I walked. Oh good grief did I walk. I can't say anything, aside from the parrots, was remarkable or fantastic. Vistas are vistas, the sea sloshes similar on all shores. Hills invigorate and bums are universal. But it is a compact and lovely city. I was followed (or following?) a cute girl with stick legs and a buzz cut for a few miles. She also had a camera, but was not looking at faces, just views from the tall ridges. With all the trolleys, cable cars, buses, and walking tours, there seemed to be more tourists in the city than people who lived there. I felt ashamed, like I did in Dingle, Ireland and London, to pull out my camera and snap snap.
A van jolted out of a steep driveway backwards and nearly ran over a man's dog he was walking. He sort of chuckled and tightened the leash. He looked over at me standing alarmed near the stopped van and said with a thick French accent, "You have a very beautiful face. You look like a doll." I decided to speak only French when I got into Chinatown.
This worked well to add more confusion to the condensed district of color and movement, shouts, smoke, and fast walkers. "Le...um...coo-kie," I said struggling to speak English with a French affectation. I pointed at a few little biscuits on display in a crowded bakery. "Ah cookie!" the tiny Chinese woman smiled and handed them over. I slipped them into my black velvet coat pocket for later that evening. I toyed with the idea of writing down basic English words on the back of a white paper bag I was using to journal on, "Size - small", "How much?", "Does this look good on my body?", and "EU size 38 please". I got so excited thinking of the awkward bows and half-concealed smiles of embarrassment that I'd be sharing with a clerk as I tried to negotiate a silk dress, but before I knew it Grant Street emptied me out into North Beach. Slick Italian men and boys evaporated my internal monologue, and I said "Excuse me" with a Russian accent when one slammed into my shoulder exiting a store. I have no home.
I passed The Holy Grail restaurant, and then by the Delphi apartment complex. Everyone's looking for something.
I walked along Embarcadero, ran away from Fisherman's Wharf, got my hair cut in Castro, bought a pirate book in Dave Egger's shop in Mission, and a strange man in a lovely hat passed me twice in Haight. The third time he touched my arm lightly and asked what I was doing that evening. He looked terribly young, but he had a hat so I gave him my number. As I had tea in a corner store in Russian Hill a few small girls asked me to be in their Girls Club that they had fashioned out of milk crates and boxes in the back of the store. I asked them, "What will we do?" and the oldest thought a moment and said, "Work!" I frowned. "Play!" she offered.
I saw the parrots again from the top of Vallejo. I may have sat there for a few hours watching them call and organize flock flight formations. A Chinese man with a large telephoto lens attached to his camera came and sat next to me on the only bench in sight. We nodded to each other but did not speak a word in the hour we spent watching and trying to photograph the birds. 
My pockets bulged with receipts and litter I'd picked up and used as writing material. Cigarette boxes, Gatorade wrappers, scraps with telephone numbers scribbled down, used envelopes, all these I folded neatly in my jeans pocket as I filled them with ideas. I descended an acre of steps and wound up back in Chinatown, wild-eyed with ache and over-stimulation. I felt most at home there where no one bothered me and no one looked at me twice. There are few if any bums in Chinatown, and the movement is rapid. I stumbled down chilled alleyways permanently hidden from the sun, ducked under fire escapes in sidestreets filled with little Chinese children playing games and shrieking in that language only other children understand, and after many random turns I found what was the oldest Dim Sum restaurant in Chinatown. I slipped downstairs and was seated in the middle of a technicolor fluorescent room, alone except for the Chinese family that owned the place. They played cards for a bit and then most bid goodnight, off in search of food for themselves, and I was left to my soup. I ate it slowly, breaking a 24-hour fast, and closed my eyes to the brilliant colors surrounding me.
The walk back to the hotel detoured me through Union Square, filthy with young, angry people, tourists in khaki shorts, and annoying bums who were not satisfied with a quarter. I scurried, arms straight and at my sides up Post Street and over the Polk Street crest. My fast had given me an inexhaustible source of energy and I zipped by all the Thai eateries, bagel shops, auto repair places and then I dipped down into Japantown. 
I did not sing made-up songs like I did when I covered 6 linear miles in Denver earlier this year. I didn't skip or dance, waltz an invisible partner or kiss plants. I felt disembodied, quiet and desperate for signs. I didn't find any Tristero traces, so I started to mark them myself on mailboxes and trash and building signs. You can only find what you are looking for, but sometimes it's hidden so well you decide to settle for what's obvious, convenient. You start to kid yourself so you don't feel so disappointed, and that turns into resignation. I have spent my entire adult life settling and then waking up months later, my suitcase in hand. Alone, alone, I roamed the streets searching for the posthorn in neon kanji signs, scratched on to street refuse, in doorway graffiti, and constellations, no longer an English major's idle musings, but as an appropriated symbol for my own personal confusion, subversion, paranoia, and most importantly, mystery. After some time it wasn't even the posthorn I was looking for; a random midnight bus ticket to Oakland seemed silly, and crouching under the 280 even sillier. I was submerged in shapes and colors, faces glanced and forgotten, trash kicked and bags floating above apartment buildings, scents remembered, thoughts triggered and then erased, two blank Polaroids pocketed, shallow mythologies in plastic bay window sitters, a black cold filling in the gaps between skyscrapers and parking garages, a dog covered in scars, a fat woman with red fake poppies in her hair, vibrant transient masterpieces on overpasses awaiting the next pressurized nozzle and quick hand, telephones ringing and echoing down alleys, gum stuck to the pavement in a lazy mosaic, church bells challenging fog horns, the city, the city, music wafting around corners and I thought of many people I have known. The cool air seeped into my blood, but not quick enough; I am so hot with life.
