It’s raining, but pulsating with light, when I wake up. I walk towards the glow of the window, and look out across the patio, and into a courtyard that seems slapdash and tight. The buildings surrounding me are all about the same height, and all I can see rising above the skyline are the cranes of new construction.
As I wake, I realize I’ve never seen San Francisco in the daytime. I’m embarrassed of the fact, given the industry I’m in, and my love of film noir. I need to find a map to get my bearings, as the hills and the flat height of the construction, make it impossible to find any landmark from the apartment.
I haven’t been here before because it doesn’t fit my endless travel trajectories, and as a result my corresponding life. I go East now: Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, Amsterdam, Germany, not West. The next ten years, at least, will be an exercise in moving further and further East. I want that to happen, because I want to be closer to my daughter. However, I like it here. Not just San Fran, but the entire Northwest: Portland, Seattle, Vancouver.
I know what it’s like for a closing door to feel like a gift, but it doesn’t in this instance. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to spend more time in these places, or maybe it’s a more base sadness that the opportunity has been pulled from the table. I don’t know if I could have made a life here, but I have the feeling that I could have been content for years.
Yet that limitation is a small price to pay, and one I give willingly, to have something so meaningful as a life with my daughter.
