Today

 "We can not erase our pasts however hard we try.  Instead we must carry them with us into the future.  We must carry them with us and look forward with hope.  We must look forward because to look back is to waste precious time.  Someone recently said to me we should live as we have never lived and we must, all of us, take heed and live as we have never lived for we are all mortal.  We are all fragile, and we all live under the shadow of death."

These are not my words but ones said by the vicar at the end of the first episode of Grantchester, a favorite British show of mine.  The reason they were said is not important.  What is important is that this paragraph is prophetic for me right now although I do take issue where the vicar says looking back is a waste of precious time.  I find it quite powerful to look back.  I believe to know ones past is to know oneself.  For most of my life before recovery and for a good number of years into it I blindly moved forth without the benefit of hindsight.  A bull in a china shop comes to mind albeit with some bits of grace and decorum mixed in.  I wasn't the bull because of outright malice, it was for the most part because I was unaware of my childhood trauma and the effects it had on my adult life.  To understand one's past is to know how that past informs ones present.  

I am not a very forward looking person right know although I have, for some time, been seeking guidance from my Higher Power about what my future is meant to be.  To say that my life has changed in the last three years is a gross understatement.  Three years ago my only concern was preparing for retirement.  I did not know that both Larry and Guido would pass from this earth as my father, mother, Crook, and Sylvia had before them.  I didn't know that I would be leaving work prematurely and that the first year of my retirement would be taken up by settling Guido's estate.  I thought my days would be filled with puttering in the garden, hanging out with Larry in his declining years, traveling back to Italy with Guido, and spending time with my chosen and blood family's who I dearly love.  I thought my days would be like that song sung by Marlene Dietrich entitled Lazy Afternoon.  I knew I wouldn't be spending those hazy lazy afternoons making love as she sings about.  I thought my life would be me relaxing into my post work life while the beetle bugs are zooming and the tulip trees are blooming, and the meadow cows are sleeping......  but I was wrong.  It has been about grieving the loss of the last of my animal companions and the loss of someone who also meant the world to me.  Guido and Larry loved me unconditionally as I loved them, just as I had all who I lost.  As Guido's estate finally moves towards its inevitable end my life has begun to take on more of that lazy hazy afternoon feeling but hanging over it all is one question; what is my life meant to be in my post work years?

I love San Francisco.  I love the fact of it.  The essence of it.  The power it has to warp ones consciousness.  It lures you in with its seductive raison d'etre even on its most challenging of days.  I love my apartment just as I have since I first set eyes on it.  I love how my apartment has evolved over time, how it has evolved since retiring.  I love my garden.  I love the play of light and shadow as the afternoon sun moves west.  I love how the leaves of the trees shimmer in the wind.  I love how the perennial border blooms throughout the spring, summer. and fall.  I love how the birds flit from one branch to another as they teach their young to fly.  My garden is everything I ever dreamed it could be and more.  I love that I have everything I need within a ten block radius of where I live.  That if I chose to I would never have to leave my neighborhood.  I have the quintessential urban life.  A cherished existence that most people only dream of.   I also understand just how tenuous this life is.  Heraclitus said "all is flux, nothing stays still.  Nothing endures but change."  The paradox for me right now is that I want to relax into this life I have so graciously been given while at the same time I seek to escape it.  It is as much about my fear of being vulnerable while at rest as it is about my fear of change.  To relax into my post work life here in San Francisco is patently unsettling to me.  To consider moving away is incomprehensible.  

I have always struggled with how I came to live in San Francisco.  It wasn't by my choice.  It always seemed to be because someone else said this where I should be, like I was riding someone else's coattails.  It may explain why I have never felt a soul connection to San Francisco, that inherent felt sense of homecoming when your foot touches the earth.  I have felt this in other places so it's not from a lack of understanding.  It has been present when walking the streets of New York City, London, Budapest, and Vienna.  In those cities I seem to be able to exhale in a way I could only do here when cuddling with Larry on the floor.  I'm happy to say that somewhat recently there has been a shift in this because of some guidance I received.  Basically it said, I didn't choose San Francisco, it chose me.  This has brought me some peace as guidance generally does, even if at times the answer is not within the realm of possibilities that I saw in front of me.  I was meant to come to San Francisco, to build a life here, but for how long?  Is there another place that is waiting upon my arrival just as San Francisco did for first twenty-one years of my life?  I have no idea.  What I do know is that, as always, the next right step for me is to continue to seek guidance from a power greater than myself until the answer is revealed.  In the mean time I raise my glass to the City by the Bay.