Build the Track Before the Train
Diane Lane, ladies and gents.
In a fit of restless angst a few weeks back,
I ponied up the $4.99 to rent the epic Diane Lane adventure, Under the Tuscan Sun, in which she plays a recent San Franciscan divorcée who moves to Italy and buys a villa. She fixes it up over the course of the film, falls in and out of love, makes adopted family along the way, and most importantly, is best friends with pregnant Sandra Oh. It was more than worth the rewatch because, travel porn.
After a classic rom-com ‘poor me’ rant about loneliness, Diane Lane’s real estate agent-turned-friend (whose name I am already forgetting) tells her a story about the building of the railroad across the Alps. According to our nameless signore, the track was built before there was a train that had been invented that could make the journey over the mountains. The builders were certain that one day, a train would come. Diane Lane translates this to her life she’s building, accepting that with this house, she’s actively creating her foundation for the family and love she’s hoping will fill it. In other words, manifesting. Recently, I’ve been taking that to heart with building out the pieces of myself to be ready for the adventure-filled life I’ve imagined. However as Diane Lane discovers (and I am reluctantly finding), when that dream takes longer than you’d anticipated to materialize, it can get really frustrating to practice patience.
This week, sitting across from one of my soul friends on this ol’ life journey, Hayley, we realized this had been weighing on us both. She’s finding herself at a crossroads of feeling it’s time to have her own apartment, to build her own life out, but not being able to reconcile the astronomical rent she’d have to pay in San Francisco to be a single woman with her own studio or one-bedroom. After a weekend in LA with another lifelong friend of hers, who’s living with her boyfriend and surrounded by a close-knit group from their USC days, she realized she’d been soaking up their feeling of home. These friends have regular coffee shops they go to, intentionally put together Mid-Century Modern apartments, a routine they seem to love. All, of course, making her starkly aware that she does not feel at ‘home’ in San Francisco.
I immediately recognized my own feelings of homesickness for Southern California and the feeling that I’ve never truly found ‘home’ in San Francisco, either. Our families are elsewhere, and while we have adopted friend circles around us, it seems impossible to put down fresh roots on the bedrock. I was born close to here, I have deep history here, but it still feels like my connections to the City are hidden behind nostalgia and time. This City belongs to myself as a child, but it has resisted being claimed by my adult self. The biggest lesson it taught me was how to pick myself back up when I’d trip while careening up and down the hills of Pac Heights, ripping my little 3-year-old leggings, and to keep on moving, never standing still. When every gut instinct tells you that in order for you to evolve, you have to once again put miles under your feet, at what point do you listen, and at what point is it self sabotage?
In lieu of any solid answer for each other at the time, Hayley and I mused about the Under the Tuscan Sun train metaphor, without finding a way to make each other feel anything other than contemplative, and finished our dinner.
My fiancée Tracy told me recently, "you cry more in the fall". I hate that I am so predictable. But of course, after dinner, I ended up sobbing, "why could I not just have wanted a linear, definable career path, it would be so much easier", letting the feelings of powerlessness wash through me. This is the first time in my life that I’ve felt the need to shed my skin, to grow beyond my current shallow roots to find softer ground, and have continuously chosen to keep waiting until it made adult, logical sense to make large change. I have an apartment, a partner, and a 15-year old incredibly high maintenance small dog. As Tracy also reminded me, you can’t sign a new lease without proof of income, so some things must come before change. Sometimes, even while you’re reminding yourself that it really is all in your hands, a Diane Lane-esque pity party still forces its way out. We just have to make sure it doesn’t stay for too long.
The next morning, we walked outside with our coffees and the dog, and the City was covered in puddles. Crisp air and clouds were flowing by, the local seagulls silhouetted against them. The City itself had let things wash away last night just like me, making room so that we all can feel that little bit of receding tide that gently coaxes our feet to where we’re meant to go. My San Francisco adoptive friend family gathered at one of my favorite wine bars on Divisadero that evening to toast a new year around the Sun for me. Most are aware their callings will most likely take them North, South, or East, and their roots are shallow like mine, but at least we’re together for now. I’m reminded of Aspen trees, whose relatively shallow root systems intertwine and grow as one, holding each other aloft.
All that being said, I am also painfully aware that I’m turning 26 this weekend, and am incredibly young to be feeling so frustrated, but isn’t that what the sweet ache of being a Type A creative in your twenties is all about? Even Diane Lane had moments of weakness along the journey of creating her home, and damnit, if she can survive on train metaphors, sunflowers, wine, and her friends, so can I.
