LONELY

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What I really meant was, “I’m lonely.”

Loneliness is a complicated feeling, the mole sauce of emotions; rich, dark, with many subtle flavors. “I’m lonely” has a million meanings: I’m tired of myself and need someone else to play with; my mind is stuck in an unpleasant internal traffic jam, horns honking, and needs a distraction; I’m unloved, or ignored, or an insignificant speck in an infinite indifferent universe. I need someone to touch me. I don’t know who I am.

Loneliness can creep up at any time, tapping you on the shoulder, blowing its soft, sickly-sweet, breath into your ear. Once it visits, if left unmolested, it can settle in, like a chill. It can be hard to chase away. Lots of things can make it worse: television, a single-serving pre-packaged meal, rain. Remedies can be scarce, or plentiful: friends, family, a smile from a stranger.

Money can be helpful, but it isn’t a cure. It enables us to be clean, pre - sentable, and personable. It can buy distractions, and entry into places where friends might be made or encountered. Also, therapy. Mostly, though, being not lonely requires cultivation and a lifelong deployment of a myriad of complex strategies, many of which have to be self-taught, acquired through trial and error, revisited, revised, renewed. Making and keeping friends, even when they’ll inevitably annoy, disappoint or disappear. Getting and staying well married, or at least partnered. Belonging to something: a Mahjong, pickleball, or book club. Church, though not so much for the Jesus as the community. Volunteering.

Being alone doesn’t cause loneliness but can be the core seed of it. Humans didn’t evolve as or to be solo creatures. Yet by all accounts we’re lonelier than past decades, bowling alone has morphed into living alone, working alone, streaming alone, numbing alone. Young adults –especially those employed remotely – the unmarried and those without children seem to be especially forlorn.

Go out and play is pretty good advice. It works on a number of levels:

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A dozen “smallish” privately owned buses went up in flames last month beneath Interstate 280 in Dogpatch. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in just under an hour. No injuries were reported. “They look like they are abandoned buses,” that were stored on 23rd Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and Iowa Street, said San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson Captain Jonathan Baxter. “But who knows.” Twelve buses were damaged in the blaze, some fully consumed, others partially burned. Fire investigators are investigating the cause, including whether arson was a possibility.

Just Closed

Just For You Café, known for its pillowy beignets and bottomless cups of coffee, closed last month after 43 years in business. According to Reid Hannula, the café’s owner, the business has been “bleeding for years. We’ve made no money since COVID.” Just For You opened in 1980 on 18th Street, operating out of a shotgun space with two tables and a countertop seating about a dozen patrons. In 1990, Arienne Landry, a Louisiana native, took over the diner, adding Southern influences from her grandmother to the menu, like buttermilk fried chicken and “Creole crab cakes.” In 2002, Landry moved the business to Dogpatch. “When I went down there [the neighborhood was] pretty much tumbleweeds,” she said. “You could just pull in and park

anywhere.” Around that time, Landry introduced her sugar-dusted beignets. They were a hit and gave the business a boost. Debbie Findling, a longtime Just For You patron reminisced, “Twentytwo years ago, I waddled into Just For You; nine months pregnant and ready to pop. Our waiter said the delicious and mildly spicey huevos rancheros would do the trick. Sure enough, I gave birth to our daughter that evening. Just For You will always be in my heart.”

Naturally Retired

After 34 years of patient care practice in San Francisco, 25 years on 20th Street, San Francisco Natural Medicine will close on May 31, 2023, when the clinic’s lease expires. Carl HangeeBauer, ND, Lac , who turns 70 this year, is ready to retire.

Green Grows

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