Back to Berkeley

This week, I closed on my house and moved from Sausalito to Berkeley. Imagine going from Fantasy Island to an advanced class on geo-political relationships in the developing world; from light and airy to intense and engaged; from high self-esteem to self-righteous-esteem. Not much new happens in Sausalito, everything is new in Berkeley. There are more people half my age in Berkeley: I feel young in Sausalito.
I will have fewer bruises on my arm, because I will pinch myself less, since I will no longer routinely cross the Golden Gate Bridge, a seven wonder of the world but the most popular spot on the planet to commit suicide.
When I was eleven, I read an article about San Francisco and told my parents that I was moving to San Francisco [imagine the scene: Southern Illinois town of 5,000 people in 1963]. My Dad asked, "moving when, this week?".
The allure of the Bay Area is overwhelming; its beauty, its pace and its imagination get inside your bones. When I was a journalist in the 1980s, I penned a weekly column dubbed "Living in the Bay Area". Each week, I chronicled the life-style and goings on in Bay Area communities. I discovered the pulse and identity of urban neighborhoods are similiar to my small hometown, explaining my preference for cities and small towns.
The burbs never did it for me, though I am like someone who hates New York City but has never been there. I have never lived in the suburbs, and even when visiting, my impulse is to run those long -- like dial-up -- traffic lights to escape.
People who live in great places such as Paris, New York and San Francisco beccome parochial, beleiving that we live at the center of the universe.
This post is falling out of me early in the morning as I sort out my new surroundings. The sun is rising in the East, rushing to get to San Francisco because it knows this is where it’s at.

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