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It finally sunk in, a friend wrote, when she stared at the planter of bright red salvia.
My moment did not come with the palm trees, prehistoric squatters along the street. Mine did not come with the terra cotta church, orange against the sky, or the sky itself, constant blue (forget what they tell you…it is blue and clear).
Tell me what it’s like there, you ask.
I’ll say there are pastel houses, close together, on hills like Jerusalem. I’ll say my moment did not come with Jerusalem. It did not come with hills. It did not come with the boy in rainbow robes striding down the sidewalk, mid-day. It did not come with the cable lines crossing above the roofs, making x’s. It did not come with the figs in the grocery store, my basket full of brightness.
It did not come with Phantom Planet singing, California, California, though I wanted it to.
My moment came with tomatoes, making bad stir-fry with tomatoes and squash and peppers and rice. I stood at the sink, peeled a sticker off a tomato with my fingernail. Then I read the sticker. It said: California.
The water was running.
California, I thought.
I love driving 280, the 101, the sand hills, the scrub brush. I love the little key that opens the garage door. I love using the parking brake in the driveway. I love when the buses go by at night. It is dark, and I can see my reflection in the dark window, at my desk, the white glow of the apple, my silver desk lamp, my jade plant in its copper pot, my brown hair in its ponytail, my rust-brown candle, my black scarf looped and looped.
I know what I must look like from the street. I look like a girl who is onto something.
Last night was my first ride down Dolores. Dolores is hills and not many lights, and on the other side of the wide dark street: bicyclists, kids—they let go, they let fly.
Long, low hills. It reminded me of riding the slides at state fairs, the ones where you stood high at a ladder in line, were told when to go by an adolescent farm worker. You rode down on your stomach on a burlap sac. The plastic of the slide gathered heat all day, and reflected the sun back in your face like a slap.
Sun. Buses. Light.
Today begins my second full week in San Francisco. That’s end of the time I’ve given myself to get adjusted, to get over it, to get on with the work already. Now I start revising again. Now I haul out the old words. I’ll lay them on the floor. I’ll go back to that world. I’ll ride the train to Berkeley.
It was a ride, Dolores Street.
We flew.
This is first place I have ever lived where I cannot hear a train, that horn of escape and city and freedom, that beast who bears you out of the small town, out of the cornfields, out of your heart and your love and your life. For once in my life, I don’t think I need it.
II.
I will do as you said. I will buck up. I will button down. I will not be self-conscious. Whenever I feel like looking, I will look away. Whenever I feel like giving up, I will lick an envelope. I will write my book.
Cracking its spine is like breaking a bone I didn’t even know I had.
When I hung up the phone with you, it was late in the afternoon, cold and bright. I wrapped up in a sweater, and walked to the park, spread a blanket on the dry, yellow grass overlooking the canyon, finished a Victorian novel. I ordered Indian food from Spicy Bite.
I took the subway downtown and brought two leotards: one black, one red. I took my first dance class in ten years, since my leg snapped in half and a large bearded stranger carried me out to an ambulance and into a different kind of life; I was crying about my expensive tights which the ER doctor ripped.
This time I bought footless ones, just in case.
I think I remember grace, but I do not remember movement. I have the arms. I have the tilt of the head, the back, the legs, the line, but not the muscles, not the strength.
I used to worry, if I did not write for months, a week, a year, I would forget how.
I am here to tell you: no. I am here to tell you: the body remembers. The body goes on. The body goes back.
The worst part is driving. The worst part is parking. The worst part is walking a few blocks in the freezing dark, and opening the door, and taking off your skirt and street shoes. Then there is a woman whose language—Chinese and French—you only partially understand, only every sixth or seventh word. Then there is music, recorded piano, and next door, vibrations through the wall from the flamenco class, the rumble of the streetcars, sirens, the smell of chalk.
Then there is the mirror and you in it, the window across from your desk with you in it, the notebook with you in it, the stories, the poem with you in it. And then you fly.
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