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.

The Home Stretch: Candles and Cramming

I’m living the worst of college stereotypes: the dreaded finals week. I can confirm they are just as notorious as the movies claim. I struggle to remember during these stressful times that this school is a privilege to attend. Even if that means in some twisted sense it is also a privilege to visibly sag from lack of sleep and pull my hair out, so be it.

Finals carry with them a presence as obvious as the descending fog. There is a sort of art to the crazed look college students give off during this time. It is fascinating to see my peers fighting off the weight of the world, all with the quivering corners of a fake smile. People enter finals week like squad groups entering a war. First the sciences are released into the fray. One can tell by the sort of people that sit huddled and on edge in the lounge. They appear to be gathered in prayer, and in a way they are. Their notes appear sewn like a tablecloth across the surface, sacrifices to the study gods. They scribble on the board as if they had but minutes to decode a bomb.

I was caught in the next wave, the quiet suffering the humanities know best. As the sciences prepare for the battle of the sit down final, humanities majors fight a war of attrition in the production of essay after essay. The war is raged against oneself. Never has the world looked so beautiful as in the week I couldn’t allow myself to enter it. Under self imposed lock down, I felt myself decaying away, reloading with the occasional fizzy drink and refreshing with short study buddy complaining sessions.

Two friends and I have a mini cramming tradition. We are still in search of a name, but to us it is a new Dead Poets Society, the bond of friendship and the assurance of collected knowledge spun into the symbolism of a candle in the middle of sprawled notes and the progression of the night. The city calls, but we have each other as skyscrapers. Only with each other do our fake smiles become real. 

So finals are brutal. But does that mean there is no beauty to be found in the end of my first semester of college? The end of the semester is for rumination as well. One last dosage of suffering perhaps, but also the realization that I wouldn’t trade a single part of the past four months. We forget, like so many people fighting battles do, that there is something worth fighting for. As I look around me, at the friends gathered around the electric candlelight, I realize that friendship is more beautiful than the city I’m in. And we all suffer but we are all together, comrades in the same battle to better our lives.

 I couldn’t ask for a more perfect end. A semester with a red bridge, but more importantly with bridges built between friends. A semester that sometimes felt like the sudden stops and swinging of the public transportation, but with so many worthwhile destinations. So I lost a little sleep and a little hair. A small price to pay for the culmination of my first glorious semester.