SF, 3AM

At 3am, there was fog everywhere and on the hillside facing the city, perpendicular to the kitchen window, there were squares of light here and there--like Rilke's wiesse elephants. It was peaceful, and still, and I stood there dripping a mucous-thinning agent into my tube, flushing it with this wonderfully cold fresh water from a Brita Pitcher. They were the innovations I requested of Scott when the doctors told me, separately and severely, that during chemo/radiation it would be impossible for me to drink too much water. Those Brita pitchers are the reason I always pee in the middle of the night, often coming to this window to see how much fog and light there is to see.

I would go out on the roof and look to the right to see Market Street go so unstraight through it, lined with green in the daylight, and belted with blurs of regular streetlights on a drunk march to the cluster of skyscrapers downtown, the Bay Bridge at the right arching left, somewhere down there the Embarcadero, the place I think of as one of several hearts this animal city has, and beyond, the Bay that yesterday I saw from the top of a hill as the 24 Divisadero Bus threaded through a hill spine on its way from Cal Pacific to UCSF, at least to me. A massive cloud ombred grey to the darkest bottom layer sat over it while I took my jacket off in sunshine. The water grey green blue at the same time, a color confusion so delightful that I wished I was capable of a second's photography.

When I got off the bus at Sutter, yes, in front of My Father's Kitchen: Vietnamese Comfort Food, where it was hot on the hill of Pacific Heights just a mile up here a breeze had a cool top to it, pulling the food smell out of that wonderful goal restaurant, pushing it into my face. I barely noticed because it was time for radiation, or rather it wasn't--I was an hour early. Not an exact match between chemo and radiation on combo days, so I went over to the clinic to try to reschedule an appointment.

It was chaos there, but with one receptionist on duty, a small office, and 6 people waiting and the endless phone lines ringing, Diana was pulling triple duty. The office was filled with waiting people, none of whom looked particularly like head and neck cancer patients--and most weren't. Most were someone's Scott; a child stared at me because I definitely was the Sesame Street Get--the thing that belonged there. Another child with a mother in studied bohemian chic (that cost about what my Ipad cost) sat inert in jeweled flip flops watching a video that baby talked her into a princess coma. I get why parents buy electronics, and why I should invest in any tablet maker.

After blowing almost 20 minutes trying to tell Diana why I was there when I needn't be, I wandered over to radiation to check in early. I went to the refrigerator room where we change to gowns (for me, just a switch of my shirt to a hospital gown), only to be summoned as I locked up my Ipad and backpack for an early start at radiation. A patient didn't show up and this was the happiest the tech has ever been to see me.

I looked up at the curious ceiling dotted with what I think are stars and ponder the fact that this room while not ugly is so uncomfortable, or perhaps that's just me. The machine occasionally makes spitting sounds with air, its pneumatics? its commentary on the mind it's reading? It could easily be either. I make a mental note to bring the techs cupcakes one day just for the hell of it. I like them and of all people, they've had to hear me bitch more than any of their colleagues. I make a mental note that I want a cupcake so bad I'd be willing to be seriously dirty to get it.

After radiation, I go back out to the restaurant front to await the 24 back to the Castro, and I try not to stare at people eating there. One more mental note: rude!

The 24 in the afternoon is busy, and when schools let out along this corridor of the city, a lot of kids pile in, sometimes the bus is incredibly crowded, and yet I have never seen someone fail to move from the front seats for a senior citizen, or make whatever adjustments are necessary for wheelchairs and baby strollers, and I have never failed to note that Muni drivers will call people out for not moving with alacrity at the approach of a person with a cane. You will not play that on Muni.

This fact set is a source of joy to me here. San Francisco is not physically large, but it is chock-a-block with people in the space it has, and San Franciscans are so often gracious in sharing that space, and making room, that I am awed. I think of the slouching subway louts in NYC, staring bald-faced at a pregnant woman in her third trimester after a day's work while they spread their legs out and scratch the proof that there is no god. Much as I love NYC, it suffers its lack of humanity.

It is always warmer in the Castro, and there are always more people, and it is more colorful. I walk from the 24 stop at 17th and Market to the 33 stop at 18th and Market because it's fun to walk down this block. Across the street is the Castro Theatre, the marquee that I love to see from the apartment deck, bold and colorful and, dare I say, gay. I love the fact that the raw majority of people I pass in this block walk are gay. That I walk by a skank bar at the top of afternoon happy hour, and the Twin Peaks, where the disability bears are sunning in the plate glass windows. I walk by a deli, an Italian deli, a clutch of restaurants, a place to buy clothing that features in its windows the types of t-shirts one would buy only if they were visiting San Francisco.

Today I plan to buy Scott's dinner but only if the Muni is "x" number of minutes away. The 33 is a bus I don't want to miss--this transfer carts me up the hillside from Eureka Valley to the tier of Market where we live, and I don't want to walk it lately. Checking the bus shelter, the bus comes in two minutes--no time. I wait a moment, checking my jacket to see if it has my keys. It does, thank god.

At 3am in fog, when sleep is wonderful, I cannot sleep. There is no reason. No one reason. Maybe it was the nasturtiums on twining over the fence by the sidewalk on my way home--so incredibly orange and yellow. Maybe the phlegm moving like a stalker, playing hide and seek with me, emerging without warning and demanding egress. Maybe the buzz of the machine, delivering humidity to my trach, maybe the fact that I was happy this evening, as vivid as those nasturtiums, if not so obvious. Maybe it was the fact that I have this window, at this hour, with this view, in this city, its squares of light so peculiar that I believe I'm seeing something entirely new.