22 April 2020. Laurel Lane.
Maybe I'm channeling Bobby Blue Bland, and the place is Memphis--his beautiful song, Sad Street--except that the song is people-filled and urban, whereas here--at the top of Solano, yesterday late afternoon, the view is heart-tuggingly empty. Not even sure why I included the one car, which feels out of place, except that I needed it to make the street-ness clear, whereas in reality there was just the one long strip of asphalt running into the distance, dark patches of trees--atmospheric shapes, a mile off, bracketing either side of the road, and the orb of the sun, a sliver at the top, disappearing over the Marin hills. The view has always been there, just like this, in the past--when you'd catch sight of that cold gray-blue strip of the Bay--but the presence of everything else--city life, by contrast--would render it fleeting. Yesterday evening there was nothing else...
George Inness gets something of this--or maybe we learn it from his paintings? Where an empty landscape becomes a mirror for the fullness of feeling--even as we recognize that same emptiness. And in any case, empty isn't the right word...
There was one figure, though. I saw him first on the steps of the line of shops just below Colusa--24-Hour Fitness, Marie-somebody's Wellness and Skincare, North Berkeley Investments--a plausible microcosm of what brought us to this juncture (I was going to say juncture of emptiness, but that would be too much)--and in any case, the young guy was appealing--I'd seen him many times before, one of the denizens of that part of the street--tall, even elegant, with his long hair and narrow frame--an explorer, maybe, or even a model--except that his clothes were soiled, and as he appeared again rounding the corner a few minutes later, I heard a bit of his crazed laughter...
Walking from the top, all the way down Solano, unbelievably peaceful--if for all the wrong reasons. Same sensation earlier when I first looked up at the mist on the hills--as if that were their true state--just that way, forever...
