Northbound

Dear Friend,

Northbound. Weekend Schedule. Trains every half hour crawling up the spine of the South Bay, snakes of striped steel racing along the newly electrified rails. Past flat-roofed homes that have never felt the kiss of snow, parks lush with trees that have never smelled the City air, quiet suburbs that have never heard the cries of traffic in heat. Palo Alto, San Mateo, San Bruno. Names smooth as river stones, left unturned from when the Spaniards rode through wild alfalfa fields tall as their horses, now swallowed into an America that counts Paris, Rome, and Memphis among its legions of paper towns. Mountain View, Menlo Park, Millbrae. Names not quite so smooth, that rise with the rolling hills made verdant by this winter’s rains, that fall with the morning fog that sweeps across the City’s shadow and down into the Long Valley.

Oh, California. You are a quality of light, a shade of blue sky, a warmth to the sun. You are the whistling of swaying palms, the chorus of crashing waves, the birdsong that greets me every morning. You are so profligate in your beauty, and yet I know this is only your opening act. For it is nearly Spring, and already the perfume of virgin flowers is heavy in the air, and the earthy scents of gardener's mulch promises lush fields of wildflowers and summergrass. We are due for a Superbloom this year.

But you are not without your vices, for you are also the Waymos that have begun to venture down into the South Bay, the billboards boasting "sock-two compliance" to drivers on the "one-oh-one", the herds of researchers and "nine-nine-six startup-preneurs" swarming through the Dogpatch. There is a fever in the Valley, but I suppose that isn't entirely new. There has always been so much boiling beneath your calm, in this cradle of innovation that lies at your heart. This is simply the latest wave of an endless tide.

I am no saint either, for I have returned to don a new mask and play my part in your masquerade. In two weeks, we shall dance, and what a dance it shall be. I must charm the snakes, the saints, the sinners in your garden, to win your love, your favor. Such are the rules, here in the Valley. The game demands to be played, and so it shall be. I must hope that the odds be in my favor.

But right here, right now, there is no dance, no mask, just the quiet of the Caltrain as it shoots up, past South San Francisco and Bayshore and 22nd Street. Today, I am off to the City, to see old friends. The type of friends with which silence may stretch across so many moons, but laughter always feels like warm sunlight when we do fall back together into orbit. With which an unplanned Saturday turns into a joyful memory, and an afternoon becomes a scenic stop along some greater journey.

Together, we will laugh and feast and warm our souls, and the months shall not feel so long as they have been.

Forevermore, Eden