Moment
To say that Marlou is out of town is to say that 1906 left San Francisco shaken. Marlou is in Sweden. Her medical news is daunting, she is undaunted and I am heading for the City. If my journey appears shorter, it's all a matter of perspective. I am not sure why either of us is traveling. It is unclear what common thread of mood runs through our journeys. In speaking to friends, I describe a constant state of agitation. Who can say what Marlou is experiencing on her genealogical quest? Certain things are known. We are both having lunch. I am meeting my friend Laurel in San Francisco's South Park. Marlou is lunching with third cousins, people completely unknown to her who have popped out of ancestral obscurity to join her in a western Swedish village. For what? Smorgasbord? Herring salad? Hot fish soup? Swedish meatballs? As the train hurtles north, this is what I want to know. What is on the menu?
Some trains hurtle, others roll, a few creep. Having been on all of them, I choose the first. I have no pressing need to be in San Francisco so early. Never mind. Speed seems important. I like watching the suburbs fly by, stops minimal, progress maximal. Arriving in San Francisco, I have a straightforward plan. A shoe shine. A man in the station will do this for $10, pleasing both me and Marlou. We all need a goal.
City? This from the conductor as I board the train in Menlo Park. I nod in the minimalist way of harried and purposeful commuters. The fact that I am not commuting and have no purpose aboard the 8:39 express hardly matters. We are all of us moving northwest toward the urban core, at speed. This is as much as I can work out right now. Shined shoes, a double macchiato ahead. For now, San Mateo slipping by in a blur.
Trains, with their lack of steering wheels and preponderance of inevitability, calm me. They function like a mantra. They transport like the wings of fate, and along the way, what can one do but relax? Burlingame is going to be there with or without me. The empty urban plain, a disused railyard, just south of the San Francisco city limits can be viewed or ignored. On this particular occasion, I give it a miss. As faux commuter, work is pressing on me. I must complete reading this morning's San Francisco Chronicle, as well as selected parts of yesterday's. As the train disappears into the first of its three tunnels, I drop the travel section to one side. With five minutes left to go, I have read all that is necessary about the Trans-Siberian Express. Life is short, and there's a book review about California's founding Jews. The latter understood the importance of trains. They, and I, we are on track.
At the station, the shoe shine man has departed. His sign explains the odd hours. Open at 7 AM, closed at 9 AM, open again for the lunch hour. Momentarily, this throws me. I pause under the clock, somewhat disillusioned to be out of the commuting mainstream, late to the action. Nevermind. I am already bouncing up Fourth Street, dodging FedEx vans, alert to dangerous peaks and valleys in San Francisco's seismic sidewalks. The other danger, the one I shove into the back of my mind, has to do with the bigger picture. A quadriplegic, wholly dependent on a battery-powered mechanism, is miles from home, on his own and far from help. Anything can happen. A wire can come loose. A wheel can go flying. I do not have Laurel's mobile phone number, because I have deliberately left home with out it. I am a trapeze artist without a net.
It's wonderful the way everything changes at the entrance to South Park, the city folding itself into a London-style square, small and enclosed and concerned with its own restaurants and fashion boutiques and small offices for architects and software designers. The scruffy playground at the center has a jungle gym, a merry-go-round, a slide. The effect is ambiguous. Norland Square, the West Kensington home of my early 20s, had a private lawn, benches and gravel walkways. Anyone who lived on the square had a key. Privacy and residency. Why not? This square is different. It seems that few live here. This is a working square, and the center is all about playing. And this, I decide, is fine. It will do.
It's cold at Café Centro. The macchiato is hot. I sit indoors and finish a neglected portion of the Chronicle. This is what single people do, sitting alone at tables. The experience will be brief, with Laurel expected in a few minutes. If in the coming years I find myself single again, seated alone at a table like this one, how will I comport myself? Better, I think. This is why I tell Marlou not to worry. This is what I need to tell myself. That I know how to occupy a table. Mine is not a commanding presence. But it is a presence. I am not making eye contact with anyone here this morning. But in the future? Who knows? I like the idea of bridging the generational divide that separates me from the metal-studded young man who steamed my macchiato behind the counter. He was all deference and formality, treating me like his father, which I am old enough to be. I like to think that if I came in here a few times on my own, some humorous possibilities would open up. It's important to make people laugh.
I'm comfortable enough in this café not to start when I feel a hand on my shoulder. It turns out to be Laurel's, and this signals the main event of the day. We launch into conversation and cover old ground and new, with psychology and personal histories in the forefront. Laurel has always had a certain calm. I think of her as calming. These days, she seems less so. Perhaps I have achieved some calm myself. I tell her about my agitation. She shrugs. Agitation may be your friend for a while, she says. We compare notes on faux commuting. Recently retired, she boarded a familiar rush-hour train near Sacramento for the long ride to San Francisco. And the irony makes us laugh.
