Today began with the type of morning where it felt like a toilet was exploding all over my life. Or at least my bathroom. This is mainly because my toilet exploded all over my bathroom.
I decided to push the re-start button and headed out to explore parts of San Francisco that I haven't seen yet since I'm leaving here in just a few days.
I found my legs walking me to the Grace Cathedral where my boots made entirely too much noise and I worried what everyone around me was thinking. I worried that I was ruining their peaceful visit. I worried that I shouldn't be taking pictures and would be kicked out. I saw how the other people there were taking pictures with flash and wearing running sneakers and have spent a large enough chunk of my life in New York City to instantly know they were tourists and felt a little better about my noisy shoes and non-flash picture taking. I reminded myself that probably no one was thinking anything about me since they came to see the Cathedral and not me but still had a few oh-god-there's-people-looking-at-me moments as I slid into a pew. Strange thoughts for an actress to have. Uncomfortable at the thought of people looking, watching, staring at her and yet this is how it is.
I closed my eyes and I thought and I prayed and I felt and I heard and I stopped wondering if anyone else was looking at me. I was the calmest I have been in weeks. Months. I haven't decided yet as to whether I'm taking this as a sign or not. I stayed for a while, longer than I meant to but I didn't mind. I reminded myself that the best days are usually the type where I let the day happen to me instead of the other way around.
I walked out of the Cathedral and I didn't make a donation and I felt awful. Terrible. I felt like I could write volumes on The Catholic Guilt. I forgot about it the second I got outside. I walked down the stairs and up the street and down the hill and up the hill and my iPhone tried to tell me to go one way but I went a different way and I was right and it was wrong and I felt glad that I can function without technology when I have to and/or when it is just being dumb. I ended up in City Lights Books and the lady at the front desk told me to leave my coffee at the entrance and I almost told her it wasn't coffee but I didn't. I started to go downstairs but turned around and went the other way and felt like everyone was watching me and I wanted to act natural, like I've been there a million times, like this is an ordinary day in my ordinary San Franciscan life but I was pretty sure everyone could tell I wasn't a local. I was also pretty sure no one was looking at me or contemplating if I was a local. This did not stop me from thinking it immediately but before long I did stop and became immersed in this bookshop filled with books that I have never seen in a Barnes & Noble. I climbed the stairs to the third floor and scanned through almost every title in the poetry section and wished that I read more poetry and made a mental note to start. I found Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet and I picked a copy up for Kaitlin partially because I love her and partially because I want my copy back. I went back downstairs and watched a girl pick up The Architechture of Happiness and call out to her friend that this was the book from (500) Days of Summer, remember? He remembered. She posed with the book for a picture as though she had just bumped into an actor from the film and when she put the book back without even reading the back cover or skimming a random page, I felt sad. I wanted her to buy the book and read it so it was no longer that book from that movie. I wanted myself to have actually finished reading it and I add it to my list underneath "read more poetry". I think about buying a copy but I don't. I go downstairs and understand why my legs started walking this way upon my initial arrival at the store when I see that this is where the books on Theatre and Film and Philosophy and Women's Studies are. My legs are always right. I try to look through the Theatre section but there are two boys hogging all the beautiful plays and one of them is very tall and I don't like to be next to tall people for too long so I turn around and begin with Film. I pretend that I don't see them checking me out. I like that I am someone who gets checked out. I hate that I am someone who gets checked out. They probably think I'm they're age. They probably think I'm younger. I grabbed the first book that got my attention, a small, red, squarish book about Independent Films. I began to wonder if maybe I'll see it listed in the table of contents but, no, it wasn't there. I put the book down and noticed a different cover on the one behind it. A second edition created four years after the first. I opened to the table of contents and I knew what I was going to see and even while knowing, I still took a sharp, deep breath in when I saw your name listed. I felt like I was punched in the gut but only for a second. It passed. It always passes. The punch turned to pride and the pride turned to proud and I did a little cheer in my head without meaning to. I will always feel proud. I carried the book around with me while I finished looking around but only because I didn't want to let go, not because I planned to buy it. Later on in the day I will consider going back tomorrow to buy it. I purchase the Rilke and I feel sad to leave all of the other books behind. I want to bring them all home with me and I wonder if it's strange to feel sad to leave books.
I head toward The Beat Museum and I go in and ask the man behind the desk how long do I need to really enjoy the museum and he says at minimum forty five minutes and I maybe have thirty since I left all of my minutes behind with the books. We end up talking for awhile and I'm surprised at how refreshing he is. I don't think about your name in the small, red, squarish book. I see the poster that the person who is not you purchased last week and I instantly feel bad for standing in the same room, talking and slightly flirting with the man who probably rung up the poster. I wonder if it was in this room that he realized he loved me or if it was later, on the piers. I decide it was later. The man behind the counter and I get to the part where we wonder if we should keep in touch and I mention facebook because it is safe and he says that he doesn't have a facebook. I am stunned and entirely too excited. He doesn't have a facebook. I want to be friends with this man. I tell him he has made my day and I leave and realize that I have an appointment twenty minutes away from a place I am thirty minutes away from. I get a cab and make it to my massage at three-thirty on the dot but the Do Not Disturb sign is on the door and so I pace around outside deciding whether or not to knock until I hear the masseuse rummaging around and realize he is waiting for me. I began to think of you about three-fourth's of the way through but only because of that stupid small, red, squarish book that I now sort of hate. I fight to get the thoughts out and concentrate on the hands that are clearly a gift from God. I wonder how many years I'll have to wait until I can hire this man to give me a massage every week. Afterwards, I am more than aware that he is flirting with me. Slightly and slowly but flirting all the same. I try to stick with my new vow and I don't flirt back except for maybe-just-a-little but way less than I ever would have before I decided to stop.
Later on I will watch a movie that I'll want to text you about. I'll text someone else instead. I'll climb into my bed and write this entry and have you on my mind all the while aware of the pillowcase that still smells like him. I'll start to analyze but I'll stop myself. I'll switch back and forth between tenses but leave it like that anyway. I'll remember that this entry was about my day but turned into being about you. I'll finish writing and debate whether or not to post a link to this on tumblr. I'll wonder what you and he and she and they will think. I'll exhaust myself before I can decide and put it off for the moment. My phone will light up with texts from people who aren't you and I will panic when I see that it is three-thirty in the morning and I will make myself go to bed and tell myself that there is always tomorrow. There is always tomorrow.
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