Sunday has long been both my favorite and least favorite day of the week.
As a hardcore advocate of Brunching One’s Problems In The Face, I find very little in life to be as satisfying as the sound of people have breakfast all round me, and while the price of eggs, potatoes and toast at a local eatery can sometimes feel wildly inflated, a good brunch spot is an invaluable find and essential, I believe, to making one’s neighborhood feel like home.
As Sunday progresses, however, it’s not uncommon for a sort of mild depression to seep into most folks (of which I am no exception), often arriving as the day settles into evening, urban areas grow increasingly quiet, and the vibrant social activities of late morning and early afternoon come to their end in a flurry of goodbyes so folks can either prepare for the week to come, or wrap up and recover from the week before. For those I know with families, Sunday Afternoon Dinner is often one way to stave off (or drown out) the melancholy, and when My Favorite Person and I lived together, we made it a habit to both be home by five pm to make our meal together and watch a movie or television show. In the years prior to that time I would frequently schedule Sunday evening rehearsals specifically to fill the space, but in the years since (which due to our home dissolution in 2020, are synonymous with the Pandemic and beyond) I have found that Sunday rehearsals have become somewhat taboo, particularly as Sunday performances (both matinees and early evening curtains at seven) have returned in recognition of a general audience that got used to going to bed earlier while we were all in lockdown. And though Sunday matinees at the Opera/Ballet will frequently get me to Magic Hour, as I walk up Van Ness I often find that the mix of nostalgia about the past and longing for the future which comes with those slanted sunbeams can end up triggering some deep anxiety and even hopelessness, if I don’t have distractions from those feelings, or channels for them.
Now, with the lazy days of high summer stretching before me, I find myself thinking a lot about where and how folks such as myself, single and maybe low on financial resources, can find places and ways to cope with loneliness in an era where that’s becoming a real issue, and not just on Sunday. Third spaces, and their loss, are certainly a prevalent topic, both fascinating and upsetting, as the world feels more and more alienated and progressively relegated to the internet.
Though currently online spaces are not considered third spaces, I have no doubt that will shift in the near future. Some of that will be due to advocacy, and while I personally loathe the idea of digital third spaces replacing physical ones, I understand and acknowledge how people unable to easily leave their homes or enter areas where co-occupancy is necessitated have benefited enormously from increased access through online avenues. But this benefit of the movement to online/everything can be done from home trend in our society isn’t really what’s being discussed when we talk about the many negative aspects of a life more digital and just because there are some advantages for a portion of the populace does not cancel out the wider implications for the populace as a whole which not only affect more people in arguably more impactful ways, but will ultimately affect that initially benefited sector as well. Those social benefits which the loss of physical third spaces entail, from lack of in-person collaboration to accelerated levels of dehumanization, need to be criticized and can be held under scrutiny even if they also make it easier to be a parent or bring the latest stage show to a housebound invalid. And as far as I’m concerned, physically engaging with the world and one another, isn’t a privilege: it’s a human right.
And is anyone actually stopping us? Well, no. Not yet, at least. But it does seem to be getting harder, either due to a lack of commercial viability when we’re talking about cafes, bookstores, bars, theatres, gyms, etc,, or a lack of civil funding and protections when we speak of libraries, community centers, parks, and any other number of locations the government seems to be cancelling left and right… though it’s usually the Right doing so. Not that I can imagine why they wouldn’t want us to have places to congregate and talk with one another. So I’m sure it’s not intentional just… coincidence. Just like it’s probably a coincidence that I decided to go back to Meeting today, my first Sunday without a matinee or a brunch or a Monday dinner with My Favorite Person to look forward to.
A Sunday which I woke up realizing might end up being a little too quiet.
Not that much talking happens at a Quaker meeting. For those unfamiliar with the Religious Society of Friends beyond the oatmeal, or this scene from Fleabag, most Quaker meetings consist of an hour of shared silence, usually followed by a greeting, announcements (administrative), celebrations (good news) and requests for members to keep other adherents in their thoughts, usually due to something that isn’t good news. Afterwards, there may be a reception or coffee hour, and if the meeting house has other activities (book clubs, discussion groups, charity organizations, etc.) then those may happen too. What is rare is any kind of sermon, other than perhaps a reading at the start of the hour. And sometimes, within the hour itself, someone will be moved to speak, but that doesn’t always happen; in five years of attending, albeit sporadically, I have only been moved once.
