A City Birthday

My 42nd birthday was the one that I spent in San Fransisco. It was raining and stormy at our house, and it felt like a good day to get away.

The city was as we needed it to be that day......sunny and cool. Full of life and people and activity. Full of words and lights and smells. A concrete forest. Otherworldy to us rural folk.

That is why we make the trip, about once a year. To experience life with another view. To be reminded there is a whole other world teeming with energy and happenings even as we slip into the solitude of winter. Life keeps happening somewhere, all the time.

We walked and took it all in. Im sure my family looked as foreign to the landscape as it appeared to us. We were the aliens, the immigrants, ignorant of the many languages and paradigms that we saw.

I enjoyed an old bookstore, coffee from a cafe, murals and tall buildings, crossing the street with the locals...trying to keep pace with their strides and certainty. I enjoyed seeing things through the lense of my camera and my own limited perspective. And I really enjoyed pulling back into my own little driveway, to my own little quiet house, surrounded by trees and weeds and twinkling stars.