i’ve come to detest good-byes and over the years and years, i’ve done my best to avoid them.

then again, considering my life that is divided between apartments in three cities (which means that i am often in transit, i am often saying hello, often saying good-bye), i am routinely confronted with a ritual that generates a lot of anxiety in me. i comfort myself, however, with the thought that no good-bye is permanent. the beautiful lie that i’ve purchased over the years is that most of my good-byes are “good-bye for now. i’ll see you soon.”

and so, it is with this thought i mind that i am now about to say “good-bye for now, los angeles. i will see you soon.” and i will also say “good-bye for now, san francisco. see you sometime soon.”

if you are reading this, then you are part of a limited audience who is among the first to know. i’m still getting around to telling my friends who live here in los angeles. i’m telling them face-to-face. not by phone, nor by email. when i’ve told my friends here in los angeles, then i will tell the rest of my friends by way of a more general announcement.

we’re moving to new york city. we’re moving back to new york city. it may be short term. it will likely be at least a year. it might be two.

the decision was made a few days ago, though it’s been in the works for well over two months. we’ve already given notice on our apartments. we’re leaving in a few weeks.

new york city is where it all began for me. the city was not my first love, but it was the first city that i lived in as an adult. it was the first city that quenched my thirst for the gorgeous cacophony of urban living.

i did not expect to return to new york right now, in this way, but when i left new york after my first stint (back in 1993), i had a feeling that i would be back.

i lived in the east village and alphabet city during the late eighties, moving up (geographically and socially) to the more central parts of the village by 1990. i went to university back then. i left new york city when i was done with school and could no longer enjoy living in the urban chaos.

but a part of me needed to return to prove myself. i was not done with new york.

ironically, this is similar to how i feel about los angeles.

i’m not done with los angeles. this city is meant to be my long-term home. i want to live in the shining slum by the sea – the venice that i have dreamed of, the dream that i have tasted and lived in, in fits and starts, bits and pieces, for the last two somewhat discordant years.

for all of its faults, i really adore venice. it is a wonderful city to wake up to. and los angeles still fascinates me. for all of its clamor, bluster, wasted space and clogged arteries, the city is filled with surprises, beauty, generosity, creative zeal, compassion and slow-burning humour.

the move to new york city is the right move. it brings into harmony several different streams that had been diverging for too long.

even though the last few years have been fulfilling and filled with adventure, by moving to new york, adriana and i will finally be able to reestablish a way of living that has been missing for many years.

taking into account the way that we live our lives today, the shortest explanation for why we are choosing new york is the belief that by moving there, we will move closer to returning to los angeles on a full-time basis. there are many compelling reasons for why and how this is the case.

the most difficult part is the leaving.

there’s a community of friends and colleagues in los angeles whose daily presence i will greatly miss. i find it hard to stomache the thought of leaving these people and their lives that i have enjoyed the privilege of sharing in.

over the last two months, i have slowly become increasingly aware of the limited numbers of days and hours that i have left to enjoy this city, during this particular time of my life.

i’ve been reminded of how nothing lasts, nothing really endures. time is always in such short supply, and i’ve wondered about the time lost to idle thoughts and inactivities. suddenly, i have a long list of unfulfilled tasks and pleasures that need to be experienced before turning east.

highest on the list is time to be spent with friends. so that’s where i’m going to be for the next few weeks. until then, i’ll see you later.

a lot of posturing, finger-pointing and vitriol has been coming from san francisco over the last few weeks, as a large number of mission residents are up in arms because american apparel intends to open a retail space on valencia street.

great.

i don’t see what all the fuss is about.

many opponents of american apparel’s incoming presence are, in the grand scheme of things, themselves new to the mission, and their very arrival over the last fifteen years has helped change the mission from an ethnically and culturally diverse neighborhood of mixed incomes into an increasingly exclusive, upscale  extension of hayes valley. as of this day, there is very little to distinguish valencia street from hayes street, fillmore street, columbus avenue, or any other shopping district in san francisco.

just take a look at the genteel clientele sipping four dollar single origin espresso drinks at four barrel or ritual coffee roasters (which, like american apparel, is a corporation). see how rainbow foods has changed over the years – ever notice the cars in their parking lot?

american apparel is going to bring about the demise of this district? it’s already happened.

i conclude this micro-commentary by stealing a quote from someone caught up in the thick of an argument on SFist:

“hipsters that come from ‘everywhere else’ wearing the clothing they profess to not want in “their” mission, typing on antique – probably artisanal – manual typewriters: does NASA know that there is literally another black hole forming as we speak, on valencia in the mission? yup, large groups of white progressive hipsters are having their heads disappear right up their own asses.

