The Flaneur recently attended an evening in the Berkeley Art Museum's series called "L@TE: FRIDAY NIGHTS for an event entitled "John Cage Celebration: Pico." It actually began really early and the Cage connection was somewhat difficult to make, but it was not without moments of genuine amusement.
Although the event began as early as five or five thirty my guest ticket would only arrive with a friend at six thirty, so I had time to pleasantly spend. I rested on the benches amid the knobby trees on the Sather Tower plaza. Aside from the tightrope walkers the student scene was not that different than TV's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis-- studies mixed with tentative boy girl socializing. Now the cast consists of the new square Asian students.
I had brought a lunch with me--a banana sandwich on whole wheat walnut bread and an apple. As I finished it the gigantic clock hands approached the straight up and down position of six. I elevated with a wee whiff of my herbal medicine just in time for a carillon recital. The dulcet but slightly eerie tones drifted down around me like huge flower petals. The lowering sun overwhelmed the view of the bay and the Golden Gate. I turned for a last adieu before proceeding on laterally to the museum.
The front doors had entirely been painted over in graffiti style--some irrelevant word, a bullshit semiotic that I have since forgotten. Lo, there on the apron, gasping tobacco smoke, stood my old friend and collaborator Don Joyce. Don is the mix-master of negativland and of the radio program on which I occasionally appear known as Over the Edge.
He was here with his "band" mate Mark Hosler to mix the evening's audio. We shook frontal extremities and then headed inside where the scenesters were already underway. It was a young demographic indeed, one which I had anticipated and for which I had dressed accordingly as sort of a John Cage manque, highlighting the age difference. I wore a tie, dress shirt and vest sweater: real grandpa drag. I had by chance just watched a video of a Cage performance from 1966 entitled E.A.T. Cage and five others in white shirts and ties had done a entirely live electronic musical performance creating an audio mushroom cloud of oscillating noise. They were walking around tables as light threw huge shadows of them on the walls behind. It was more or less the origin of every music act in which the performers essentially sat and twiddled knobs including everything from negativland to the Chemical Brothers etc.
A brisk tour of all the upper galleries was next on my agendum. While I climbed and perused a poet read on monotonously on the main floor--his name escaped me. The gathering crowd dutifully sat on the hard stone floor of the main lower gallery--there were no seats for attendees anywhere in sight. At the lowest sub-gallery, where Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau was reconstructed last year, someone was spray-painting on a large wall size mural, how ho-hum. Mental note do not approach close enough to this to smell the paint. I scanned the profuse Barry McGee exhibit. He seems to be an obsessive type who draws similar, very-involved cartoon faces quite a lot. Spawned I believe in a Graffiti art and zine scene genesis. The exhibit seems to have not only emptied out his portfolio but also his various scrapbooks and printed matter storage to include every single artifact he'd pack-ratted away. One is not put off by this though and it does seem to be after all part of a more democratic vista.
The top gallery had a lot of queer art and seemed just a tad cruisy in its tea-room sparseness. The next gallery descending from this had a jewel-toned array of religious art by ye olde masters. A Last Supper predella looked as if it was comprised of mug shots of the apostles. It gave me a mystical frisson--a split second out of time..
Around down to the lobby again I joined Don at a mixing desk above the lowest galleries where the main performances happen. Then we are joined by the David Lynchian figure of Mark Hosler, tall wearing tails, and with swept-back, newly gray hair. It had been more than a dozen years since we performed together in San Francisco and that long since I've seen him last.
Minutes later Don had taken his position in the lower gallery where he would mix sounds from an audio archive together with live performance on piano by Sarah Cahill on the balcony several floors above and a rather ostentatious cellist all situated at considerable distance from the the others.
As the music began the dancers arrived in a procession---many festooned in LED lights or with glow sticks, all carrying empty picture frames with which they mimed as museum tableaux. A dozen or so danced completely in the nude.
Prior to the commencement of festivities I'd attempted to sit on a free-standing set of stairs on the main gallery floor but was soon asked to push off. I observed at the point of the dancers onslaught that the stairs were part of the act. As if not prominent enough in their youthful birthdays suits and shaped pubis, the nude dancers repeatedly mounted the stairs for better exhibition.
