Soul Searching

My mother recently phoned me with news that she had just found an old post card I had once sent her from San Francisco. The postcard itself isn't the important thing here. What was inscribed on the back is what made my brain start churning out old memories of my favorite city.

I can remember going down Lombard street for the first time when I was about 7 years old. My dad stopped briefly at the top of the hill in our old 1979, shit-brown colored, Chevy Blazer. "Everyone buckled in?", he says as he revs the engine a bit just to freak out my mom. He takes off, at what seemed to me, mock speed. Twisting and turning down the curviest street in the world, my box of books, crayons, and tapes flew off the back seat and onto the floor below. I just sat there squealing with delight, clapping my hands, begging my dad to do it again,as if we were on a ride at Great America. My mom attributes my joy at this moment to the reason that I had already been placed on high risk insurance by the age of 19, a fact of which I am still proud of to this day (drive fast, brake hard, take chances). But I think that moment was what did it for me. At that moment I fell in love with the city. All it took for me was one car ride, 15 seconds in time, one block.

I returned a few years later with my family on the way to Yosemite. Golden Gate Park, to a 10 year old, seemed like a vast open wilderness. Sausalito became my new dream house location. To live on a houseboat seemed like the most romantic, fun, adventurous thing you could do and still be an adult. Visiting Alcatraz for the first time made me realize that maybe I shouldn't have taken that piece of Hubba Bubba from the Ben Franklin store recently. Although, the idea that people couldn't survive the swim from the island to the mainland just seemed preposterous to my 10 year old, chlorine laden, swimmers brain.

I returned again and again throughout my teens and twenties, making it an almost yearly trek. I devoured books that had anything to do with Haight Ashbury and the Beat Generation.

I can remember getting chills the first time I walked into City Lights bookstore. It was as if I could feel the presence of Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and Diana DiPrima all sitting around reading poetry, smoking cigarettes, creating masterpieces. I wondered what it was like to share a flat with ten of your closest friends. Holding odd jobs, supporting each other and each others lifestyle. Going to clubs and snapping to the great jazz musicians that were up and coming at the time like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charles Mingus.

I stood on the steps of 710 Ashbury Street and imagined I could hear the guitar strumming and intoxicating voice of Jerry Garcia floating out the second story window. I wandered through Golden Gate park and caught a whiff of Patchouli Oil, taking my brain to the winter of '67 and the Human Be-In. I yearned to be born a couple decades earlier. To have been able to experience the Summer of Love in the city that seemed to define the hippy culture.

Each time I return these feelings rush over me again and again. I walk around the bustling streets in an almost trance like state. I can feel the pulsating beat of the cable cars rush through my body as they glide past me. I digest the delicious garlic creations from The Stinking Rose by smell alone, blocks before I can even see the neon sign. I giggle like a little school girl at the sea lions at the 39th Street Pier as if I am hearing them for the first time.

Although this city pulls at my heart and brain on a constant basis, I have rarely felt any desire to live and work here. I think that somewhere along the line, when you live in a place, you tend to loose your curiosity of it. The joy and wonder that it once evoked takes a backseat to daily obligations, meetings, and finding a parking spot. I will always come back, but most likely will never stay for good. But never say never right?

What did all this have to do with a found post card sent to my family years ago? As I said before, it wasn't the picture on the front that was awe inspiring or thought provoking. It was what I wrote out on the back: "I may not have left my heart in San Francisco, but I do think that here is where I found my soul."