Then "Blank" Happened

As I rapidly approach the end of my first semester of college, I am trying to commemorate my experience. To capture how each and every memory has added up to this change in me I cannot ignore. The catch with memories is that alone they offer few conclusions. No solid plot line, no spoilers—I did not know I was changing until I realized that I had.

 The characters of so many stories begin as normal people, and then one day something happens. “Blank” happens and it changes their lives. My “Blank” may have been arriving in San Francisco. Or it may have been when I decided to attend my college. Or it may have been when I started writing, what inexplicably and amazingly led to my wanderlust of the world. “Blank” could even have been driving across the Golden Gate Bridge as a young girl, wanting nothing but a life of magical red bridge moments. It could be one or all of those things.

But my story goes like this: my life was normal, and then “Blank” happened-- before I knew it “Blank” paved way for an infinitude of “Blanks.” Like the trunk of a tree hoisting hundreds of outstretched branches higher in the air. Who knew when I opened one door, I’d find so many others, already ajar. Every “Blank” has dripped into the paint palette of my soul and changed my color. My heart bleeds the brightness of a thousand San Francisco hill dotting houses. To take away one experience would be to take away the brilliant muddled conglomeration of my essence.

 In under a month I will return to Denver, to the family and friends I must inform of my change. I will return to the people that up until “Blank” knew everything about me. They knew my color, and they knew the assortment of doors to pass through to get to me. But every day of college I’ve opened a new door. I’m so far away from where I started that I wouldn’t even know how to get back if I wanted to. My mind floods every new room. My life is now a chorus of “Blanks,” and between every phone call home to my friends I don’t know who I will be. I’m the lead character of an invigorating story in which something is always happening.

So what will I tell people? I will tell them that I finally opened the floodgate to my soul and let a whole new city in. That magical red bridge moments are now my reality. That my heart has swelled as my world has swelled and it will continue to do so. This story is just beginning.

 I suppose I cannot commemorate something that has yet to be completed. So I will tell people that I am a beautiful work in progress. And I will ask what “Blanks” changed their lives.

A Happy City: Black and Orange

 Three minutes before the end of the last world series game, the television under which 20 + students stood taunt started counting down to automatic shut down. The lounge on my dorm floor filled with an anxiety to an extent I have never known. As students pounced to turn the tv off and back on, people cussed and covered their faces as if they too faced inevitable shut down. But the game was restored…just in time to see the last play of the game, to have Giants’ “Dynasty” as they call it restored.

 San Francisco must have been the happiest city in the world this weekend. Not only was it Halloween (a holiday made for the specific breed of San Francisco people) but their team snatched a victory once again. A double feature of black and orange. In the moments after the game, I heard not only the cheering of students around me in the lounge, but echoes from the street of people screaming, cars honking. I chose that night to walk to the supermarket, watching as strangers high fived each other. Smiles were rampant. Already students speculated about whether classes would be cancelled for the big parade.

  I’ve would not call myself an aficionado of any particular sport—I’ve never demonstrated that level of commitment. But I can plug myself in to almost anything, especially when it means the uncontainable excitement of my own city. Sports carry a mystic, magical power that entrances millions—for the weekend San Franciscans worshipped this power, for the weekend they were hypnotized by the seduction of success. So I followed the processional of people to the epicenter of the sports world.

The victory parade, a sacred ritual leading through the downtown streets of San Francisco, brought the players to their real home. As they rode by in the parade my surroundings turned into a torrent of screaming I was sure couldn’t get louder until the next player came along and it did. Fans climbed into trees for views, children clung to edges of buildings. A college student even climbed up a street light, chugging a beer as he swung higher and higher. A woman standing close to me had brought her young son. As Blanco went by, her son anxiously pulled at her shirt, screaming “I can’t see him! Mommy I can’t seeeeee him!” His mother wasn’t listening. Instead she thrust herself upward into the crowd, shouting “BLANCO! I love you! See me! See me!”

Both rain and orange and black confetti fell from the sky that day. It poured actually, but I was gloriously warm, surrounded by an adoring love only sports fans can feel. Confetti coated the umbrellas that surrounded me. I had but to reach up to touch a little bit of magic myself.

This city may make an aficionado of me yet.