san francisco

Amidst the ache of the past month, San Francisco has helped me. Not by cloaking my feelings with other strong sensations, but by letting me bare them and accentuate them without feeling like it was too much. The places and people comfortably crammed into this compact city (seven by seven miles, right Steph?) remind me that all these things I carry in me can fit inside of me, that I can grow to make room for them. At the same time that I’m glad that my emotional self won’t burst from the expansion of my own thoughts and feelings, I’ve always found it difficult and lacking in value to keep these things for myself. Even writing publicly this way seems insufficient. But the most I can aspire to, now and until I find something more useful, is remembering and sharing.

Living in the Sunset District means living in the thick of fog, which means that you can see the air physically and swiftly moving across the hills like it’s racing to get somewhere, and it’s especially nice watching it roll over the bridge near sunset. Running through misty mornings is not unpleasant. The slight cold makes me conscious of my body gradually warming, and my breaths register more clearly. My mind keeps going even as I try to concentrate on these physicalities, but it still helps to move, literally. It is nice to explore the streets of my new home, see the rows of shops and houses and bookstores, and discovering oddities like the pink Catholic church that reminds me of New Mexico and an alternative elementary school where I saw little Asian kids milling about in black T-shirts.


Our place is a ten-minute walk from Golden Gate Park, where it is perfect to run because there is no way you can take the same path each time. There are so many small and large treasures sitting in that park--lots of quiet trails, gardens of varying sizes and types, a baseball field (baseball fields are so pretty). It is quiet on weekday mornings, and the sprinklers make the sidewalks wet. I got a little lost the first time through (because I’m that way, and because it’s larger than New York’s Central Park) and ended up in Haight-Ashbury, a funky neighborhood lined with pot shops and music stores and old Victorian houses.


Haight is also where Raph lives (crazy to see him, five years after our first meeting!), and I’ve been lucky to dine at his place twice. The after-work (even though I haven’t started working yet) get-together-at-an-actual-place-that’s-not-a-dorm felt very I’m-in-my-twenties. Sitting around in an apartment with home-cooked food and wine, with conversation as entertainment, with jobs but not yet careers, with people from different places now with a common city of residence, makes for a good combination of settled and not-settled. Both dinners were very satisfying meals.

So much good food here, it’s the one thing I feel like I can literally endlessly explore. In Haight we had Cuban tapas at a cheery place called Cha Cha Cha. Steph took me and Leo to The Stinking Rose, on Columbus Ave near TransAmerica and City Lights, which is a garlic restaurant serving boiled garlic as appetizers and garlic-laced entrees. We sat in private booths that each had a different mirror and chandelier, and velvety red curtains.


Sarah and I had a fabulous seafood lunch at Pier 1 on the Embarcadero, overlooking the Bay Bridge. Another time she brought John to the city to eat at Tadich Grill, the oldest restaurant in California; it dates back to the Gold Rush. The restaurant was one big room with large engulfing booths tucked on the sides and a big bar in the middle, and we had cheesy-rich casseroles. It’s in the Financial District, and gets quickly crowded with after-work businesspeople, so it felt very grown-up to be there.


Last week I saw Andy for the first time since he graduated last year, with Steph, and went to the famous Burma Super Star and had my first taste of Burmese cuisine. I love how there are super popular hole-in-the-wall places here. Speaking of which, Tanvi and I had lunch at a warehouse-turned-streetfood-Indian-joint in Berkeley. I forget the name of what I had, but it was huge puff of crispy bread that took up half our table. Yum. I went there a second time with Sandeep and friends, where I again ordered a dish I couldn’t finish. Another time Aud and I searched for a Thai place and found one right when we got off the bus. I always knew the city was full of food, but living right here and seeing food on every block still amazes me. I love meals.

