calfornia, 1 / towers in the sky

on the airplane i sat next to a pastor. i could tell he was a pastor the moment i sat down next to him. as we were flying from chicago to san francisco, my eyes were glued to the window. trying to mark the passing of space - from one state to another. trying to follow what i guessed to be the route on the in-flight magazine. i was astounded by how little development there is between san francisco and chicago. i tried to guess what state we were in, what mountains we were crossing over, what lake was below us - when i was unsure, i asked my pastor neighbor and we tried to figure it out together. i think he was confused by why i cared so much. i wished my father would have been sitting next to me instead. not just because he would have known all the answers, but because he would have cared too.

i got to san francisco and was immediately overwhelmed. it's sort of how it usually goes. i don't really like other cities. i love pittsburgh. and i love anything else that isn't a city. but i'm intimated by other cities. i don't understand what it means to not know a city - to not be totally familiar with it. i don't like driving. i don't like the people. i don't understand them. i feel like an outsider. maybe it's a product of always living in one city, but i'm constantly feeling inadequate, like a fake. i'm not a 40-something with a dog living in the "bay area", drinking wine, writing my second book and wearing teva's. so why try to even like it?

i did like san francisco though. it's the first city i've visited in maybe my whole life that i just sort of liked. i think it was the bay. and the air. and that it felt small. and the temperature. and that the first person i saw there was emily. my friend for 20 years now. since kindergarten. she is one of the three people who i've known the longest and have remained quite close to.

in general, i don't think my photographs from the trip are very good. these are just pictures from the first 2 days. the evening i arrived and then the following day before kate and i left to drive south to san diego. i don't think that you can photograph things you don't know - or at least, i can't. or maybe i just don't want to. a few weeks ago i took photographs of the trees in the cemetery, and whether anyone cares of not, they took my breath away. the orange against the blue with the streaks of color in the sky were enough to make my ankles shake. i've watched these trees for my whole life, i've broken up with boys in that cemetery, i've figured things out in that cemetery, i've walked in circles around those buried bodies and watched the way the trees look against the sky since my dad taught me how to drive there. there's memory, and feeling, and emotion and attachment. i've spiraled into some sort of depression since returning from california. disappointment, maybe. i was hoping that week-long trips to beautiful places would be enough to satisfy this thing in me. but they're not enough. they're not it.

5 years ago, had you asked me who i was, i would have said, "God's beloved" - or something weird like that. now i would say, "my mother and father's child." i am destined to be them. i see in them the exact same struggles that i have. i see within both of them this constant pull between family/friends and this other thing. for my father, it's the west - it's mountains, it's climbing and hiking and being face-to-face with even a simple deer in nature. for my mother, it's this desire to be alone, independent, for the phone to be shut off - i overheard her recently say, "i can't stay on the phone for more than 5 minutes or else i feel trapped." i am determined to learn from them. i find myself still stuck in this pittsburgh vs. the west, or this people vs. place dilemma. and i don't know the answer yet. and i don't know what the next move is yet. but i think i'm getting closer. and that's good.

a rare and endless blistering sun shines down on grace cathedral park / red house painters

muir woods / sequoia trees

golden gate bridge