the only thing missing… is some white dude holding a sign in spanish that says ‘american apparel no en mi barrio.’”

and so it goes, thus we move on.

san francisco.

winter finally announced its unequivocal arrival last night in san francisco, with a proper storm coming through from late sunday afternoon until the early morning hours of monday. the system dumped hail and cold rain on the city, and snow in the coastal mountain ranges. the sierra nevadas, which are located further inland on the opposite side of the central valley, received two feet of snow in the last eight hours and it is still coming down.

the last few days have delivered the kind of blustery weather that sees unbridled black umbrellas cart wheeling down market street near the alabaster white ferry building on the embarcadero. some of them collapse into a heap, landing at the bottom of the bay while others end up in the hands of lucky pedestrians, who seem all too willing to rescue an ownerless umbrella while they take shelter from the downpour.

weather forecasters say that the temperature might drop below freezing during the day time on wednesday, as a high pressure system moves in. this is quite remarkable, to say the least. though not unheard of, but it certainly is the kind of meteorological event that plants itself on the lips of many chatty (and concerned) san franciscans.

even in los angeles, there is snow in the local mountains.

this is not surprising, if you find yourself in the san gabriel mountains that hover over the glass skyscrapers of downtown los angeles – for much of december through march, their shoulders are always covered in snow; but the mountains along the tejon pass, also known as the grapevine on interstate 5, barely reach 4.000 feet, and i’ve heard on the radio that it is snowing there.

there might even come a light dusting of snow on the santa monica mountains along the coast, and hopefully by the time that i arrive in venice tomorrow afternoon, the snow might still be there on the jagged green peaks to greet me during a late afternoon stroll along the beach.

THE WEEKEND PAST

in a week that is not atypical from other weeks, i flew up to san francisco on a thursday night, so that i could spend a few days with a. in san francisco. seeing that it was my birthday on friday, i might normally have chosen to celebrate that weekend in venice, but a.’s office was hosting their annual christmas party, and my presence was expected.

the mood at the party was generally sedate if not lugubrious. a.’s company has just been through a series of lay-offs, while they’ve recently opened an office in a city on the east coast – so the combination of two dozen overworked jetlagged employees arriving from the east coast a mere few hours before the party with the rest of the overworked-underslept work force suffering from survivor’s guilt and unreleased frustration as a result of the lay-offs did not make for a good environment. it did not even make for a potent environment where scandal might break out at a moment’s notice, which would have at least made things interesting and possibly memorable. people were too tired for that.

we said hello to a few of a.’s colleagues, drank some wine and tasted a drink made especially for the evening called a “baracktail” in honour of the incoming president. we listened to the dj who, despite an impressively receding hairline, somehow had a headful of curly hair style, like a blond afro. we watched the oddly coiffed man attempt to inspire the guests to dance to his combination of latin beats and holiday rock and roll, while we wondered why not one of the firm’s partners got up to make a speech (this is typical californian to not do something like that). sensing that conditions at the party would not improve, we made our way home.

during the taxi ride back to the apartment in the dogpatch neighborhood, i thought about the horror stories that i had heard coming out of the recent fiascos at several companies in silicon valley. one company hired extra security on tuesday so that on wednesday, several dozens of its middle managers could announce the lay-offs of 1.500 employees in their sunnyvale office (just south of san francisco). each laid-off employee was told by a middle manager that they would have forty-five minutes to pack their belongings and grab their personal files off of the company computers. they were then escorted by a security guard to the front door, where television crews and journalists waited to interview them as they stepped out into the cold california sunshine and the rest of their lives.

lay-offs in america have become a spectacle, with up to the minute television and internet coverage broadcast live to a world obsessed with the morbid details of failure and catastrophe, especially when such high profile “successful” companies as these are forced to “reorganize,” as they call it.

to cap things off, on thursday, this same company unceremoniously laid off the middle managers who were in charge of wednesday’s firing rounds, and thus the purge was complete. companies like these will lose some of their best people and even manage to inspire a new generation of cynics and skeptics. there won’t be that many talented people left in their companies to create the products that they became famous for in the first place. we’ll see what happens.

i see a lot of new start-ups in the future, with an attitude that says “we’ve nothing to lose.”

