Bare Bones

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“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

-        Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan

I will be moving out of San Francisco at the end of the month.  December 27^th to be exact.  Not too far in the past I would have said that I was leaving San Francisco. And that I didn’t know how I was going to do it, to leave it, to be without it and everything and everyone who is dear to me here.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on my couch with the lights down low looking at the bookcases that stand on the opposite wall now relieved of their duty as all of my books are in boxes.  And boxes and boxes.  So the shelves are bare.  Not a book in sight.  I noticed how truly beautiful they were all pared down like that.  Their design is very simple. Pale planks of ash wood that form open cubes, no back and no sides to close them in.  And naked like that, their bones showed. 

I am feeling a bit like that myself these days. More transparent, almost like an x-ray of myself.  A piece of film when held up to the light reveals a structure made up of bones.  Bones connecting to bones.  Reveals even the very connections the bones rely on.

The camera lens through which I see my life likes what it sees.  Walking around this city the last several days has been joyful.  I have had the pleasure and benefit of living in this city for 23 years.  The pleasure of its sheer beauty and bounty and the benefit of living in a city that embraces and encourages one to be the one they truly are.  Come on out this city cries.  Come on out.  For me it was a literal call.  An outing of myself on many levels.   A permission to love whom I please, men and women.  Permission to be a bit whoo whoo sometimes with all the California dreaming.  Permission to interpret the ruins and lay out the taro cards.    Permission to engage in humbling privilege.  I ride the bus every single day and I ride right along side people who are Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Hispanic, Black, American Indian, Indian Indian.  Everyone is represented.  People who are in suits and dresses on their way home from work. People who are out of work. Single people. People with families.  Mixed in are lots of people who are really really poor.  Sometimes people who’s clothes could only be called rags who are dirty and smelly from sleeping on the streets.  There are people who are crazy.  Scary.  Delusional.  Hopped up. People who talk to themselves.  People who talk to others. Conversations where sometimes something really good is going on.  Connections are made.  Bones fall into place.

 

Believe me, I have had a royal opportunity to meet my prejudices, judgments and concerns right up close and down and dirty. I often think of the lyrics sung by Joan Osborne that go, “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.”  I believe I’ve met God on each and every bus ride. San Francisco had held a piece of celluloid in front of my face and challenged me to see.

It is a hard city to leave.  I may owe my very life to it.  I bow to it.  I will miss it in my marrow. I feel lucky indeed to have loved my life here so much that it is hard to say goodbye.  And lucky to see the beauty in the structure that is now.  This life where I am packing box upon box of all of my earthly belongings and moving on.  I will live with a woman I love and her father on five acres in the country where the Sacramento river runs right behind it singing its river song.  I will live in Mexico.  I will make long visits with friends and family.  That is as much as I know right now.  It is enough.  And I carry San Francisco forward with me.  That is the bare bones of it. 

In gratitude,

Suki