I love you San Francisco, but you’re breaking my heart
or maybe it's that I'd break my own if I didn’t choose to experience something new
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Hi lovelies,
Your witchy writer friend is currently traversing Asia for the first time—first Japan, and now Southeast Asia. (!) And it has been a little while. I’m sorry for being MIA; I have been deeply missing our little community, but April was one hell of a chaotic ride, and there were absolutely points during it and this entirely life-changing eclipse season when it was all I could do to remember to breathe. Mostly it translated to hanging on as best I could; planning a move from a city that was your home for around a decade, while also prepping for extensive international travel, is no joke.
The way April is inexorable never fails to surprise me. Year in and year out, it is always relentless, slowly unfurling and then all at once, the blossoms are adorning the trees in their pretty spring frocks and there’s finally sunshine again (the “finally” is usually negotiable in California, of course, but this year it was long-awaited).
For the past month or so, I have vacillated between feelings of bone-deep tiredness, overwhelm, happiness, fear, and complete and utter thrill for what’s to come; though I kept myself so busy with my travel plans that at first, I didn’t really allow myself to feel the move, and everything it would bring up. I was too wrapped up in the thing of it all, the far-flung pieces and discarded items and trips to Goodwill and thrift stores to offload clothes I hadn’t worn in who-knows-how-long. Too busy with the dreary human muck of moving and packing, packing, packing—we all know how that goes!—to miss my friends and family just yet.
And of course, I planned this major life change in the midst of a massive Aries x Scorpio eclipse portal—kicked off with the hybrid new moon solar eclipse in Aries on April 19, and ending with Scorpio’s full moon lunar eclipse on May 5. Of course; it really couldn’t have happened at any other time. One could even say the timing was divine. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself!).
Now, it’s May, and I wrote most of these words from a tiny hotel room in Tokyo, where I officially began the first leg of my grand adventure. I received my Reiki Level II attunements and certification from a wonderful teacher in Nakano City while I was there1. Last Thursday I took the train down to Kyoto, where I stayed, explored, and became even more obsessed with Japan, natch, before flying out from Osaka to Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday morning.
Some (not so?) brief housekeeping items
Next week I’ll do my best to get back to a regular posting schedule, with a new edition of yes, we can have nice things. Still thinking about how I’ll format these going forward, though witchy writer friend recos will take a back seat for now. I’ve thought about whether I should create a new section of this newsletter for a series of travelogues about my (mostly) solo experiences, but I think for now everything will be kept under Cosmic Kudos proper.
I’m also sharing some of my adventures on Substack Notes.
For my readers who don’t have the Substack app, you can head to substack.com/notes, or download it and find the “Notes” tab! As a subscriber to Cosmic Kudos, you’ll automatically see mine. Feel free to like, reply, share, and write notes of your own. Twitter, who?
Granted, I was slightly triggered by the launch of Notes at first—it can, after all, so easily become a scrolling time-suck, and/or contribute to the comparison game we’re all hideously intimate with on social platforms. Why isn’t my subscriber number growing more quickly? Why don’t I have more likes on my Notes? Why haven’t my words and posts been restacked more? All concerning and all-too-familiar questions.
I had wanted to avoid this feeling on Substack. It’s why I started my newsletter on here instead of building with any number of other providers; I liked the concept of “subscription network” versus another social platform, where a shifting algorithm can render you invisible at any time.
But. The words and art that interest me most, that hold my attention in this cacophonous world, aren’t created by people who are willing to wait for someone to “like” their idea to begin. They forge ahead. Sometimes it works, but not always. When it does, it’s the stuff of dreams. Or, what keeps you up at night because you’re too excited to fall asleep.
And again, it’s why I wanted to create a Substack in the first place, to share what lights me up in just that way. It’s what I’ll continue to hold space for on here, especially in hopes that those looking to do the same will find me. That we’ll keep finding each other, really.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now. For now!
The below essay is about my time in San Francisco, and the friends who became family that I made there (I don’t care if that’s cheesy), but it’s absolutely not the last I’ll write about that gloriously weird and wonderful City by the Bay. I’ll miss it and what it filled my life and heart up with, but what it gave me, I’ll know I’ll hold on to, and as I share below, I need to miss the Bay Area for a little while.
i.