. . . . . . .

the next day, we met up with two of our friends, asd and nm, who originally come from paris and, up until two months ago, lived in san francisco but now live on the east coast. the husband works with a., while the wife is a fashion designer (though, since they moved to the east coast, she’s now an out of work fashion designer). we’ve done a lot of trips together with them over the past few years when they were san francisco residents, and they were our reliable dining companions when we had time to go out to try new restaurants in the city, though with the new economy (which, with christmas in mind, we now call “the new credit-crisis holiday-slowdown economy”) no one, including us, is spending too much money on things like dinner or vacations.

after a chance encounter in the neighborhood of hayes valley with our friend oc (whom everyone now seems to think looks like barack obama because he happens to be young, tall, thin, a snappy dresser, smart and black but really, the only part of him that looks like obama is the part above his eyes – they have the same hair)…. well, after the four of us had a chance encounter with oc, we enjoyed a modest brunch at a tiny french restaurant that oc introduced us to by taking us directly to its door.

we then made our way to the recently renovated de young museum in golden gate park for a survey of the architect maya lin’s recent work (which borders more on sculpture than it does on building design). there was also an extensive retrospective on the works of fashion designer yves saint laurent (which picks up nicely from where we last saw his work at his own institute in paris).

i found myself distracted by my suddenly uncovered habit of getting into angry, tight-lipped discussions with the security guards. i managed to annoy the security guards on three occasions – my shoulder bag caused consternation for one, my camera for another, and my cell phone for a third (apparently, sending a text message while standing before an yves saint laurent bridal gown is an absolute no-no).

the day continued with a twilight walk along the beach at crissy field (which used to be a military airfield overlooking the golden gate bridge and then became an abandoned airfield overlooking the golden gate bridge but now the airfield is gone, replaced by grasses and dunes and sculpture gardens and promenades).

while driving us to a nearby metro station, asd quietly confided to us that she “has trouble with red lights” after slamming on the brakes in the middle of an intersection, which encouraged a few other motorists to gesticulate irately at her. “in paris, i wouldn’t think twice about driving through.”

. . . . . . .

on sunday, a. and i planned to sail on the ferry out to angel island, the nature preserve in the san francisco bay located between tiburon in marin county (across the channel from sausalito) and the former prison island of alcatraz. the mountainous angel island provides outstanding views of the entire bay, including the city, but the incoming storm put a change to our sunday ambitions. instead, we took a train and a bus to japantown, located near pacific heights.

riding the bus in san francisco is an interesting social experiment. most people who have some money do not ride busses in san francisco, and the same generally applies to los angeles. in both cities, the only white people who ride the busses are europeans or the truly destitute.

while in los angeles, busses are genuinely underused and in surprisingly good condition, occupied mostly by cleaning people and low income wage earners. things are different in san francisco, where the busses are the run-down traveling circuses of the city’s infirm, the desperate, the homeless, the disenfranchised and the confused. in their zeal to find the exit, elderly chinese women push their way through the crowded aisle, inner city teenage kids who have no other way of getting around use the bus as their recess courtyard, recently arrived honduran immigrants will crowd a corner of the bus while a homeless guy will strip out of his clothes just as the occasional hipster in his vans sneakers will pretend not to see anything as he lowers his eyes to type messages into his iphone.

you very rarely see working people ride the busses, much less people in suits.

our friend, mg, a lawyer from new york, used to ride the bus to work, until he was assaulted not once but twice. the first time, someone threw a half-consumed burrito at him, smacking him on the side of the face. he never saw it coming and it knocked him backwards into a row of seats. he quietly stepped out of the bus, hailed a taxi home and spent the rest of the day picking black beans out of his ears and hair. he was later the victim of some homeless guy’s projectile vomiting, thus shattering his ego while ruining his suit. now a man twice defeated, he walked all the way home and stayed inside for the rest of the day. he bought a mercedes the next day and has never ridden a bus since.

nonetheless, on sunday, we rode the bus, taking us through different parts of town with different income levels and different cultural backgrounds, as the passengers who got on and off the bus along the way reflected these differences.

sunday’s bus ride also provided us with the pleasure of sitting next to a weatherbeaten vagrant who had crafted a raincoat out of a black garbage bag and wore it over his tattered striped sweater. he reeked of unwashed clothes and a four-day hangover and his skin was leathered and dirty. he would nervously swat at his garbage bag raincoat. every time the bus slowed down, he complained loudly, moaning to no one in particular: “typical, typical, some people have to work, you know. whenever you are running late for work, the bus is always in no hurry. they just take their sweet, sweet time.”

while ultimately agreeing with him, i wondered what kind of work he might be late for? it is true, also in the reverse: whenever a bus or train is needed, it will never be on time, but when time is not an issue, there’s always plenty of trains or busses.

stepping off at japantown, we had luncheon at a small restaurant called mifune, located in a small distinctly japanese shopping arcade.

a year ago today, i found myself in an anonymous hotel room on the outskirts of chicago, the unintended victim of a technical problem with my connecting flight to los angeles – a flight that would never leave chicago o’hare. i had been flying in from copenhagen, after having spent much of the second half of 2007 in denmark and the south of france while working as a production designer on a feature film.

