Post Script
Hello again Redhead,
Today I miss New York so much, I’m browsing Craigslist for apartments. I’m listening to Fleet Foxes’ “The Plains / Bitter Dancer” on repeat and it’s sounding like the soundtrack to The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and I’m missing the Met and remembering how I used to wander its halls every Friday evening to escape the loneliness of Barnard. Alone in San Francisco and craving the city on the opposite coast, it is hard to believe I was ever lonely in New York.
There was a time when I thought it impossible to be lonely in a city. In the country, you are always alone with your thoughts, but in the city — oh, in the city, the subway cars breathe with you, the “don’t walk” signs throb in sync with your heartbeat, you are surrounded by everything and everyone. But no matter how much everything and how many everyones I encounter, I am still alone with my thoughts, alone with my grey Ikea couch and my solemn walks up California Street when San Francisco has shut down for the night.
I come back to my sentence from before: “It is one thing to make yourself at home, but it is an entirely different thing to find yourself at home.” San Francisco is a familiar place. But when will it be familiar out of warmth and not out of routine?
I am tired of being brave and pretending to live in the present when I know I live in the past.
- Co