I climb to the top of the massive rock that serves as a kind of isolated promontory jutting out over all of China Beach. It’s become my safe haven, this sleepy little beach bordering its big sister, Baker; I come here week in and week out, splay out my tarot cards across this bumpy surface. There’s enough room at the top of the rock that a group of friends can sit and laugh together, suck down seltzers on a rare sunny day. I’ve done so with an old roommate or two, but mostly I come alone, to sit in the comfort of the salt spray or huddle up against the cold as the fog presses its wet fingers up from the shoreline.
When asked what I think about growing up in the Bay Area—in San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley—my answer is this: As a teenager and then a twenty-something, the only thing I liked about San Jose was its proximity to the places I really wanted to be—Santa Cruz or SF. In the intervening years, another question has been posed: Did I ever see myself leaving San Francisco? For a long time, the answer was no. I hadn’t strayed far from home, I always said, grinning around at all my friends, the overwhelming majority of whom are transplants from other states. Detroit or Miami, I said; it’s where most of my people are from, but me? I’m a Bay Area babe, through and through.
It’s hard for it not to feel like a kind of betrayal, for me to be leaving now. It’s a choice I have actively avoided, even though I knew part of me has been wanting to go.
This city gave me more than I could ever have imagined, and in return I gave it nearly a decade of my life. I’d be remiss not to point out how much it’s changed, and how much that saddens me. Sure, there’s the possibility I may be back, and of course the Bay Area is always home; it’s just that at this time in my life, I need to go and I need to miss it. And getting the chance to live out my digital nomad dreams, as I’ll be doing this summer, is something I’ve always wanted to experience.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t taking an enormous step out of my comfort zone; San Francisco is my comfort zone.
It’s the place where I made my writing career happen, where I tested the limits of what I thought was possible for me in tech (and surprisingly, for me at least, made my foray into it in the first place!), where I formed lasting friendships, where I found my techno tribe, where I graduated from college and, later, got my masters—despite my mistrust of traditional schooling. It’s where I dyed my hair a million different colors (pink and blue and purple and neon green and deep, electric, vibrant forest green), took on multiple alter-egos as a kind of armor and then discarded them. It’s where I healed myself again and again with my art.
At the same time, it’s a work in duality: San Francisco is a place that has chased off its passion, dulled its vibrancy. Expelled its artists. It has pushed out and laid off its creatives. Many of its techies, now, too, most ironically. It has failed minority groups repeatedly. There is no longer such a strong and unapologetic strangeness, the kind that used to make up its lifeblood—at least, not everywhere. I remember walking the streets before deciding to go to college here and wondering at what a special place SF was, how open, warm, and welcoming its embrace to all kinds of people, music, art, and more.
I’m not saying that there aren’t still pockets of soul-affirming weirdness, because there are, and I have found my home in many of them, not to mention my people.
But it’s hard not to feel that it’s an asexual city now, in its way2. Quiet, sleepy, bored. It seems to operate as a suburb, everything closing early, not a lot of enticement to wake up and stay the fuck up, not a lot of excitement or electricity any longer—as much as it breaks my heart to write these words. (Though there are always the parks, of which there are many, all of which thrive with colorful people, day drinking, and those selling myriad cannabis-filled goodies, as they do at Dolores on gloriously sunny days!).
I will not miss the Marina District, either. (Will I?) I’m grateful for my time in the neighborhood, incredibly so for the ability to live on my own for the first time. But December 2020, when I first moved into my cute studio apartment, was an entirely different time. The energy in the Marina is not something I’d like to continue participating in, if it ever was. I am now at a place in my life where I want to prioritize community in a far more active way in my day-to-day. I don’t want to live in a place that isn’t conducive to that.
Of course, San Francisco always felt transitional in some ways. There aren’t many people who will stay past their twenties and early thirties. It struck me as I was looking through old photos that so many of the friends in them are no longer here, even moved away years ago. I don’t know how that bodes if I ultimately wish to return.
