Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Last Barbershop
Yesterday afternoon, although it's still today because I haven't gone to bed yet, I went for a haircut and found a proverb...
As I climbed into the chair at Frank's barbershop, I told him I had just been reading a Chronicle that didn't look like the Chronicle, and I saw a picture of all the sidewalk mailboxes that they've taken away, while sitting next to a sign for his retirement party. "It's a new era," he laughed.
He's been in Berkeley since 1962. I started getting my hair cut there in the early 80s.
It was several years after I moved here. In that time I'd become familiar with Moe's seeming omnipresence at his bookstore. Moe's face was the face of Berkeley. But he's been absent a dozen years now. So from my perspective, after twenty-five years, Frank is today the face of Berkeley.
Frank is not very tall, bald, white of hair, not stout but nearly so, and quite pleasant but not always easy-going. I have not patronized his shop exclusively all those years by any means. I used to feel a little bit of an ambiguous vibe there at first. I was also concerned that some of his haircuts made me look too square. But square in a way he was--"I'm not a stylist." And that's why you went--nobody can give a white man a better "fade". I think he perfected his trademark cuts while in the military.
When it comes to short hair there is, of course, a fine line between square and not square. What I would usually do was to doctor the haircuts up a little when I got home. What was crucial was the professional short sides and back. If the somewhat longer hair on top made me look a little like a game show host, that was easily remedied. I could make slightly oblique and angular chops in it with my own barber sheers. With it gelled-up, I looked like an Interview magazine stylist had had his way with me.
Yes, I have cut my own hair when I felt like it. I actually cut my ex-wife's hair a few times too. A hairstylist was too timid to give her the cut she wanted, very short with a long forelock, so I did. She got compliments-- especially from some Japanese friends who ran a little restaurant in nearby Albany called Sakura. They dug my advanced design. My career was brief, however--hair-cutting is a headache and eyestrain for a crude perfectionist like me.
Nowadays I attempt to tend things when I need a trim between haircuts. Of course Frank notices the trail of my mutilations but doesn't mention them. I told him this week that I knew I looked like an overgrown vacant lot. I am tempted to paraphrase the old saw about acting as your own lawyer, and say a man who acts as his own barber has a fool for a client. But then I was reminded when watching Henry Fonda in the film "Young Mr. Lincoln" that old Honest Abe used to cut his own hair too. It kind of restored the nobility of it in my sight. The actual Lincoln has quite artfully messed-up hair in many photographs.
When I started going to Frank, he had his deluxe old shop next door to the UC Theater, which was then central to the local social scene. It was a familiar lay-out with all the classic barber furniture and equipment. The surrealism of everyday life abounded in these places, as with the vats of antiseptic with combs in them. They were always rather evocative of the barbershops, soda fountains and drug stores of...the twilight zone. The past as seen in the distorting mirror of memory.
While he sometimes had partners in those days as I recall, he's worked solo for two decades since. I seem to recall there was an elderly barber with him at first, and an awkward but routine decision by most people to wait for Frank. The old guy would sit quietly and read.
I even remember the period he shared the place with a woman barber, for once breaking with tradition. It never seemed quite workable but, like many unwieldy marriages, it went on for quite a while. She was incongruous in the same way the wall of framed posters by David Lance Goines was. But that was able to hang much longer. After all, Goines' deco-moderne posters for local high culture are echt Berkeley. He had a studio shop nearby for ages and probably got his hair cut at Frank's as well.
I recall experiencing a Proustian moment the first time Frank applied hot shaving cream to my temples and neck to shave me for the real aviator fade. It was something I had experienced regularly as a youth in the pre-Beatle-haircut days. It feels terrific.
A lot of the stylistic appeal of Punk and its aftermath, one of retrospective and revival, had to do with the charm of things lost in the hippie end of the sixties. This would include primitive rock and roll, tattoos, flat-tops, hot-rods, make-up, vintage clothes, low-budget movies--the whole morbid psycho-billy 50s-early 60s shebang. Frank's place still had illustrated cardboard racks of pocket combs and copies of Playboy with the reading material---it was the real thing, not some phony LA retro-style marketing concept.
