Found
From the country roads of Hooterville to the streets of San Francisco…
When we were in San Francisco for Rob’s surgery, we stayed in an area I didn’t know very well. When I lived there, I lived in Pacific Heights and worked in the Financial District. I walked to work through Russian Hill, Nob Hill, and a dash of Chinatown. In my free time, I didn’t venture much further.
It was interesting to be in a different part of the City, though also a little odd not to know where things were (or where I was). This area ranged from the Lower Haight to the Castro via Duboce Park. Conveniently, the N Judah light rail was just a couple of blocks from our friend’s place:
and it went right to the hospital with very few stops.
The Haight part of the neighborhood was characterized by tattooed hipsters, second-hand record stores, and beautifully maintained Victorians. Duboce Park was full of kids with their nannies, and the tree-lined streets leading to Market Street featured strollers chained to doorsteps in the way one usually sees bikes:
The tree-lined streets also had some mini parks, with benches and plants, where a girl could rest her hospital-worn feet. At one such parkette, I shared a bench with an abandoned briefcase:
Such was my weariness that I didn’t even think about opening it, remarkable in a girl who avidly sight-sees in lighted apartment windows and eavesdrops on public transit.
While walking down the briefcase street, I came across a piece of notebook paper with a sort of prose poem written on it. It looked to me like a teenager’s writing, and if so, there may be a poet to be on the streets of San Francisco:
“Waking up at this house is being blinded in the eyes by a stern sun’s gaze. Illuminating your resentment, a hangover and the twisted smile to these ways. Being smashed with the gross beauty of commerce like waking up to a slice of heavily frosted cake, at breakfast, wrenching your stomach in tandem with hangover, but oh so delicious in a sort of manufactured splendor. It’s seeing beauty you love, dampened.”
July 9th, 2011 at 2:41 am
How interesting and strange to see a different part of a City we think we know well, a part where things and people are forgotten for whatever reason but where people still dream and wonder about life as we all do, thanks for the entry.
July 9th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
I think, Suzy, that you are a born writer with a writer’s observational instincts. You should not neglect this gift that you have.
jxx
July 12th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Great post, my dear. Love your writing ALMOST as much as I love you!