berkeley sketch #1

Sitting on the grass in front of Sproul Hall, looking out over the plaza; people crossing in the calm before the storm. A man with dark sunglasses is calling out to people, trying to get them to stop to talk with him about his project, give money, for a website to investigate the time when corporations were given legal rights as individuals. He is having little success, and when I talk with him, he seems unclear as to his purpose, curses at my barrage of questions. Homeless, underhomed, unemployed, underemployed, or some combination thereof, pass through in a jolting connect-the-dots between garbage cans set in a grid, reaching in to pull out food remnants, bottles and cans to redeem.

Yesterday, by the berkeley BART, a woman with her cart filled with blankets and topped with a doll sat down to eat a pint of Hagen-Daaz ice cream with a knife, yelling out to passerby she seemed to know, "I'm not going to share any of my double-fudge chocolate ice cream with you!".

Thanks for sharing. Next?

"Hello, my name is David, and I am a graduate student at Berkeley."

(together): "Hi, David."

train of thought #2

at the CED at Berkeley
architectural models
of apartments the width
of a single parking space

tiny habitations
boat cabins

a luthier i met the night before

resonant hull cello boats

you

Aspen, Colorado: Welcome Home. Goodbye...

Back in the happy valley and it is raining, gentle and cool. I as I breathe the clean air, filled with the scent of sweet woodruff (gallium odoratum) at the condominium redevelopment I was designing before I left, I begin to remember how I came to spend four years of my life in this fantasy land.

I have been traveling for weeks, and have miles to go. Running into old friends (or at least acquaintainces), I ask a weak question: Did I miss anything? The answer inevitably is no, in the passing conversations that can't get any closer to the soul. Some buildings come down, others go up; people come and go: they broke up, and they got married, they had a child, they moved to a new house...did I expect anything more?

Are we getting closer to really knowing? Twixters and self-proclaimed dirtbags; tele girls and the nouveau riche. It is so easy to fall into everydayness. Would it be so wrong? Why do we demand so much of ourselves? Am I demanding too little?

Life steps. The green light flashes go, and in the morning I will, leave the happy valley for harder places, hotter and dryer and with the soot and smenge of a larger circle of humanity.

Welcome home. This is America.