Well, that wraps it up for this series of letters; it was fun writing them but so much got missed out; did I have time to talk about the Pelicans that seem to be flying on a continual loop around the edges of the city, Mitchell's Ube Ice Cream, the stateliness of the Palm Trees, the song of Mexican voices in the Mission District, the hunger/peace demonstration on a back street part of Broadway, and did I describe the clarity of the blue skies faithfully enough?
August is all but over and on Monday I flew out of San Francisco and back to Europe. As the plane banked over the Bay and began the tiring return eastward I looked back a final time at the city that had been home for almost two months and a thick layer of fog covered everything, starting way out east, and only the skyscrapers and Bay Bridge remained visible. Tendril like fingers of fog reached past Telegraph Hill and I realised that these thoughts and stories were already being swallowed up in the Bay.
This morning I woke at 1a.m, jet lag refusing my request for sleep and I lay listening to the silence that surrounds this house at that hour. There was no siren from the fire department trucks, no footsteps from people returning from the all night grocery store, no television from an apartment down the hall.
Suddenly there was rain and in my dozy state I imagined it to be the sound of Pacific waves, but the sweet smell of earth and pine that was liberated brought me back to this place, this forest where I live.
And as the storm passed I lay in the dark and listened to the sound of a single drip falling on a solitary leaf, something I never expect to hear in San Francisco.
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