Then, in the transformation of that UC Theater block, I lost track of Frank. His old shop between the theater and the corner cafe was closed-down. Another regrettable step downstairs for the city scene. But only some of us will feel the loss of habitat and resources. And with extinctions come new species.
That said however, I was pleasantly gassed when I picked up an issue of the New Yorker and read a full-page color comic by Adrian Tomine telling the story of a somewhat stern barber who looked exactly like Frank. And, of course, it was Frank. This fact was confirmed for me when I discovered that Francesco Caramagno was still open for business on University avenue, a mere few blocks west of his old place. And there on the wall was the New Yorker page in a frame.
In the comic, Tomine's character comes back to face Frank's consternation after having gotten his last haircut elsewhere. Many of us know the look. The story shows his utter trust in Frank's opinion and skills. I should say that this view is nearly unanimous among a multitude of his customers.
Though Tomine eventually moved away to New York on a more permanent basis, he started off his career locally. I used to see him walking along College avenue and frequenting the same Elmwood post office I did. We both had mailboxes there, and so did another star of alternative comics in the 90s and beyond, Dan Clowes. I became acquainted with Dan but never met Adrian. I believe he noticed me too though, observing me from across the street even. We were each noting another bright-eyed Berkeley-dweller at large and on foot in the mid-afternoon. He is the comic artist of his generation who has impressed me the most. I enjoy the precision and humor with which he draws subtle moments of emotion and behavior.
During the nineties I grew my hair long again and tied it back, "like Punk never happened." But not really, any moreso than that Punk was "like the Beatles never happened," as one slogan went. Nevertheless, for money-saving years all I required was the exchange of an ends-trim with a gal pal of mine. I had long hair like it in the seventies and it was a nice return to having it again. Long hair is spiritual and sensual, a blast and a bother. It's also amusing to see how differently people treat you with it and without it.
However, in recent years, with more snow on the roof, I try to keep it quite short. I have come to depend entirely on Frank to get my hair cut. More often than not it is not only worthwhile, a good cut at a fair price, but more fun and more informative than ever. After 47 years beside a big window on University Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Berkeley, he knows quite a bit about the life of this city. The "How Berkeley Can You be ?" parade goes by once a year, but really it's here every day.
Frank is unusually wise and always insightful on society and politics. I speak freely when I'm there and, even if I'm sometimes slightly tendentious, more often than not I find general amusement and a majority in agreement with what I say.
This visit, I was the last customer in the shop and said, for example, that I wanted to change careers, to become a bee-keeping monk in Hawaii. "The monks in Hawaii wouldn't get the property near the beaches," Frank replied.
At another point the mayor of Oakland came up. We'd seen him on TV airing some ceremonial rhetoric after an ex-con killed four cops in a traffic stop followed by a shoot-out. "I watch a lot of Western movies and it's not exactly honorable, but for the bad guy to take out four is certainly memorable." I took his silence as assent.
The conversation turned to cooking. I tell him that even though I am largely vegetarian I regularly use Israeli chicken consomme cubes in my cooking. I confess that I don't tell my vegetarian friend it's involved and he thinks I'm a really great cook. "Now I don't like Israel politically...at all...and I would just as soon boycott their products..."
"...but they are too good to do without!" he finished my thought.
There's just no one else I know of hereabouts who can cut hair like Frank anymore. Even his fellow old-timers rarely have the quality control that he has shown consistently. And that is after the decades of standing-up to work have made his walk a little slow and ponderous. My dentist once treated Peter Townsend who had broken a crown while he was here on tour with the Who. I doubt if Frank would care if he had a famous customer unless it was like Jerry Vale. I'll bet he has though, even if he didn't always recognize them. University Avenue used to be hip--the Berkeley Square (Mission of Burma, Robin Hitchcock), Keystone Berkeley (Jerry Garcia, Hugh Mundel), Lookout records (Green Day, X) to name a few lost locales whose scenes I used to make. Of course, there are many more I missed in the days, for example, back when there were "psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street." In it's heyday the old UC Theater next door to his shop was a magnet for the alternative film audience.
