INSIDE OLLI  - 
Information about Who is Who and 
What is Going On at Our OLLI Program        

The Lobby at 160 Spear St. - San Francisco 
                                   Photo by Kathy Bruin                                   

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TRANSIT ZONE
by  Charlene Anderson

(Enroute to my first OLLI class at the new Main/Spear Street location.)

On her way to OLLI class

​I exit the bus at the Transit Center,
cross the street and walk down Mission.
In the middle of the block, I stop and look around.
The street names are familiar, but though the area
is wedged between the Bay and Market Street,
I don’t recall ever being here before.
It may not be new territory—but it feels like it.
 
It has a different look than most other parts of town, too.
Buildings aren’t crabbed and cramped together.
There’s an openness, a spaciousness, and it almost has a sprawling feel,
almost as if there’s no issue whatsoever with space down here.
There are tall buildings of course, but they have courtyards,
patios, benches, flowers, almost as if in defiance of the norm
in a quietly daring, boldly artistic way.

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​I look around again.
The expansiveness of this zone rustles through my mind,
strangely making me think of a toy I had as a kid:
Ten two-inch match-like sticks were glued together on the ends
and folded up so one end of each ‘match’ touched at a center point
while the other jutted up. The result: A scrunched-up, 5-pointed star.
When you dripped water or a special liquid provided by the manufacturer--
I can’t recall now which it was--
on the central meeting point at the base of the star,
the ‘matches’ opened up and out to form a larger, more impressive structure/star,
only to contract again when the sticks dried out.
I observed that expansion and contraction countless times--
each time the process seemed some lovely magic act to me.
 
I find a Starbuck’s on the corner.
It’s large too, as if in the known-unknown space down here,
it’s configured somewhat differently than other Starbuck’s.
I buy a Danish, leave, cross Main
and head along the street towards my destination.
Can I really have discovered an area of expansion in a cramped,
cluttered and contracted city—world? It seems fantastical, absurd--
that is, until I recall those relentlessly repositioning sticks.

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In the rest of the city and the world,
there’s been more contraction than expansion recently,
human ‘matchsticks’ retreating back into constricted configurations,
huddling, hiding, refusing to work together to build, create
or simply legislate—beauty, justice crumpled up and fallen away.
Still, I’ve stumbled on this place,
this almost-new territory with open terraces and widening skies.
So maybe all the streets and our minds too can expand and open out again.
In my heart, hope bursts up—water flies up off the sticks,
as if they’re struggling to reconfigure into some new and stunning pattern.
I shake my head, whisk the damp away and continue on.
 
I reach my destination finally, enter the building and am greeted
by a dark-clad woman who leads me to a bank of elevators
where I search for a panel to punch in my floor.
She waves me away, keys in parameters on a device
that apparently only she can operate, and the doors slide open.
I get on, feeling confused, wishing, even though I’ve shaken it away,
that hope were with me again, now, and boarding too.
 
The doors slide shut: No floor access buttons in here either.
The carriage shifts and begins to move, I can’t be sure if going up or down.
I see no sticks, feel no moisture brush against my cheek,
yet there is motion, and I can’t keep from hoping that that means change.
The elevator shudders to a halt; the doors jar open.
I inch forward and edge out.
In this unknown territory I’ve been transported to--
I let hope fly and begin to move.  

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​​Charlene Anderson has an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from SFSU. She spent much of her working life doing research grant administration during the day and writing fiction at night, and in 2001 published a novel. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board, and has served in that capacity ever since. She is also pleased to be able to submit her own work to the magazine!

Other pieces in this Issue:  
Fiction: 
Dark Matter, A Science Fantasy
Photo Essay: 
A Puzzling Parklet

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