Learn From It

There is one room in all of San Francisco that is my own cathedral. It's a room with rounded bay windows and a western exposure. I am there once a month, typically. There are no priests, nor even priestesses because this room is no god box.

The place is a sanctuary, but not a refuge. No praying occurs and no penance is ever paid, but understanding comes, always comes. Sometimes it takes some time. Other times the onset of instant recognition hits you in the tummy as you plunge from a precarious height down the rail to a more amenable level. Near to the ground, to fortitude, to firmament.

Away from Sam, away from parents and brothers and sisters. Away from friends and other loved ones. Away from the flickering tableau of that city of lights that is the sum total of the people in my life. Sometimes the light hurts your eyes. Sometimes the paparazzi lay in wait. Sometimes it's simply that it's the Dark that you want or need to see, or the dim twinkle of a Big Sky, and the homespun magical lights interfere.

Sometimes, solitude. Sometimes, aloneness.

But a guide is different than a priest or a judge or a diagnostician of any stripe, and a guide is always welcome, even in the solitude: he doesn't interfere, but merely enables.

And after the Cathedral, and after the tears and the bottomless weeping and the restorative hand on the shoulder, the world is too small. The house is too small and too many things happen in 900+ square feet of Home.

To sit atop my City, just for a while. To look at there and there and there. There's the house; 50¢ gets you a closer look. There's the POX's house, just a nudge of binocs and you're there, one street down and two blocks over. San Francisco General. The Transamerica Pyramid. The Castro. The International Orange of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Panhandle. Angel Island. The Bay Bridge. Emeryville.

Down just below, the pink cube of a building where Bob Matgen used to live. He's dead now, these five or six years now. Back to Bernal Hill. To the Bay. To Candlestick Park. All the way down the Bay as it fades into a brown-yellow smudge of haze across the horizon.

Back to the Vespa, sky blue with my red helmet strapped to it. Back to self. Back down the hill. Back home.

Home. Feeling placid now, with my thoughts spread out over area measured in square miles instead of square feet.

Sam. Mom. Dad. Spruced up house. Clean.

Sprucing up Home will take a little longer—a lot longer.

Hope is there, but Hope is just the quiver of opportunities that Tomorrow arrives with.

Tonight is for smiles and conviviality. Tonight is for me.

Hope can wait; Now is Here.