Ah the 20th century, how naive and complacent we all were back then.
From his barber's chair today, I could see the building for Trader Joe's going up on the corner of MLK. There is mercy in Frank's timing in that he will no longer be there when that Gordian knot of traffic starts tightening. Maybe it will be good for the locksmith next door or the hot hot-tub place across the street. Hope springs eternal hereabouts. I noticed a nice new whole wheat artisan pretzel place a few doors over. And I recently caught an art show by Mark Mothersbaugh, artist/composer and beautiful mutant, at a tattoo gallery in this patch. Naturally Frank himself will be fine, at home with his family, attempting to replicate his aunt's recipe for white beans with tomato.
Until then, he still occasionally smokes a cigar even after a local ordinance said no, again like Moe. I'd find him puffing and sitting in his chair on a slow day and other times he'd take a hefty puff while cutting your hair. I have never minded the smoke and it's a tiny place that airs-out in no time with the door open. The music is always at a good volume and is always on a radio tuned to a classical station. A real Italian, he has a authentic zest for life, a sense of humor and an open laugh. He can voice advice or opinion on anything. Or not. That's the wisdom.
Hat's off to Frank.
(He's open until May 2009 if a reader is interested)
As always with human destiny in this material world, the only constant is impermanence. It means one less cool attribute to Berkeley, at least it does for me. Like all substantial changes to dependable things: you can't imagine it could happen; it happens; you go on.
As I climbed into the chair at Frank's barbershop, I told him I had just been reading a Chronicle that didn't look like the Chronicle, and I saw a picture of all the sidewalk mailboxes that they've taken away, while sitting next to a sign for his retirement party. "It's a new era," he laughed.
He's been in Berkeley since 1962. I started getting my hair cut there in the early 80s.
It was several years after I moved here. In that time I'd become familiar with Moe's seeming omnipresence at his bookstore. Moe's face was the face of Berkeley. But he's been absent a dozen years now. So from my perspective, after twenty-five years, Frank is today the face of Berkeley.
Frank is not very tall, bald, white of hair, not stout but nearly so, and quite pleasant but not always easy-going. I have not patronized his shop exclusively all those years by any means. I used to feel a little bit of an ambiguous vibe there at first. I was also concerned that some of his haircuts made me look too square. But square in a way he was--"I'm not a stylist." And that's why you went--nobody can give a white man a better "fade". I think he perfected his trademark cuts while in the military.
When it comes to short hair there is, of course, a fine line between square and not square. What I would usually do was to doctor the haircuts up a little when I got home. What was crucial was the professional short sides and back. If the somewhat longer hair on top made me look a little like a game show host, that was easily remedied. I could make slightly oblique and angular chops in it with my own barber sheers. With it gelled-up, I looked like an Interview magazine stylist had had his way with me.
Yes, I have cut my own hair when I felt like it. I actually cut my ex-wife's hair a few times too. A hairstylist was too timid to give her the cut she wanted, very short with a long forelock, so I did. She got compliments-- especially from some Japanese friends who ran a little restaurant in nearby Albany called Sakura. They dug my advanced design. My career was brief, however--hair-cutting is a headache and eyestrain for a crude perfectionist like me.
Nowadays I attempt to tend things when I need a trim between haircuts. Of course Frank notices the trail of my mutilations but doesn't mention them. I told him this week that I knew I looked like an overgrown vacant lot. I am tempted to paraphrase the old saw about acting as your own lawyer, and say a man who acts as his own barber has a fool for a client. But then I was reminded when watching Henry Fonda in the film "Young Mr. Lincoln" that old Honest Abe used to cut his own hair too. It kind of restored the nobility of it in my sight. The actual Lincoln has quite artfully messed-up hair in many photographs.