And having good people to eat with. It’s been calming and good for me, to have the leisure to see people I’ve seen fairly regularly during college as well as those I haven’t seen in a long time. There are few people I can talk to for long periods of time like I do with Audrey. After not having kept in touch for a couple of years, Tanvi and I had a three and a half hour conversation without pause. True, some of it was catch-up what-are-you-doing but mostly it was thoughts on the here and now, and the recent past, and connection was easy. We talked about how much we feel we’ve changed, but also questioned how much of that is self-awareness. After all, she seemed like the same person I knew in high school—then again, we’ve both changed so maybe we just changed similarly. College, being a communal experience, perhaps brings about similar transitions and feelings for most people. Some things like, how home’s not home, anxieties about growing up, the need to do things before life takes over, misremembered memories, loneliness. I wonder, will there be a time when people diverge so much that they not only move at different paces but in different directions? There are big chunks of time and experience that most everyone goes through: post-college life, marriage, settling, children, middle age, and so on. I suppose people will eventually be at different stages in their lives (some are, even now) but it seems like—it is natural and comforting to think that—there is usually a common base from which we all begin.

The last two weeks, as the rest of the Bay was drenched in heat, San Francisco warmed to gorgeous degrees, and there was plenty of sun here. During this time I saw some of the touristy and not-as-touristy sites that I never sought out before, which makes me feel closer to here. We went to Alcatraz, which was interesting mostly for getting the view of the city that prisoners had there. There was this one tiny window where the gorgeous white skyline appeared like a diorama. The simultaneous feeling of closeness and distance was sad.


After taking the ferry back to the city and looking back to Alcatraz, the island looked a bit different, less formidable, more melancholy.

Sarah and I wandered downtown and decided for no real reason to see the Grace Cathedral. Apparently it’s the largest Gothic structure in the West, which brought back memories of seeing Yale this past spring and made me miss the East Coast. The cathedral has these golden doors that were cast from the same mold as the Gates of Paradise from the Baptistry in Florence (Sarah recognized them as something from Italy, and we learned this detail looking it up afterwards).


There seem to be several Italian architectural imitations in the city. I randomly came across City Hall, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before and is beautiful, whose dome is modeled after St. Peter’s Basicila in Rome. Anyhow, I liked the building’s golden accents and its sense of length; it spans across a vast space, and a long row of trees and stretch of grass lead up to it.


I ran into it on my way to the Asian Art Museum, which is a wonderful museum. It’s divided into Asian countries and the physical space of the museum is handled really well and delicately. It was easy to sense the change as you transitioned from India to China to to Korea to Japan. The hall of the entrance and some of the rooms inside are beautiful, too, with the kind of tall fat pillars, high ceilings and smooth stone that make you feel like you could be as elegant as the surroundings. I spent the afternoon there by myself, and it was the first time since I came back to California that I appreciated the solitude. Not that I was without thoughts of being not-alone, because I thought about that a lot, as with anything that moves me enough to want to share it, especially with people who would value it.



I also saw the city’s Museum of Modern Art, which has a lovely collection of Matisse. I liked especially a portrait he did of his wife, wearing a hideously beautiful dress, a patchwork of vivid and odd colors—the one where he told people that she had been wearing black when posing for him. Besides loving the colors, I’ve always loved the value modernism places on individual perception, and how emotion gets expressed in the concrete. I still don’t really understand contemporary art, which was a big part of the museum. One of their biggest exhibits also featured Shomei Tomatsu, a Japanese photographer. It was called “Skin of the Nation” and was an enormous collection of war-time and post-war Japan and its people. Tomatsu’s eye is amazingly comprehensive; he captured the rural and urban, Americans and Japanese, prostitutes and socialites. The concept of skin was most poignant in the series of Nagasaki victims. It overwhelms you, thinking about all the elements that comprise a culture and a person.


Overall, though, the SF MoMA doesn’t quite compare to New York’s, which might be my favorite museum of all because I’ve been there three times and had such a different and satisfying experience each time. I still remember the thrill of seeing the huge canvas of Chagall’s I and the Village the last time I went there, the cold winter of junior year.

One of the most special places I’ve been to while on my break before work is Baker Beach, very close to our place (we live a few miles from the ocean), a beautiful beach at the head of Golden Gate. Warm white thick sand, cold water, and an unbelievable view of the entire bridge. We walked across the entire expanse of the beach, to make it to the cove of rocks, whose rugged, slippery qualities felt great on our bare feet as we climbed them. This is also the nude area of the beach, and it’s funny, it was mostly men who went without clothing. (In Greece we’d noticed it was mostly women, never any men). I felt happy standing on those rocks facing a sun that was on the edge of setting but still draping the water with its warmth and shine.



