As of Late
On the second to last Sunday of September Nina, a widow from New York, New York, entered the store I work at on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Nina carefully browsed the racks of overpriced clothing telling me,
“I am only visiting for a few days”,
which prompted me to ask,
“From where?”
She replied, “Can’t you tell from my accent?”
Nina tried on a pair of high waisted wide leg black jeans and walked out of the dressing room.
“Are these too young for me?” she asked.
“Of course not. ” I replied.
I suppose in the realm of undressing and dressing yourself therein lies a certain level of intimacy. Whether you are undressing in a bedroom with company or behind the closed doors of a fitting room, you bare yourself to somebody. Maybe this kind of intimacy made the bridge for Nina and I to have a conversation that I have thought about quite a bit since. Nina said the words, I am a child of the seventies and the phrase had some sort of gorgeousness about it, permanently being a child from the time in which you came to be.
Before I charged Nina for her jeans she told me that the day before she walked with an old friend of hers who has lived in San Francisco for the better part of the last twenty years. Her friend was disheartened by San Francisco and missed New York. Her friend claimed that San Francisco has died, as if the city’s soul melted like a forgotten candle. Nina had a hard time with this information because she found the city beautiful.
“New York will always be New York… San Francisco is just beautiful” she said.
I told Nina about my friend from Los Angeles who recently just moved to San Francisco. My friend’s story is not much different than that of Nina’s friend. Sometimes the ideas we have of places get lost, or maybe we get lost in them? Much like that of a Romance. I told Nina,
“San Francisco is a Romantic City.”
I recalled sometime ago I was in the backseat of a car with a friend of mine who claimed San Francisco to be an ‘unsexy city’ as opposed to places like New York or Los Angeles. Nina liked the resonance of the title a Romantic City. I think this is where it prompted her to tell me about her late husband. They did not know he was sick, but one day two years ago he got up to use the bathroom and died of a heart attack. She went on to explain that although she was never a fan of the Grateful Dead, she shares her birthday with Jerry Garcia. So, this year she went to see Dead & Co. in Golden Gate Park. The music although that was simply a vehicle to get her where she really wanted to go. Nina rented a car, she drove down the one. She found herself spending some days and nights in San Simeon. She saw the seals, Hearst Castle, but the thing that struck her most was the light. Nina said,
“I find that my life now is about following the light. It is both miserable and incredibly freeing.”
***
On the last Sunday of September I sat on the kitchen counter and so did Victoria. We told each other the things about blundstones left in a kitchen, while we ate Humboldt Fog, plums from the farmers market, and olives straight from the jar. Between the two plums we were eating, the one with the red flesh was better than the one with yellow flesh. We decided that this week we need to cook a steak and drink a glass of good wine. We need more art for our walls. We need to make more art for our walls. We need more sleep. We need to rewatch certain movies and go to the movie theater too. We need to do the things that make up for the misery and heartbreaks and expectations of how a life is supposed to be lived because within the notion of freewheeling flippancy therein lies something incredibly freeing. The conversation moved us from the kitchen counter to the living room furniture. We talked about things we want to do and have and see until we forgot what time it was, but remembered we had to be up early.
Since September, the season of autumn has moved in. Autumn in California has always existed to me as a suggestion regarding personal consideration. Autumn is in some ways a return. The light fades away from golden hues to a sort of squint worthy bright white. When the world itself seems to change I get the urge to do something similar. I have been trying to find the merits in cheap thrills. Staying up late and saying yes without hesitation.
There was another night that happened in October. Chloe came over to our home after work. It was the same day a fur coat I ordered came in the mail. Victoria, Chloe, and I sat on our couch listening to music. We slipped on coats and moved the conversation outside. We talked about life and love because that seems to be the main concern these days. Chloe shared a story about a conversation she had with an old man in Davis, CA. The old man offered Chloe the analogy that life is a moving sidewalk. The tread of the sidewalk is moving. It does not stop or slow, but you the person on the moving platform keeps acquiring heavy packs to carry. You get stronger and trudge onward. If you stop or sit, the platform moves on without you. The things I have found that have been getting in my way are the mysterious concepts of “what I should do.” Some of those things are about the future. Where I will live and what I will do and who I will inevitably become. However, in the spirit that has been taking the form of finding merits in cheap thrills it has become increasingly clearer that a life lived in the in the present exists independently of tomorrow, and yesterday was just some other time.
Lately, life has been sweet. Maybe it has something to do with autumn returning and being a marker of change, a hashmark on a door frame. There is an Eve Babitz quote that Victoria and I have adopted as mantra: I used to be a piece of ass but now I am an artist. Last Monday, Victoria and I went swimming in Aquatic Park. We followed the swim with a sauna and talked to some women our senior. In hearing these women talk about the politics of street renovations and how to fight hypothermia this idea of ‘a life’ seemed to slap me in the face. Life does not stop, instead you wander down down other paths meeting other people and carrying other things with you.
This past Saturday, after a German restaurant closed its kitchen I played records for people to dance to. I wore a miniskirt and my hair was braided. I thought about the days that have not happened yet. I thought about when I maybe will have a home and a really nice dining table with someone. I imagine pushing back my chair from the table ever so slightly and tossing a cloth napkin over my plate, clutching a wine glass thinking about the days of my youth fondly. Thinking about the things I wanted to do and did. Thinking about where I lived and who I knew when. I am sure I will think about the incredibly freeing feeling and not so much about the misery. But in in order for something to be a thing, there has to exist what it is not. I find an inherent quality to romance is heartbreak. Some of that heartbreak looks like a dinner with friends. You all collectively arrive with tears in your eyes because the preciousness that is your life now reminds you of the temporality. You cherish and hold tightly the nowness of the moment, knowing that at some point things will have to change.
Earlier this year I thought I knew what next year would be like, however the days that lead me closer to what I thought I knew seem to reveal that everything and nothing is possible. This tension does not quite have a name, but seems to exist in the background that looks like the calendar changing its monthly description. In this season that is a marker of change I have noticed changes within myself. I somehow now crave the slight bite to the air and the new things that have seemingly filled my days. I do not want to let go of what I have in order to hold what it is that I do not know and maybe that is the misery within the incredibly freeing feeling of the now.
