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. 

So Long, Farewell

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Change used to come to me in small droplets. Fragile and long-awaited, like rain. I’ve been in sun showers and rain storms and felt them soaking in one by one. But this change is different. I am engulfed, submerged in change’s world when before change ventured into mine. I cannot reach my hand out and receive the change I want. I reach out and see that I am pulled by the current that’s been waiting to take hold.



My summer was swift and beautiful and bold. The first swipe on my new canvas. I think of it and yearn for that simplicity that seems so complicated, so unattainable now. But it was so perfect because its end was always destined to be this—the receding of my friends, my family, my city and my mountains. A heightened sense of droplets rumbling at my feet. A notion that my life is no longer still-standing water, but a roar of waves.

My family all piled in a car to drive me to my university. It was like a death processional and victory tour all at once. The road was what it always has been--relentless, graceful, Lion King and Sound of Music magnificent. Mountains and other sights to behold, unfolded before me like pages of a pop up book.

The best, perhaps, was the existential expanse of the great Salt Lake. In places it was strewn with trash, in others devoid even of footprints. Occasionally carefully placed stones created messages in the hardened sand. We stopped where the salt was frozen, arching upwards in small ripples. My brother and I raced across the surface of the abandoned paradise, two specks moving closer and closer to the mountains ghostly in the distance. Rain water trickled across the surface, over our scratched feet.

Even when stopped at the side of the road, nature in soft acts of motion pushed me on.

Swing Dancing

With only two days left in Colorado, I called up my friends for one last hurrah before all of our lives change in some way. We jumped in my car, what we affectionately call the mystery machine, and headed to downtown Denver. The destination is truly one of the gems of Denver, one cleverly disguised as an old, chipping building with an intimidating eccentric air. This place, the Mercury Café, holds swing dancing lessons every Sunday.

As a hopeless romantic, swing dancing has always entranced me. But up until Sunday, it had always seemed a (sadly) antiquated wooing, a vibrant stream of motions doomed to dance farther and farther back into the past. Physical movement correlated with intrigue, happiness, laughter, connection. Something replaced by the angsty and constant anger of the modern generation. So I expected to find a group of oldies obsessed with bringing back what most of the youth will never understand.

Instead what I found was a surge of hope for the idealistic youth. Young couples looking for a way to be close, shy teenage guys looking for a way into the world, the regulars poised to sweep a girl off her feet (literally). Spiced with the adults who truly do preserve the beauty of the dance and instructors that hop with excitement, my feet started to tap the minute I walked in. From the ceiling hung a spidery chandelier of Christmas lights, and on every table sat a red rose.

Half of the room  was comprised of couples, the other half of singles rotating. In the middle the instructors demonstrated their poised moves as the outer circle tried with sweaty hands to mimic the dance in some way. When pairs began to move to the floor, the open dance period had begun, the live band moved into its position and the girls lined themselves on both sides of the room waiting for the hand to reach out. And it was an unbelievably romantic tucked away paradise in a hot attic of Denver.

I danced with younger guys, I danced with older guys, I danced the Charleston with my friends. I danced to what I can only think of as the swing dance version of the Cuban shuffle. I was dipped three times, spun until I was dizzy countless times, was even switched off mid dance between two competing expert dancers. By the end of the night I was sweaty, tired, and elated that such a place exists. Can any other form of movement feel as light, as cultured, as fun, and as purposeful as even the simplest of swings? It was my Midnight in Paris, my transport to another time that I am thankful exists in some form today.

My friends and I exited the café into the light of the biggest full moon of the year. We walked the city streets to a cake café and recounted the miracle of dancing. 

Happily Ever After

Me standing with my brother at the wedding site

Never have I been caught up in such a large, elaborate, destined for disaster wedding. And never have I seen anything allotted as such turn out to be in its own over the top, elegant, affectionate way successful.  Ingredients for chaos included (but were not limited to): the convergence of two east coast families, 12 bridesmaids, 6 groomsmen, 4 flower girls, 250 guests, open bars, hiking in high heels, 2 days in the mountains and one ski lift carrying all of us up to the fairy tale scene. Sound like a cheesy Rom-Com yet?