Then there are the places outside of San Francisco that have been great too. A few of us from high school and a couple new friends took a trip to the Takara Sake Museum in Berkeley. We watched a short video on how sake is made, and the different types; glimpsed part of the sake factory; viewed sake-making tools. There is something satisfying about knowing something about what you’re consuming. We sampled six different kinds of sake. First we had classic sho chiku bai, their most popular sake. It was hot (temperature wise), and dry and faintly sweet. Next was Ginjo, which was one of our favorites. It’s made from really well-polished rice (apparently, 50% instead of the normal 30% polished), so it has a delicate texture and flavor. Served cold, it felt nice travelling down your throat and into your stomach, and very crisp. Then we had flavored sake! Out of a choice of plum, lychee, green apple and raspberry, I had lychee (smelled just like the fruit) and apple (tasted like candy). We also had nama sake, which isn’t made by pasteurization like the others but by filterization. It had a very distinct taste (the details of which I can’t remember) and strong smell. Next was nigori creme de sake. Nigori is unfiltered sake, so it was a murky white color instead of the usual clear. It was textury and richer than the others. Finally we had plum koshu which was very very sweet, but had more alcohol than the flavored sake.


Today I went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival with Steph and her mom. I can see where Steph inherits her silliness. It was so funny watching her mom impulsively gravitate to the foods and goodies that caught her fancy, and she was as excited about garlic ice cream as I was. We had garlic pasta, sausages, shrimp, mushrooms, and escargot. We had four different flavors of garlic ice cream: vanilla, pistachio, almond and chocolate. Gilroy is a funny town with lots of farmland, and we enjoyed the dry yellow landscape. We joked about how the dirt roads we had to go through to get parking had just been freshly dug out of the land for the festival, but I think underneath the humor was a wistful appreciation for the simple life of tilling land and producing crops.


I feel welcome here, and not because the Bay Area is my home--that concept of home as a place has been growing increasingly fuzzy for everyone. But because strangers (including the man walking through residential SF with a parakeet on his shoulder) smile back at me, because cars stop for pedestrians (even though they are perceptibly slower here), because a lady offered me money for bus fare (and in Haight, people offered us wine and crack). And mostly because the sun and hills and roads seem to love me back.

Will me and this city be enough to heal and grow over the next year? It’s too soon to actually feel the truth of it yet, but I build and rebuild faith that it will be.

greece

Sunsets from the three different islands we visited, left to right: Crete, Santorini, Mykonos.

The eleven days in Greece with Andrew made up the most intensely full time I have ever had. To be in my favorite country with my favorite person makes for a rare kind of happiness that is intangible and concrete at once. Much of it was surreal, and after all the difficulties, it was continually hard to believe that we made it, that we did it for ourselves and that we were there together, just us. Even on our very last night we were in awe, not only of the place but of our closeness that brought us there. At the same time, nothing in my life has felt as real as experiencing each thing with him, far away from everything else we've known yet being so at home with each other. Absolutely everything went smoothly; any mishaps were minor. We got from city to island to island to island to city exactly as planned, and saw all the sights on our itinerary and more. We spent our funds wisely, and we didn’t go as broke as I had thought we would. I was so proud of our ability to navigate the country, quickly figuring out the subway, bus and airport systems. The combination of my previously planned course of action and his on-the-site directions made everything go so well. It would take volumes to make just a small attempt at describing it all, so I'll settle for a summary of events with a smattering of impressions and feeling. Our photos and these descriptions portray such a small part of it all, the place and our experience. That’s always the case, and as always, I have the urge to share just the bit I can express.

