'I dont care about your $2 peaches'

So into the gloom I go, but my hands, a week later, still can’t seem to find any kind of purchase, I am most certainly a drift.
This week has been so hard. I started school; I had to leave G with strangers for 10 hours, two days running. My dreams of my life here are being drawn into sharp focus by the realities of being a single mum undertaking my task at hand.
And it kinda sucks.

Starting school was unbelievably hard.

Orientation; do I feel orientated- no I feel totally flummoxed.

I know the metaphor of the fog could get old here pretty quick but truly it seems that the city and I are one in our metaphorical haze.

Orientation was Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week so I had to scramble to get babysitters for G as his school was off, (oh it’s a whole other post!) I had to find babysitting for him, which I finally did after some frantic phone calls. The women I finally found were really lovely and off course not available to help me out regularly, so it would appear I am back at square one on the finding a babysitter thing, excellent.

Early Tuesday morning after Gabriel wished me good luck I headed out with a tummy full of nerves over the bay bridge. I have decided to drive at the moment until I figure out the whole public transport thing. Although people here’s insistence on 'how bad the traffic is' is really getting to me, these people have no idea what bad traffic is, they should try the I-10 at rush hour.
Anyway more on the 10 things that I hate about northern Californians later.

The traffic was busy but not BAD and as I started to climb up over the bridge a song on the album, ‘Belle & Sebastian Late Night Tales’, (which has been my soundtrack to being here) called, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever - (with The Peddlers) came on, and the cheesy timing made me sing out load for sure enough, for that one moment, it was a clear day and I could see where I was going.

As I looked to my right I could just make out the Golden Gate Bridge, a smudge of red on the horizon barely there, faint and frail in the morning haze. And as I look down at my left I could see the huge cranes on the Oakland docks straining to unload all that cheap plastic shit from china, how all that plastic could weigh so much? I don’t know. Lumbering beside them were bruised behemoths of ships painfully, slowly edging out to sea. Heading back to china, I suspect, for another fix of plastic.
As I navigated the other morning dreamers, trying to stalwartly STAY IN MY LANE, my gaze was fixed on these titans. Just as quickly as I thought I had figure out which direction they were heading in, the pale cool fog suddenly descended, enveloping them, as it seems to do to so many things I hold too long in my gaze here.
And just like that they were gone.

With nothing to distract me now I headed directly to the school and arrived at the orientation on time, As I stood there with all the Cool Young Kids trying to project a persona of cool indifference a figure walked up to me and said, ‘Lynne right?’
I looked at the girl wracking my brain for a name? A meeting? But sadly I found myself lacking.
She continued,’ I’m Maria, we met at diverseworks? , Michelle introduced us? …. You were on medication?'
‘Ah yes’ I said as the fog slowly lifted; I vaguely remembered the meeting in question. As it was when I was under the influence of some lovely codeine after hurting my back, good times yes, but vague, vague times.
So in and instant I am no longer Johnny nae mates, I have a chum. And lo and behold does she not have another chum she has already garnered from the milieu; I now have two chums, lucky me.
I walked into the auditorium head held high knowing that I will not be eating lunch alone which is, as we all know is the pits of, the first day at a new school, experience.

The auditorium is full of eager young minds, decked in their Saturday best. I felt pretty OK, as I had bought a yellow cardigan the week before on telegraph so I feel I’m holding my own.

But when the main show debuts I feel as though I have been invited to a play where the actors are all talking in Russian. Is it my foreignness? Is it my long time out of school? I don’t know but what ever it is I am lost.

It all seems so completely random and mercurial. I know that somewhere to somebody all the stuff they are telling us makes sense, but not to me.
The only thing that stuck out was that I get 10 free sessions of counseling so if my current sate of melancholy continues I’m sure I will be availing myself of the facilities. So as to avoid a chemical romance.

At some point in the proceedings I look across the room to a beautiful young woman languidly draped over the partition wall of the auditorium. And out of nowhere I know I know who she is, call it weird Celtic shit but I just knew I was looking at Lauren one of my colleagues in Social practice.
We break for lunch and I look for her to say, ‘ hey I knew it was you’ but she is nowhere to be seen.
But my two chums are there and we settle down to eat or strange lunch of two pastas and one bread, carbs apparently rule here!

My new friends are charming. Sandra from Peru and Maria from Puerto Rico they are lovely but not in my department so, my eyes scan the room over and over for a hint of social practice, when I don’t see anyone sharing their lunch I give up.
Just at that moment a women leans over and says,’ are you Lynne?’
Its Sune’ a lovely woman I had emailed and called prior to enrollment as she too has a 4 yr old, so we weirdly strain to meet over the chatter.

