A Glowing 2014

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life” –The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

2014 leaves yet remains some how, like a great love I can never forget. This is the year I graduated, the year I started college. But those words seem empty, the accomplishments void of emotion, like describing a loved one as tall and brunette and brown eyed. There is so much more. This is the year I became bolder and my eyes brighter. It is the year I moved into the city of my snow globe and exploded my horizon. It is the year I found my transplant San Francisco family, the ones that makes the city as beautiful as it is. I regret leaving this year, as though I were moving out of a home that saw so many memories created. But in the end each home, each year, is but a structure made special by the people in its midst.

This night last year I had no idea what was in store for me. I didn’t know I could love, or be loved as much as I have been. I didn’t know how hopeful and tragic a goodbye could be until I waved goodbye to my friends and family. I didn’t know how glorious a hello could be until I first met the fellow students that would change my life. I’d never before felt the ache, not to praise myself, but to show my unadulterated love for the many special people in my life. My life is blessed by none of my own doing.

When my family gathered for Christmas, my cousin told me that I was glowing. I’ve had some time to contemplate this. I’d never been told this before. My happiness was always the quiet kind. Now it seems I cannot keep it in. I have stories worthy of telling. But I realize in the night sky of my life, I am not the shining star. I am the lucky wanderer, my face illuminated by the brilliant glow of the stars, the people around me. The memory of them ignites every story I have. They beam and burst and brighten my big eyes. Their light marks the skylines of the two cities I move between. I glow because of their presence.

Everything and everyone I love is fastened in the snow globe of my heart. It shakes with the buzz of cable cars and the passionate red beat of bridges. It echoes with the steady fast call back home, to mountains and memories. 2014 is etched in the San Francisco sand, faded by the tide but remembered by the feel of footprints. Here no earthquake will shake my resolution to love my friends, my angels, the characters of my life for as long as I can. 

“To see the world.” In 2014 I lived intertwined in the intimacies and intricacies of San Francisco. But I learned that the hearts of others make the most beautiful destinations.

“Things dangerous to come to.” I moved alone to a huge city, making the biggest decision of my life. The first step is the hardest. But I’ve learned it only takes one big decision to change everything.  It only takes one decision to glow.

 “To see behind walls.” This year was more than a structure, more than walls—it was defined by the people that filled them, and the ways we ventured outside of them. I’ve learned it doesn’t matter which city I’m in, there’s a story out there and a person worth living it with.

“To draw closer.” I’ve drawn closer to myself and my dream. I scream my happiness aloud, and it is a miracle to have stumbled upon the right path, every step in the right direction, lighted by my stars.

“To find each other and to feel.” Somehow I have found others. My friends and family are lighthouses that beacon to me as I travel across the sea. My newfound friends are ships that will sail with me to the end of the world. I cannot thank them enough. No night of my life is dark.

“That is the purpose of life.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Before leaving for Colorado, I met with a couple friends for one last San Francisco brunch. We laughed over the semester, each story with an undertone of thankfulness that we had changed and for the better. One of my friends chuckled and said to me that I was going to see Denver with all new eyes. This, he’d find not the least bit surprising to know, has proved truer than I anticipated.

Reentering Denver I treated it as I had San Francisco. I crept around corners, charged into stores, shook the city like a child would shake his toy box. It seems I have a restlessness and eagerness instilled in me, together like a time bomb ticking down to when I will have my next adventure. My friend and I wove in and out of the Christmas lights of 16^th Street Mall. Denver’s beauty is nothing if not classy, and it touches the heart in a different way. It’s polite, always asks permission, but serenades one with its own tune.

 We found an ice skating rink nestled by the Clock tower. The sweet, charming appearance of the rink quickly became a series of dives to the rim as children literally raged a war in the middle. Someone at some point in time had the idea of giving children barricade-like structures to learn how to skate with. I have never seen children more empowered. They threw their barricades at each other. They purposefully charged in large groups, attacks and counter attacks that almost took me down as the first of the casualties.

Afterwards, still in search of a destination, we stumbled upon the Union Station turned into a hotel, illuminated with a Christmas shine. Its presence triggered a San Franciscan empowerment, an elation that comes with each step. The sense that one is so close to a story, in such a special place, that no step can be in the wrong direction. We walked inside. We watched a Christmas party send laughter out into the cold night. We feasted on the feel of the air. We stepped into an elevator, stirring an excitement now so familiar and so essential to my life.

