Fyodor in San Fran

 

Holy Trinity Cathedral was the oldest Orthodox church in the United States prior to the acquisition of Alaska in 1867, founded in 1857.  I was in San Francisco for the American Psychiatric Association’s annual conference in 2013 and I decided to walk from my hotel to this historic church for Vespers on a  Saturday evening.  It would be another day or two before I figured out how to use the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system and my Army days weren’t too awfully far in my past at that time, so why not?

Per my map it did not look super far from my hotel, all things considered, but between here and there were those famous San Francisco streets that go way up and way down like a giant urban rollercoaster.  I ended up sort of short-step jogging down the declines and then leaning into the inclines while keeping my arms swinging.  It took an hour or so for me to get to the church - sweaty, slightly dehydrated, and with very sore hips.

I hadn’t known how long it would take so I’d left at least a few hours prior to the service and ended up hanging at a coffee shop across the street from the church, “Notes from Underground”.  It was a bit of a thrill to find it as I was a huge Dostoyevsky fan in my roaring 20’s and it was the title of a novella of his that I loved.  I’d read “House of the Dead” roaming Eastern Europe after college and “The Brothers Karamazov” in medical school by keeping it on the back of my commode.  Melancholy was my love language and Fyodor was fluent in it.  And of course it made perfect sense to be across the street from a church whose US roots came by way of Russia.

Sitting there sipping coffee and contemplating my place in the universe now that I had a wife, two kids, and a dog I was treated to a rather bizarre scene for someone who grew up in the Midwest.  Apparently there were festivities somewhere in the vicinity whereby three men in funny hats and body paint suddenly appeared bicycling down the street, naked for all intents and purposes.  Maybe I was dreaming?  A Nightmare?  I felt like Prince Myshkin in “The Idiot” - not exactly scandalized as much as simply incredulous.