On Crowded Walks Through San Francisco’s Panhandle

There’s specific happiness in finding yourself in step with strangers.

To be a human being means existing in perpetual dichotomy: to juggle two (or three or four or five) juxtapositions in tandem, weighing each notion against the other with muted certainty.

My job — cutting teeth and grinding molars, extrapolating reflections and ideas onto the page — lends itself to straddling the line that splits introverted and extroverted activities. I’m inherently, innately, overtly on the side of the former social quality; I’m a reticent individual who can masquerade as a jovial winged insect under blips of manic conviviality for about ninety minutes at a time.

But I, too, am a member of a social species. Finding myself amongst kin is as vital to my continued existence on this mortal coil as securing regular access to food, water, and shelter.

Trudging through the Panhandle remains a steadfast means of communing with that first aforesaid necessity of life.

On more days than I’d care to admit, I want to lay down and remove myself from this cellulose bag of flesh and bones. I want to masturbate another two times; then one more time for good measure; then maybe exchange unclothed pictures with a man on Scruff I’d messaged precisely seven minutes prior. I want to ignore the missed calls and unanswered texts and DMs. I want to wallow and bemoan and marinate in a certain ideated state of self-loathing that magnifies mundane, minute issues into unalterable confabulations. I want to stop myself from feeling any semblance of joy. At all costs.

Outdoor concerts fall into place like a partner’s hair down the bare skin of a sun-kissed shoulder. The Panhandle always twinkles in a kaleidoscope of niceties for anyone to make meaning of.

These are wants, not needs. This is the depressed mind at work.

Those among us who have spent substantial amounts of their lives navigating around mental health ailments know the importance of differentiating between the two: the healthy, sound mind and the despondent, depressed one.

When the latter unbuckles from the back seat and tries to drive our cognition, we acknowledge what’s happening. We know it’s there. We know it’s happening — in real-time, right then and there. And we, through a myriad of trials and errors, have come to the knowledge that we do exactly the opposite of what the depressed mind asks of us.

The sheer carousel of humanity on display along this eight-block greenspace never ceases to amaze me. Or pull a smile up onto my face. Or allow me to dissolve into a moment of deep gratitude.

I rallied my lower body to a vertical position. A dozen or so Chrome tabs dedicated to gay porn were closed. I donned my usual attire — black tech pants; black t-shirt; black huaraches; black sports cap; green outerwear — and locked the door to my apartment on my way out, sifting through texts splayed inside various blue and green bubbles. I FaceTimed a friend of seventeen years en route to purchase two Diet Cokes from a nearby bodega.

A brisk walk after leaving my 160-square-foot apartment, I found myself on the corner of San Francisco’s Oak and Baker street. The last Diet Coke’s chill had surrendered into droplets of condensation from the warmer temperatures outside. Leaves around my feet scraped the sidewalk, pushed by a strong breeze.

I noticed the dissimilar lengths of my backpack’s shoulder straps; it made sense as to why my left shoulder felt oddly more fatigued than my right; I evened out the length of each band before taking a deep exhale — a respiratory release before combing in the Panhandle.

Seasons are present in the Panhandle, which is an anomaly in many parts of San Francisco.

The sheer carousel of humanity on display along this eight-block greenspace never ceases to amaze me. Or pull a smile up onto my face. Or allow me to dissolve into a moment of deep gratitude.

It’s the vanilla kisses of couples, strolling newborn children. How voices carry a distinct saccharin quality as they echo through eucalyptus trees and off busy basketball courts. When a small dog discovers an abandoned tennis ball that’s long lost its yellow stain. The slow sips of coffee I’ve enjoyed here before — with colleagues; with friends; with lovers, new and old; with the man whose promises crumbled like scraps of journal paper under the weight of dead vegetation.

Seasons are present in San Francisco’s Panhandle, which is an anomaly in many parts of San Francisco. Fall and winter bring with them crisp early morning walks enjoyed before sunlight tints the thinning trees. Spring and summer elicit flushes of cherry-red cheeks, painted by glasses clinked on the open green space.

Outdoor concerts fall into place like a partner’s hair down the bare skin of a sun-kissed shoulder. The Panhandle always twinkles in a kaleidoscope of niceties for anyone to make meaning of.

An omnipresent stillness envelopes the Panhandle at all times of the day and year, even amid the crisscrossing of warm bodies come 5 p.m. on Fridays. Today, like other days, I have my AirPods holstered. I’ve come to learn I use them as a crutch when I fear the present moment (and the thoughts that populate it) for what it might entail. Each step (sans Bluetooth headphones) is something of a love letter to our biology.

How wonderfully incomprehensible it is to occupy both space and time inside a cosmic vessel capable of making sense of tangible realities. The magic of those small clouds that billow from our maws during colder months. Like watching a fleeting summer-bound love disperse into the dense morning fog come August.

As if existing as a reminder that nothing is tied to permanence; everything’s in a state of entropy; more reason to cherish all of life’s holy happenstances and realize that pains, disappointments, and despondencies, too, will bury in the sands of time.

All of this transpires while fellow park-goers pass to my left and right.