Grace Cathedral Hill

“A Blowout Does Not Mean That I Will Have A Good Night”
-Avey Tare-

"The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Was Summer In San Francisco"
-Mark Twain-


I must have been searching for something. I'm not much of a spiritual person, but I was looking for something outside and beyond my limited understanding, something steady and true as I felt unguided and lost.

Each morning, standing in the cold fog and soggy, damp air as I sipped my scalding coffee, I would unfold the plastic map and determine the days destination. Completely adrift, unemployed, I was in San Francisco staying with a friend in the hope that I would find some sort of work and an apartment to restart my life in one of the most expensive cities in the world when I wasn’t in very good shape; emotionally or psychologically. The truth was I was killing time, unsure of myself, wandering the city in aimless loops, waiting for something or someone to tell me what to do and/or do it for me.

I was in no shape for a serious job search, relocation, new start, new dawn...It was what I needed, but not necessarily in the Geographical sense. To find a job I needed to hit the ground running with a Green Beret-like blood lust and singularity of purpose; pounding the pavement with the vigor and determination of a recent college graduate looking for that first foot in the door…determination, discipline and an enthusiasm to play the job seeker game, and i had none of it. 

This isn’t to say that I wasn’t motivated. I was up early every morning, rising with the bay fog…was out the door with the morning sun…the difference between me and everyone else up at that time was that I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no one was expecting me to be anywhere at any time.

I didn’t matter to anyone. My life meant nothing because I wasn’t contributing to the world in any meaningful way. You get what you give and I was giving absolutely nothing.  I had wandered up and down Polk Ave, burning through my savings at breakfast diners, deep oblivion coffee in the Russian district on Nob Hill, down to the Wharf where the tourists traveled in rolling waves, where I stopped to watch break dancers and painters and a colony of otters among other thing.  The later afternoons, possibly to the Mission district to read underground music magazines in musty bookstores or to Haight Ashbury to connect to some psychedelic residue of enlightenment but only found Starbucks and Pizza Huts.  As the shadows grew long and elastic I would make my way back to the Hemlock Tavern on Polk, down beers and look longingly at the other people in the bar, envious of their comraderie and conversation...other days spent with the martian flora and fauna of Golden Gate park, fighting off earaches from the cold ocean air...what the hell was I doing?
 
As I stated prior, I fancied myself on some sort of quest, in search of some truth about myself perhaps?    So, there I would go; Up and down the steep hills and deep valleys of the city, pausing to admire and study the  bluish flowers and exotic twisted trees the likes of which I had never seen.  The crush of people everywhere, pushing through Chinatown and the Tenderloin district and for the first time in my sweet sheltered life t I felt like a minority in the city, the clamor of voices and languages unlike my lily-white-bread own, lent itself to the otherworldly experience. I would rest on the regal steps Opera House on Van Ess, past the mansions on Nob Hill...so much happening all around me and all I could do was walk and stare at the ground, all bent out of shape over the past.

In the late afternoons, in the dying California light, that sepia-toned gold casting long shadows, the twilight awakened, with arms outstretched and wide mouth yawns, I would head for home. I’d make my way back through Chinatown or up and over Knob Hill stopping in at the Russian coffee house, to sip black coffee and smoke cigarettes one last time before rolling down Van Ess back to the apartment. Those were my days: Zig-zagging and aimless, spending money I needed to be saving - I simply did not know what to do with myself.
 
Not knowing what to do, I thought I would ask someone, and who better to ask than one who can predict the future?  I stopped into have my palm read and my fortune told; the answers and direction I sought would be layed out in the deck of cards on a cheap jewel encrusted table in a room with the air thick with incense and a bead and tie-dye decorum. There were fortune-tellers on every corner it seemed. Mystical experiences waiting to be had for 10 dollars or more. The future unfurled, all doubts waived, the fog - lifted, the Golden Path laid out in detail.

“You’re on the wrong path, you’re are not where you need to be, you need to be course corrected” One told me.


“You are paying for your mistakes, you are paying a karmic debt” Another gypsy said.


“You will have one final conversation with her and then you will never speak again”, yet another fortune teller told me.


They were all correct in some way. Looking back now I was looking for some semblance of security in my life. I wanted one of them to tell me that everything was going to be ok. Hell, Ok, I'm sure what I really wanted was for one of them to hold me, to let me cry in her arms…I was overwhelmed, lost and wandering in a foreign city, my bearings gone, the very ground beneath me seemed to shift with each step I took.

"What Excursion of the Legs can Bring The Heart and Mind Closer Together?"
-R.W. Emerson-

When I had two weeks left in SF and it became apparent I wasn't going to find a job, I finally began to explore the city with a plan; I would pick two different Cathedrals/Temples/Synagogues/Churches to visit each day. This brought me to Grace Cathedral Hill. Not far from the apartment, I would sit sipping my coffe in the park across the street from the colossal structure, a daunting, mammoth 'House of God', picking at sod grass and basically looking around at...nothing.  One a couple occasions I considered walking the labyrinth outside the cathedral, but knew that I was already in a labyrinth, there was no need for simulation.


I spent my last several misty San Francisco mornings sitting cross legged in the grass, staring across the bay at the Pacific Ocean, turning to face the sun dappled stain glass window of Grace Cathedral, recalling my own Catholic upbringing.


Those mornings I thought about forgiveness, divinity, clarity, direction, purpose, charity, and just how utterly aimless I was. I think in some way I was praying without ever setting foot in the cathedral. I knew I was a sinner from my upbringing, but something about sitting across the street in the park, about the willingness to search for an answer…for something deeper, but I could not bring myself to go inside.

On my last night in San Francisco, a very dense foggy night, my companions and I strolled through the mists, in a glowing slightly drunk swagger. There I was, I thought I was wise; very early 30s, a touch of grey at my temple, in one of the greatest cities in the world. Elegant, "living fast and dying young" like a real rock and roller beatnik non-pink anti-establishment slacker…slouching toward Bethlehem…We stopped in the park at Grace Cathedral Hill…laughing as the drizzle fell. I put a cocktail umbrella in women’s hair like a flower. I brushed her locks back from her forehead as she looked up into my eyes. We laughed and she hugged me tight. I never saw or spoke to her again.

The next morning I flew back to Kalamazoo, Michigan - but I suppose that's another story for another time.