Don was down there among them mixing by himself. He had donned his zebra-patterned cowboy hat over his black leather jacket atop his forever young Beatle haircut now as white as Christmas snow. "Look, Don's getting a lap dance," I quipped to various amusement that didn't appear to include Mark's. Mark was a Montessori teacher years ago and a certain prudishness not to say repressiveness still obtains. After all, the MC had just invited us to misbehave.
The cellist was gimmick-heavy playing an instrument made up of screens at one point. A sort of promotional film of her ran on a screen behind her satellite stage. I checked out of it when I read the statement, "Life doesn't have a rewind button." I wished I could rewind and erase that bit from my memory.
The dancers, more specifically, the nude dancers had live cameras held on them and their somewhat abstracted images also appeared on screens. Where we were was a prime vantage spot and I felt the warmth of a small crowd pressing up behind us. Without turning to look and assuming it was comprised of students who had reached majority age, I remarked, "The nude ones are forming a huddle...funny how that always happens." I looked over my shoulder and realized it was a flock of thirteen-year-olds craning for the peep show. One young man replied in sort of sexy-knickers tone of voice, "Yeah, funny how that always happens." I thought I could detect a wistful boner in his voice. This I can't verify as he seemed to take a sheepish step back from pressing in on me when I turned around and spoke.
I was getting sleepy myself with the hypnotic onslaught of sound and vision. I asked if there were to be different "acts" or if it was to be more of a continuum. I was told to expect the latter. Mark, who was required to maintain the illusion of this being cool and expressive, seemed to have his fill of me. He said something about not talking if I wished to remain sitting beside him where I was. But I was incurious, I didn't really want to see where this all was going and so I made my excuses before heading onward.
Outside a frenzied buzz scene was taking place as the September-mad students learned the gig was now sold-out. I over-heard one enthusiastic girl telling friends that she was unable to gain entry but was certainly returning for next weeks' event (it was to feature Devendra Banheart). I understood her fervor--I was a freshman once too.
"Would you like a ticket, my dear?"
I gave her mine and she in her sweetness returned to me a hug.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
Skateboards of the Apocalypse
This column means not to imply that the Flaneur approves of this sort of thing.
A roaring crescendo Friday morning at approximately ten:twenty in the morning.
It sounded like a skateboard approaching behind you in raw existential threat.
It was coming through the floor the walls the air the subsonic viscera.
To the window I went unprepared.
There over central Berkeley at what seemed a meager altitude,
flew the leviathan of a 747 with the space shuttle strapped on its back.
A slender black jet flew just behind it in the wispy-clouded sky.
Others who knew in advance gathered on hilltops and piers.
Yet none of these were startled in delight more than I
caught as I was unprepared.
Five seconds and it was outside my field of vision.
I thought I could see dollar signs raining down as it went
and global warming waving in its wake.
My mind accepted this outlandish sight on a conditional level,
the way one accommodates watching special effects films
that create similar spectacles in similarly familiar skies.
That is, one watches "actuality" with a certain suspension of doubt.
Had I expected it I might have been on my roof to see it go by.
But then I would have lost the exhilaration of an all too rare intrusion of surprise.
All the day long leaves of diaphanous cloud prevailed above.
These were intersected by the vapor trails of conspiracy.
A new looking jumbo jet flew over us with curious lucidity.
"Something's going on today," said a black lady with a dachshund in a park.
It was in fact the first of Fall, subtle colors in the trees,
with an autumnal shiver of the inevitability of challenge and change.
A roaring crescendo Friday morning at approximately ten:twenty in the morning.
It sounded like a skateboard approaching behind you in raw existential threat.
It was coming through the floor the walls the air the subsonic viscera.
To the window I went unprepared.
There over central Berkeley at what seemed a meager altitude,
flew the leviathan of a 747 with the space shuttle strapped on its back.
A slender black jet flew just behind it in the wispy-clouded sky.
Others who knew in advance gathered on hilltops and piers.
Yet none of these were startled in delight more than I
caught as I was unprepared.
Five seconds and it was outside my field of vision.
I thought I could see dollar signs raining down as it went
and global warming waving in its wake.
