Yesterday was September First – which felt more significant than many other days of the year. It’s as though the beginning of September is the official end of summer. You feel it in the air, the smells begin to change to fall smells, the memories of seasons past come flooding back. It is both a time of dying and a time of new beginnings. Many of my job changes, geographical moves, and relationships have taken place and taken shape as summer slid into fall.
For much of August, I’ve been watching how the light changes… how even though the days are growing shorter, the light and the shadows it casts somehow seem longer. Despite its lamentations (or perhaps because of them), I love this time of year.
Lately, I’ve been making the time to take long walks – five miles round trip: to the bay, to a warming hut near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, and back again. On the weekends, the picnic areas and beaches I pass are full of people grilling and playing in the sand. During the week, it’s quieter, emptier – mostly runners and bikers and other people taking walks. On yesterday’s walk, I was struck by the dramatic clouds over the Bay and the city, but also by the quiet. I enjoy the peacefulness of these walks not because I need peace but because peacefulness is nice. Some people seek out peace to calm their frazzled nerves, slow the hurry of their lives. I seek it because it is its own reward. On these walks, I don’t listen to music and seldom look at my phone (though I take the occasional note or look up the name of a bird or type of plant: Sandhill Sage, Coyote Brush, Black Phoebe, Bewick’s Wren, Elegant Tern).
This morning’s walk included a partial rainbow as the sun lit up the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. I live in a very pretty city and am fortunate to have these kinds of views within walking distance.
These past few weeks I’ve been trying to “get back to basics.” For me, getting back to basics means less screen time and less time at the bar, more time walking and reading and reflecting. My phone tells me that I’ve averaged just under 11 miles (walking and running) per day this past week (yesterday was a 14-mile day). Getting back to basics has also meant deleting (temporarily) the profiles on the dating apps – less swiping, less scrolling. The changes may not last, but it’s a nice change of pace. I was beginning to feel like I was in a rut.
Fall weather tends to make me feel more pensive, more reflective. It reminds me of one of my favorite poems, “How to Like It (poem at bottom of linked page).” And much like in the poem, fall stirs up feelings of wanderlust – wanting to disappear far off beyond the hills, but instead settling for a tall sandwich in the all too familiar kitchen of one’s limitations. I can’t afford to do much traveling, so long walks and a change of pace will have to do for now.
Yesterday, in the spirit of a change of pace, in the spirit of being a tourist in my own town, I went to an art museum. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a museum, and this one, The Legion of Honor, had been on my list ever since moving to San Francisco. I’d have gone sooner, but it’s in an odd part of the city not on the way to anywhere else. In addition to boasting some unique views, it houses the city’s main collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings (Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco) as well as dozens of Rodin sculptures (the largest collection outside of Paris). With between 20 and 30 galleries (not including special exhibits), it was smaller than I had expected it to be. As such, I breezed through it, and then felt bad about breezing through it.
Admittedly, I’m not sure I know how to “do a museum.” Without a guided tour, I wander around, I read the placards, I look at the paintings, and move on. I suppose what I mean to say is that I don’t know how to study the paintings, much less internalize or remember them. I don’t know how to interpret the “art” of what I’m seeing: brush strokes, use of color, depiction of light and shadows. I appreciate, but perhaps not deeply. That said, I had two observations yesterday. The first was in how in some of the landscapes (especially those of Venice), there would be tall ships in the distance – sometimes as seen through windows. This reminded me of the much later surrealists like Dominique Appa who painted a steam liner about to pass through an open door or a train emerging from a fireplace. My other observation was that the whimsical drawings I’ve liked from Kurt Vonnegut owe much to the art of Joan Miro.
I suppose what much of this amounts to (long walks, visiting museums, reading in the solitude of my apartment) is an attempt to recalibrate. I’ve been living in San Francisco for nearly three years. I plan to stay as long as I can afford to or until something else compels me to move. I have moments when I feel limited by my inclination to stay: there are so many other places in the world to explore. In the beginning, I explored the city a lot and stayed in a lot. Then, as I made friends and found my third spaces, I settled into a routine that mostly involved work, concerts, and the neighborhood bar. Now, perhaps because of the season, I feel the need to push those limits again: explore more, meet new people, do different things, re-discover old selves, and reacquaint myself with varying degrees of solitude. Deleting the dating apps and skipping the bar coupled with expanding my reading and doing different things has had the effect of forcing me to ask the question: what do I value and why? Do I still value what I used to? What has changed, what has stayed the same, what have I lost sight of? I find that I need to ask these questions from time to time.
On this morning’s walk, I was thinking about my interests and how they sync up with the people I’ve known and the people I know. I thought about how so few people I know go to museums or read poetry or just enjoy a day with no agenda other than wandering around. I was also thinking about how I tend to view those activities as things I would prefer to do with a partner (or solo) as opposed to doing them with a friend. In that vein, I was trying to remember which of my past girlfriends and partners enjoyed those things – with whom did I go to museums, who had books on their shelves and art on the walls? Sadly, only a few. I was also thinking of some of my friends and how they seem to have so little in common with their partners – one guy and his boyfriend of several years didn’t seem to like any of the same things. What on earth did they do together? Is that why they broke up?
In my head, I was trying to articulate/envision why this matters. Is it better to enjoy a lot of the same things, or nothing at all? Mentally, I was re-writing the dating profile. Mentally, I was having one of those imaginary early conversations in which one articulates their vision for a life well lived. Are you on board? Where do you want to go? In that moment, a fond memory of little consequence crossed my mind. A woman I was dating once suggested we visit a park and a nearby brew pub. This was in the suburbs/open spaces west of Philadelphia (my memory says near Pheonixville). We wandered around the park, which if I remember had a dam and a reservoir. We went to the brew pub (I think it had turtle or tortoise in its name) where we had a flight of beers. On thew way home, we stopped in a nearby town for dinner – or at least I think we did. That was it – simple, not overly planned and uncomplicated. We didn’t know what to expect and everything was great. When people write that they want someone with whom they can share in life’s adventures, I seldom imagine that these mini (not-so-wildly-adventurous) adventures are what they mean. Yet, as I walked and thought and envisioned, this became my version of what I’d want: sure, capital T travel, but also days spent in parks, at pubs, in museums, or visiting the farmers’ market and having a lazy day.
It’s early September with hints of fall on the horizon. It’s a good time to pull back, reminisce, re-think, and re-commit where appropriate. It’s a time to look at what’s been harvested, be thankful for where there’s bounty, and take stock of what’s in short supply. It’s early September and I wouldn’t have it any other way.