Channels and Memories

I just reread the very first piece I wrote in the Spring of 2006.  It is about my longing to find my place in the world, where I want to be.  That spring day was also the first time that Channel appeared in my life.  And no I am not referring to an apparition of Coco either.  (You've been reading my list of 25 things on Facebook.)  Channel, pronounced just like the Channel Islands, is the source of my writing, a source that seems to originate somewhere deep inside my core.   Channel is not of any gender that I can speak of.  Channel just is.

Ok, I'll stop drifting now and get back on point.

The opening few lines of my first piece are:

I am an old soul.  I can feel it down deep in my core.  I wonder if this is why I struggle so when I think of where I want to be.

"Where I want to be."  It still resonates in me as I sit here in bed, snuggled under the blankets with my kids laying next to me.  

When I wrote this piece I was at a very difficult place in my life.  I had just gone through a particularly bad patch, health wise, and was struggling to just get by from one day to the next.  In hindsight though, I do not think that my piece was just an ethereal reaction to my situation. There was and is substance to those words, especially the word, Be.  For me, that simple two letter word reaches deep into my core and out into the cosmos.  It represents all of the facets of both my inner and outer existences and, for me, is all encompassing.

That first piece continues by describing how disconnected I felt living here in San Francisco and how I missed the four seasons of my youth and all that they represent.  Sitting here, I can still call up those memories from my early years, things like seeing the intense green of buds that are just about to break in early Spring; the aroma of the sweet warm humid air wafting in the window at daybreak; the sound dried leaves make as their crumbled edges scrap along the sidewalk; the deadening sound of heavy wet snow as it falls on a windless winter night.  All of the things I still remember and they are all of the things I still long for.  I know that these longings are not superficial or just nostalgia. They are deeply connected to my core in ways that I can not explain.   So why am I still here you ask?  Good question.  The easy answer is because I am.  The real answer is because this is where I am meant to be at this time of my life.  So how did I get here you ask?  I'll tell you.

I moved to California in 1978, not because I wanted to, but because a friend of mine filled my head with wonderful stories about her life in the City by the Bay.  After a brief stay in the East Bay I moved into the City in 1979, first staying with friend, then getting a place of my own.  

I have to say that I have developed over the years a deep and abiding love for the Paris of the West.  I have created here a wonderful life for myself, complete with a family that I love deeply, a family who has sustained and loved me through it all.   A family that continues to grow to this day. 

Over the years San Francisco has also become my home, albeit an adopted one.  I love to walk the streets just to listen and connect with the City around me.  And I have found over the years that San Francisco has an energy that is unique in the world, the same energy that Herb Caen, among others, use to write about in their daily columns.  

One of the ways I have claimed the City for my own has been by learning it's history.  I have become an aficionado of San Francisco history, mainly by studying it.   For many years I have searched local bookstores looking for books written by people who have lived here throughout it's short but spectacular history.  Dino and I have a running joke about it too.  When we are out and about I will point out a spot as we pass repeating some fact of history about it.  Then we both turn to each laughing, saying, useless fact number 432,329.   It's true too.  They are useless for the most part, unless for some reason I am meant to become a tour guide in a future life.  But this is how it is for me, how I have survived over the years.  Learning about the City has become one of the ways I try to combat that instinctive core feeling of loss that is always with me.  The loss that is so prevalent to me in my first piece.   The same loss that is the legacy of my insane childhood.  The one that striped me of my innocence at the very tender age of 8. 

That first line "I am an Old Soul" has also become the working title of the novel that Channel is writing at present.  It's a story full of memories, longings, love, death, and ultimately finding the true meaning of Be.  I too hope to find the true meaning of Be in my life time.  Maybe Channel will show me the way.  Maybe, that is what this is all about anyways.  Why Channel has chosen me to be the typist and ultimately why I am meant to be here in the Paris of the West at this time of my life.