Letter #1
We need to talk.
"Once I knew the city very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills, slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts .... It had been kind to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency." – John Steinbeck
Dear San Francisco,
We need to talk.
We’ve known each other a while, right? And …. My relationship with you has been different than Steinbeck’s, but no less important to me: I’ve felt that I belonged to you, and you to me. That’s why I began writing about you a few years ago, from my apartment on Pine Street. It was a cranky, disjointed series of complaints amounting to a break-up letter to you, San Francisco, the city I had loved. Maybe still loved.
Why? You know why. Over the past 20+ years, the generational changes you were undergoing – some good, some bad, I know – triggered anxiety for me that slowly mounted until it became a wave of distress. Too much of what drew me to you and kept me with you was evaporating … or being absorbed into a different San Francisco, a new you under construction within your 47 square miles. My city. The city I loved. Maybe still love.
I didn’t know what to do, so I started to write about it. (Sorry you had to squint to make out those scrawls; you know my handwriting always gets worse when I’m worked up, writing too quickly.) I hoped what I was writing might matter to you. That you might, I don’t know, remember yourself. Or at least care that I remembered you …. Anyway, scratches on yellow pads began to take shape. I started typing. And revising. Before long, I had the bones of a novel, or at least the guts. I kept working on it. Now I hope to publish it. The working title? A Bridge for the City.
OK, look, I know my angst over your metamorphosis is overkill. I’m not great with change. Immaturity as middle age approaches is nothing to brag about, and I’m trying to work on that, but …. I was so much younger when I first moved in with you in the mid-90’s. I know, I know, you were younger too. To borrow from one of my novel’s characters, we met when you were an iteration of San Francisco celebrating its past self, not yet charting a future, and neglecting the present. The Beat Generation, the Summer of Love – there was already a Gap at the corner of Haight and Ashbury when we sublet our first apartment together, the summer Jerry Garcia died! – Tales of the City, even Burning Man if that counts, and the rest? Gone. Or going. No matter how much I loved dancing with your venerable ghosts, they were leaving the dance floor. If “the city that knows how” was well on its way to becoming “the city that knew how,” it didn’t stop me from falling in love with you as we danced. (Hey, “The City That Knew How” is a pretty good line to slap on a t-shirt to market to other disillusioned denizens of yours.)
Do you think maybe A Bridge for the City and its characters can help write the chapter of your story about the tech and finance sectors – I point the finger at them; often the middle finger – conspiring to push you to become too much like too many other cities? To make your neighborhoods too much like each other? To strip your sparkle?
Not very uplifting stuff, I admit. But you can feel my implicit wish for a worthy reincarnation, can’t you? Because your next chapter is already being written; even I know that. We can’t read it yet. We don’t know what sort of new Phoenix we’ll meet. But one is rising, as one always has.
Anyway …. I know I’m the one who moved out, but do you realize how much it hurts to need to cross a bridge (or two) to come spend the day with you? Me, a “Bridge and Tunnel person!” I don’t know if this exile – like most, mine is self-imposed – will be permanent. Maybe we can talk about that.
In the days ahead, though, I’ll be haunting a few of our old haunts. Who knows, maybe new ones too. You can find me if you look. I’ll be looking for you.
Until next time ….