open

tonight i met my friend jessica in the city for tacos at don pisto’s in north beach. (delicious food made even more wonderful by the company of the good, good heart of a beloved friend – and the baby girl in her belly!)

i just can’t get over how excruciatingly cool san francisco is, or how terribly happy its little quirks make me.

i was a bit early and my phone was dead so i took twenty minutes to soak in my surroundings. the hills were draped in fog, and the air smelled like charring pizza dough; music wafted out of restaurants and colorful houses perched so blithely on the slants of the streets. i watched people pass me and wondered where they were headed, who they were talking to on the phone, what they were worried about, why they were smiling. i popped in a couple clever little shops cozied into grant avenue under italian flags and green and red lights strung across the road. the mist moved as the people moved, sheeny and soft. 

i noticed these signs in the windows of the famous city lights bookstore, the windows below them stuffed with volumes of words and pictures and the ground below them stuffed with a trillion footsteps gone by. i thought about the signs as i drove home, wrapped up in memories i have in san francisco, and resolved to be more of an open door and open book, to have more of an open mind and open heart, to be everlastingly open for absorbing all the beauty of the vicissitudes of mortality.

thesaurus for “open”:
clear, unobstructed, sweeping, unfenced, exposed, unsheltered, uncluttered, vulnerable, frank, candid, honest, communicative, forthright, direct, unreserved, straightforward, upfront, patent, manifest, palpable, conspicuous, clear, evident, barefaced, brazen, unbiased, unprejudiced, receptive, amenable, willing to listen, ready to listen, responsive

open door, open books, open mind, open heart = live deliberately; live on purpose.