In which there is a current beneath the surface, and a question

I want to write down my thoughts about Harry, who died at age 93 on July 4th, but I'm having trouble, with the distractions around me and the series of phone calls from lawyers and insurance agents needing information to complete our purchase of the boat.

In the meantime, my coworker Melvin sent me a link to a list of ten restaurants recently voted as having the Best Hamburgers in San Francisco, and I got sidetracked further into a discussion of places not on the list, and of other restaurants I used to frequent, starting out generally and then narrowing down to my old neighborhood, finally to a place called Foreign Cinema. I used to go there with my friends and sit outside in the courtyard, drinking wine and watching the movies shown on the rough wall of the building next door. It was cold there, and foggy, but we would sit until it was unbearable, then retreat to a table under a large tent, for dinner. I could walk home from there.

It is not my home any more, but today I went against my better judgment to see what the places in my old York Street building are selling for (a lot) and found some photos of one. That was a mistake, because it made me sad and nostalgic for something I willingly gave up years ago and can't recapture.

I believe that the constant stream of documents and dealings with buying the boat are bringing me back to the last time I was involved in a major purchase, which was the loft on York Street. I was terrified at the time, because the paperwork was intimidating, and the laywers and the thoroughly heartless real estate brokers. The other tenants of the building seemed so oblivious to the process--many of them had made giant sums of money in start-ups, and were cavalier about finances. They were cavalier about a lot, actually. One tenant, a pretty girl with expensively streaked honey-blonde hair, lived down the hall. Her mother, an interior designer, had put a lot of money down on the loft, resulting in a mortgage of only about $300 a month. She and I became friendly partly owing to her delight that I was able to identify the high-end designers of several pieces of her furniture. She had a casual, flighty air common to people who never have to worry about money. One night, her black BMW broke down just outside the common gate to the parking lot, and she left it there well into the next day, completely blocking the driveway. It didn't seem to occur to her to have it towed, or that someone else might have it towed away in her absence. She was indignant when she discovered that another tenant had scraped the side of the BMW with his own car, leaving long streaks of white paint in squeezing by. He would have had to drive over the sidewalk to get out to the street, but none of that occured to her. It was clear that she had no understanding of why anyone might have objected to her parking spot.

I didn't understand people like that, and I didn't fit in at all. The stress of paying our mortgage, combined with the many little stresses already in our marriage, ripped the relationship wide open, and I leapt out and ran as far as I could conceive of going. That caused its own stress, of course, which is only just this year smoothing away. I think. I never know if I'm in the eye of the hurricane or if the storm has actually passed.

Beneath all the physical reality of the boat--the moving, unpacking, signing papers--is a ripple of nervous tension as I ponder the idea that I am going into a repeat of the York Street situation and wonder if I will take off running again.

I don't think I will, but the thought is there, needling at me, delineating the rift between the craving for a home and the desire for absolute freedom. I can't go back, but it's impossible to imagine going forward. How can I be expected to make decisions when the situations requiring decisions change constantly, and the outcomes are uncertain and fluid? How does anyone ever know how to do the right thing?



Star of the day. . .Harry Day
posted @ 12:11 p.m. on July 08, 2005 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......