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9.5.20

I've been preparing to close the San Francisco chapter of my life for awhile, but now that the plans are shaping up and getting real I've began seeing the city through a different lens. Or maybe the same lens with a shifted perspective.

I tend to conflate physical references with my journey along this four-dimensional timeline. Case in point I would always annoy my ex by pointing out the same place of relative significance everytime we passed it. "Hey, we used to live there." "Hey, that's where we had our first date."

I've been heading outdoors a little more frequently as of late as I make preparations for my eventual exit. The other day, with a bit of extra time in the day to stretch my legs, I decided to detour around the waterfront, where I inevitably found myself along a well-tread path, passing the place where I first got my foot in the door in this town, a chain restaurant (now a gym). And that led me a few blocks away to the bench where I would lay down before my shift and look up at the buildings, imagining I was just on the edge of falling into the abyss of the endless sky. And that spot would become a location I would end up taking future dates to share the memory, until these various points in my past became recursive spirals of overlapping experiences.

All of which is to say that this town, which has become something of a phsyical memory palace for me over the last dozen years, has become extremely cluttered- I need only pick almost any street to take a walk, and it won't be long before I'm tripping over a metaphysical pile of laundry.

I'm not sure when, or if I'll be back here. If I'll wander these streets again, falling into old thought patterns like the well worn grooves of a vinyl record.

I didn't quite say goodbye, but I did aknowledge these old haunts with a sad, knowing smile. A new chapter beckons, and it will be nice to move forward and make some new messes somewhere else to ponder on.

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