is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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What Distance Does.
What Distance Does.
Here�s my latest distance-friend neurosis. Recently I feared I would not be able to go back to SF for spring break, as you know, because of the money situation. However, then I remembered that I had an about-to-expire cancelled-ticket-credit hanging over me, so I was able to swing it. It�s just that I couldn�t get anyone to acknowledge how great that was. When I mentioned to people that I might not be able to come home for break, no one said �that�s too bad!� or �that�s terrible!� or anything. And once I figured out how to get there, no one was saying �great� �can�t wait to see you!� etc. Oh how tiresome this story is already, isn�t it? Clearly no one should have to tell me any of these things. Just let me say right away that I am not posting this entry because I want to have these things acknowledged in retrospect. I am writing what I am writing as a background to my current thoughts about What Distance Does.
For me the distance (as expressed by the time between my visits) is more emphasized by my daily life (alone, away, for months at a time) whereas for those back �home� whose lives are the same except for me not being around, it�s taken for granted that I�ll always be back when I can. I wouldn�t have it any other way, given the circumstances. The months aren�t as long for those in San Francisco because those in SF haven�t been uprooted from all friends, they�ve just found themselves having less exposure to one friend. One of my SF-dears even reminded me recently that I come back so often that I shouldn�t be able to have �it�s my last day� activity-picking privileges. She said that in part because we had a misunderstanding about what I was asking for. I wanted to have Indian food, and I didn�t want the Indian food gathering to be treated like a special party for Jill, but she didn�t understand why I got to pick the restaurant. She changed her mind a little bit when I reminded her that part of what I miss about San Francisco is the FOOD, so when I say I am going to eat Japanese food and then Indian food on my last day in town, it�s not because I always have to get my way. It�s because it�s going to be two more months before I am in the town of good food again. And anyway, I thought I was just facilitating getting friends together by picking a restaurant and telling them to meet there if they could. And I did not successfully communicate with her that I was taking the desire of more than one person into account when I made my plans. So we miscommunicated, and then we communicated, and all was fine. I mention it only because that conversation reminded me that, for better and for worse, my friends don�t notice my absence as much as I do, and not because they don�t miss me. In addition there just are a lot of things about my life in Pennsylvania that they can�t understand and I often forget that. Also, for me some major socializing is jammed into my visits, which for them is probably just exhausting because it is added to their daily routine which is always already overfull. Because my friends are naturally interesting!
The thing about distance is that you can't have it both ways. You can't be there and not be there. You will miss out on things. And that is no one's fault. We all make choices, and have to live with them.
With regard to all this, sometimes I get haunted by something Perrone once said to me about people who move away. He was full of certainty that when someone moves away she (or he) cannot keep a lasting connection to a place. Perrone cited evidence of various friends of his who moved away and either never came back to town or who, over time, came back much less frequently. That evidence was enough to convince him that it must be a rule of human behavior rather than a pronounced tendency that people cannot stay close across distance. (And you all know how I feel about calling anything a rule of human behavior. It�s a cop-out.)
However, perhaps there is something else true from within the thing that I think Perrone wrongly believed. It�s not that people go away and inevitably stay away (what a dour way to assume things must go, by the way), but that it just is more difficult to keep things real and meaningful when they happen over distance and with chunks of time taken out. And maybe it is a rare thing for people to have the energy for such things.
Let it not be said that I lack energy! I�ve managed to keep in fairly close contact with my New York friends all the years I was living in SF, spending weeks of the year visiting them. The farther away people are, the harder it gets, and of course work and money and other things get in the way. Now that I�m in Pennsy, I am even more thankful that I never let the New Yorkers slip out of my solar system, because they are often my saving grace when I need to escape QuakerBubble. My, what a lovely Thanksgiving I had this year, as well as various art events and movie viewings and eatings of meals, right here on the east coast! It�s not that I refuse to LIVE anywhere but SF. It�s just that, if you�ll forgive the expression, SF is where most of my heart is.
There�s no conclusion here. When I say that I�m sometimes sad about the distance of QB from SF, I don�t mean to say that I am constantly tremendously unhappy in �my other life.� I am not. Lucky for me I adapt well to solitude, and also lucky for me I do really like many of the people I�ve met in QB, and I appreciate how quiet and pretty it is here. So, even when I feel sad about the different weights on the scales of time-and-distance between SF and QB, I am also slightly amused by my sadness. In a world like this, full of truly terrible things, this is my trial? I guess it remains to be seen whether I will inevitably become less and less relevant to the lives of people who get to stay in the Bay Area. I could even end up back there� it is not impossible.
Only time can tell such a thing, though of course human beings have something to do with how the outcome works. These are risks we take whenever we try to do something new. I�m not absolutely certain it is worth it to have left San Francisco, but I am certain that not leaving would have been disastrous to my feelings of self-worth. After having spent all those years getting a Ph.D., how meek would I have to have been to choose the known over the unknown without even giving it a try? And, anyway, I�m currently just back to Pennsy after nine days in SF, and I return to SF again in late May, and for most of June, July and August. How many people faced with a tough choice about where to live end up having it as close to both ways as I do? Not many. There are risks, but I�m still lucky. And my friends are fantastic! Everywhere!
12:06 a.m. - March 14, 2006
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