I was along for the ride the whole time, feeling like an insider reporter. Watching to see how crazy my family could get and how happy they could get. I’d been to a bachelorette party, menhdi women empowerment night, a massage, a facial, a bridal party, an engagement party…and found myself dropped off at the beginning of the weekend at my aunt’s house for another episode. I love this side of my family unquestioningly, but never cease to be amazed when they run late. No, they redefine late. The bride (my cousin) and the rest of the family (including myself in a car with my other cousin and another bridesmaid) were an hour late to the rehearsal. I suppose grand entrances are more noticeable when they are late. More suspense maybe?
So we burst into the town of Copper Mountain where our story takes place. We scurried up with irritable, hungry bridesmaids (who were on time) to the part of the mountain where the wedding would take place.  More ingredients: a sick ring bearer, a wedding planner insisting the number of bridesmaids requires us to stand in the dirt, a cowboy with a pipe who hasn’t memorized part of what’s needed to marry the couple. When moving in to our condo, we found boxes of party favor counter parts, unassembled. I love what my aunt had to say. When more would come up, she’d insist on having a sense of humor. “Happy times,” another of my aunts said. It was hard to imagine 250 sticky muffins and fraying ribbon as happy times.

But they were, of course. The next morning as bridesmaids clustered to get their hair and make up done, I finished the favors. But I had my Cinderella moment when a makeup appointment was open and I was freed from chores to prepare for the ball. We surrounded my cousin Jenee to fix her make up crisis, we sighed at her beautiful hair, we raced her to the lift before the approaching groom and groomsmen would see. The day was supposed to be cloudy, but miraculously it was clear. The cowboy remembered the lines and make a joke. None of us bridesmaids tripped, and we spitefully stayed on the concrete. My brother and step brother looked like body guards more than ushers, standing with crossed arms and dark sunglasses on each side of the seats. One of the flower girls, a one year old, stopped in the middle of the aisle, suddenly perplexed at the situation. But she, just like the entirety of the wedding, just needed a nudge and a little time to regain her eager step.

Then began the trials of the bridal party. We walked down a hill, our heels sinking into the ground, for forest pictures. We then were left in a room for the first hour of the reception, choreographing a dramatic entrance to the song “Fancy.” However more were eager to practice our second task—a nerf gun war with the groomsmen. The bridesmaids stowed away ammunition in our surprisingly accommodating dresses (except when one fell out during the reception, before other guests knew of our plans). Someone asked an employee while we were waiting in the room “What would we have to do to get us some vodka in here?” A characteristic line of the two days there.

And the reception. Guests danced with the same fervor of a high school social, with an infused belief in true love. My dad accompanied my cousin as she sang Moon River for Jenee and her dad, as warm light and warm-hearted people flowed in and out from the mountain balcony. The champagne and words shared were sweet, a photo booth confirmed our cheesy happiness, and there was no end in sight. I even suckered my brother into a slow dance, which began what would become a long night of dance offs for him. Afraid for my feet and face with his crazy flying elbows and sliding shoes, I passed him off to the middle of the dance floor-- his rightful place.  The best moments were surrounding the bride and groom as they danced and kissed in the middle of us all, immune to the odd perfection around them, thinking only of their perfection in the middle of it all.

A wedding is an interesting cultural phenomenon. Especially big weddings. Yes, plenty rolled their eyes at the detail after detail, person after person added to the list. But people were plucked from every which direction, from their dream lives or average lives, and placed in a setting to experience the same happiness. To mix together lives. Whether everyone was the happy drunk of a weekend off from work or teary eyed from the vows and bright mountain sun, it was a jigsaw completeness. So we got a Rom-Com. My cousin got her fairy tale ending. Everyone else had each other, with the glimmer of stars and champagne and disco lights and togetherness in their eyes.