Athens
We flew into Athens from New York (spent a lovely night and half-day there, eating at a late-night diner and doing laundry at a laundromat and being mistaken for newcomers to the neighborhood). The airport experience was worsened by rude people and inefficient service, and the twelve-hour flight wasn't too pleasant either. Not getting much sleep on the plane coupled with the seven-hour time difference exhausted us, but seeing Athens from above made us too excited to care. After dropping our stuff off at our budget hotel, we immediately took off for Mt. Lycavittos, the highest point in Athens. The 360 degree view of Athens was the perfect introduction to the city, and we were completely giddy after seeing the sprawling white that went on and on, and the Acropolis from afar. We also went to Parliament and the National Gardens, and walked around the Plaka district in the evening. The vendors really spill out onto the streets there, very charming and festive.


The next day we got to see everything up close, and he pointed out the linked nature of our experience. From Mt. Lycavittos we could see the Acropolis and from the Acropolis we could see Mt. Lycavittos, and also the Agora, and from the Agora you can see the other sites and on and on. We were early enough that it felt like we had the Parthenon mostly to ourselves, and we spent a long time lingering there. Over the day we saw all the best ruins Athens had to offer—the Ancient and Roman Agoras, the Theater of Dionysus, the Temple of Hephaesteion, and our favorite, the Temple of Zeus. There’s something about the simplicity of ancient columns that I really enjoyed, and there was a lot of empty space around them, so you could really take in the sight in its own space. We also went to the National Archaeological Museum, which has rooms full of amazing sculptures and houses the Mask of Agamemnon, and the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, which had the opposite feel of the National Museum. It’s small, subtle, not as ancient, but gorgeous. We were the only people there so it felt like a secret treasure. The ceramic tiles and tapestries were beautiful; swirls and bright colors made for such pretty patterns.


Crete
The next morning we took a short flight to Hania, Crete. We first saw the hills hugging the sea from the cab drive, down a steep slope. Our taxi driver enraged us by dropping us off a twenty minute walk from our hotel and trying to charge us twice the fair fare, but our hotel made up for it. It was by far the best deal of the trip, very cheap but quaint and beautiful. Our room’s name was Zeus, and we had a small balcony overlooking a narrow street filled with colorful buildings.


Hania is a city to watch and walk through. We first went to the Municipal Market, where we were amused and a little disturbed by the nonchalant display of lambs’ and bulls’ heads. After that we walked around the Venetian Harbor, whose image was hard to capture in a photograph. The buildings arched around the water, so the view changed with every step.


It was very leisurely, which was nice because we were tired from all the walking the day before and because we needed to rest up for our next day’s activity—making the five-hour hike down the Samaria Gorge, the longest gorge in Europe (about 13 km, and an extra 2 km afterwards to walk out to the city to go home).

We thought we’d die doing the hike, but we actually took it on fairly well. The hike isn’t smooth; it’s steep and very rocky at a lot of parts. At times you just focus on your feet and the land in front of you, which can be a soothing thing to do—concentrating on one simple feat. The path continually changed though, and the whole experience was amazing and a highlight of the trip for the both of us. The drive to the gorge was pretty scary; the bus went over two-way roads at the edge of high mountains at a quick pace, but it was a great way to traverse the landscape. We got there early so we had views of the moonset over blue-misted mountains before we began.

Descending into the gorge, we saw so many things—different hills, creeks, rock formations, bridges…and the same single kind of pink flower bursting in bunches at various spots among the green and brown. At the end there is a narrow gap between cliffs, that they call the Iron Gate, that greets you after a trek across flat terrain. That sliver of light peeking through the gap is the most sublime culmination to a day wandering in the depths of the gorge. It gave us the opportunity for quiet time and conversation, and I think it made us feel very close to take that journey together, small bodies gliding through this massive structure.


The next morning we took an early bus to the other end of Crete, to the capital Heraklion. There we went to the biggest known Minoan palace, Knossos, and went to the museum to see all the frescoes and artifacts people had found there.


A fun part of the day was seeing the city itself, and all the Venetian buildings. We also caught a view of the city from the Kazantzakis tomb, a simple but compelling site. We had a delicious seafood dinner by the waterfront, getting there at sunset and staying until the sea was pitch black.


Lights across the sea started twinkling; one area was completely dark except for one winding line of yellow light, whereas another was sprinkled with green lights. He mentioned how in rural areas, one light usually signified a life—the lamp outside someone’s home, for instance. That sense of life was very detectable walking back to our hotel later in the warm night—a lot of families out, restaurants packed, water fountains in full spring.

