I'm not a huge fan of the Inner Sunset. Something about the loudness on the street, the dull cafes, the apathetic restaurants, the dismal parking situation...I rarely have a good time in that particular neighborhood, let's put it that way. I should add that there are, however, a few decent places to catch a meal--Ebisu, for instance, and on the low end, the ever-reliable and cheap Gordo's; and the Beanery cafe is staffed with remarkably friendly counter people...oh, and there's Le Video...but other than that, I'd rather be almost anywhere else, on any given day.
But the baby was desperate for a stroller ride, and I happened to be in the Inner Sunset at 4 pm. So I pulled the stroller frame out of the trunk and attached baby and carseat to it, and we set out. After a few minutes, I realized that the Inner Sunset at 4 pm provides no vibrations whatsoever. (By "vibrations" I mean, no sense of connection to the lost and the unknown--no unfathomability). One house offered a faint whisper of something more than the mundane--but only a whisper.
Set back a good distance from the sidewalk, unlike all the other houses nearby, it looked like a New England bed and breakfast, only a lot smaller and more rundown. An automatic sprinkler was watering one small section of grass on the long front lawn. It would have been a pleasant sight, but there was something dull and dispirited about the whole scene.
Nevertheless--for one split second, I saw myself as a wizened grandmother, sitting in a large rocking chair near the front window, meditating and remembering. Was this a happy thought or not? Mostly happy, I suppose. So tired these days that any thought of making it to my seventies seems a happy one.
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