The Bridges of San Francisco

(Not the Bay Bridge, the other one.)

I love this city, but I don't think I could live here for very long.

I realised this yesterday as we were driving across the Bay Bridge to Oakland. It's a long road bridge that stretches across the Bay in two decks: the upper, open to the sky and with views of the water, is for traffic heading into the city; the lower, leading to California proper, is a claustrophobic corridor of covered steel. Even on a Sunday, with only moderate traffic, getting across the bridge took too long and I started feeling anxious. On a week day, at rush hour, say, with the cars at standstill, I know I would find it extremely difficult to cope.

Because of earthquakes, of course. There will be one, at some point. In Houston our natural disaster of choice is the hurricane - dreadful, destructive, life-wrecking things, but we get a fair bit of warning and one can get out of the way. Earthquakes don't give sufficient notice. As a visitor, for a few days, this doesn't worry me. I think I could stay quite a long while, in fact, and I would carry on feeling fine. Until I found myself on one of the bridges, moving slowly, and, suddenly, I would be horribly aware that one could happen in an instant and there would be almost no chance of survival.

The murders that were committed in Aurora, CO, took place while we were getting ready to fly to California; we weren't properly aware what had happened for a long while after we had landed. You know all about the anger, horror and other strangled, desperate feelings such a crime stirs in one's hearts and guts - but something else struck me once we had finally got back into San Francisco after our trip across the Bay.

They made me feel the same way that the bridge did: suddenly vulnerable to a threat I had discounted as vanishingly unlikely. Murders like this happen from time to time in America, just as the earthquakes do in San Francisco. Unlike these natural disasters, I know they could be prevented - but I also know this country is never going to take the steps that are necessary to do so. Just as the bridges have made me nervous about beautiful San Francisco, these killings have made me despair for America. I'm not sure I want to raise my kids here, lest they get entangled with the madness of the place.

In a few days, I'll leave California and I'll forget about earthquakes.

The sun shines. The waves in the glitter in the Bay. It's beautiful to visit.

Correction

Actually, that was a lie. That isn't what happens, the crucial (and possibly slightly smug) difference being that I do often have very clear memories of my dreams, sometimes for years afterwards. I'm not saying they don't fade. And I'm not saying I remember everything. I'm not even saying that I remember any more than a tiny fraction of the total amount of nocturnal visualised brain activity that must occur during the many, many hours of my life that I spend asleep.

But, most mornings I will wake up with the after-images of a dream safely washed up on the beach of my consciousness. And, insofar as any of this has any meaning or importance, I find this a satisfying and stimulating state of affairs.

What I don't do is spend a lot of time agonising over what my dreams mean.  I'm not looking for clues to explain the inner workings of my mind or suggestions from my unconsciousness as to how I should manage my life. Having said that I do get recurring dreams, or rather recurring situations which get re-staged every now and then. That's quite interesting, but they don't tell me anything I didn't know already.

No, what I enjoy is the act of creation, the idea that my brain can spontaneously spin a scenario out of nothing for me to experience. I'm fairly certain that this was what I am trying to ape when I am writing, but I get discouraged by the wearying reality of having to think about it and having to write it down. All I really want is to have the story play out effortlessly in the comfort of the visual centres of my own brain, thank you very much!

So when that does happen and I wake up and am able to consciously remember the narrative, I find that quite amazing. And the more complex and long-winded the salvaged dream is, the more exhilarating it is to go back through it once I'm awake.

I feel I must warn you that the gnawing dread that's been building inside you, the growing fear that I might actually tell you one of my dreams, is now about to be realised. You may look away now. But I promise it's a good one: brief, vivid and not particularly weird as far as I can see, but you may be the judge.

It happened this morning and prompted this whole post, of course.

Today I spent an indeterminate time before I woke up staring out of the top floor south-facing window of the house I don't own overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I was looking across to the city. I knew all about my house already, obviously, I didn't need to examine that. But for your benefit I'll mention the pale brown hardwood floors and the luminous bare white walls, all washed clean by the sunshine that splashes in through the green shutters. Not much in the way of furniture, but then we've only really just moved here, haven't we? And that's why I'm checking out the view.

Despite it being a beautiful sunny day with clear unbroken blue skies, a thick mist has moved in off of the ocean, obscuring all but the tops of the tallest buildings of the SF skyline. When I peer carefully, I can see the cables and hawsers of the Golden Gate Bridge reaching out of the fog, although the bridge itself is in completely the wrong place. Well, it would be rather in the way of my view if it had been left in its original position.

