It almost made me cry to be finally out and rolling down the hill to go shopping. Pandemic measures are loosening in San Francisco. The virus transmission rate has been low enough long enough for the city health department to decide, okay, so go ahead and have your haircut. Just do it outside. Want some sushi and a little sake? Same thing, resulting as Jane and I observed near the bottom of our hill in a sidewalk expansion of our local Japanese restaurant. No one in this burg has been inside a restaurant in six months, not legally anyway. But, yes, I could well imagine sitting in front of Tekka House and pretending things are normal.

But for now, as Jane and I approached Canyon Market, indeed they seemed to be completely normal. Of course, this has all the earmarks of a redefined ‘normal’ that now includes the habitual obscuring of much of the human face, vis-à-vis masks. I wore one, Jane wore one, Vicki the Canyon wine proprietor wore one, not to mention the produce guy, fishmonger and associated stockers.

Thing is, this market has been a daily feature of my life for many years. It’s where ideally go to ‘pick up a little something’ which, if I’m brutally honest, includes my spirits. A retired, writer, introvert sort of guy does need a little human interaction. And there it is, and in a very small area. This is not, let me make it clear, a supermarket. It is a shop broken into the constituents of a supermarket, such as deli, salad bar, in-house bakery, not to mention, you know, groceries. But each of these units is remarkably small. 

I am not even certain where the bread gets baked except that it is somewhere behind the deli. The bakers are only glimpsed occasionally, and they would in fact glide through the place unnoticed except that I asked to be introduced. After all, they are artists, as far as I’m concerned. Whether it’s the whole-wheat boule, the sourdough baguette or Friday’s challah, they are on it, these people.

Staffers have told me that one of the job requirements there is being comfortable in tight working conditions. That is to say, a bit of submarine experience in the Navy would probably be helpful. And there are two reasons for this analogy. One is simply discipline. In six months no one on staff has gotten the coronavirus, which seems to me quite remarkable. Working together and inescapably breathing together, they have somehow avoided getting sick. 

Which makes me feel that I might just not get sick myself if I go down there slightly more often in the future. At the moment, Jane and I have a risk assessment of trying to stock up once every two weeks. And Jane almost entirely does the stocking. I would be more than willing, but I am also more than average in my susceptibility, having mostly paralyzed intercostal muscles in my chest, etc.

So, the sun shines bright in our coronavirus future. It also shines bright in the sky, although this is a mixed solar blessing. After a week of being completely socked in by summer fog, the skies are finally lifting, revealing themselves to be blue. I have been blue myself, doubtless seasonal affective disorder in part, the general social upheaval of the other. There is grief in all this. The election remains uncertain. Still, I made it out today, into the larger mercantile world, and I am a better man for it. I shall now retire to the sunny deck to read a bit of Saul Bellow. The beat goes on.