14 years later

Dear long lost travel companion of mine, I do not remember if I ever thanked you for taking me around San Francisco many years ago. It was before growing up, before the restrictions for liquids at airports, before the iPhone, even before digital cameras. And before the pillars of my life started to disappear, one at time. 

And so I am back here. In fact, I can imagine you might have been back too at some point. I recall you tended to follow patterns. Yet, I can also imagine you do not really remember the patterns of our life back then: the 5-6 songs always on the radio, so regular we called it our CD; the pancakes with nutella on campus and the Kimbo coffee from Little Italy; the rush to take the Caltrain and the announcement at the station: "it doesn't really matter where you want to go, just take this train".

Of all those memories, the Caltrain is still there, with all the irony of an old fashioned piece of technology crossing nothing less than the Silicon valley. The Golden Gate bridge is still there too, majestic. Yet, no way I could beat the perfect spring afternoon light in which we took our pictures back then, the old fashioned way, with a film. I wonder where these photos are now. Likely buried under the dust of irrelevance.

And, as a kind of challenge to the past, I took again the long walk back downtown along the bay, direction Pier 39. And I took again the cablecar, but also walked up Telegraph Hill, Lombard street and even via Cristoforo Colombo along its Italian shops.

I also came to Mission. Oh, wait, we did not go there at the time, perhaps lack of time or perhaps it was just not your style. Actually, it was certainly not your style. So, Mission we did not see. Neither did we see all the homeless people sleeping in the street, in tents or on the pavement. But that, again, was before the world started changing, back then maybe these people were not even there.

And so, ultimately, in this sunny summer afternoon, I am not going over the past any longer, but sitting on the grass burning my nose, watching elegant moves of Capoeira and somehow even looking forward to going back and trying to change the world again, one piece at time.