Jul 08 2011
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.”
3 Responses to “Found”
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.
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
Great post, my dear. Love your writing ALMOST as much as I love you! 🙂