I can see the walled garden beneath me with its dark green lawn and beyond that there's the road that dips down the slope towards the Bay itself. I should be able to see the large mossy rocks that rise out of the dark blue water. But I can't see them because the water is suddenly in tumult, writhing like a monster. Then I realise that it is crashing towards me, uphill, swamping the road and drowning grass and trees with frothing white foam. I'm not perturbed. I can see this is a small, albeit dramatic looking inundation and judge it not likely to endanger the house or garden which do, after all, have a wall. I'm just about to shout for L to come and have a look when, JESUS, EVERYTHING IS SHAKING!

Books are falling off shelves, toys are rolling across the floor (I am a conscientious unpacker after all), but that's nothing because the floor is moving, the window, the house, the whole headland is rocking and buckling. I swear I can feel the juddering climbing up inside my legs, sending my knees in useless directions, making me reel, even as I turn and try a staggering run towards the stairs. The children are downstairs, I've got to get to them whatever, but I'm thinking that I don't yet know what the rules are for an earthquake and that scares me. Am I supposed to find a lintel to shelter under? A doorway? Does my new super-duper house have a special room for such an emergency? I do hope so.

Plaster dust is falling from the ceiling. I'm just getting to the stop of the stairs. It's a beautiful staircase (more bare hardwood) but it's so steep, with several sharp, square turns. I can barely stand, but I'm just going to have to pour myself down it.

And then the shaking stops. Completely, like someone's thrown a switch. The quake lasted a second, maybe two. Everyone's all right. I return to the window. Nothing has collapsed or fallen, but there is water nearly everywhere, running along the road, sloshing and churning around drains or marooned in pools amongst the trees. Everything is still, even my hands on upon the white window sill.

And of course, suddenly, that's that. I'm awake and elsewhere.

San Francisco

Wow, different again.

San Francisco, with its peculiar topography, bridges, bays, parks, architecture and myriad forms of municipal transport, looks and feels more like something from Sim City than any other place in America. It is beautiful and odd and foreign and familiar all at the same time.

Thanks to some hefty frequent flyer miles L's acquired, I got to tag along for this leg of her November audition tour. Whilst she was stuck inside working, I got a day to myself to zip about. Impossible, of course, in such time to get a proper insight or understanding of a whole city, but it is possible to form some first impressions.

So, firstly, density. How wonderful and thrilling to be somewhere squashed up, where every square foot of ground counts. Houston is so lazily spread out that the very air is thin, but San Francisco is piled high and squeezed in, from the bay to the ocean and therefore immediately has the air of a properly exciting city.

Secondly, the hills are spectacular and stupefying, just as they seem to be in Vertigo, or Bullit, or the Dirty Harry films, or even Crazy Like A Fox (don't tell me you don't remember that, I know you do). In fact watching the streets bend up and up, the impossible angles rendered by sedate lines of traffic, it's hard not to feel part of a vast optical illusion.

San Francisco feels like a city that's happy to play up to its reputation. The cable cars and trams are all carefully preserved from classic eras whilst the buses proudly proclaim their zero emission status, the overhead cables clicking and singing with juice. The architecture varies enormously with white-cubed casas in the hills near the airport, grand and ornate Victorian town houses in the heights, immaculate classical civic buildings around (and including) City Hall and everything else, scruffy and smart in between. Every single billboard I saw was an advert for iPad, but at the same time there is a faded resort charm to the place, rather like Brighton I suppose.

It's a very diverse city, a broad mix of white, black, hispanic and asian Americans; the kids are very cool and there's plenty of delicious individuality on display from all walks of life. But, in some senses, San Francisco is very much the end of the line. There are certainly more homeless people there than anywhere else in America from what I've seen. And, perhaps not coincidentally, plenty of people who look like they are headed in the same direction: young men with wild beards and ragged clothes, ranting at nothing. I wonder if there is a current in this country that pulls or pushes people out west to California. Maybe people end up here simply because they keep going until they hit the ocean and then there is nowhere else to go.

The ocean was my favourite thing. It really does feel like the end of the world, the outer limit; especially if you are keenly aware of the time zone you are in, knowing that there is nothing beyond that is not Tomorrow. The beach itself is vast and empty, fading in each direction to a pale mist that allows mere hints of distant objects. But the sea is even bigger, of course, and emptier and the only sound is that steady insistent drone of waves and motion that becomes almost a lullaby, because no matter how large and savage are the waves that crash upon the black/gold sand, their ferocity is nothing in relation to the size of the ocean.

We went for the sunset and were not disappointed. The sun sinks fast and cleanly out of a cloudless sky and plunges in the endless waters, extinguishing itself. The last of the daylight leaks away immediately and within minutes the world is dark.

We made our way back into the city and took a cable car up into Chinatown. Getting off the cab and suddenly being surrounded by Chinese script, lanterns, restaurants, shops and people was a reminder that there really was something across that ocean after all.