Even when vocal ministry occurs, it is neither an invitation to conversation, nor a moment to proselytize. Though there are no real guidelines or rules around (well, anything in Quakerism) what you can say, the whole purpose of the silent worship is to open one’s self up to what is bubbling up from within, the idea being that whatever that is, God’s behind it, and compells you to share it, rendering each of us a minister for a moment, sharing the wisdom of our experiences. Over the years, I have seen and listened to everything from a dying woman making her peace with mortality, to a young politician wrestling with whether he could compromise his personal ethics in the service of a greater good. Most of the time, however, it’s nothing anywhere near as dramatic, but regardless we nod as a congregation. When the person is finished, they sit down and the silence resumes. A silence in which sometimes the nearness of others, most of whom are at best familiar strangers to me, can sometimes provide the comfort of community which all the parties and picnics in the world fails to.
Today’s meeting was followed by a potluck lunch, but I only stayed for a single cup of coffee and quick chat with the building caretaker, who waved at me from across the room when I first sat down. The librarian who I probably know best is out today, but I still spend a few moments in the small but well-chosen library, a place that feels and smells like my college library’s thesis tower. For some reason, there is something about a designated room for the storage and display of books that always has a vibe to it, like each volume is emitting a low frequency hum. Unified they become something like the sound of a door standing open, a snowless version of The Lantern Wastes. It is comforting, and reminds me of picking through volumes to lay down with on the lawn of my childhood home, paging through idly while waiting for dinner.
Though it was good to go back, and my first time this calendar year, like many things in San Francisco lately, it also felt sort of haunted, something stuck in a past which can only be my past, but the trouble is my own past feels distant right now, some other country on the far side of a border that only recently came into existence to delineate a home I can visit, but not return to. When I found myself watering the garden a few hours later, my thoughts kept circling around the question I knew would come in the wake of My Favorite Person moving away from San Francisco: could this place feel like mine again at least sometimes, and not always the ghost of ours?
Vespers at Grace Cathedral, which happens every Sunday at six, is usually pretty sparsely attended, but tonight it was nearly half-full. A solid twenty minutes early, I shook hands with the clergy as I entered, and took my seat in the outer most ring of the circle of chairs, which they arrange around the labyrinth that decorates the space between the entrance and the pews, and which mirrors the one in the tiled courtyard outside the arching walls. A symbol of contemplation and journey, the evening altar is placed at the center, and from there is prayer, wisdom, and The Body of Christ dispersed. I never take part in the last of these, but I have often found over the years that evening prayers are comforting, meditative and poetic. The sermon this time was about the speaker’s dog, and how the dog had recently run away, only to return. The episode had taught him the value of leaving to explore, of how we must have faith that those who leave us will return, and that you can’t have the joy of a homecoming without first leaving home, or having your home left. It had also taught him the value of pawboost.com, which he assures us is not sponsoring the shout out. Everyone laughs, and he laughs too, and then grows somber. In the light of the candles and the last of the sun through the stained glass windows, we are reminded that life is short, and thus that it is our duty above all else to rush to love, to hurry to be kind, to leap at our chance to discover our friends, our family, our community. To build. And rebuild. So that the cycle which has ended finds new life in the cycle begun. So that even if nothing is ever the same, nothing ever ends.
Outside the fog was coming in, always a sign that even the Bay is ready to make it an early Sunday, and as I exited to the piano player trilling beautifully but carelessly under the chatter of the congregation, my eyes settled on the outside labyrinth, where I know on his last day in town, My Favorite Person had made his final farewell to this city and all that had happened to him there. I stood in the chill air and looked around, at empty Huntington Park, the towering hotels that were once the most luxurious resorts in the west, and the swank apartment buildings where some little part of me still foolishly believes he will one day live. Which made me think of the flat I loved, and which had once been our home, and how it would always lurk on the north side of the hill which I stood at the very top of. And on whose south side was the studio where I lived now.
Turning away, I tried to walk like I was leaping to discover, past the old people with their dogs and the young couples walking home from Trader Joes, past the bars with their doors open and their houses with their windows all aglow, past the folks on their way to something and the folks with nowhere to go.
*************************************************************************************************************
Hello!
Thank you for reading!
So, in a moment of just, fuck it, I'll give it a try, I am finally doing that thing people keep saying I should do and giving you the chance to support my writing.
If you liked what you read today and would like to show that gratitude in cash money, you can help keep this middle-aged single writer turned food equity coordinator/usher/online content creator/social media manager in the black. I accept Zelle (it's my phone number), PayPal (@stuartbousel), or CashAp ($Bousel) and I leave it up to you to decide what to give. You can also get a paid subscription to my Substack. I offer multiple options- two year, one year, and month to month subscriptions. All of them help.
Full disclosure, July is going to be a lean month for me with very little side work so… if you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please consider it. NOW IS GREAT TIME TO SUBSCRIBE. But if now is not a good time for you, I totally get it. And I promise to be here for you either way.
Be well. Reach out. You are a light.
Stuart