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.

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.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

 

 I fell in love with San Francisco last night. My feelings have undoubtedly changed, as drastically as a relationship changes when one says “I love you.” Suddenly the view from the campus, the city the ocean and all, is not just a pretty view—it is my view. I feel myself interwoven—I have walked enough steps along the beach, stood on enough busy street corners, stared at the city scape at night enough to earn a place. From my dorm room window I can see planes flying away, and instead of envy I feel pity. What a tragedy to leave such a place.

  Last night a group of friends and I ventured to Ghiradelli Square for late night chocolate samples (Secret: if you’re there around closing time, about midnight, they’ll give you any left over sundaes or cones). The chocolate shop itself is the best smelling place in San Francisco, with large basins of churning chocolate right out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The Square is picturesque romantic, complete with late night strolling, lit up fountains for wishing, old fashioned diners and a saxophonist somewhere around the corner. We devoured our chocolate products as we walked along the water, headed towards Fisherman’s Wharf as bright as a carnival off in the distance.

Once there I tried my first animal fry from In ‘n Out Burger (…interesting). I watched a street dancer reincarnation of Michael Jackson surrounded by a gathering crowd across the street. A man in a wheelchair put on a light display, throwing flashing boomerang toys into the black sky. I was handed a puppy, of all things, and allowed to swoon as he yawned and grew drowsy in my arms. We stopped to watch graffiti artists create $10 masterpieces, small fantastical worlds with the stars and planets spinning around the city. I am determined to go back, if only to see the world I now live in recreated before my eyes.

We quickly located the epicenter of Fisherman’s Wharf, finding a carousel still spinning, energy still brewing. We pieced together various scenes from the movie Big—we found both a fortune telling machine and the San Francisco equivalent of the piano in the toy store—a piano staircase that makes the accompanying sounds of the keys. But it was not until we walked along the pier that I officially fell in love.

The moon rose slowly over the sailboats creaking in the water. At times the moon was a bobbing party lantern, resting on a string of sailboat Christmas lights. We walked towards the Bay Bridge, over which the moon had launched itself, finding the closest pier. Can one ever help singing “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore…” at a sight like that? In front of me was la luna over a sparkling bridge reaching into the night. Behind me was the city’s different kind of sparkle, the sparkle I could rejoin with a couple moments’ steps.

 The city became all at once the street performer and the puppy and the chocolate bar and the bridge and the moon and the faces of those around me. Standing perched above the black churning waters, so much life and light fought the dark fearlessly. Such sights and such nights inspire to no end. I cannot get enough of “I left my heart in San Francisco,” and I’ve taken up the romantic music of Frank Sinatra. This place makes me want to sing and dance and drink up life and love.

Dear Ocean, We Meet at Last

 An ocean’s embrace is much different than that of mountains. I cannot escape the feeling I’ve been missing something all this time. Yes, a mountain is a guardian and a goal—it is endurance and the quintessence of beauty one finds at the greatest of heights. But the ocean’s particular breed of beauty comes with depth. The process of lowering oneself into the water, pressing one’s feet into the sand, standing motionless and knowing that the sea is moving and changing everything. An ocean all at once grabs for those who walk in its midst while appearing still, like an endless road spotted with glittering footsteps stretching into the horizon.

 Upon my first sight of the ocean, it was impossible not to overreact. For the landlocked people of the world the ocean is idealized, idolized, like a renowned celebrity that asks for nothing of fame yet receives it nonetheless. I wanted the ocean waters to autograph my legs, and I ran in regardless of the chill. I splashed and ran along the shore through the bubbly serf. I maneuvered around hundreds of people sprawled across the beach like an impressionist masterpiece. Each glowed like a candle in the late afternoon light.

There is something about a beach in relation to the expanse of the ocean that speaks to life. Life is displayed there in stages—I spotted mothers lathering sunscreen onto confused baby faces, children determined to perfect sand castles, teenage girls gossiping on brightly colored towels, college students drinking, married couples strolling, older couples watching with gentle smiles of nostalgia as subtle and strong as the waves. Each lives out a part of his/her life here, each in face of whatever lies in those vast expanses—in face of the truly unknown.

 Why do people get comfort from the ocean? I have never felt a more peaceful excitement than when I sat watching my first sunset, seeing the orange sun sink into the bowels of the sea like a swallowed tangerine. The wind has never seemed so purposeful, as when my dress billowed behind me and I smelled the gentle breath of misty air. Some jokingly say it gives them comfort because they could escape in the case of a zombie apocalypse. But maybe the ocean is just an escape from everything. A return to a humanity as simple and significant as footsteps in the sand. Away from the whirlwind of an apocalypse of thoughts, to the comfort of the ocean’s unknown one can wade in for a moment.