Santorini
We loved Crete, but I was excited out of my mind to go to Santorini. We ended up being the only passengers on our tiny plane to the island, so we pretended it was our private jet. This, along with the fact that the airport was abandoned when we got there, caused him to deem Santorini “our island”—it seemed to belong to us from the very beginning. We took a bus to Oia, and though driving on those cliffs scared us, seeing how the island existed right off the sea was beautiful. When we got to Oia, we were even more blown away. Seeing pictures does nothing to prepare you for this place—all the buildings fit snugly into the rocky cliffs, practically dropping into the sea, and they are all a bright painted white.


The buildings within the teeny town are vividly colored: oranges, reds, blues and greens everywhere rising from the cobblestone streets. Walk a few feet from the town and you meet the vast Aegean sea that is so crisp it looks like you can skate on it, with other islands floating atop.



In absolute jaw-dropping awe, we made our way to our hotel. Having gone budget on all our other lodgings, we saved to splurge on our one night in Oia, living in a traditional cavehouse hotel. We appreciated its unique character right away—we both thought it wasn’t worth it to go broke for luxury, but to go for character. This place integrated the natural beauty of Oia into its own structure; it had an arched ceiling lined with stones, rocks nestled in its walls, beautiful wooden doorways and window frames. And it had a balcony with the most amazing view of the caldera, which consists of the surrounding islands and volcano (the same view you get everywhere you go along Oia). We also got a free upgrade to their best room, which had a jacuzzi on the balcony. When we got there he and I stood grinning at each other for quite some time. Then we headed out for lunch, where we also could not stop marveling at the town and sea, and afterwards explored every crevice of Oia.


In the evening we staked a spot at the northern end of the city to watch the sunset. The Oia sunset is often deemed the most beautiful in the world, and I felt so lucky to be able to see it. Hundreds of people come out and line the streets to watch it. The sun becomes completely circular and contained; after a certain point its rays don’t disperse from it anymore, it’s just a wafer in the sky. Andrew took the photo below. Well, he took several of these photos but I thought I should point this one out in particular because I really like it and because he showed it to me right after and asked me whether I liked it, and I remember thinking it was sweet how he valued my opinion about that kind of thing.


We left Oia the next day for Fira, where we stayed for two days exploring the beaches and the volcano. Hiking the volcano across from the island, we could see Santorini Island in its entirely, and were able to look up to where Oia and Fira sat atop the cliffs. We rode donkeys from the port back up to town, which was hilarious and fun, though he vowed never to do it again because the donkeys looked so miserable. His in particular refused to do anything; it would stop for long periods of time without moving, paying no attention to the fact that he was supposed to be carrying Andrew up to the hill. I would look back to see donkey and boy looking equally bemused.


We also went to one of Fira’s famous black sand beaches and to the Red Beach. The sand at the black sand beach comprised of small pebbles that were pretty to sift through your fingers. The Red Beach, though, was the most amazing beach I’d ever been to. Your first sight of it is with towering red cliffs in front of you, with a stretch of white sand that grows distinctly red as it creeps toward the sea. There’s a very distinct line between the sections of white, red, and deeper red once the sand hits the water. Up close, you see the gradations of red, from red rocks to red pebbles to red sand.


We saw the sunset in Fira as well; much less people were out than in Oia, but the sky was a bit hazy so we never quite saw the sun disappear, only watched it slip into the haze.

Mykonos
We were sad to leave our island, but looked forward to a new kind of atmosphere in Mykonos, the party center of Greece. We took a three-hour bumpy ferry ride to the island, and were glad to see the harbor. The buildings there were also mostly white, but in a different way from Santorini. They were boxier, and also often had the same parts that were colored. Like a row of white houses whose stairway railings were painted different colors: one house blue, another red. The roads were the same throughout the town: squares of stone separated from one another with thick white paint (we actually saw a man painting the roads at one point).


