Out of the Swing

Days 25-29
Neighborhoods Covered: North Beach, though I can barely claim even that
Streets Completed: Scotland, Via Bufano (Grover)

It's been a slow walking week, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. My parents were here through yesterday morning, and in order not to run them into the ground, I cut my standard walking pace in half; and although we did a fair bit of perambulating (and they did even more on their own), we didn't cover much new ground. I have precious little to report, then, for this stretch of the project.

I'd hoped to change that today, when I had a bit of time between clients this afternoon. I even toyed with the idea of taking the N out to my second client--in the Inner Sunset, on a block of lower Irving Street that's (almost literally) painfully familiar to me, lying as it does between E's house and the commercial innards of the area--and swooping through a few streets there or in Cole Valley.

But then I realized that I don't yet trust myself to maintain my composure in this neighborhood, and it would be poor form indeed to scrape my emotions raw as I walked and then try to be fully present and with it for my client. (As an aside, it's an odd thing indeed when the person you want most to see in the world and the person you're most frightened of seeing are one and the same. I'm still so used to just knowing the former.)

So I drove instead. Even driving, though, made my heart feel a little like this. Dear InSu, it may be a while before I can handle you in anything more than the most delicate and fleeting of doses.