Where I Was From

Where I Was From

I love that magical and completely illusory power the internet has to break down social barriers so that strangers can email each other on Myspace and somehow their presence in each other's personal space isn't as intrusive or patently impossible as the presence of offline strangers in one's private life can be. Someone wrote me out of the blue (since the wallpaper on my iBook is, after all, mostly blue) and asked if I ever miss California. His profile indicated that he'd left the Golden State behind this past year, as well.

Honestly, nobody had really asked before. Seven months isn't much time to cultivate longing for something as complex as a city. Or had no one been curious how I felt?

I hadn't allowed myself to dwell on the question much. Of course, I miss my friends something awful. But the place itself? Hadn't considered it. The whole peninsula seems imaginary when you're not there.

But something stirred in me and I wrote back, easily, instantly:


"I miss the strange feeling of security I derived from living on the edge of the world. And the ordinary things a person misses after moving far away: friends, familiarity, sushi. But San Francisco is so isolated, not geographically (at least until BART shuts down for the night) but philosophically. I don't miss that self-aggrandizing attitude folks cultivate in the Bay Area: I don't miss that way Emperor Norton seemed like a role model for everyone else to come to his town.

Do you miss it?"

Labels: memoir

posted by Leah @ 12:38 PM