We first set out to explore the town, seeing the churches, Little Venice and the five windmills overlooking the water. We caught the sunset near the windmills later, and it was a nice moment. No one was really out, and the sun set very slowly, sinking almost imperceptibly into the sea. It was very quiet in the afternoon, and we sensed that the town hadn’t woken up yet. During our wanderings we came across a giant pink pelican, a famous creature in Mykonos and sometimes rare to see. He was pretty excited about that, and it was nice to have a private viewing—the next day the birds came traisping near outdoor taverns where tourists flocked to them, taking photos and laughing at their peculiar silliness.


Anyhow, on our first night in Mykonos we went out, bar-hopping and dancing, running into a packed gay club by accident—it was fun but not quite as crazy as we had envisioned…we were probably a little early. Lots of clubs and places don’t even open until midnight there, and they stay open until morning. We only stayed out until 3 or so, because we had to get up the next morning to go to Delos.

Delos is a tiny island, now completely uninhabited but once the sacred center of the Cyclades. Seeing the ruins there was unique because it was an entire region frozen in time…walking through, we’d come across mosaics and temples and sculptures. We hiked a mountain to see the entire island, and it was amazing to think the whole place was a sort of artifact. It was a hot and tiring expedition though, so we spent the latter half of the day on Mykonos’s white-sand beaches, enjoying the clear clear and cold waters.


Athens
We took a short flight back to Athens to spend our last day in Greece. During the ride to the airport I thought maybe it would have been better to fly back to NY from wherever we ended in Greece instead of returning to Athens, but after the day was over I couldn’t imagine spending it any other way. We came full circle by revisiting Athens. The first day, we’d seen a panoramic view and the last day, we saw it up close. Because we’d seen all the major sights the city had to offer, we were free to wander. Instead of seeking out particular things as we had the first, we explored. We went to the port to find that it wasn’t anything special, found a delicious ice cream parlor (we had so much ice cream on the trip), and stumbled into the poet sandalmaker’s shop. The shop is a family business that handmakes leather sandals; they had a collection of sandals with different names, some of them named after famous people who had bought them (John Lennon, Jackie O, Sophia Loren). The poet sandalmaker refers to one of the owners (his son was currently manning the store when we got there) who creates sandals and poetry, who says that a writer must have another occupation in order to truly write. That idea, the necessity of experience in order to convey life in words, was personal and touching. We went in and out of the store several times before deciding to get sandals for ourselves. His had to be adjusted, so we got to see the person’s handiwork in play right in front of us. We hadn’t bought anything during the trip, but we thought the sandals would be the perfect memento. They get darker and more brown with wear and exposure to the sun, so that the artistry of the sandalmaker continues with time. We found that notion of continuance fitting for us, feeling that our experience here wouldn’t be bound by geography once we returned, but would stay with us as time passes and as we grow. The same goes for our relationship.


We did a lot of window-shopping in the Monastiraki and Plaka districts, as he tried to find something for his brother, and in the evening headed to dinner. We found a place with a view of the Acropolis and Agora so that we could watch them light up as night fell. Yet another way of closing our time—on the first day, seeing the Acropolis in light and on the last, in the dark. I love how in these places, it is so easy to find a view—so many things are visible from different points in the city. I also like how everyone eats outdoors, and how long the meals stretch—our last meal in Greece was a two-hour dinner…eating slowly, drinking wine, having dessert. The night was very alive, so many people out and vendors everywhere. Our table must’ve been approached about a dozen times by people selling roses. We sat and talked about our favorites of Greece—favorite meal, sunset, hotel, ruins, characters and so on. We put on our sandals, and read aloud the poetry that we’d been given at the sandalmaker’s shop. We wore our sandals on the way home, and I knew we both felt grateful for being able to walk in Greece together like that. The air was so vibrant, live music playing, restaurants still crowded late into the night, vendors with tiny lamps illuminating their products. By that time, we’d developed a habit of waving goodbye to the places we’d seen, and it was hard to wave goodbye to Athens since it was also a precursor to the goodbye to Greece altogether.


What a crazy thing to have done. We went through a lot to make it happen, to stay committed to our fantasy. A lot of things were against us. We’re so young, but maybe that’s partly why we were able to do it. I can’t remember ever feeling so fulfilled, so in awe of how powerful a feeling can be and how far it can take you. Halfway around the world, and back.