My mind accepted this outlandish sight on a conditional level,
the way one accommodates watching special effects films
that create similar spectacles in similarly familiar skies.
That is, one watches "actuality" with a certain suspension of doubt.
Had I expected it I might have been on my roof to see it go by.
But then I would have lost the exhilaration of an all too rare intrusion of surprise.
All the day long leaves of diaphanous cloud prevailed above.
These were intersected by the vapor trails of conspiracy.
A new looking jumbo jet flew over us with curious lucidity.
"Something's going on today," said a black lady with a dachshund in a park.
It was in fact the first of Fall, subtle colors in the trees,
with an autumnal shiver of the inevitability of challenge and change.
Monday, August 27, 2012
August Weather in the Inner Bay Area
The heat of a long hot Summer may make those who are elsewhere wish they were here--but a Berkeley Summer is not for the faint of heart.
plum clouds going east
the image of day is done
progressive indigo
indeterminate clouds
hindenberg the hills
radio piano
friday the thirteenth
an unhappiness of crows
deepens early dusk
the giant kite
a king-sized mattress
mind colors in deep sky blue
take a nap on it
under a ceiling of fog
too cold for crickets
people from the past
lavender blue clouds
the hillside sudden copper
just for an instant
an august evening
ominous folds of cold fog
like hills lost in snow
plum clouds going east
the image of day is done
progressive indigo
indeterminate clouds
hindenberg the hills
radio piano
friday the thirteenth
an unhappiness of crows
deepens early dusk
the giant kite
a king-sized mattress
mind colors in deep sky blue
take a nap on it
under a ceiling of fog
too cold for crickets
people from the past
lavender blue clouds
the hillside sudden copper
just for an instant
an august evening
ominous folds of cold fog
like hills lost in snow
Saturday, August 11, 2012
The Third Ball
Ah, the poignant indignities of life--the Flaneur shares an interesting email. Parental guidance is urged but is perhaps too late for the Flaneur himself.
I finally conceded to it last june when casually feeling my balls.
I noticed that was a third grape so to speak--a smaller one.
Since at least 1984 I have noticed a little thickness in my epididymis ...it just got thicker.
A doctor said it felt normal at that time and it seems to be not a cause for alarm.
It is, wikipedia says, an spermatocele--a diverticulum of the tubes.
Sort of like an ox-bow in a river. Sperms hang out in it.
So I was send to an ultra-sound image lab where
in a darkened room a young lady gave me a 30 minute ball job.
(so to speak).
You strip and lie down then she applies hot lube after having you "pull it all up."
You strip and lie down then she applies hot lube after having you "pull it all up."
She puts a towel so it all doesn't pour back down.
She told her name was Trisha.
She tells you she knows it's a sensitive area and that she will be taking a lot of pictures--
She told her name was Trisha.
She tells you she knows it's a sensitive area and that she will be taking a lot of pictures--
just to let you know that you will be tumescent before long.
And when I'm tumescent there's an anaconda in the room.
She's so close I had to recite hail marys to stop short of full jumping erection
or she would have been ducking.
Later she talked to me from behind a the curtain to tell me to wipe off now.
She'd even lubed the unit in her spree.
Later she talked to me from behind a the curtain to tell me to wipe off now.
She'd even lubed the unit in her spree.
It was amazing foreplay; I have to admit I was horny that night.
I think I once told you of my newspaper baseball orgasm measure?
Two open newspaper sheets: first page is a bunt, second page is a single, third is a double, fourth is a triple,
beyond that is a home run.
Lately homeruns are somewhat less frequent, but that night I opened my eyes to find two homers, numerous triples and doubles, and lots of infield activity.
Well I'm not blocked off at least. Luckily I'd shaved last month so I
looked neither denuded nor like the fuller brush man for the fair young
technician.
yrs,
yrs,
a dirty old man
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Dreaming July
The Flaneur had an unusually eventful month this year. Here are a few fleeting impressions for my unfaithful readers.
Seismic activity of human origin continues along Milvia Street. While the venerable New Deal Post office building threatens to tumble into the claws of rapacious real estaters, the bulldozers and cranes have been busy dismantling the ancient gymnasium building at the high school. A steady stream of dust swirls up from the athletic fields still under construction behind the gym now collapsing in clouds of particulate matter. The whole area smells like someone's musty cellar from the 1930s.
