25 and the San Francisco trip, October, 2011

Excerpted from my travel journal:

October 3, 2011

I'm heading northbound on the Caltrain from San Jose to South San Francisco, rolling past modest little homes by the side of the tracks. Jason Isbell is playing on the stupid fucking iTouch in my pocket that refuses to get wifi and leaves me stranded in San Bruno with no internet service and therefore, no maps or taxi cab phone numbers. This is the first time I've been to the North Bay area in almost 10 years. I didn't much like it then, so let's hope I like it better this time around.

This trip has begun with snafus and frustration; missing hotel confirmation information, the afore-mentioned broken iTouch, the decision to take the Caltrain instead of a shuttle from San Jose to San Francisco Airport, taking an airplane instead of driving the six hours from Los Angeles to the city.

It's okay though, time ticks away and trips are often a microcosm of life in general. Sometimes trips start or end roughly, but often there are highlights, turns that lead you somewhere surprising, fabulous, unexpected.
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10:30pm, October 3, 2011

First impressions of San Francisco go like this; the city so far reminds me less of its Northwest siblings and more so of a smaller, slightly better smelling New York City in so far as the Union Square area shopping is top-notch and Armenian-owned crystal chandelier shops abound. The city even smells reminiscent of New York; a faint urine smell fills the air. Buildings are old and crowded, especially in Chinatown, hallways and bathrooms are scuffed up and paint peels from the walls.

I love the feeling that there's more to this city than I've seen so far and I have a suspicion that there's another flavor-perhaps like that of my beloved Portland and Seattle that I have yet to taste---like those cities, San Francisco lies amidst dense forest and cold water after all.

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11:30 AM, October 5, 2011

Yesterday, mom and I took the BART into the Embaracadero Station on the edge of the Financial District. Occupy Wall Street movement had set up camp in the Financial District and it made me feel proud that the activist tradition in this area is once again alive and kicking. I looked out to the warehouses and the piers and thrilled at the idea that I was looking out at the same water and the same view, traversing the same streets that Kerouac walked--the same Embaracadero he talked about.

Fisherman's Wharf reminded me of a less glitzy Times Square; everyone hawking the same meaningless trinkets, post cards, disposable cameras, t-shirts and sweatshirts. I'll be honest, I wasn't impressed with the Wharf.

We took a sight-seeing bus tour of the San Fran highlights, Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, the Victorian row houses. I am astounded with Golden Gate Park, so beautiful, so vast.....

Money has slipped from my pockets and I haven't been keeping track of where it goes as I've been traveling. A planner, I usually revel in planning a trip; buying trip books and guides, searching online for information about the city, places to shop, things to do. Planning a vacation is the best part; it's the mental foreplay, all about what's to come before the orgasm of the actual trip.

This San Francisco trip is different though. No guidebooks, little research, little forethought. This trip is a celebration of me turning 25. Maybe, like the trip, my 25th year can be unplanned, unguided. Maybe I need more spontaneity and blind faith that stuff works out.

A Candle and All Hallow's Eve

Last night I participated in an old Irish custom I've read about in books.

When I was but a child, my mother's friend gave me a book for my birthday called Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts by Edna Barth. I've always had an affinity for Halloween and the change of seasons, which in Los Angeles happens in very subtle ways, and I was delighted to read the book.

Barth's book was written at a child's level to help children understand the meaning of Halloween and the origins that spawned the Halloween symbols of carved pumpkins, ghosts, witches, owls and cats.

Barth writes, "There was nothing make-believe about the fears of the Scotch, Irish and English on this same evening [October 31st] years ago. This was the night when ghosts, the spirits or disembodied souls of the dead, were thought to return to their former homes, looking for warmth and cheer.....Throughout Gaul and Britain, huge Samhain fires lighted the skies above hilltops. Their bright flames were meant to guide kindly ghosts on their journeys home and frighten evil ones away."

In Lisa Carey's novel In the Country of the Young, Oisin MacDara is a moody, lonely, solitary artist who, as a child, had the gift of "second sight" where he was able to see spirits that lived alongside the living. After his twin sister's suicide, he loses the sight and wishes every day to regain it. The book jacket reads, "Then on a quiet All Hallow's Eve, a restless spirit is beckoned into his [Oisin's] home by a candle flickering in the window: the ghost of the girl whose brief life ended on Tiranogue's shore more than a century earlier. In Oisin's house she seeks comfort and warmth, and a chance at the life that was denied her so long ago."

In the vain hope and mostly superstition, but also as a link to my Celtic ancestors, I lit a candle in my window, last night on October 31, as a way to welcome my aunt and uncle home, wherever they may be.