She Haights me; she Haights me not.
Yesterday, I was on the search for pants. Ever since my old pair of $10 Gap khaki pants, much treasured and loved through the majority of college, sprouted several gaping holes (not the smallest of which conjuring itself in the crotch region) a few months ago, and the Spilled Wine on the White Pants Incident of yesteryear (read: last week), I have been making do with my collection of what can only termed “second-tier pants”. Sad as it may sound, I felt out of place without a sturdy and dependable pair of pants. What would become of me, were I to don pants that I could not appreciate myself wearing? Where had my Dumbo’s feather gone? And so it was, with these worries saddled on my brow, that I set out for the Haight district yesterday. Nothing could keep me from my goal of pants.
I searched high and low. Frustration began to percolate deep within my soul as I moved from vintage store to vintage store, thrifting my way down Haight Street to no avail. There were no pants to be found; none, at least, that seemed to want to conform themselves to my 33 x 32 frame. Even the trusty Gap, sacriligeous though its location on the famous Haight-Ashbury intersection may be, let me down. As the rain began to fall, intermingling with my crocodile tears, I was ready to call it quits, but I made my way into the last stop of the afternoon, the Crossroads Trading Company. And lo, was there a pair of pants that fit me to a specification so perfect, I could not have asked the very genie of the lamp to fabricate them, for I would have known not how to guide their construction. In fact, there were two. And so, dear reader, I purchased them, and I am wearing them now, and all is just a little bit more right with the world.
Such was this tribulation a microcosm for the set of all experiences that have comprised my emigration to San Francisco. The pursuit of my passions has brought me to this City, but I cannot find everything I need, exactly when I need it. There is something hidden in the cracks of this City that I have always sensed but never possessed the discernment to identify — and it is always the unexpected intangibles that step in and rescue me from the need to trash the day’s emotional progress due to the small rigors of a big life. The Victorian bay windows that stand in grand repose to my right; the skyscraper landscape I see now for the first time with the eyes of a resident instead of those of a guest; the diminuitive Chinese elderly that congregate around fruit markets; the change of weather every four hours. These are things I can name, but it is the unique interaction of all of these kinds of items together in one gelled atmosphere that create a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. It is the recognition of this gestalt that lifts me out of any worry even remotely related to the tumult of having uprooted myself and transplanted my life into a garden that boasts a much more fertile soil and the promise of a bumper crop of emotional levity. At times, I feel out of place and agoraphobic in this City, as though this place or these people desire my departure. I have relinquished some semblance of stability by leaving Modesto, but I gladly do so to live in a place where the large bulk of its residents invest purpose in their daily routine. I have been pretty moody these past days, with high highs and low lows, but such a life lies embroiled in delicious contrast to my time in Modesto at Gallo, where it was a struggle most days to get myself to feel at all. San Francisco is some sort of ignition key, an emotional catalyst, or whatever one wishes it to be. One needs simply to wish it to be something. This city is many things to many people, but I feel that it somehow will end up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
But perhaps it’s too soon for such declarations! After all, I only yesterday found a good pair of pants.
