Yesterday morning, I walked around my block and documented it for the local blog for the Mission neighborhood.

I came up with the title, “Leave your mark”, within the first few minutes when I stepped outside.

It started like this: Just steps from my apartment where I have lived since 2006, I discovered the tiled entryway “Dog Eared Books” in shades of green. You see, I knew that Dog Eared Books had never been there ever since I moved in. I had always known it as the “witch” and “herbal” store, which recently moved several doors down to be replaced by an artsy zine store. In fact, Dog Eared Books had been several blocks away. It is the bookstore whose bargain bin always caught my eye, the location where I found something for a SF “scavenger” hunt experience, the place where I could find literary magazines and zines and other various things.

But what struck me was how the former businesses here left their mark whether it was their historical and/or artistic signs. How people left food outside. How artists left their marks on the sidewalks in Koi fish or fried eggs. How the city’s sirens ring every Tuesday at noon singing “This is a test.”

What would be my mark? I moved here in 2006, not knowing that I would be still living here in 2014. I think that I believed then that I would be a transient, making a momentary stop as I figured out my life. But as I look around the neighborhood to the businesses that used to be here, I wonder if I would disappear? Just like all the people I never quite knew who lived right next door, quietly watching in the window, wishing that the neighbors wouldn’t block the driveway. Again.