I like wearing sunglasses in the city, because they allow me to stare at people without them thinking I’m creepy, and people are more blatant about staring at me because they can’t tell I’m looking back at them. It can be rather illuminating to hide the windows to my soul.

These days, I don’t live in the city. I live in a pretty little village in East Oakland, a bus and a train away from San Francisco. It’s green and quiet and bucolic, and my house is a multi-level cocaine palace straight out of a Woody Allen movie. My housemates are fun and gracious, and I have a great time living with them. We watch movies on a giant projector screen in the living room, we cook dinner together and share beer, and we have a litany of private jokes and an established rhythm of communication. I have lots of private time, and a sunny little bedroom. It’s a wonderful place to call home, and I’m so fucking lucky that it was available to me when I arrived here.

It’s lovely, but I miss the pulse of city-living. I miss being a little blood cell in the circulatory system of underground trains. I know this is cheesy, but it’s like poetry to me. Cities make me miserable and happy in unique ways, and I miss the extremes.

Seems to me that every city speaks a different dialect of a common language, a dialect shaped by pace, drawl, culture, topography, and spirit. London and Boston are aloof and a little provincial, New York and Chicago are brash and seem to have spawned from the fungus of a giant’s footprint, and San Francisco is … well, fuck. I don’t know yet, and it’s driving me crazy.

I suppose I could say that if New York is Metropolis, and Chicago is Gotham City, then San Francisco might be Whoville. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Since I work and go to school in the city, I’m there five days a week. It’s different from living there, though. One of my first days in California, I went to San Francisco for a job interview, and followed it up with some cheap sushi on Market Street. I sat there with my book, and watched all the fish dishes float by, on their parade of little wooden boats. Curlicues of baby squid, lacquered in candy apple red glaze; slabs of defeated salmon bowed over hand-clumped wads of rice; festive nori-wrapped avocado rolls gazing up from the plate like unblinking eyeballs.

There was something simultaneously innocent and sinister about it, a commonality of movement with several undercurrents of different personalities. I think, maybe, it’s accurate to compare the rainbow sushi parade to life in San Francisco. I’ve been to a few bars, attended some parties and street fairs, and I’m getting a feel of it. It’s veiny and bumpy and bubbling, silly and wide-eyed and filthy. I think I’ll move there before the year’s up, but we’ll see.

I feel really secluded out here. I know that the city can be far lonelier than the country, because it’s full of people who don’t care about you, and you often find yourself among a crowd of strangers so determined not to pay attention to you that they wouldn’t notice if your head exploded, but I miss the mess of it all.

I don’t know how the hell it happened, but this white bread suburban girl from smalltown Massachusetts has become citified. I miss stepping out my front door and being the in the thick of anonymity. I miss how the subway smells like old piss and new school supplies. I miss the challenge of privately differentiating myself from the rest of the pigeon-kickers. I miss the feeling of grappling for sparks of humanity while plummeting down my own private elevator shaft. I’m not romanticizing it. By now, I know the energy too well doubt my instincts.

The other day, I was on a corner in the city, when a bus pulled up. Through the window, I saw a giant man hunkered in his seat, holding his face in his hands, and rocking gently. He appeared to be talking to himself, so I took him for crazy.

When he lifted his face, however, to gaze out the window, I saw that his cheeks were covered in tears. He looked right at me. I was wearing my sunglasses, so he couldn’t tell I was looking back. It wasn’t until his bus pulled away that it occurred to me to blow him a kiss.

I think I'll go now, before I bust into a Petula Clark song. I have homework to do.

I know I sound mopey right now, but honestly, I'm in such an awesome mood.

~ Last Five Entries ~

Black Friday - 11.27.05

Hey! Who's That Drunk Chick on the Blue Couch? - 11.23.05

Ratso Rizzo - 11.11.05

Chunks - 11.06.05

Treasure Hunts, and Why I Have "Psychic Tony" Programmed into My Cell Phone - 10.24.05

---

BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

---

BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

---

««« Chicago Blogs Webring »»»

---

email:

---

words © luvabeans, 2003 - 2004