Six Years:
Six years ago today, on a brisk, bright day in Austin, TX, I bordered a plane bound for California. The next day, my youngest brother Daniel arrived and met me at the corner of Taylor and Lombard Streets in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. My possessions arrived later that afternoon. We waited for then at the café across the street, eating paninis and drumming our fingers. That evening, we took a break from lifting boxes to take a bike ride down to Crissy Field, where we stopped and ran, fully clothed, in the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay. “Kevin, you live here now,” my brother said.
Six years. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere since leaving home at 18. In that time over half of my initial friends have moved away. I’ve changed jobs 4 times and apartments once. I’ve lost favorite places and gained a cat. I’ve had frustration, pain, loneliness, and terrible loss. One day the earth will rumble something terrible here and make me wonder the deepest kind of why. Why am I still here?
And yet I will stay.
I will stay because I have collapsed to my knees and thanked God for the overwhelming natural beauty of this place. I will stay because few places I have been value literature, art, culture and human creative achievement the way this place does. I will stay because I believe there are few cities in the world where the citizens are constantly working towards utopia, knowing it is impossible and yet trying anyway. I will stay because despite the soaring prices, the cramped quarters, the self-importance and the foolish rejection of the future, San Francisco feels like where I belong. It feels like home.
I’m not going to say I’ll be here forever because, if the last few months have shown me anything, I know now that the only constant is change. One day I may awaken and find that my long term relationship with San Francisco has done all it can and that we’ve grown apart. Then I will go.
For now though, I look at the past six years as the best of my life. The people who’ve contributed to that know who they are. The city, well, I hope she knows. I hope she knows, that despite how on somedays I want to rage and kick and scream at her narrow, pigheaded ways, that on most others, when I turn off the lights, feed Faygo and climb into bed, I thank her for bringing me here, for taking care of me and helping me to grow.
So happy anniversary San Francisco, from a blessed adopted son. Us Jews don’t believe in heaven but I sure like what one of this city’s wisest men had to say about it.
“If I go to heaven, I’ll probably do what every San Franciscan does. I’ll look around and say, “‘It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco..”