You don't have to read this. It's mostly just symbolic value for me.

In an average Mediterranean restaurant after a comrade of mine departed to his final night of homework, I devoured a chicken gyro and drank ice water, not realizing that I'd spent the last of my cash. I'd just gone to the library, looking over Jung's Red Book to kill some time before going home, and all of a sudden the way home's time was multiplied manifold. I walked out onto market street, dodging some junkie and walking west past the Burger King and off to the Castro where brief panhandling for the fifteen cents I'd need to get home would be a little easier. I tried to ask people who clearly would have money, and all of them assured me, nearly mockingly that they had "Absolutely no" cash whatsoever. So I walked on. I had three hours before I had to get home, I might as well kill them with some quiet introspection.

I looked around the Hayes Valley neighborhood for a while, scouting out something for a later task and briefly browsing in Isotope Comics , somewhere that I'd frequented years ago. Back in the day I'd loved comics. I hardly read any books without pictures, opting for art. I wanted to be an artist and writer, but when I realized that art took too much time and the speed of words was malleable, unlike the stationary monotony of a pencil line, I opted to try for the storyteller's path, rather than the maker of images. In that temple of sequential art, among the toilet seats and doctor strange costume, the path began to come into focus. I was supposed to go home. I thanked James, the man who runs the establishment, and walked out. He didn't recognize me.

I sojourned on for a while. I came upon three women having a street sale, clothes and kitsch tacked up to a chainlink fence or left to burn in the sun on the gum stained sidewalk. They stopped me, offering a water balloon. It was orange, shaped like an eggplant. I picked it up one handed, shifting the weight of my book laden coat in the other hand. I thanked them, they just smiled. Only one of them could speak a word of English, and she said, faintly, "Good-Bye" as if it were two words.

Then I came upon a temple. The Zen Center. I had recently read Brad Warren's book Hardcore Zen, and the religion had sparked my interest. A man was walking on a slack line outside. An audience of ten or so people watched him, sitting in steep brick steps. I walked past, then realized that I had hours before I had to go home. I walked to see if I could get inside the center and a woman stopped me, saying that it was closed but that I was more than welcome to try the slackline, and possibly sit in on a bit of their writing class. I waiting, watching the man on the slackline. He was of average height. His name was something Japanese beginning with an I. The woman who was running the whole shindig was called Joann. She pushed me to try the line, and while the others assembled could call upon a great stillness in their soul, I found myself wobbling with innate confusion. Great, sweeping metaphors were constructed concerning the line, a flat strip of fabric with the word "Gibbon" a brand, written on it over and over again. Mr. I told us that he had only been practicing on the line for ten months, and a man he had been instructing the day before showed us the great progress that one can make in such little time. I was invited inside to the writing class, a complimentary session. I entered the brick building first, ushered be one of the students, a woman whose skin was so thin that it looked almost like the paper of an encyclopedia. The halls of the center looked like one might expect, Ensos, blank walls, art. Several priests dressed in black walked the halls, straitening things. Unlike most writing classes, this one was held in what was nearly a living room. I sat down near the door, next to a woman whose name began with B and the teacher. I was horrified that I'd drop the balloon, that I'd spoil their floor, that I'd ruin my welcome. The teacher told us to say what we thought of when we heard the word "Teeter." The first student responded that he hated teetering. He hated not having control. The same was said by all the other students. None of them liked chaos or uncertainty, and those who said more than that complained of "Always teetering" and "Never having stillness." It made sense for the temple, but I found myself set apart. I told them of balancing on the fences of the backyards on my block as a child, of nearly falling, of falling, of falling and getting back up again, and falling and skinning my arms, and again of not falling. I told them of a soccer ball's invasion of the Louie's backyard, and of my factions reinforcements, in the shape of myself. I told them of how I'd climb a pipe in an atrium outside my old house's bathroom to go up onto the roof, and how I'd walk just over to the edge in the center of the sunset district long past sunset. I wish that the students and the teachers had said more, I could discuss it, but I was left only with my own embellished story. After the sharing of teeterings, I left. I'd need to keep moving. I did not teeter when it came to the water balloon, I kept it held strong in my hand, but not too strong, going along the middle way just as the Buddha would have intended.

Before I left the Zen Center writing room, I looked at one of the walls. There was a painting there, and on part of the painting was a design: Three letters. Theta, Tiwas, Mu. That, along with the Egyptian hieroglyph for "City" is inscribed on one of Madeline Ruth's rings. Interesting.