Farther along Milvia an even more disruptive scene takes place in the dust. The phenomenal quixotic soccer field at Carleton is being crimped into a ballpark. A breathtaking expanse of open lawn where I would sit and rest in the sun, a halfway point from the Berkeley Bowl to my home, is gone. The digging began July 5th and now represents a hazardous walk past the sad defunct Ice Land skating rink building through dirt borne by howling winds. A microcosmic remnant of a once-happy town, appears today as a kind of a melancolony.
But demoltion derbies, surgeries and hypodermics of all sorts aside, one finds the golden vein of wonder in everyday life even still.
A birthday rolled up with a real bateau ivre of a picnic with a primordial pal down at the kite-festive Berkeley marina.The wind blew steady over our salmon and stout as we sheltered in the weeds. The part of the brain that exists in the future was stimulated by a fortune of sidereal indications. One leg I left in the sun in a new pair of shorts came home sun-burned-- a rarity for me and all part of my slightly seasick evening. But all for pleasure as the water waved into cat's paws and a phantasmagoria of kites snapped overhead. A stack of jelly fish kites were condom-like with a submarine subconscious effect suspended in the air.
We drove back toward the golden wall of the Berkeley hills looking smaller now as the bay remained so vast behind us.
So the actual birthday arrived with the early morning fog still chilly around me as I hiked up to the San Francisco train. I stopped in the Park as the Farmer's market swam alongside. Smoked here to enliven my long quiet passage by rail. Good times good travel under the Bay and under the city to emerge up around the Mint and submerge again until Irving street riding the N Judah out to Golden Gate park.
Always a light-footed ramble down past the Botanical garden with its lonesome fountain--tourists are sparse now that they must pay to frolic there. Over to the grass-roofed, hobbiton amusement park of the Academy of Science I stroll.
Obtaining my ticket ($35 for adults...the ones who have to pay it), I sidled off to a deserted corner of the grounds to consume my double-dose blonde brownie. I notice a nice fenced-in garden there that I would access for lunch. A slightly dour bored-to-tears guy loiters around the garden, presumably to thwart fence-hoppers. He observes me boredly.
Next I slip inside the dense forest of signage, screens, out-landish interior architecture and occasional live creatures. Twenty-five years since my last visit and it certainly is a changed place. I tunnel about and take a breather on the living roof before lunch follwed by parking myself beneath the sloping glass of a very deep coral tank with myriads (might as well use the proper word) of colorful fish in kinetic patterns over waving heads of coral. In this I drifted quite a long while. A tower of luminous jelly fish recalled the jelly fish kite formation of last week. Little kids commune with me telepathically. I try to use my mind-power to affect a chambered nautilus hovering in his tank--he moved to keep his eye on me
The grand finale was two viewing of an earthquake program in the dish-screen of the planetarium. Great fear of falling effects and a scene on a beach in which the cliffs behind you advance in a most hallucinogenic splendor. A real head-kick as we descend to the earth's molten core of fear.
from my notes:
All in all, a lively summer in a refusal of being made to suffer by apparent sensory phenomena.
Seismic activity of human origin continues along Milvia Street. While the venerable New Deal Post office building threatens to tumble into the claws of rapacious real estaters, the bulldozers and cranes have been busy dismantling the ancient gymnasium building at the high school. A steady stream of dust swirls up from the athletic fields still under construction behind the gym now collapsing in clouds of particulate matter. The whole area smells like someone's musty cellar from the 1930s.
Farther along Milvia an even more disruptive scene takes place in the dust. The phenomenal quixotic soccer field at Carleton is being crimped into a ballpark. A breathtaking expanse of open lawn where I would sit and rest in the sun, a halfway point from the Berkeley Bowl to my home, is gone. The digging began July 5th and now represents a hazardous walk past the sad defunct Ice Land skating rink building through dirt borne by howling winds. A microcosmic remnant of a once-happy town, appears today as a kind of a melancolony.
But demoltion derbies, surgeries and hypodermics of all sorts aside, one finds the golden vein of wonder in everyday life even still.
