Insane crowds and dismantled morning thoughts...

Hooked on a feeling.

I’ve been rising just a tad before 7AM most mornings. Sometimes the sound of the neighbors humping will make my eyebrows twitch. For someone who used to do her writing at 3AM, while the world slept, it’s a big adjustment. This schedule doesn’t allow me as much time to focus on my writing before the rest of the world starts to stretch, yawn and begin their hohumities of life. For those few hours, the world is mine.

I open my west facing bedroom window to let the frigid Outer Richmond ocean breeze seep through the crevices of the screen window, parts of the screen are rusted and decayed from the same thing that keeps me vitalized: sea air. The nearby church will announce its bell, the clang often growing frustratingly louder and louder to overcome the boat’s fog horn echoing on the horizon. Like two people well versed in the art of altercation, thinking that louder is righter until they both happily collapse from exhaustion. It may be summer in other parts of California, but in San Francisco, it’s the season of Karl.

By the way, Karl. If you’re okay, let us know.

After a few hours of writing, I’ll walk to the corner store, or the coffee shop around the corner, ingesting as much of the neighborhood as I can before I have to go back into the real world. Speaking of which, the city has been more crowded than I can remember. I visit the beach after my coffee idling hour. My daily beachside cruise has been steadily interrupted by swarms of maskless people, like tourists shuffled in by chartered buses attempting to escape the scorching inland weather. From the Cliff House it looks like endless rows of ants forming colonies in the sand. The pan de coño affected everyone in different ways, I definitely didn’t like crowds (or people getting within three feet of my personal space) before, and it took me until this weekend to realize I like it even less now. Crowds closing in on me dismantles my thoughts. I was getting anxiety from seeing the groups of people beyond the windows from my moving vehicle.

The thrift stores are next. It’s mostly an excuse to take in the bouquet of old, the aroma of the archaic, the perfume of the forgotten…I love the smell of old shit. It’s like the smell of the old buildings emanate with the smell of ephemera. How someone hasn’t created an incense to recreate that smell is beyond me. Two to three thrift stores a day.

I’ll return to the residence, park the car in the garage and sit outside on the stoop to people watch. Sometimes that task includes a brown paper bagged tall boy. Sometimes not. I don’t normally drink, but there’s something about the ceremony of a cocktail while sitting on a stoop and taking in that air. That fucking sea air. The entire concoction is intoxicating and the day before I have to return home, no matter how long I’ve stayed at the residence, I will break down and cry.

When I have to say goodbye to the crown molding, goodbye to the life-size fireplace, goodbye to the squeaky board in the middle of the long hallway, goodbye to the neighborhood, goodbye to the quirks of a Victorian in San Francisco. And this is after I’ve seen more bare asses during my everyday errands than I’ve seen in my entire life. Maybe the ass cracks of the world also feel invigorated by the sea air?

I spend so much time chasing…a feeling. I don’t know what that feeling is or how to describe it. But, I know I sense it when I’m in San Francisco or Alameda on a cool day and I’m sitting in a second wave coffee shop (RIP Rocking Frog) or a bookstore where there’s a cat in the window and the smell of old encircles my body like galaxy vapors.

A contentment hard to come by.