Overlooking Union Square in San Francisco there’s a hotel with a glass elevator. For years it’s been closed to tourists, and for months my friends and I dreamed of sneaking in, rising above the glimmer of lights and rhythm of passerby. Finally, the night before I left, we were successful. We stepped in with a big group of guests, side glanced each other, and tried not to burst out laughing. The city expanded underneath us like a pop up book. Sure enough, we needed a room key to bring the elevator back to the 1^st floor. We were stuck. Oh, but what a beautiful place to be stuck. 

The feeling is not in the jolt of the elevator. The joy is not even in the physical beauty of the view. The elation is in the action, in the smile as long as the skyline, the eyes as bright as any skyscraper. A city, whether it be San Francisco or Denver, is a dare to be all that one can be. It is a challenge to find happiness in each step, in any direction. The key is to fling oneself into a city with the carelessness and spirit of a child, even without a barricade. If one ends up pinned under a pile of children on an ice skating rink, or closed in an elevator, so be it. Happiness is never stuck for long.    

A City of Light

My dorm room decorated for Christmas

 San Francisco cleans up nicely for the holidays. The entire city is decked out in the equivalent of a bedazzled, spinning, ever unfolding new dress. Each city corner offers its own kind of twinkle. It seems the city has already popped open its champagne bottle—sweet, sweet, alluring energy eagerly pours out. So I set out to renew my Christmas spirit, San Francisco style.

View of Union Square

 Two days, two Christmas epicenters. The first place I ventured was to the good old Fisherman’s Wharf. Yes, it is touristy and commercialized. Yes, I stepped into the Forrest Gump shoes outside of the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant like everyone else. But Fisherman’s Wharf from a local’s perspective includes walking along the pier by the boats preparing for the light parade. It includes a huge tree that glimmers way in the distance, accompanied up close by the ever present jazz musicians. Even the little tourist shops add an extra Christmas flavor to the small keepsakes propped in windows. There’s something about the addition of little red ribbons and candy canes that colors up one's cheeks and one’s heart.

On this particular occasion we walked through the main square, standing by the outside fire of a restaurant when none of the employees inside were watching. We bought cookie cakes and I watched as drama struck the scene. It began to rain, but San Francisco rain is the equivalent of a nice spray bottle spritz on a summer’s day. Not that San Franciscans would know the difference between that light tickle and the force of a hurricane. Lights streamed through the rain as people laughed and ducked into the small awnings of the little corners Fisherman’s Wharf had to offer.  My friends and I? We took advantage of the open square, laughing at our youthful resilience.

 Day two, Union Square. It began with my drama. My inability with directions led my friends and me into the heart of the Mission, one of San Francisco’s scarier neighborhoods, under the false promise of a free carriage ride we never were able to find. With Christmas my inner sense of cheesiness and desire for the fairy tale touch rises to the surface. But while I was not rewarded by a carriage, I found the equivalent of my castle at the end of the lurching ride.

My roommate and me

Union Square is Christmas at its glory. Another tree, and another ice skating rink, but somehow they are different than their stereotypical appearance on the television screen.  Union Square is surrounded by the shiny new glow of stores and the gentle towering of the oldest, fanciest hotels in the city. The experience feels like something new and something passed down through the ages. It is enigmatic and enticing in a way no other part of the city is. The Macy’s beacons like a plump, welcoming hostess, blushing with the golden glow of wreaths placed in every window. 

So we ice skated, and in a grand display of the movie moment no one wants, of course I fell. We sampled the Ghiradelli peppermint bark and danced in and out of the crowds with shopping bags in tow. I had the strangely pleasant feeling of being on my way to someplace, all the while sensing I had already arrived. Yet the true mark of Christmas is its elusive touch, leading one in every which direction without rhyme or reason. At Christmas one is more trusting, more willing to follow. Perhaps because everywhere there is a kind of happiness to be found, as plentiful as the Christmas trees spotted in windows.

Cheesy? Most definitely. Am I a tourist in my own city? Perhaps. But in San Francisco I found places that glow as much as I do at this time of the year. I found people who share the same expression of awe at the twinkling lights that somehow add up to sheer beauty. Each caroler in the Fisherman’s Wharf rain, each Union Square skater and shopper, each college student seeing the city for the first time, is an ornament adorning a stunning city. It keeps growing brighter and brighter.