I am sitting on my sofa in the early morning light of the height of San Francisco’s summer weather. We are staring down the barrel of the hottest days of the year. There will be no government shut down, so Fleet Week is in full gear. At least out here we are not being buzzed by fighter jets that rattle the windows and send me shaking and shivering. My moral self does not appreciate shows of military might in this most left-leaning of cities. War mongering should not be a spectacle to be taken with bread bowls of clam chowder and candy floss. Dogs chew through walls and doors, and people of a more sensitive disposition (or with PTSD like me) end up making like the dogs and wishing someone threw us a damn tramadol or three. Downtown it felt as if they were going to fly right in through the window, whether by sheer accident or daring. Whichever, whatever, it made for an utterly miserable week, and this year I am dreading it more than ever.
Living downtown was a constant siege during War Week. Out here in the ‘Burbs, whilst still San Francisco, is a rather more genteel incarnation of the City. So far it is much quieter than it was during Fleet Week downtown, where they were flying close and terrifyingly all week long.
Up here it is all Farmer’s Markets and holiday street parties, and sweet free music festivals. I live up high now, well at least higher than I was. I can see rooftops from my favorite seat here in the bright front room of this smart bigger apartment in the good part of town. The rooftops are mission-style red tile, adorned with chimneys and crests. From the houses opposite, who sit with windows not covered by blinds or curtains, I am confronted by neighbors living like no one can see them. They watch vast TVs, so big I could watch the show from my sofa, let alone theirs. They eat their meals and fight with their spouses. They live with no veil. They have nothing to hide. They believe in the modern catechisms of the Democratic Party, but are not political to an extent that makes them suspect or dangerous. They never yelled ‘Sabotage’ in the street, or felt true revulsion at the cops, let alone fear of them. They are the fashionably, safely, socially acceptable face of San Francisco. They pay their way, they live their rather smart lives, and they do not like people like me. I am the wolf in their den.
Once you leave ‘polite society’, I am of the opinion that there is no way back, no way home, for the exile. You might get to walk through the farmer’s markets, buying two dollar holy basil and beautiful bunches of thyme, but you will not get the time of day from these people. Once you are out, you are out. It is a bit like baseball, once you strike out, it is to the bench for you, but unlike baseball you rarely get another chance to go up to bat and try again. To be frank, I couldn’t get a bunch of fancy coriander, or a boutique mason jar of artisan small batch honey. I don’t fit in, and moreover I never wanted to anyway. It is a good job, really, because wandering around with no hair and a bad attitude, and a desire to be left alone does not scream desiring to fit in and get along with people. Don’t get me wrong, I want no trouble. I just want to be left to be. I want peace and quiet and no drama and silence and calmness. The price I have to pay is loneliness, but I can’t handle anything else. Not after this year of illness and sadness and constant disruptions.
Sometimes the clouds over the pretty red roofs opposite my new window are framed with clouds. Sometimes a sunset, pink and orange burns softly in the sky. Right now it is pure blue, that blue that I never saw in Tokyo, whose skies tend towards grey. It is not the deeper blue of other hotter countries I have seen summers in. It is not the eternal grey of Europe, that has the patina of age. It is not something that I have ever seen anywhere but California: it is Tiffany blue, an almost duck egg shade, a paler shade of perfection and it sits outside my window, glowing preternaturally against a backdrop of white plaster and red tile and grey chimneys and un-curtained windows. The window blinds stripe my arms with light. I almost feel as if it is a blessing from the Pop Art spirits, some kinda natural light show. I am not going outside today. I will hide from the heat and drink fizzy water and hope that no one wants to talk to me today that I can’t handle talking to. I wonder if explaining, begging, the world to leave me alone might work? I wonder if anyone can possibly understand or care. I wonder if I will ever get respite from the rain, shelter from the maelstrom. I suspect not, but if I don’t rest, I fear there will be nothing left of me to find out anyhow.
The street is silent. There is no boom of music. Downtown there always seemed to be the possibility of a scene from that old show Fame, that I used to love so much as a child, breaking out in the street. Perhaps someone would let off a fire hydrant in an expression of joy and dance and sing and downright boogie to the joy of being alive. Here, no such thing would ever happen. It is too stiff and stuffy. No here, people eat their purple basil and their tofu and sit hypnotized by vast televisions that beam light and pictures across the street into apartments in an exchange of visions of some kind of suburban ecstasy. I do not reciprocate. I do not beam it back. There is to be no exchange. I draw my blinds down and shut the shades and my television sits on the floor, all 32 inches of it, and sometimes gets turned on to watch something sedate or scary, but mostly plays music on my youtube juke box, while I sit with book in hand and wonder how the world has all gone so far to shit that it does not appear there is a way out that doesn’t stink.
There are no junkies on the streets, no needles in the gutter, but there is no life either. I am safe to walk outside at night. It feels as if I have moved to another city all together. This is not another district, it is another world entirely.
There has been no more graffiti on the door, and no one has decided to knock and scream at me for no reason that I deserved. I am starting to uncoil. Will the shaved head be enough to warn the world to stay away, to tell them clearly enough that I have no desire to interact, to exchange anything? I can’t help it sometimes. A person who is suffering will come up to me, drawn to me, as always, and I will offer them a kind ear, some succor, and end up giving too much of myself, too much to the point where I am left drained and depleted. I have to learn to shut myself off, before I go under. I have never felt this tired or depleted in my entire existence. Everything hurts, everything.
Nothing is happening outside. Nothing. No dogs bark. No people scream and shout. No one is passing out in the gutter. It is not that it is not happening, it is just that it is not happening HERE. Somehow this absence is scarier than the overt violence. I start suspecting buses of being agents of death and have trouble crossing the road out of sheer fear. I make sure my windows are locked, in case spider man decides to break in. I try to gather up all my mental faculties and look for danger. It is out there somewhere, ready to strike me down and ruin my fragile peace. It is simply not possible that I am safe. I will never be safe again.
A bird flew across the skyline. It looked like a crow. I saw hummingbirds in a tree on my street, buzzing around happily. Nothing is shifting. This is a vacation from reality. Perhaps one that will give me enough time to report back from the front lines, now I am not wrapped up in surviving all it threw at me. Maybe now there will be some space. I doubt it. There is always something ready to snap at my ankles and threaten my existence.
I wonder if the Fleet Week fighter jets will buzz the rooftops over here, close enough to see the whites of the eyes of the pilots. I read that these acrobats of the skies have a 1 in 10 death rate, which seems a little high to risk flying between high rises in San Francisco, but what do I know….I am just yer average peacenik who just wants to see what it is like to live a bit of peaceful life.