Home Cooked Care

I cannot for the life of me imagine why I am so tired.

I jest.

I was up, after two and a half hours of sleep, at 5a.m. to wrest myself and my belongings onto the J line train headed out of Brooklyn to Queens to connect with the AirTrain to JFK.

It seems a little surreal, that.

I was just in New York and now I am here.

I was just at Burning Man.

I have been to both sides of the country and back and wonder why I might feel a tiny bit deflated, a tad flat, a touch morose, a teeny bit sad.

I also feel happy and grateful and glad to be home.

Home is where San Francisco is.

Home is here, in my little bungalow by the beach.

It was so good to feel the cool breeze off the ocean when I deplaned today at SFO.

It hit me as soon as I step over the threshold of the plane and onto the tamarack, cool, clean, slightly salty, crisp.

A perfect San Francisco day, no fog, scatter of high wispy clouds, mid 60s, slight breeze.

When the wind was not blowing the sun felt warm, but not hot, and then the cool breeze would slough over me and refresh my weary self.

I got into SFO at 11:10 a.m. this morning.

I got on BART, then onto MUNI and it was about 1:30 p.m. when I got home to my little studio by the sea.  If you count the hours as they stood East Coast time, it took approximately 11 hours door to door to get home.

Of course I am tired.

I did nap a bit on the plane, which helped and though I don’t feel terrible, I do feel quite low-key.

Perhaps it is my body still digesting all the meat from last night.

God.

That was just yesterday.

I was walking through Central Park, sitting at Tavern on the Green, eating steak at Peter Luger’s (and bacon and lamb, and I do not apologize for it), it was just yesterday that I was at a Chelsea gallery looking at the Nick Cave exhibit, walking the Highline, having iced coffee in the hot and humid of New York.

And here I am back home.

Home, though, where the heart truly is.

I did have a wonderful dreamy time in New York, but as someone close to me recently said, “great to visit, don’t want to live there,” it is not the city for me.

San Francisco, my foggy seaside treat, you are.

I was reflecting that it’s been twelve years since I moved out here from Wisconsin.

Twelve years.

Give or take a little sabbatical in Paris.

Twelve years of rainy seasons, fog, recycling, composting, eating organic, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, no more drugs, no more car, riding my bicycle everywhere, slowing down (who am I kidding, I am still learning to slow down), meditating, trying surfing, trying yoga (neither stuck, but I do have a great wet suit to show for the surfing), giving up sugar and flour in my diet, going to Burning Man a lot (8 times in a row), concerts at Stern Grove, dancing at the EndUp and the Mezzanine, DNA Lounge and Mighty and Club 222 and The Elbow Room and The Make Out Room, riding across the Golden Gate Bridge on my bicycle, going up Twin Peaks (on foot once, on bicycle once, many times in a car, once on the back of a motorcycle, and once on my scooter), taking the cable car, the BART, the F-Market Line, living in Nob Hill (Taylor at Washington), living in Potrero Hill (Kansas and 26th), living in the Bayview (Palou at 3rd), living at the foot of Bernal Hill (Kingston and 30th) living in all sorts of places in the Mission (20th and York, 22nd and Alabama, 23d and Capp, 23rd and Folsom) and now in the Outer Sunset–46th and Judah.

Twelve years of Halloween’s, Gay Pride, Folsom Street Fairs, Castro Street Fairs, Day of the Dead, Carnival, Fourth of July fireworks, Giants play off seasons and league wins, Sunday Streets, and farmers markets, the Ferry Building, riding the ferry to Tiburon and Sausalito, walking the Embarcadero, feeding the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, playing frisbee in South Park, lying around Dolores Park, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on Easter, and Hunky Jesus, SantaCon, pillow fights on Valentines Day, the How Weird Festival, Decompression parties in the DogPatch.

Twelve years of work, waiting tables at Hawthorne Lane and Absinthe (almost at Slanted Door–tried out, got hired, then they had a hiring freeze), working at San Francisco Vet Hospital, volunteering at the SPCA to do kitten socializing with feral kittens, personal assistant to a pornography director (documentary and educational films), make up artist assistant, household assistant, nanny, babysitter, customer service representative for a Bayview Wholesale vegetable and fruit vendor, house sitting, dog sitting, cat sitting, plant watering, fish sitting, front of house whiz kid at Mission Bicycle Company, and a whole bunch of odd jobs from being a hair model to dog walking and plenty of other things I am sure to be forgetting.

Twelve years of dating but not really dating, craigslist dates, Missed connections, M for Female (mostly when I first got in San Francisco before it got super creeps and weird), accidentally ending up in the first Fucking Machines studio before they relocated to the Armory and Kink Dotcom (they shared space with a Burning Man artist’s studio in the SOMA), blind dates, hook ups at, of course, The Make Out Room, the R Bar, Zietgeist, sitting outside and smoking cigarettes and drinking bloody mary’s and pitchers (pre-sobriety), dating the door man at the Crow Bar when it was still open, blind dates with guys from Silicon Valley that drove up to the city, too many OKCupid profiles, one 9 month relationship with a steam train locomotive engineer (I kid you not, RedWood Steam Trains up in the Berkley Hills, he’s probably still running the miniature trains up in the hills today) kissing outside of Muddy Waters on 24th and Valencia, strolling down 24th to Philz, too many blind dates at Philz (maybe I should stop first dates at coffee shops, I get too caffeinated), sushi at WeBe Sushi, sushi at Blowfish Sushi, a surprise date to Flour and Water when I thought we were, yes again, meeting for coffee, dates at Mavericks, Mission Bowling, Chez Spenser before it burned down, that one time I dated the tea buyer at Rainbow not knowing he bought tea for the whole store and I invited him up for a cup of stale chamomile I filched from a room mates tea box, weird underground Trance parties in the Bayview for Kontrol, making out underneath Coit Tower.

Twelve years.

San Francisco I hope I get at least twelve more.

And twelve more after that.

And well, you get the idea.

Happy Anniversary love of mine.

So very glad to be home.

Home where my heart resides easiest and best.

When I am not wearing it on my sleeve.

Tags: bicycling, Blowfish Sushi, burning man, Coit Tower, Craigslist, dancing, dating, DNA Lounge, home, home is where the heart is, Kontrol Parties, memory, Mighty, Muddy Waters, Ocean Beach, Philz, postaday, R Bar, San Francisco, SOMA, The Bayview, The Crow Bar, The EndUp, The Mezzanine, The Mission, The Outer Sunset, We Be Sushi, wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, work, Zietgeist