Sunday. I drove over to the old neighborhood in San Francisco this morning and took a look at what was once the Rip Off Ranch where I lived on Arkansas Street in the 70's and then at the building that housed The Rip Off Press. Big difference. Many new buildings, the streets more crowded now, I thought, the automobiles more expensive, the buildings pressed up closer to the sidewalks, new pull in parallel parking constricting what were once wide open streets.

The Mission Rock Inn has been enlarged and refashioned. I went in through the door and found what looked like a yuppie sports bar, no relationship to the old place, no small boats moored out in front off the wooden dock. No more wooden dock. I could hear the voice of a crowd up at the top of the stairs on the second floor, overweight young women with purple hair arriving in two's for what must be a brunch. No need to check. One last look standing on the deserted first floor for what was no longer there. Time to leave.

I drove to San Francisco with an intense feeling of sadness and a need to climb out of my skin. I realize I associate these feelings with all of the old chapters in my life, the boyhood house in Woodway Park north of Seattle, our house in New York. I have these feelings about many times and places, my first days at this current company, for example, people I knew who have made their own choices and passed along. I was thinking as I was driving, boy howdy, if this is what is coming as I get older, then boy howdy it's going to be rough. Then I realize I've always had these feelings, young or old, the need, at times, to jump out of my skin, to drive into the night. I go up to Napa now and then and experience these same sad thoughts, drive through the old neighborhoods, remember the people. Good people, now gone.

I realize the first one or two years at whatever place - new school, new job, new state - are the years when you meet new opportunities, are given new choices. Some of them, perhaps all of them in my case, had to do with potential friends and partners, potential directions in the job. Given time, if you don't make those choices, others will make them for you and move on. Slowly, then suddenly, all faces are familiar, all possibilities predicted, all stories known and you are again left with the sadness and the itchiness inside. Part of the deal, he said. How life works.

I thought with this job maybe I could stay longer than I've stayed in the past, make it do until I retire, but maybe that's not how it works. For a man who isn't willing to choose, there is no place to land, and, maybe, even for those who do make choices and move along, maybe they find no rest there either, maybe there's no rest for any of us, anywhere, just choices to be made and change that must be embraced, one after one, forever.

Then there's the age. At my age the body starts to fall apart, a piece here, a piece there, all under the bell shaped curve, and not all choices are available that were available in the past. Maybe that's what's driving these feelings of sadness today, not the loss of place, but the loss of moment, each moment, taken or not taken, is still gone. You tell yourself you can't take chances with your health insurance (which mostly you can't) so hold tight. Hold tight to what?

Times have changed and I need to change. Maybe I'll be able to do it, maybe getting to my age will make it more difficult, I'm not sure. It was never easy in the past, this need to get in the car and drive, looking. Looking for what? The next place, the next step. I'm running out of places. I'm running out of steps. I'm running, been running since I started.