A birthday rolled up with a real bateau ivre of a picnic with a primordial pal down at the kite-festive Berkeley marina.The wind blew steady over our salmon and stout as we sheltered in the weeds. The part of the brain that exists in the future was stimulated by a fortune of sidereal indications. One leg I left in the sun in a new pair of shorts came home sun-burned-- a rarity for me and all part of my slightly seasick evening. But all for pleasure as the water waved into cat's paws and a phantasmagoria of kites snapped overhead. A stack of jelly fish kites were condom-like with a submarine subconscious effect suspended in the air.
We drove back toward the golden wall of the Berkeley hills looking smaller now as the bay remained so vast behind us.
So the actual birthday arrived with the early morning fog still chilly around me as I hiked up to the San Francisco train. I stopped in the Park as the Farmer's market swam alongside. Smoked here to enliven my long quiet passage by rail. Good times good travel under the Bay and under the city to emerge up around the Mint and submerge again until Irving street riding the N Judah out to Golden Gate park.
Always a light-footed ramble down past the Botanical garden with its lonesome fountain--tourists are sparse now that they must pay to frolic there. Over to the grass-roofed, hobbiton amusement park of the Academy of Science I stroll.
Obtaining my ticket ($35 for adults...the ones who have to pay it), I sidled off to a deserted corner of the grounds to consume my double-dose blonde brownie. I notice a nice fenced-in garden there that I would access for lunch. A slightly dour bored-to-tears guy loiters around the garden, presumably to thwart fence-hoppers. He observes me boredly.
Next I slip inside the dense forest of signage, screens, out-landish interior architecture and occasional live creatures. Twenty-five years since my last visit and it certainly is a changed place. I tunnel about and take a breather on the living roof before lunch follwed by parking myself beneath the sloping glass of a very deep coral tank with myriads (might as well use the proper word) of colorful fish in kinetic patterns over waving heads of coral. In this I drifted quite a long while. A tower of luminous jelly fish recalled the jelly fish kite formation of last week. Little kids commune with me telepathically. I try to use my mind-power to affect a chambered nautilus hovering in his tank--he moved to keep his eye on me
The grand finale was two viewing of an earthquake program in the dish-screen of the planetarium. Great fear of falling effects and a scene on a beach in which the cliffs behind you advance in a most hallucinogenic splendor. A real head-kick as we descend to the earth's molten core of fear.
from my notes:
All in all, a lively summer in a refusal of being made to suffer by apparent sensory phenomena.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
More Anti-Happenings Around Town
To the Flaneur's wizened resignation time and entropy march on.
It was the beginning of May I was managing a busy first-of-the-month day. My itinerary included a stop at the cannabis drive-in in order to restock my home supply of one of God's great gifts to mankind.
It operated out of a mirror-windowed building that curved and sloped over a parking lot giving away its origins as a fast-food place.
The advantage to the place in addition to being walking distance from my home was that it offered a room where one could prepare and consume one's purchases. Fine coffee was provided by the house, an idea I always found to be a prudent one--everyone had a coffee and woke up a bit after the magic indica dust made them a little sleepy.
But today low and behold and without prior notice even though I had been there a week or so earlier, the gate was locked on the business at noon. Their landlord it seems had been intimidated by the federal district attorney, a woman aptly named Haag, and given them the boot. A few familiar employees manned a table to get the hapless customers like myself to sign up for home delivery. Chagrin falls on the local scene.
As for myself an hour later I was at the old place on telegraph where I had gone for years and was very happy with the buds I found.
Alongside the quaint and mildly pleasing news that Harold way which runs between Kittridge and Alston near the Library and Post Office would be changing its name to Dharma Way. A large Tibetan Buddhist school and book and tanka shop had acquired all properties on the short street and moved the wheels of the City it seems. Jack Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums about Berkeley when he lived here for in the mid-fifties. It foretold of a wave of "rucksack revolutionaries" to follow in the sixties, some of which marches on in the post-apocalyptic new century.
But the big whammy arrived with the news in the Daily Cal yesterday the the great funky old building on the National Historic Register that has been the Berkeley main Post Office for 97 years will abruptly be closed and sold off. Roll with it or blast off, baby.
