. Kind of like how you can only drive down Sunset during sunset, on Sunset when the sun is setting in Los Angeles. Certain things belong to certain places, and that is why we send postcards. I remember attempting to write a convoluted paper in college about “emblematic signatures” of Los Angeles, and one of them I was attempting to explain were Palm Trees. It is not new, or anything groundbreaking so-to speak, except for the fact that when you are a young face in a city, which has nothing to really do with a birth certificate, you notice the noticeables in an innocent way–No leather jacket wearing person has over explained your mispronunciation back to you, yet. There is something about being a freshman in a city; going through the growing pains, going to the bars that are only cute when you know of nothing better, or only being able to get around with a map. It all makes me think back to being twenty one infatuated with Los Angeles and Joan Didion because she wrote,
“One of the mixed blessings of being twenty or twenty one and even twenty three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone ever before” - Joan Didion
Living in San Francisco is something that I never really figured would ever happen to me, like winning concert tickets by calling into the radio station. It is kind of like how some people never thought they never could like oysters or win the lottery, but they do. I thought Southern California was in my blood; staying in the same fifty mile radius. But then I left, and left, and left again and then moved away. The weird part is it feels normal now to be globally Californian. San Francisco feels like home because real life has been lived here. I have gotten parking tickets, a busted window, lost a job and got another one, cried some, laughed a lot, and had a leaky sink fixed. It is all the inconveniences that make places feel like home because the varnish of a new city begins to tarnish.
There are faces I see at bars, and now recognize. Had conversations that were capable of only happening here, in San Francisco. My cousin said something beautiful and jarring about that thing when you love someone and then it all backfires. She said she realized maybe she loved a version of him that does not exist. It led me to think about perceptions and which reflection in a kaleidoscope you focus on. So I do not know exactly, but I think I could be loving this city that only exists for as long as I am here. Because there could be a day where I wake up and don’t feel like it anymore or something else will come along or I will come home one day and San Francisco will up and leave me for no good reason. It is all a matter of time and sleight of hand. For the time being, San Francisco is the place where I feel like myself and it is a city where people have good things to say to you.
My last trip home, to the place where I am from, things kept creeping up on me about timestamps–when I am coming back, that I should come back, and statements with an err of it is only a matter of time. I do think about those things, especially when the first of the month rolls around and it seems like everything you want to do is happening at the same time on the second of the month. But there is a chip that proudly gets worn on my shoulder at times when I get to say the words, “I live in San Francisco.” And maybe it could be any city for that matter, but the reality is that it is not just any city, it is the one I live in–for now. It is the city with hills, bridges, a Golden Gate Park, a mission, a presidio, beaches, defunct bath houses, and a bay. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the kind of person who believes you have to live in a city in your early twenties is quite loathsome. They usually talk at you about the book they are reading and only drink one kind of liquor. Subscribing to something because it sounds good coming out of your mouth when you see those particular faces around Thanksgiving makes the worst leftovers.
I feel like I know my time in cities will have an expiration date, but it is just a feeling, not necessarily a gut one, but a thought that creeps up every now and again. It has caused me to feel like all of these days had when the sun is shining or the fog erases the top of Sutro Tower, I am already sad for their passing. I have become nostalgic for my present.
“...quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again.” - Joan Didion
Names of neighborhoods actually mean something, and I know which buses to take for the most part. I have a favorite beach, parking spot, and a place to get salads. It is just funny because none of these things necessarily signify anything or are inherently different from doing them anywhere else in the world, but to me it makes the city where I find myself feel like home. So much so, I have this apprehension about staying here. My older brother gave me this foggy warning about staying in one place for too long and by the time you leave for another place you missed the window to live in another place [city]. There was also something he mentioned about finding someone. The kind of person you share a life with, something I have come to completely disregard because why focus on something so unreal like that, when you could focus energy on winning the lottery instead?
I miss Los Angeles, for what it is worth, but there was never room for me when I was trying for it. My roommate’s grandmother advises to never be a pants chaser when it comes to men, and I think the same goes for cities. No one likes a try hard, especially a desperate one. Right now it feels good to be a twenty three year old girl that lives in San Francisco. It is the best change of scenery amidst the total uproar that is life. There are hills and bridges and sun and fog and really really good people. One warm spring night a few weeks ago, I was walking back from a friend’s place. I thought San Francisco only smelled like Eucalyptus, but there was something familiar. It was balmy and floral. It was jasmine. Jasmine on a warm spring night in San Francisco. There is always a cure for city sickness, and usually it is just another city.