I am laughing again at day's end. I have dinner with friends at the Japanese restaurant down the street, then we all repair to my place to watch a video. It turns out to be the right video. It's British, outrageous and in uniformly bad taste. The thing is funny enough for me to constantly turn around to see if my friends are sharing the fun. They are. I realize, amid the sadness and fear, that there's plenty of reason to laugh. Each moment is different. Each moment is only a moment.
Some trains hurtle, others roll, a few creep. Having been on all of them, I choose the first. I have no pressing need to be in San Francisco so early. Never mind. Speed seems important. I like watching the suburbs fly by, stops minimal, progress maximal. Arriving in San Francisco, I have a straightforward plan. A shoe shine. A man in the station will do this for $10, pleasing both me and Marlou. We all need a goal.
City? This from the conductor as I board the train in Menlo Park. I nod in the minimalist way of harried and purposeful commuters. The fact that I am not commuting and have no purpose aboard the 8:39 express hardly matters. We are all of us moving northwest toward the urban core, at speed. This is as much as I can work out right now. Shined shoes, a double macchiato ahead. For now, San Mateo slipping by in a blur.
Trains, with their lack of steering wheels and preponderance of inevitability, calm me. They function like a mantra. They transport like the wings of fate, and along the way, what can one do but relax? Burlingame is going to be there with or without me. The empty urban plain, a disused railyard, just south of the San Francisco city limits can be viewed or ignored. On this particular occasion, I give it a miss. As faux commuter, work is pressing on me. I must complete reading this morning's San Francisco Chronicle, as well as selected parts of yesterday's. As the train disappears into the first of its three tunnels, I drop the travel section to one side. With five minutes left to go, I have read all that is necessary about the Trans-Siberian Express. Life is short, and there's a book review about California's founding Jews. The latter understood the importance of trains. They, and I, we are on track.
At the station, the shoe shine man has departed. His sign explains the odd hours. Open at 7 AM, closed at 9 AM, open again for the lunch hour. Momentarily, this throws me. I pause under the clock, somewhat disillusioned to be out of the commuting mainstream, late to the action. Nevermind. I am already bouncing up Fourth Street, dodging FedEx vans, alert to dangerous peaks and valleys in San Francisco's seismic sidewalks. The other danger, the one I shove into the back of my mind, has to do with the bigger picture. A quadriplegic, wholly dependent on a battery-powered mechanism, is miles from home, on his own and far from help. Anything can happen. A wire can come loose. A wheel can go flying. I do not have Laurel's mobile phone number, because I have deliberately left home with out it. I am a trapeze artist without a net.
It's wonderful the way everything changes at the entrance to South Park, the city folding itself into a London-style square, small and enclosed and concerned with its own restaurants and fashion boutiques and small offices for architects and software designers. The scruffy playground at the center has a jungle gym, a merry-go-round, a slide. The effect is ambiguous. Norland Square, the West Kensington home of my early 20s, had a private lawn, benches and gravel walkways. Anyone who lived on the square had a key. Privacy and residency. Why not? This square is different. It seems that few live here. This is a working square, and the center is all about playing. And this, I decide, is fine. It will do.
It's cold at Café Centro. The macchiato is hot. I sit indoors and finish a neglected portion of the Chronicle. This is what single people do, sitting alone at tables. The experience will be brief, with Laurel expected in a few minutes. If in the coming years I find myself single again, seated alone at a table like this one, how will I comport myself? Better, I think. This is why I tell Marlou not to worry. This is what I need to tell myself. That I know how to occupy a table. Mine is not a commanding presence. But it is a presence. I am not making eye contact with anyone here this morning. But in the future? Who knows? I like the idea of bridging the generational divide that separates me from the metal-studded young man who steamed my macchiato behind the counter. He was all deference and formality, treating me like his father, which I am old enough to be. I like to think that if I came in here a few times on my own, some humorous possibilities would open up. It's important to make people laugh.
I'm comfortable enough in this café not to start when I feel a hand on my shoulder. It turns out to be Laurel's, and this signals the main event of the day. We launch into conversation and cover old ground and new, with psychology and personal histories in the forefront. Laurel has always had a certain calm. I think of her as calming. These days, she seems less so. Perhaps I have achieved some calm myself. I tell her about my agitation. She shrugs. Agitation may be your friend for a while, she says. We compare notes on faux commuting. Recently retired, she boarded a familiar rush-hour train near Sacramento for the long ride to San Francisco. And the irony makes us laugh.
I am laughing again at day's end. I have dinner with friends at the Japanese restaurant down the street, then we all repair to my place to watch a video. It turns out to be the right video. It's British, outrageous and in uniformly bad taste. The thing is funny enough for me to constantly turn around to see if my friends are sharing the fun. They are. I realize, amid the sadness and fear, that there's plenty of reason to laugh. Each moment is different. Each moment is only a moment.
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