In August 2022, I wrote in a journal,
“another friend of mine is moving to New York, and for the millionth time, I wonder if I should move there too, at least leave the city. if I really do need to get out of San Francisco. (stop paying this exorbitant rent for my little studio apartment, stop paying for two spots in the parking garage, stop seeing the same people on the same dating apps before I delete and then re-download them again…)
or if it’s just that July and August in this city mean sometimes not seeing the sun for days, and I do be partaking in some of that summertime sadness. thanks, Lana.
all of the above? yes, sure, maybe. but the light is that empty stretching pearlescent white that’s so bright it makes your eyes smart and either/but/also it’s hard to think in a straight line when I feel like this.”
Not too long after, I made a promise to myself—and the Universe—that if things didn’t change within six months, I’d leave the city. It was an ultimatum, honestly speaking. Only a month later, I was one of thousands impacted by the sweeping tech layoffs.
Sometimes we don’t just get “gentle nudges” as signs from the Universe. Sometimes, it’s more like a kick in the teeth.
And it’s been difficult, living in such an in-between space, a liminal courting and questioning, shifting back and forth between being ready to go and knowing just how much I’ll leave behind.
ii.
Music has always been a connective tissue, a guiding force bringing me into contact with all of the people I’ve met over the years—the friends I made and lost, the people who have unexpectedly wandered into my life at my lowest points and then stayed, those who, like me, hung on through COVID and layoffs (not once but twice, in my case) and gentrification and all kinds of things changing the very texture of the city. Those who joined in on the day parties, shows and festivals, all the late nights—and those who fell away. Those who came back, too, to rejoin in the life I’ve built here.
These are the friends who throw a going away sendoff for me that goes on well into early morning. They give toasts, and I am somehow able not to cry. We take a group photo, timed impeccably. There is always, always, the hypnotic thrum of techno music in the background, pulsing like our collective heartbeat.
By the end of the party, I feel more than a little numb. The missing hasn’t started yet, but I can feel where its ache will plant itself and then grow, especially as my best friends humor and ply me with goodbye dinners and readings of my poetry and heart-tugging embraces.
My fear of leaving has grown; so, too, has my need to leave. Not them, never them! But generally, and eventually, it eclipses the pull in my heart to stay.
I have no wish to come across as though I’m not thoroughly grateful for my time in San Francisco, for the opportunities it’s given me and the people it’s brought into my life; that would be grossly dishonest. There will always be a huge swath of my heart devoted to the pastel houses crowding its hills like crooked and colorful teeth.
I used to say that if cities could be soulmates, this one would be mine.
And now I’ll say I love you, SF, but you broke my heart, even if just a little bit.
Or maybe it’s that I’d break my own if I didn’t choose to experience something new.
Everywhere I go there are hosts of ghosts, unmet possibilities, questions, strangenesses and faded memories, as well as the forever ones. I lived within the pages of the book I started writing here and then let the pages started speaking through me. It’s ironic that in this city where so many people refuse to grow up, that’s exactly what I did. I’ll always have my memories and my wildness. I’ll always have my ghosts and the way they spoke to me; I’ll always have that year in the Presidio, where I’ll never forget seeing one, really seeing him, coming toward me across the lawn outside a restaurant where I’d just had dinner with a friend who’s always believed in me. Pale and spectral as you’d imagine, but with arms held out to me, and I was not afraid.
This was just before I moved into the pale green house in the forest for the year I proved to myself that I could finish a thing, that I could return their welcome with one of my own, that I could speak with the spirits in the trees. I’ll never forget the cries of the hawk that nested behind my house, either, nor the swift-beating wings of the owls, their low-throated hooting, that told me it was time to go.
And it is, again, time to go.
xx
Kimia
More on this in another newsletter for sure. Whew, has my energy up-leveled!
If you’re not queer and/or poly/ENM/etc., that is. Unfortunately for me, I am not any of those things (*releases deep and long-suffering sigh*). And if you’re not using the apps—read: downloading, deleting, re-downloading—I don’t find that it’s easy to meet potential romantic partners, at least if you’re ostensibly looking for something more serious. Plenty of Peter Pans wandering around, though, unsurprisingly. But this is a topic for another newsletter entirely, and I do not want to end this on a jaded note, as all these things can exist together at once; I fell in love many times while I was living in SF, and it taught me to define my parameters of love differently as an adult than I probably would have in any other place, and I absolutely would not be the person I am today without those lessons.