Books That Changed My Life--Casting Lures to Bats on Green Evenings

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Friday July 27, 2012 · 5:00 AM PDT

2012/07/27 · 05:00

When someone asks me when something in my life happened, I often don't know: was it the 1990s? the 2000s? Yesterday? It was lucky for me, then, that I found a clue in my copy of John Hanson Mitchell's Living at the End of Time. Tucked into it was a bookmark: Phoenix New and Used Books, San Francisco, California. Aha. So I probably bought this book in the 1990s, when I had moved back to the city from the East Coast.

I moved back home because graduate school didn't work out, because my family was on the west coast, and because I needed to figure out what to do with my life. San Francisco was (and is) a gem of a town, sitting on its many hills. There was so much to do, so many interesting people, and more cultural activities than I could possibly take advantage of. Yet I always felt out of step. Most of my new acquaintances came from the midwest or the east, thrilled to be gone from the weather and their families, and happy to be launching into a new life.

Despite knowing that I was in a desirable place - one of the most desirable in the country - I missed New England. When I would say this to people, they would be incredulous: how could I possibly miss the cold? The humidity? I had no good answers, and felt I ought to somehow construct some kind of rational explanation for myself and others. But I couldn't understand my feelings myself, much less explain them out loud.

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