Should
I Have Said More?
Under the Influence of Sausalito
Written by Dan McDonald
The right Psychologist could
probably tell me the nature of whatever personality disorder I have. I do suspect I have one of some sort. Perhaps it is common however among human
beings to wonder if today I have spoken too much or should I have said
more? I’ve done one of those two options
far more often I think than I have ever had that moment of saying just the
right amount and the right words. I had
a couple of times when this happened in my California vacation. In this blog I will tell you about an early
evening in Sausalito, when I wondered when I left if I should have said
more. Because sometimes you find someone
intriguing and a question hangs around your head and you think it probably
would be really just wrong to ask it.
But you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t have said something.
Sausalito is a beautiful town. I meant to take a photograph of how the small
town just north of the Golden Gate Bridge is built on a hill that descends to
the bay where wonderful one of a kind shops, restaurants, galleries, and
marinas are filled with people enjoying beautiful architecture, the smell of
the bay, and a view of San Francisco rising up out of the opposing shoreline of
the inlet of the bay bridged by the Golden Gate. Sausalito is like an enchanted romantic place
where hills and beautiful architecture, curious visitors all make a journey to
the piers where sea and hills and humanity seem to meet in an embrace. It is just the place where someone single
might see someone and imagine saying something, and then think better of it
because sometimes there is this common sense about us that keeps romance from
making fools of us.
I didn’t take any photos of
Sausalito’s hills descending towards the bay but there are some on the
internet. So I borrow one of these to
show you the beauty of Sausalito.
A city seemingly created for a postcard
It was here that I wondered if I
maybe I should have said something to the lady sitting alone at a table along
the street outside of the restaurant. My
table, where I sat alone was next to her table.
I was enjoying the beauty of the village, the smell of the bay, and the pleasant
one of its kind shops. I had walked
along the street at the bottom of the hill near the bay and imagining I would
eat fish was surprised by what looked like one of the most sumptuous roast
chicken plates I had ever seen. So that
is where I decided to eat.
I did take a photograph of the restaurant where I ate
in Sausalito.
The lady, who sat a few minutes later at the table near
me, ordered a drink and a snack. She
then pulled a book from her bag and began to read her book. That is when my mind went to work
overanalyzing the situation. We play
this game sometime, where we try to figure out a person by looking at what they
are doing without asking them a question.
All we are really doing of course is feeding our imaginations and
creating a character that is the figment of our thoughts. I wondered in my own mind why given such a
beautiful location why one would read a book at an outside table near a nice
little restaurant. I suppose that if one
were asked such a question they might answer, “why would you read a book in a
room with four walls, a chair and a desk, when you could sit at a café, smell
the ocean, be surrounded with people, and beauty? That would have been an answer that would
have led me to say, “I never thought about that. Maybe I would get more books read if I did
think like that.”
But those weren’t the thoughts I thought when seeing
the lady read her book. Reading some of
my own experiences into hers I wondered to myself, “I wonder if she reads
because she doesn’t want anybody to interrupt her, or because she really hopes
someone would interrupt her reading.” I
also wondered does she really know what she wants. Again that was my reading (figurative) of
myself into her reading (literal). I
have sometimes sought to be alone thinking that is all I really wanted. But when the day was done what I discovered
was that I really wanted someone to tell me that I was not alone. That is how we are sometimes, imagining how
happy we would be if we could be alone, when in the end our day brightens up
because somebody proves to us we aren’t alone.
I didn’t say anything to the lady reading her
book. After she left the waitress
started to pick up my glass to pour some more water and it dropped from her
hands and broke. Some of the glass fell
on the floor behind me and she was a bit flustered, but handled it well. So although I didn’t say much to her either,
I guess it was the ocean bay breeze having an effect on me, because I gave her
a generous tip and wrote something on the bottom of the bill. I wrote something along the lines: “Never forget how beautiful it is where you
live.”
I then got up and walked some more and took a
photograph of the architecture of the Sausalito Hotel:
I
started thinking of returning across the Golden Gate Bridge to the San
Francisco area. San Francisco looked
like this at the time from the Sausalito side of the bay:
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