a lot has happened since that day.

i eventually made it to los angeles, albeit 48 hours late.

a. and i took an amazing holiday to a secret location – lavishing in the extravagance of having four days entirely to ourselves.

shortly thereafter, we flew north to san francisco, to attend a.’s office holiday party (the same party that we are going to attend tonight)… a year ago, that party was fun, frivolous, there was much optimism in the air. the company was poised to open a second office in a major market, and was still bringing in new people to take on an ever-expanding roster of clients. a year later, the same company has endured lay-offs while its resources have been stretched thin in this ever-collapsing economy.

in the year that has passed, we rented an additional apartment in san francisco, starting in february, so that a. could concentrate more effectively on her clients that are based in northern california. we started again a life of dividing our time between two homes in two different cities.

we’ve traveled a lot, with very likely at least fifty flights between the two of us between san francisco and los angeles.

we made new friends from our new part-time life in san francisco, expats from paris, who became our steady dining companions and hiking companions. a year later, we will see them again this weekend, but now they are guests to san francisco as they’ve recently moved to manhattan.

down south, we’ve become closer to our friends in los angeles, with the circle of friends ever expanding. it has been a privilege to get to know these very special people.

in the mean time, it has been difficult to bridge the distance between our life here in california and the life that we had in copenhagen and norway. while we had the pleasure of taking another holiday at the family summerhouse in brekkestø in southern norway, and it was amazing to spend time with friends and family, we missed out on chances to see other friends. and, in living over in california, we missed out on many of the daily pleasures and revelations that used to be such a vital part of our life in copenhagen and scandinavia.

to stay in touch with friends in scandinavia is not difficult if it is gauged by intention, but if one uses deeds and actions as the standard by which one measures commitment, then i have failed, to a certain degree, and by extension, i have failed these friends. most friendships are built to last, but there are not many relationships that can endure prolonged neglect. it is something that i hope to improve upon in the new year.

in the last year, friends of ours in europe as well as the united states have become engaged, some of our friends have become pregnant, some have given birth, we met some of our friend’s babies for the first time. we’ve been to a wedding between two 60 year olds, and met an elderly couple who were once high school sweethearts, then spent the next 50 years with no contact to each other, then in the autumn years of their lives, both of them having been widowed, they met again, less than a year ago and now they are married. an amazing story of renewal, fortitude and passion finally requited. at a party in sonoma, we watched the two of them dance with each other late into evening and thought to ourselves that this was something to aspire to.

we’ve been to many birthday parties. we’ve witnessed the vagaries of sickness and disease exact their price on the bodies of our friends, we’ve listen to our friends’ hardships and testified to their admirable endurance. there have been family dramas and family successes. i’m grateful that my immediate family is still here with me and that a.’s immediate family is still here with her.

we’ve been to our share of funerals and anniversaries of the passings of loved ones. i still remember vividly being with my grandmother on the last day of her life, watching her struggle to breath, talking to her as she lay in her deathbed, and then i buried her many days later and traversed the outer reaches of the sadness that my father most have felt for losing his mother.

yet the funeral brought the family closer together and in the aftermath of her passing, i can now say that i have more contact with all of my brothers than i have had in years past.

in the last year, since that accidental day in chicago, we’ve seen companies fall, we’ve heard stories of friends’ lose their jobs, and some of the circumstances have been heartless and vulgar. we’ve seen friends start new companies, receive recognition for their efforts, gain access through the doors opened by success and hard work.

i’ve seen stores open and others close. just as i was getting used to living one block away from abbot kinney boulevard, stroh’s finally says good-bye after all of these years. just as i was getting used to the idea that there was nothing to see on rose avenue, a wine bar opens that later becomes a staple of my social life. my god, even whole foods has come to venice. is this good? in small doses, yes.

in the mean time, the work goes on.

it has been an amazing time to be in the united states, to be in california. i’ve witnessed something that i thought i would never see, a change in government that i thought was not quite possible, and i am ever more optimistic that this country might one day join the rest of the world instead of standing apart from it, for better or worse.

in california, i still find myself walking outside the door from our home, stepping into the cool morning air, and having my breath taken away by the sight of the ocean, the mountains, the beauty of the afternoon light and the long shadows that it casts. the simple things that make my heart sing.

now i am one year older, one year closer to forty years old. the bells that ring in the death knells seem louder with every month, though i am hopeful that i have many many more years upon this planet.

i am ecstatic that i have a. in my life, that i have my friends, that i have new friends, that i still have my health, my optimism, my curiosity.

thank you, life, for giving me these things, for your generosity.

oh how i look forward to the year to come!