The past week or two I have been spending an awful lot of time researching things like "Alcatraz night tours," "Napa wine tasting package," and "hop on hop off bus tours." May I remind you that I've lived in San Francisco for almost two years now and have never done any of the above? So why the sudden touristy urge now?
It's really quite simple: I've a visitor arriving in less than a week and I want this city to woo her just the same as it did me, but there's a catch. She's got one week to fall in love with it; I've had years.
The importance of understanding what the Bay area can and will do for a person cannot be underscored enough. I came here feeling so apart from the world, overwhelmed by its size due to the incredible bubble that is Vermont. So many things seemed unimaginable to me, and now my naivety is laughable -but never embarrassing. The silly things that I was in awe of are now at my fingertips, and are fully grasped in many of my friends' hands. My friends who are published, who are on television shows (albeit pretty bad ones...), who work with well-known musicians on a routine basis and are nominated for Oscars, who are interviewed by the likes of Dan Savage and NPR.... it still blows my mind, but it is all part of the tapestry of life here. Even writing it sounds trite and leaves me wondering if I'm coming across a braggart, but that's not the point: I want her to feel it too. The connection, the electricity.
I have this recurring dream -or a theme of one, rather. The red barn behind my parents' house, now long since torn down that sat just before the brook and bridge that leads to the rest of the property, is the host of it. Often the brook is raging and I am either paddling or saving others from its torrent, but lately the inflection of the water's tone is different... it still pulls with a type of yearning that overwhelms me, but no longer do I feel the need to escape it -nor save anything or anyone from it.
Being swept downstream and being okay with it is the most liberating thing I have ever felt.
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