Leaving Potrero Hill

Today is the last full day that I well spend in my apartment here on Mariposa street in the lovely Potrero Hill district of San Francisco. I may come back to the City again - I may not.

I do love it here, but nonetheless I have the feeling that it’s not /quite/ the where where I’m supposed to be. It’s certainly the closest - but I keep thinking that there is a somewhere else that I am meant to be.

But P-hill has a wonderful aura about it (if only the rent didn’t suck so bad!) and I’ll miss Farley’s coffee (where I’m typing this), Nadja my laundry lady, the staff at Chez Maman bistro. As the legendary Chinese sage said, this too, must pass.

I sit at Farley’s and right now two girls I hired via Craigslist are cleaning my apartment. I really lack the resolve to get it into the state that is required to not lose a big chunk of my deposit (I’m sure I will anyway, screw you slumlords).

But what about when I come back, will I return here? I have to think about that. I always thought that I would move to Amsterdam one day after I studied abroad there - 3 days there on business over a year ago showed me that you truly can’t go back, Angel, you can’t even look homeward, as Tom Wolfe would say. Are San Francisco and I destined for a break up? It started as a flirtation, checking out her website and visiting on the weekends. It soon became more than a casual thing and soon we were living together. Sure, the first couple months were full of the usual ecstasy, we were going out every night, her seductive whisper and fog keeping me up all night. I succumbed to her allures - but now we part.

Will it be as with loves in the past, once gone, lost forever? I still rue some of those that I have lost forever - will the lady astride the Golden Gate be another?

What to do? It’s still a big question mark - but now it’s two months out further in my future. As I like to have everything under control, I’m sure that I’ll have the instinct to try to plan everything out at the expense of the present. I think I’m going to remember that life advice from Master Yoda that one should not live as young Luke, always his mind in the future, never on what he’s doing.

I’ll dust off my remembrances of Alan Watts’ introductory Zen courses and take on “beginner’s mind” and focus and what I’m doing at the moment with the entirety of my intent.

…And the Smiths record cues up on the tape player. No lengthy visit here is fulfilled without The Smiths.

…Incidentally, I heard T. Rex’s “The Slider” here and I can’t find it except online for over $30.00! Damn. It sounded like a glam “OK, Computer” - sometimes that whole Glam ostentation really did touch the Operatic that it so deeply chased.

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