Last week we went back to SF for a short visit, and my soul was invaded by so many mixed feelings.
While I was on the beach, I took a few moments to meditate. A story about me as an eight or nine years old kid came up so vivid.
I spent a lot of my childhood at the village with my grandparents. Every year when the school was over, I couldn’t wait to go there, to play all day long with other kids, with my dogs, cats, cows, everything that was alive and ready to play. I really gave my mom and my grandparents a hard time because, I don’t know how, I was always returning home with a wound. Being so involved in the game I was playing, I didn’t care about obstacles.
One day, when my gradma was cooking for the pigs, I was playing in the backyard with a friend, I don’t remember what game, but I remember we were running like crazy. Grandma finished the food, then she put it somewhere in the backyard to cool down. Right away, she told me to be careful because the food is very hot, and it would be better to play in the front yard. Of course I’ve heard what she said, but the next second I fell down with my left hand in the food. I burnt my hand, my grandma went nuts. She didn’t know what to do first – go to the hospital or call my mom. She called my mom, my mom went nuts too: “OH, NO! Again? This girl is driving me crazy!”
We had to wait like an hour for my mom to come. Meantime my grandma was “curing” my hand with ice and she kept asking me if it hurts. I was in a tremendous pain but I was hiding it as much as I could. I was telling her “it’s not such a big deal, it doesn’t hurt much”. I was afraid they wouldn’t let me play anymore because “who knows what happens next.”
My mom came running with a burn spray, sprayed my hand with it, and I felt like dying, my hand was on fire. Again, I didn’t say much, except “It hurts a bit”. Then we went to the hospital, and on the way there, both, my mom and my gradma, were asking me why I don’t listen to them.
Without being a rebel kid or adolescent, I had this problem: I didn’t listen to no’s if my soul vibrated to yes.
When I decided to leave everything behind and move to SF, I heard a lot of don’ts, of course. I guess being an adult doesn’t mean that my childhood problem is solved. Only the “game” is different.
San Francisco was my first host city in US and I’m grateful for its embrace. This city is the eruption of nature, with its hills, its beaches, and its unsteady weather.
To quote Mark Twain “The birds, and the flowers, and Chinamen, and the winds, and the sunshine, and all things that go to make life happy, are present in San Francisco to-day, just as they are all days of the year.”
What Mark Twain didn’t mention about is the fog. Oh, my! Karl the Fog was a noticeable enemy for me. You can lose yourself in that fog. I didn’t feel it at first; I tried to find reasons for how I felt while adjusting to a new culture. But after a while, the inevitable happened and “I got lost in the fog”. I was feeling small and rejected, so it was very easy to become anti social. Finding the right people to play the same game with felt like running miles and miles with 0 energy. Hiphoster suffered too because of our lack of creativity and 0 positivity. Diana was in the same boat as me. And besides the metaphoric side, Karl gave me muscles pain and Diana had joints pain. It’s true that we were living in one of the foggiest areas in the city. It’s not the same in all neighborhoods and not everybody feels the same way about the fog.
The absinthe – drinking woman has become a metaphor for the dark side of the modern age. She stands for the loneliness and helplessness, the anonymity and harshness of modern city life.
Diana and I realized that we have to change something really fast to get back on track, and regain our motivation. I believe that it’s very important to try something different, to look for new options, to do whatever it takes before saying: I give up.
We had no recipe but we listened to our instincts and changed our perspectives, our environment and our lifestyle. We changed everything, including the city.
The Sin City, Las Vegas has no fog but it has scorpions. My poor dog got stung by one two days ago.
But other than that, The Sin City, has a beautiful and growing local community, which gives us hope that it might be the right place for Hiphoster and us.
We are finding our voices and strengths with every passing day. As long as you want to play the game, you have to leave your fears behind in order to unleash your true potential.
Reinvent yourself!
