Looking for the Lost

It doesn't make sense to seek out the lost, the unknown and the unexpected; it has to surface on its own. However--like I said, I'm setting myself the task of exploring some quiet, relatively unknown part of San Francisco every day, with my baby in tow--setting the conditions, if possible, for encounters with the lost.

Why?

Because this is, in a sense, the essence of writing itself--to throw yourself into an unknown terrain and hope something meaningful comes of the encounter; because I've always been someone who loves secret hideaways and unexpected encounters, and it feels good to reconnect with that side of myself; because I'm spending part of every day walking the baby and I might as well set this agenda for myself--a new walk in "hidden San Francisco" every day.

Today we went to Mountain Lake Park, a wonderfully lost park in the Richmond District. When I lived on 9th Avenue near Clement, I spent several weeks in the neighborhood before I even knew this park existed; that's how hidden it is. Yet its historical significance couldn't be much greater: this was the spot where Juan Batista de Anza and his men ended their 900-mile, nine-month trek from Mexico on March 27, 1776. They camped at Mountain Lake for two days, then returned to Mexico; in three months a contingent of about 130 men returned to set up the Presidio and "a mission three miles to the south" (presumably, Mission Dolores). You might say that the first phase of the European life of the entire region began at Mountain Lake Park, which now has busy Park Presidio Drive at its northern border, but still exudes a certain quiet charm. Its small lake attracts any number of migratory birds, and I saw dozens of dragonflies floating across the paths as I walked. The grassy fields are bordered by impressively large Monterey Pines and plum trees, and the children's playground offers, among other things, an imaginative climbing apparatus. So the park offers future delights for my son, as well as a voyage into the deep history of San Francisco.

The unexpected did not emerge here at the park, however--it came somewhere between California and Lake Streets as I walked up 9th Avenue. Time stopped, somewhere around there. By that I mean, everything became very still. No breezes ruffled the baby's blanket; an old man walked his dog off in the distance, but other than that I saw no one; the traffic noises were a vague hum in the background. Everything was very quiet, suddenly; and so the feeling came over me that time itself had stopped.

Then the odd thought came to me: "This very moment might be the exact middle of my life." This could be true, of course, if I live to be eighty-eight years old. But it doesn't matter if it's true or not. What matters is that the unexpected came to me, as I walked my sleeping baby up 9th Avenue.

Being a mother sometimes means: you feel as if nothing unexpected will ever happen again (not that babies aren't full of surprises--but after a while you feel like even the surprises are all drearily predictable). So that's why it was good to encounter something like the "inconnu" all over again--my old friend from those days spent exploring the world of the Surrealists, the Beats, and old San Francisco.