In Fair San Francisco, Where we Lay Our Scene…

 There is nothing like settling into the promise of a beautiful city. And nothing like finding one’s home aglow, a hilltop castle in the middle of it. Sunset or sunrise, the light is reflected into my eyes and heart. Night or day, I feel the gravitational pull of something setting in motion. From here I feel everything. Either the ominous cloak of fog or the hint of warmth taking back its lost ground. Either the dancing of wind or a moment of pure silent thought. I didn’t know such glorious sensations could exist amongst the wheeze of the muni buses or the chatter of a city’s mentality.

 I enter my first scene of the day in the lounge. Dorm life isn’t what one would call beautiful by any means. Already I notice wrinkled clothes, smeared make-up, freckled morning irritation and dripping shower bags. Half hearted good mornings and toothpaste smiles. But somehow that light gifts everyone a glimmer of magic. I cannot help but to imagine the ruins of a lost ancient city, dust illuminated by the gentle morning touch.

From the top campus, one can see from the mist of Ocean Beach to the city in all its glory. It adorns buildings like a top hat. It is the constant temptation from many a classroom window. This campus especially pulsates with spirituality. In this very garden, next to the Jesuit house, my program held one of its first orientation activities. We stuffed ourselves together for pictures amongst the flowers, in awe of the dotting of bridges and buildings on the close horizon. We held hands in a small room with large windows—for how could one ever relinquish a minute of the sights? The first church service filled me with warmth, the air with whispers of the city, my eyes drank in the bridges I could cross in more ways than one. 

 And could there be more perfect an end than a room from a childhood novel? The notorious Harry Potter room beckons for Dead Poet Society meetings and secret conversations. One can find one’s corner amidst the wisest of friends—old books lining the walls, quiet and sure. The room is supposedly haunted, but it can only be friendly ghosts that open and close the windows. The elegance is that of a stowed away romance, the scene of a Downton Abbey ending. How could one not feel scholarly? I am either that or whisked away by my own fantasy.

Out of those doors beacons the downhill glide to home, just a little to the left of the gold of the church. Above it hangs the moon in a crooked smile, in it the bells catch light and glisten like mysterious hearts. Around it the lights of homes up the hills spark enviously. I can touch the light—in a way it is mine. It is part of the dream that never goes to sleep. The last scene before my eyelids drop as curtains and await the next act.  

Welcome...Home?

Our Bed & Breakfast

 “You have to get lost before you can be found.”― Jeff Rasley

We drove and drove and I impatiently awaited the first sign of my new life in the distance. I expected the first sight to be like eye contact across the room—shy but sure. And I expected to feel like I was jumping. But when I first did see the city, traffic threw that jump into suspenseful slow motion. I stared at my snow globe come to life and I knew the real thing was about to shatter that little world.
It is surreal to look at a place for the first time and know that it is already home. I tried to force myself to love every part of it.  But the skyscrapers seemed not a collection of guardians like mountains, but like huge staring strangers that sensed me in their midst. Wherever my family ate, wherever we stopped, I wondered if I would return. I nervously regarded every street and assured myself that with time, the city would open up. Or I would open up to it.

So after a day of fighting for parking on Fisherman’s Wharf, racing flocking tourists for a sunset view from Coit Tower, and photographing myself with the city (with the stranger across the room I’d thought I wanted to talk to), we ended up at our bed and breakfast. Escaped from the coils of the city, I encountered the strangeness of Painted Ladies. They are the clothing of an eccentric city, the perfect setting to a colorful Wes Anderson movie. I could not help wondering what personalities filled those bright, bold, ornate walls. My first San Francisco specimen was the owner of the B&B. A man who has devoted his later years to the intricate mini reproduction of historical furniture. Lining the walls were doll size cupboards, ovens, closets, typewriters. 

Part of the view from my window

Desperate to enter a bigger world quite literally, I couldn’t wait to return to my university. To reaffirm the reason I was there, to claim my reserved place, to begin what a summer of fantasizing had yielded. I rushed my family to the campus, beat all the lines, and was the second on my floor to move in. It left me time to look around. To feel the school. Every corner of it oozes a kind of gold pulse, and it’s more than just the paint job. It is in a perpetual state of hugging, open arms. And it seems willing to share its beauty, which increases in my esteem every time I see it. 

From Salt Lake to the sharp waters and wits of my second city. From miniature furniture to my university. I am undeniably intimidated by the world I have sought out to be mine. I am lost before being found. But I’m going to dance with this stranger, walk the streets until they are mine, and look at my snow globe in a new way.