Angela Hamilton
over the holidays, we went on my favorite road trip ever, up through big sur to san francisco. we’re going to SF again in the spring and i cannot wait. like i’ve written about here and here, san francisco is my city. it’s the one. i love my home, seattle. but SF? a whole nother level. anyway, i never blogged the facades i captured on my iphone over a month ago, and as you can imagine, there were many. not to mention gorgeous shops to peruse and lots of coffee to be had.
What a quiet evening spent in your favorite city looks like: pastel sky, headlights, the slight blur of twilight, as much water as concrete. Growth emerging from quiet corners. Streets surprisingly un-trafficked. Blinds being pulled across bay windows. A light sweater and sandals and denim.
Fear is a funny thing. It envelops you at once, holds you tight, then lets you go as quickly as it came. Anxiousness, which can come before fear or even without, has a steady hold on your wrist. Generally not enough to completely stop you from going about your day. But just enough to make it hard to pick up and put things together, to get places. Sometimes, the anxiousness is worse, or rather, more affective, than the fear because like a bandage, the fear will be ripped off and discarded. Anxiety of fear is really a double threat, because you spend all this time anxiously awaiting the fear of the experience.
Like I said in part one of my San Francisco travels, the two of us basically spent 24 hours walking the city. A skirt didn’t feel quite right for adventuring, denim was too hot, and I happily left the shorts behind that I live in at home because finally I was going somewhere below 80 degrees. I also bought this crop top, but it’s really too crop, so I had limited options for high-waisted bottoms. Thus these old printed pants came out of hibernation. I am not crazy for the fit. And the way the elastic fits is just a bit much for me. But, for wandering around the city streets: this was just right.
Writing to you from not-San Francisco. Not-favorite city. Not-simply-walk-to-the-top-of-any-hill-for-a-bay-view. What my location is (Los Angeles) matters less right now than what it’s not. Because when you come back from a place—and here’s the part where it’s different for everyone but still universal—that you really feel you belong, at least for any moment of your life which could be just that day or two years or forever though it’s most likely not or even in memories real or made up (both truths), your location afterward is only that: a place.
