The last forty eight hours of disorientation – separated from my belongings, here in San Francisco with all its familiar pangs and beauty, far from the comfort of my gf, my zoo, the LaLa; I sat outside catching up with a friend and there was all the “almost” European feel to us. We looked like a couple in Rome, only a Rome recreated by Disney. <\/p>\n
The pulchritude is alive and well in San Francisco, but even this city of abundance can’t avoid the downturn in the economy as the outside restaurant on the Embarcadero “typically overflowing” had many tables open and the waitstaff seemed more obsequious than normal. <\/p>\n
Where are we now? Are we happy? began our conversation and it wasn’t me asking the pointed questions, which is unusual and maybe a sign of the times. I’ve been through many sign of the times here in San Francisco, a hub of up and down – from the downturn of the early 90s, to the insane spike of the dot.com explosion in the late nineties, to a somber post 9\/11 world, all the way to a forced recovery in the early 2000’s. Where are we now? indeed was a perfect question for my return in 2009 amidst one of the sharpest declines in the economy I have witnessed. The only familiarity between this and others was in the early 80s in New Orleans when the energy crisis left behind a wake of foreclosures and oilfield trash. <\/p>\n
Are we having fun? Or are we living on the excitement of past fun?<\/p>\n
The questions are then about what next – we are of a certain age – approaching some big birthday. What next indeed? One has a house to be used as collateral – bought and fixed up with the intent of using it as a ticket out. The other has a house that is worth less than what is invested in it – bought and fixed up as a monument to coming home to roost. There are desires – simplify one of us says – complicate the other one declares – each of us going a separate but parallel path – the unknown – one of us wants to go with baggage, the other without. <\/p>\n
The night before having spoken one more time with the call center in India trying to find my lost baggage and having spoken with Vee, Gee then Dee, I felt like my head was going to explode. I lay in bed and bought a movie – Marley & Me – somewhere between Jennifer Anniston screaming at Owen Wilson that Marley had to go because she couldn’t believe how far she had come away from her with two children to care for and a bad dog – I curled up in a ball of anxiety and put a pillow over my head and tossed and turned to comfort myself to sleep.<\/p>\n
Now sitting by the Bay, with the last vestige of sunlight waning and dancing across the small white caps, watching my friend get on a ferry to take him to his path, I felt my future looked so bright, I needed shades.<\/p>\n
Only mine were in my suitcase. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last forty eight hours of disorientation – separated from my belongings, here in San Francisco with all its familiar pangs and beauty, far from the comfort of my gf, my zoo, the LaLa; I sat outside catching up with a friend and there was all the “almost” European feel to us. We looked like a couple in Rome, only a Rome recreated by Disney. The pulchritude is alive and well in San Francisco, but… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-Zw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}