The BlogHer Diaries: The City In Which I Loved You

It is very strange to have traveled across America to a city that I don’t know well and not really have a chance to explore. After stumbling out of the plane and reaching the hotel, we dropped off our bags and went in search of lunch. I had it in my head that all I wanted was a salad. But it had to be a particular type of salad (of course). Josh has the patience of a saint.

The day after we got engaged, we drove out of Washington (we had slept down by the Mall) to Great Falls, wanting a few more minutes together before we went to my parents house to celebrate with both sets of parents. As we drove out of the city, I quoted Li-Young Lee:

At the gates of the city in which I love you,
the sea hauls the sun on its back,
strikes the land, which rebukes it.
what ardor in its sliding heft,
a flameless friction on the rocks.

Washington, DC is our city. It’s the city in which I love him even when we’re no longer living within its borders.

Today, after he not only found a salad, not only found a plate of grilled asparagus, not only found a cup of iced coffee and carried my laptop back and guided me across the country, we were walking up the street and I realized as that poem popped into my head that San Francisco is one of the cities in which Li-Young Lee loves her. Perhaps it’s Chicago; it has been a long time since I read the poem and without the rest of the collection with me, I can’t remember why I thought it was San Francisco. But I do.

It is fairly cool to be in a city with someone I love inside a space where someone else loved. Even if I don’t have time to explore.

I now have to try to figure out how pressed powder and mascara work. And try not to look like a clown. I wish I had my sister with me too. She’s good at things like this.

More later tonight once I go from party to party to party–hopefully, with pictures.