THE MYSTIC

The thing about the city is, as much as it changes it stays the same. When you’re in San Francisco it doesn’t matter if you’re actually from the city or not. While you’re there, its home. And when you leave, it goes with you. It’s got that groove, kind of like New Orleans, that wraps itself around you and wakes up your soul in the best way.

That was the feeling Lizzie was craving when she woke up to one too many cold January mornings in the little Hollywood flat she’d made for herself just off of Sunset. If she was going to be cold, Lizzie wanted to be Bay Area cold; where the chill is tangled up in a thick fog that hugs you like a blanket and blinds you from the morning view, giving you a little time to let your thoughts run free and a perfect excuse to take it.

The city isn’t one of those places you see. It’s a phenomenon that you feel. It closes your eyes and opens your soul so when the fog clears you can see what’s really there; the you in everything around you and the possibilities in what is yet to come.

Lizzie pulled on to the I-5, turned up the music as loud as it could go and found herself in a perfectly comfortable state as she eased into the ride. Memories of the city sailed through her mind. The feel of what it was like to be there, the amazing moments that had helped to make her the woman she’d become… And then it hit her. It didn’t really matter where she was going and it didn’t really matter what she was leaving behind. She was going somewhere and it was about the going, the ride. Lizzie would come back of course but when she did things would be different, the same way they always were when she let go of life, let herself just live, and sailed off into the mystic.

This story was inspired by a thoughtful and quiet morning infused with the amazing Van Morrison and his song Into The Mystic.


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