It was the beginning of May I was managing a busy first-of-the-month day. My itinerary included a stop at the cannabis drive-in in order to restock my home supply of one of God's great gifts to mankind.
It operated out of a mirror-windowed building that curved and sloped over a parking lot giving away its origins as a fast-food place.
The advantage to the place in addition to being walking distance from my home was that it offered a room where one could prepare and consume one's purchases. Fine coffee was provided by the house, an idea I always found to be a prudent one--everyone had a coffee and woke up a bit after the magic indica dust made them a little sleepy.
But today low and behold and without prior notice even though I had been there a week or so earlier, the gate was locked on the business at noon. Their landlord it seems had been intimidated by the federal district attorney, a woman aptly named Haag, and given them the boot. A few familiar employees manned a table to get the hapless customers like myself to sign up for home delivery. Chagrin falls on the local scene.
As for myself an hour later I was at the old place on telegraph where I had gone for years and was very happy with the buds I found.
Alongside the quaint and mildly pleasing news that Harold way which runs between Kittridge and Alston near the Library and Post Office would be changing its name to Dharma Way. A large Tibetan Buddhist school and book and tanka shop had acquired all properties on the short street and moved the wheels of the City it seems. Jack Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums about Berkeley when he lived here for in the mid-fifties. It foretold of a wave of "rucksack revolutionaries" to follow in the sixties, some of which marches on in the post-apocalyptic new century.
But the big whammy arrived with the news in the Daily Cal yesterday the the great funky old building on the National Historic Register that has been the Berkeley main Post Office for 97 years will abruptly be closed and sold off. Roll with it or blast off, baby.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Anti-happenings around Town
In which the Flaneur fesses-up to slacking off this year, a brief and incomplete round-up.
Someone called "hey, Raymantico" in my open window from the street. It was Ian my former house-mate who is active in Occupy. He came up and invited me with him to visit the latest encampment, "Occupy the Farm" in nearby Albany. A doctoral candidate in music his appearance had changed since we'd first met. From the clean-cut grad student (who nevertheless played in at least two bands, one Ethiopian-pop the other wooly dense stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra on nitrous oxide or something) to the back-to-the-land-archist cat with beard as long and wild as his head-hair. He hurtled through back-streets and crowded boulevardes both at what is for me breakneck speed toward the agricultural tracts owned by the Yooniversity and occupied by a mostly young bunch of students and friends.
The place had a charming mood of the makeshift practicality, and good vibe gathering. A small kitchen wafted aromas of the evening meal on its way. Ian became engaged in several conversations so I pushed on for an unguided tour. In the near distance beyond the central mid-way as it were planting and watering took place in the extended evening light of spring. Closer to were a couple of information tables and other operations some adjourned for the day. The concourse culminated in a ring of hale bales above which folks were stringing light bulbs. Tonight was to be a jamboree and various folk guitar toting young minstrels bided time as a stage-area was wired for sound. I sat in an available canvas lounge chair and watched the long shadows across the ruled farm land.
Who would not sympathize with the quixotic idealism of some the stated goals of this action? That is to make a statement about preserving some of the last viable farm land hereabouts versus the publicized plan to create a whole foods market and modest retirement housing there. But seriously considered it has less chance of prevailing in the courts of property than did the appeal to UC's better nature in the call to preserve the monumental oak grove. That legacy was, as we know, eventually shredded for the uber-stadium plans the funding for which, what do you know?, have recently been exposed as a fraud-ridden part of the boom boom war and investment scandal years. As the last secretary of state once asked, "How could we have possibly known?"
At some later court proceeding against Occupy the Farm, a UC lawyer referred to this state-owned public property as "private property." In other mad mad courthouse news the judge who had issued draconian stay-away orders for enrolled students arrested on campus at Occupy Cal, has since been indicted for elder abuse and grand larceny from an octogenarian trustee lady. Accept judgement from the moral high ground, ye must.