The day ends with us at the student exhibition space to see s performance piece. I had to peel of and go get G but really it seemed a lot to ask of us on the first day so I was happy to make my escape.
The next day was more of the same but I did get to meet all of my social practice peeps. All women, all more arresting and beautiful than the next and they all seem nice, but hell that’s a lot of estrogen.
One of them a very sweet young red head walked up to me straight away and said, ‘ so two red heads in the class how do you feel about that?’
Well I just told her ‘ listen, some of my best friends are redheads, I’m sure it will be fine’. Off course said person and myself got into on the second day over a discussion about the 4-year liberal college education, Blanco I’m looking at you here.
Yes it will be a fun ride I suspect, I’ll keep you posted.

Wednesday had a ‘ mixer’ scheduled for the end of the day so I was lucky enough to have a couple of hours to kill with Sune’
We sat talking, nursing our one and only drink as we waited for our Grad ’mixer’ to start. As we wandered over to the restaurant I suddenly realized that this experience without David here to support me was going to be a whole different beast, one I’m feeling a wee bit sad about.

The mixer was fine, everyone was really, really ‘nice’ and I was on form as only nerves and a glass of wine will facilitate. Apparently so obviously on ‘form’ that this nice guy who has become a social practice groupie (nothing to do with my lovely female colleagues, I’m sure) came over and said, “ Can I join you guys, you look like you are having lots of fun laughing at Lynne’s stories” so it seems my friends, my number is immediately up.
I just have to pace myself, as you all know I only have ‘so’ many stories. If I play my cards right I can eeak them out to last the two years, I just don’t want to blow them all on the first semester!

A little heart tug, I did feel a wee bit sorry for myself yesterday as I met one of my gorgeous new friends at the college café where I was with G. She was telling me how she was taking part in Tino Sehgal's first solo exhibition in the United States, see:
http://www.wattis.org/exhibitions/tinosehgal
Which I had looked at but due to babysitting etc cannot be a part of. I invited her to join G and me at the beach, but she said she would love to but that she had already agreed to go to the beach with the guys I had left at our table at the mixer.
And my heart went twang,
that is not going to be my experience here, staying out way too late planning trips to the beach.
But if I can have days like today then maybe I wont care quite so much, but those who know me best know, I sort of will.

So yes forward I must go, but it seems no clearer this week than last how to inch forward in the fog of being here.
My feelings of lost bearings are so, so exacerbated by the physical climate of the place, i just cant shake these feelings of being un-moored.
Let me illustrate with a short note about Thursday.

On Thursday Gabriel and I after being at school decided to go hang out down at Golden Gate Park, where Tracy joined us. I had said I could help her pick up a desk she had bought on Craig’s list up on twin peaks.

The day had been exceptionally hot, but suddenly around 4pm the sky began to darken and children started running to their mothers for blankets and coats as the rapid, cold, damp, fog descended upon them.

Gabriel, Tracy and I were already heading towards the car but neither G nor myself could believe this curtain of gloom that fell so quickly across us. Although this would prove nothing compared to the wind up on twin peaks.

As we ascended the steep vista heading to twin peaks and Tracy’s desk.
The city below us became smothered in a grey damp blanket of fog. Looking in the mirror i could see that where we had been was rapidly being eaten up by this pale grey, nothing.
AT our Google map terminus we teetered on one of the twin peaks. I opened the car doors only to have them all slammed shut by the crazy windstorm. So violent was it that Gabriel started to cry that he was scared. After many try's, and soothing words to G we realized that despite our best efforts against the winds counter insurgence, the desk is not going to fit in my car, no way no how. It was really more a bureau than a desk anyway, something Tracy and I discuss on the way down.

As we gingerly made our way down the hill searching for a glimpse of the blue sky and unfettered road, Gabriel suddenly shouts, ‘there, there, look I can see buildings... oh no their gone' and almost starts cry. I quietly realise i have no idea how to make this better for him.

Something in this place's impermanence's, which I think makes it so attractive to the twenty something crowd who seems to populate the city, Is the thing that to Gabriel and I makes it almost impossible to find a footing for our lives here?

Until my little man become comfortable with the Teutonic shifts we seem to encounter daily right now and the inability to see where we are gong I feel much turmoil still awaits me.
Maybe I’m wrong…
I'll let you know.
Lx