Friday, March 06, 2009
I Left My Heart
I’m missing San Francisco. Unlike a normal person I did not miss it so much as the snow fell and I was cut to the bone by icy winds. No, I miss it now as we are teased and tickled by Mother Nature into believing that maybe this time the blush of spring is really just around the corner. I missed the snow when winter came and I was in the land of sunshine, although really at that point it mostly rained. There is something ingrained in me I suppose that the world must sleep so that it may then reawaken. As longer days and occasional mild breezes tease my mind free of the tangle of daily drama so that it may be lofted on zephyrs of daydream I think of warm days and sun-filled streets bustling with people free of their layers of wool and thinsulate not focused on the slippery concrete and brick beneath their feet but on the trees and gardens and flowerboxes all around them bursting with color and life. And that… leads me to San Francisco.
My first city is beautiful in her Easter finery. Boston wears spring like a joyous young lady of another age in an exuberant hat, ribbons down her back, a frilled parasol in her one hand as the other holds up the skirts of her new dress so that she may dash with shockingly childish glee in the direction of the ice cream vendor as her chaperone is left to heave her grey severity off of a park bench grumbling in the proverbial dust. San Francisco I have never seen in spring. I have seen her sunning herself oiled and glittering in a long hot summer that extends its reach far into autumn. She is distracted, seemingly lost in her own dreams as she sips a margarita beneath the broad brim of her thrift shop hat the dark lenses of her cat’s-eye sunglasses masking a gaze that may focus on the throng, the Maupin novel, the bougainvillea or nothing at all. Somewhere a window opens and the air is infused with a sensuous beat. In one fluid motion she rises, doffs her hat, plucks a cold beer from somewhere, perhaps nowhere, and taking a long slow draught begins to dance, a glorious confusion of sensuous undulation and peals of innocent laughter at once alone, before an audience, at one with a crowd, part of a tribe. How can one not miss that?
My first city is beautiful in her Easter finery. Boston wears spring like a joyous young lady of another age in an exuberant hat, ribbons down her back, a frilled parasol in her one hand as the other holds up the skirts of her new dress so that she may dash with shockingly childish glee in the direction of the ice cream vendor as her chaperone is left to heave her grey severity off of a park bench grumbling in the proverbial dust. San Francisco I have never seen in spring. I have seen her sunning herself oiled and glittering in a long hot summer that extends its reach far into autumn. She is distracted, seemingly lost in her own dreams as she sips a margarita beneath the broad brim of her thrift shop hat the dark lenses of her cat’s-eye sunglasses masking a gaze that may focus on the throng, the Maupin novel, the bougainvillea or nothing at all. Somewhere a window opens and the air is infused with a sensuous beat. In one fluid motion she rises, doffs her hat, plucks a cold beer from somewhere, perhaps nowhere, and taking a long slow draught begins to dance, a glorious confusion of sensuous undulation and peals of innocent laughter at once alone, before an audience, at one with a crowd, part of a tribe. How can one not miss that?
