A Discerning Eye (Continued)

Tomorrow I fly to San Francisco. There is fear, which I do my best to ignore. I fold the green dress carefully. Underwear, socks, jeans, sweaters. Think about the future, the peace of working during the Spring rains. The Papa paintings and Daniel behind me. In the past. Healed over, healthy scar tissue, clean and pink.

The Valdivias have sent a car to the airport. From the back seat I stare out the smoked windows, fascinated. San Francisco is like nowhere else, the beautiful old buildings with their oxidized blue domes, the meticulously kept gilt medallions, stone and marble shoved up against contemporary glass boxes. Graffiti and street people and buses, jumbled in a crazy quilt of activity. There are more people on one city street than in all of Bluestem.

The wind whips through everything, skidding garbage down the sidewalks.

During my infrequent visits I sometimes fantasize about living here, what it might be like to be a part of such vitality. In the past I felt it would be too much stimulus, that my work might be negatively impacted. Now, teetering from portrait to landscape to empty rooms, still lifes seemingly lost, I wonder how much personal geography matters.

At the hotel there's an invitation for this evening, a dinner at the Valdivia's home. An Artist's Dinner, reads the embossed card. No thanks. I'll take a walk, eat something ethnic and impossible to find in Bluestem, watch hotel cable and go to sleep early.

Continued

Fiction, Writing