Two joys

Yesterday was interesting, because two things happened to me that I haven't experienced in the longest. The first was the quiet sense of contentment, of feeling love for a place. For the four years since I've been here, I have very rare felt love for the city. It is dynamic, it is interesting, but never the gentle feeling of beauty that sometimes washes over me as I stand on the balcony in Kembagang watching the sunset, feeling the warm tiles cool from the afternoon heat on my bare feet, watching the tree tops glow like flames, and hearing the birds call as I listen to the stir frying of the woks of my neighbor, watching the distant lighted windows of homes I have wondered about. I truly loved Lengkong Tiga, and I truly loved the city as I looked out from my balcony.

But I have never felt love for San Francisco. There is just a numb association. Nothing in the city moved me in the slightest, until yesterday. I was walking on California street after work. The sky was setting. It is that clear blue that fades into a dark blue and then black. It is my favorite hour of the day, just as the first lights are lit. It was not cold, but breezy. I was walking to meet up with Lee for a movie on Van Ness. I walked up hill, past the Farimount hotel--grand and imposing. Between two tall buildings, the blue sky stuck out like a cut out, and there was a lone star framed inside the narrow strait. And there was Grace Cathedral. I took a detour and went inside. I saw the picture of John Donne, lighted candles, and the giant domed arches that made me think of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When I went outside again, I was on a hilltop overlooking the entire bay and the bridge and the lights twinkling in the distance looked just like candle lit offerings. It was just one of those rare moments, when I feel connected to the city, to the random strangers on the streets. For that half an hour I was happy.

Then, Lee was late.

The story is familiar from that point on, but that is not a rarity, so I won't discuss it here. But the movie we watched, Blue Valentine made me cry so much that I had a headache by the end, and had to sit in the bathroom for five minutes until I could compose myself again. This has only happened to me one other time. It was in Singapore, watching a movie adapted from one of Murakami's stories, and I hid in the bathroom and cried before I went out. Yikang, the friend whom I was with, suspected nothing.

Perhaps I will talk about what the movie made me think, made me feel, so other time. But for now, I just want to bask in these two grand feelings that I haven't had in while. Being moved by the world around me. Being touched by someone else's creation and feeling joy in just being alive.

Perhaps, I will go jogging today.