Route 101 winds through the city, around buildings like a mountain road carving switchbacks through a rocky terrain. The cars on the highway glide along slowly, perennially stuck in traffic, before my sight of the road ends abruptly and they appear to drop off into the San Francisco Bay down by the waterfront. The waterfront, the rows of piers that shoot off radially into the bay, is the ostensible final destination for the freight ships that loiter endlessly there, but I’m sure this isn’t true as the area has long been more of a tourist destination than a real site of industry for many decades. But it’s funny how that charade still persists to me.
I’m on the roof of a house I’m working on, near Buena Vista park, where I find myself staring longingly at the ships fairly frequently. I have never seen the bay unoccupied. On a light day, there are perhaps four or five boats, the more slender ones with the decks that sit almost dangerously level with the waterline, maybe a few tankers too. But on those days, there is always a sort of unease in the air, like they’re waiting for something. I can feel the imminency of the container ships. I am waiting for them too.
There is something deeply zoomorphic about the freighters. The way they crawl along in the water. How you can hear their call all the way across the city, the low timbre of the fog horn that you can feel in your gut, in a soothing way. Maybe more mythological creature than real animal. Their size so grand they’re only told of in legend; a mammoth, a megalodon. Modern Nephilim, ripped from the pages of the old testament. I am sort of joking here of course, but there is an undeniable ancientness, a projection of permanence. I am very comforted by their constance, the tangibility of their presence. Throughout the day, I look to them and find that I am grounded by their grandeur and resoluteness.
I think there is an easy connection here to the omnipotence of capital and the constant inescapable machinations of industry. Even more so, the way that commercialism can feel so comforting. I’m not sure that has much to do with what I’m feeling here, but if you would like to think about that you may.
I’m not joking about this next part. I can’t help but imagine I’m on there. I’m on the ship and nobody knows that I am. I’m in the containers. During a slow moment at work, I’ll cast my sight out over the bay and pick a container ship, circling imperceptibly slowly. I will think, “Perhaps that blue container?” Then think better of myself, “No, too conspicuous. Maybe that brick red one, with the rusted corners. That’s it. I’ll go in there.” And I project myself over the city, through the fog, and into my container of choice. I curl up on the metal floor, a threadbare blanket pulled up to my chin, a little tin cup of water tinkling beside me. Stowed away with the packages of Shien tops and Stanley Cups and whatever else my fellow San Franciscans have requested from overseas. The hum of the engine below, an all encompassing white noise enveloping me, swallowing me whole. I am surely alone, as far from work and the demands of daily life that I could possibly be without leaving the city. I couldn’t be found. It’s just me and the ceaseless hum of the beast.
*****
Cassandra Pendino is a carpenter that works on old houses in San Francisco, She also writes. Previously, she was a regular contributor to The Georgetowner magazine based in Washington, DC.