A few blocks later came Haight Street. I moved down the lower section of the street, then found Divisidero Street. Back before all of the cemeteries were removed from San Francisco, Divisidero was basically the border between the land of the dead and the land of the living. The dead to the west in the fog, the living to the east where the sun shone. I encountered a few girls from my old highschool, taking part of the street fair that took over the upper Haight. Zola, the best poet I have ever met, was one of them. I handed her the orange water balloon. She told me that she had no idea what to do with it, so she tossed it to her friend who caught it one handed while taking a drag of a cigarette. This friend, someone who I'd seen around a few times, promptly threw the water balloon in the street. She smiled as she did this. Her eyes seemed weighed down by the black makeup on them. The orange balloon did not break. All of a sudden, Zola's friend, the girl who threw the balloon in the street jumped up, dropping her cigarette and ran into traffic, trying to grab the water balloon before someone ran over it, before a car on Divisidero divided her or the balloon. She got it, thank god, and jumped back on the sidewalk, smiling like mad, telling me that she'll treasure the balloon for as long as possible.

I walked up a hill to the upper haight, walking past Buena Vista Park. It was covered with people, nobody I knew. I kept walking on through the crowds. I turned on my music player. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" blasted in my tinny headphones, imprinting me with a grand cliche. The crowd clustered every so often. I was horrified that someone would think I was following them, even lines of people worming their way through the crowd was inevitable. I someone else I knew, someone whose name began with A, who I knew when I started playing this game. That was one era of my life that I'd prefer to forget, and A hobbled past, not noticing me at all, for the better.

Klezmer-Core buskers and white reggae on a stage played through the streets as I passed by the most unlucky person I've ever met. They walked down the street, alone like me, but isolated, unlike me in the haze of smoke from outdoor food and marijuana. The unlucky person looked at the ground, and ducked into a cafe. Their foot caught in the door. Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and the Scarecrow all posed for a photo op. A professional dominatrix cracked her whip. Frank Chu stood around nonchalantly. The Silver Man stayed still so silver came his way. I coughed. The music changed to a barrage of song-songs, the Gardener and Love Love Love among them, opposites of what had happened before. I kept walking on. I saw a girl that I thought I fell for years ago, back when she was taller than me, back when I thought I knew what falling for someone even meant, though I think I've made progress with that. I finished the crowds. Sometimes you're the most isolated when there are many people around. I hit the park, walked past Hippie Hil. There was nothing to describe there, just the old Children's Playground, ruined with each renovation. I hit Irving Street. I tried to smile at every person that I met. Every single one of them smiled back.

I walked down Irving street to find the place that I did my very first task, Object Annotation, when I was just eleven years old. I looked at the sign on the Bank of The Orient which still said that it prohibited hoods, hats, and glasses. I ran into a few more people I know, a gray haired woman and a giant who I met during an gallery opening where my art was displayed. They were getting bubble tea and I, somewhat delirious, sounded moronic. I strolled on, past the police credit union, a goodwill, a supermarket, and finally walked to my house. On the way there were two children rollerblading up a hill, their father walking a white dog. I had walked those streets, or gone down them on a bicycle back in the day when the wide cement expanse of the sunset was comforting. I was going home, making my way through a number of sights and sounds, confronting what had come before and what will occur again until I walked past an inscription on the sidewalk "Your Life Is The Sum of Your Present Moment" -E.R. Obvious. I laughed and unlocked the door to my house, made a pot of tea, drank it, and got on with things as the sun began to slip closer to the vast ocean. I sat back in my chair and opened up a book. I was home.

I closed my eyes then, gulping the last of the tea and I tried to make sense of what had just happened. It felt like a beginning. I'd seen people who I'd known at my worst, and at my best. I'd gone places that I'd frequented as a child, and as something a bit more than a child. This was a six mile walk of bitter nostalgia, brought upon me with hunger, happenstance, and a soundtrack.

I thought about the balloon, which, all of a sudden became some sort of symbol for the whole thing. I'd been living precariously in San Francisco for such a long time. I'd messed up a great number of times. I'd fallen off the tightrope many times, but I'd picked myself up and gotten on with it. I'd never fully broken though, no matter how many times I'd tried to destroy something about myself, or if someone pushed me down. I'd walked through the city countless times, seeing the same masks and having the people change just as I did.

This June I take a test that give me a get out of jail free card. I graduate from high school two years early. I've got two jobs, a bunch of wonderful friends. Everything's working out, but I'm still a bit haunted by the things in the past. Before turning 13, I don't think that anything happened in my life that I was really all that proud of. Looking at that first task that I did, it was cheap, easy, the work of an 11 year old. Time passed, I grew up. The one really constant thing that's always been around has been sf zero here. It's the one real track of who I've been and what I've been doing, and thankfully there's been a swift improvement from task to task. I got to walk across my city today, and I managed to find something I really needed: Release.

This chapter is over. I'll turn 16 in two weeks. Most places, that's where childhood ends and real life begins. Bryce Hidysmith, I'm leaving you behind. It's time for something new.

Good Luck, Bryce Hidysmith, City Theta Tiwas, Mu, Sweet dreams,
-Bryce