Returning to the United States after being away cruising for nearly five years without a single visit back is something worthy of its own blog. The changes in the country and in myself, the identity challenges of reentry, the reactions you get from people when you tell them what you have been up to...
With eyes that have seen many destinations, the bay area now looks overrated and with its cost of living, it isn't a very good deal. There is little energy on the streets here except in Chinatown. The Mission with the twenty something bohemians seems more like a token gesture than a place of ferment and revolutionary ideas. The Castro that once felt like one of the most sophisticated neighborhoods now feels as if their strengths wouldn't work anywhere else. Labels like "liberal mecca" seem so out of place... The most intense energies seem to be hidden deep in the confines of tech campuses with the only discernable surface indications being droves of foot soldiers stressed out trying to stick to tight personal schedules.
I spent a few weeks in Phoenix and there the lessoned learned which has been reinforced here in the bay area is that one must have an explanation for oneeself. You cannot simply just be. Without an "in" nothing will happen. Everyone is a specialist executing their own unique individual agenda. As a result, even the simplest interest takes the form of an overly complicated niche.
I naively thought that returning to the US and the bay area would be the end of my trip. Now after these observations, I remember how another
couple who completed their own circumnavigation and subsequent reentry explained to me that I have been out cruising long before I cast off the lines and that I will continue to regardless...