And as it inevitably shook down, platoons of police state overkill arrived and ejected Occupy the Farm a few weeks later. Some were arrested one brave soul allegedly urinated on a riot-clad cop from a tree. Shortly after ward both the city of Albany (trapped in a mutual support agreement with the gestapo-like UC police) and the UC police themselves both submitted a bill for police expenses to Occupy the Farm members. Albany asked for less than four-thousand dollars. UC's villainous mouth-piece Mogolof has demanded around four-hundred thousand and counting. People who are humble enough to sleep out with their crops are thereby damned to a huge financial liability for daring to protest UC officials for selling off public holdings to bankroll their own careers and gild their own parachutes.
On that idyllic night in May, Ian and I didn't hang long enough for the show to begin. The meal smelled great but the line was long and I was happy to leave the vittles for the others especially those hauling water to remote crops. Instead we decamped to an area where instruments were played and the smoking chalice was passed about. As we pushed on through Ian again held up in conversation I climbed a little tower like outdoor airport stairs and looked over at the small group enchanted by music and herb. Hope among the remnants of the natural world getting smaller as we were soon winging toward home.
Someone called "hey, Raymantico" in my open window from the street. It was Ian my former house-mate who is active in Occupy. He came up and invited me with him to visit the latest encampment, "Occupy the Farm" in nearby Albany. A doctoral candidate in music his appearance had changed since we'd first met. From the clean-cut grad student (who nevertheless played in at least two bands, one Ethiopian-pop the other wooly dense stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra on nitrous oxide or something) to the back-to-the-land-archist cat with beard as long and wild as his head-hair. He hurtled through back-streets and crowded boulevardes both at what is for me breakneck speed toward the agricultural tracts owned by the Yooniversity and occupied by a mostly young bunch of students and friends.
The place had a charming mood of the makeshift practicality, and good vibe gathering. A small kitchen wafted aromas of the evening meal on its way. Ian became engaged in several conversations so I pushed on for an unguided tour. In the near distance beyond the central mid-way as it were planting and watering took place in the extended evening light of spring. Closer to were a couple of information tables and other operations some adjourned for the day. The concourse culminated in a ring of hale bales above which folks were stringing light bulbs. Tonight was to be a jamboree and various folk guitar toting young minstrels bided time as a stage-area was wired for sound. I sat in an available canvas lounge chair and watched the long shadows across the ruled farm land.
Who would not sympathize with the quixotic idealism of some the stated goals of this action? That is to make a statement about preserving some of the last viable farm land hereabouts versus the publicized plan to create a whole foods market and modest retirement housing there. But seriously considered it has less chance of prevailing in the courts of property than did the appeal to UC's better nature in the call to preserve the monumental oak grove. That legacy was, as we know, eventually shredded for the uber-stadium plans the funding for which, what do you know?, have recently been exposed as a fraud-ridden part of the boom boom war and investment scandal years. As the last secretary of state once asked, "How could we have possibly known?"
At some later court proceeding against Occupy the Farm, a UC lawyer referred to this state-owned public property as "private property." In other mad mad courthouse news the judge who had issued draconian stay-away orders for enrolled students arrested on campus at Occupy Cal, has since been indicted for elder abuse and grand larceny from an octogenarian trustee lady. Accept judgement from the moral high ground, ye must.
And as it inevitably shook down, platoons of police state overkill arrived and ejected Occupy the Farm a few weeks later. Some were arrested one brave soul allegedly urinated on a riot-clad cop from a tree. Shortly after ward both the city of Albany (trapped in a mutual support agreement with the gestapo-like UC police) and the UC police themselves both submitted a bill for police expenses to Occupy the Farm members. Albany asked for less than four-thousand dollars. UC's villainous mouth-piece Mogolof has demanded around four-hundred thousand and counting. People who are humble enough to sleep out with their crops are thereby damned to a huge financial liability for daring to protest UC officials for selling off public holdings to bankroll their own careers and gild their own parachutes.
On that idyllic night in May, Ian and I didn't hang long enough for the show to begin. The meal smelled great but the line was long and I was happy to leave the vittles for the others especially those hauling water to remote crops. Instead we decamped to an area where instruments were played and the smoking chalice was passed about. As we pushed on through Ian again held up in conversation I climbed a little tower like outdoor airport stairs and looked over at the small group enchanted by music and herb. Hope among the remnants of the natural world getting smaller as we were soon winging toward home.
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