Anonymous

There are few places to stay in Berkeley, most either too expensive or too beat. The Rose Garden Inn is a b&b made up of four Victorian buildings and a beautiful garden at distance from the university on Telegraph Lane. From my bed on the third floor of one of the old buildings, I could see downtown San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I had a private balcony where I ate my dinner alone on the night of my arrival.


I went to San Francisco in a beat mood thinking that I was making a mistake. From what I can tell, the mood is going around. So it was with a certain melancholy that I drank wine and looked out through the cool air toward the city alone, writing in my journal with the same tone as the failing light.

That night I awoke to a rhythmic rocking as if I was sharing my bed with an active couple. I lay there in half sleep waiting for it to cease, but it went on for minutes. Tremors. Seismic, not alcoholic. It was what I needed, a good shaking up. That is what you are looking for when you travel.


Though I travel much alone, I have a hard time feeling anonymous. There is a certain liberation, of course, walking through unknown or barely known places, but when a person looks at me, there is no escaping it. I am known. Look at this woman. She knows.