Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
“All things change, and we change with them.”Please note that this blog spans a broad period of time. The intervening years have brought many things into my life, including divorce and remarriage. As such, some older posts reference a relationship which is no longer active. In context, however, the portrayal is accurate.
For many reasons, I have chosen to let entries such as this one remain in the overall continuity of the site.
Woke early this morning, no time to make tea before getting on the road to head down south to the airport in San Francisco.
My father drives the way he talks — with purpose and direction, but with a drifting lane-to-lane quality that appears reckless to everyone but him . . . you start to wonder if you’re going to get out alive.
We talk books and writing and (eventually) everything that’s wrong with my life . . . breaking only to reflect nostalgically as we pass by The Nut Tree.
Coming into the city from over the Bay Bridge, my father tells me that the Lucas designers based some the “Star Wars” designs on the large shipping gantries that are clustered around the mouth of the bay. As we drive onto the bridge I have to admit that they do indeed look like AT-AT’s.
San Francisco is the only real city that I actually enjoy being in. I love the way the city looks . . . the crowded, storybook quality to all of the multicolored houses piled on the hills, the jumble of new and old, the multiplicity of race and culture . . . the people on the streets, everyone of them a god in training.
We pick up Sandberg at the airport and head back towards towards the Golden Gate Bridge. She unloads the little presents she picked up for the kids while at her conference in NYC — finger puppets and books and a Pee Wee Herman bobblehead. My dad asks if she went shopping at an adult sex toy store, to which I reply “It’s New York City, Dad. The whole city is one big adult sex toy store.”
Driving up Van Ness Avenue, I say to myself “I bet we’ll cross Geary.” Ten seconds later we do and I am pleased that I have the presence of mind to snap a picture of the street sign from the backseat, complete with the world’s famous Tommy’s restaurant on the corner. For three blocks I reflect on synchronicity (or maybe just serendipity) while my father taunts Sandberg by turning on the radio to listen to the last five minutes of Rush Limbaugh.
My fondness for San Francisco notwithstanding, the only thing I hate worse than California is the Beach Boys. Once Rush is done ranting, my father starts up “California Girls” on the CD player and I pray (perhaps not for the last time this week) for a speedy and somewhat merciful death.
Three o’clock in the afternoon we pass over the bridge, the towers looming overhead, shrouded in fog…