When I started going to Frank, he had his deluxe old shop next door to the UC Theater, which was then central to the local social scene. It was a familiar lay-out with all the classic barber furniture and equipment. The surrealism of everyday life abounded in these places, as with the vats of antiseptic with combs in them. They were always rather evocative of the barbershops, soda fountains and drug stores of...the twilight zone. The past as seen in the distorting mirror of memory.
While he sometimes had partners in those days as I recall, he's worked solo for two decades since. I seem to recall there was an elderly barber with him at first, and an awkward but routine decision by most people to wait for Frank. The old guy would sit quietly and read.
I even remember the period he shared the place with a woman barber, for once breaking with tradition. It never seemed quite workable but, like many unwieldy marriages, it went on for quite a while. She was incongruous in the same way the wall of framed posters by David Lance Goines was. But that was able to hang much longer. After all, Goines' deco-moderne posters for local high culture are echt Berkeley. He had a studio shop nearby for ages and probably got his hair cut at Frank's as well.
I recall experiencing a Proustian moment the first time Frank applied hot shaving cream to my temples and neck to shave me for the real aviator fade. It was something I had experienced regularly as a youth in the pre-Beatle-haircut days. It feels terrific.
A lot of the stylistic appeal of Punk and its aftermath, one of retrospective and revival, had to do with the charm of things lost in the hippie end of the sixties. This would include primitive rock and roll, tattoos, flat-tops, hot-rods, make-up, vintage clothes, low-budget movies--the whole morbid psycho-billy 50s-early 60s shebang. Frank's place still had illustrated cardboard racks of pocket combs and copies of Playboy with the reading material---it was the real thing, not some phony LA retro-style marketing concept.
Then, in the transformation of that UC Theater block, I lost track of Frank. His old shop between the theater and the corner cafe was closed-down. Another regrettable step downstairs for the city scene. But only some of us will feel the loss of habitat and resources. And with extinctions come new species.
That said however, I was pleasantly gassed when I picked up an issue of the New Yorker and read a full-page color comic by Adrian Tomine telling the story of a somewhat stern barber who looked exactly like Frank. And, of course, it was Frank. This fact was confirmed for me when I discovered that Francesco Caramagno was still open for business on University avenue, a mere few blocks west of his old place. And there on the wall was the New Yorker page in a frame.
In the comic, Tomine's character comes back to face Frank's consternation after having gotten his last haircut elsewhere. Many of us know the look. The story shows his utter trust in Frank's opinion and skills. I should say that this view is nearly unanimous among a multitude of his customers.
Though Tomine eventually moved away to New York on a more permanent basis, he started off his career locally. I used to see him walking along College avenue and frequenting the same Elmwood post office I did. We both had mailboxes there, and so did another star of alternative comics in the 90s and beyond, Dan Clowes. I became acquainted with Dan but never met Adrian. I believe he noticed me too though, observing me from across the street even. We were each noting another bright-eyed Berkeley-dweller at large and on foot in the mid-afternoon. He is the comic artist of his generation who has impressed me the most. I enjoy the precision and humor with which he draws subtle moments of emotion and behavior.
During the nineties I grew my hair long again and tied it back, "like Punk never happened." But not really, any moreso than that Punk was "like the Beatles never happened," as one slogan went. Nevertheless, for money-saving years all I required was the exchange of an ends-trim with a gal pal of mine. I had long hair like it in the seventies and it was a nice return to having it again. Long hair is spiritual and sensual, a blast and a bother. It's also amusing to see how differently people treat you with it and without it.
However, in recent years, with more snow on the roof, I try to keep it quite short. I have come to depend entirely on Frank to get my hair cut. More often than not it is not only worthwhile, a good cut at a fair price, but more fun and more informative than ever. After 47 years beside a big window on University Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Berkeley, he knows quite a bit about the life of this city. The "How Berkeley Can You be ?" parade goes by once a year, but really it's here every day.
Frank is unusually wise and always insightful on society and politics. I speak freely when I'm there and, even if I'm sometimes slightly tendentious, more often than not I find general amusement and a majority in agreement with what I say.
This visit, I was the last customer in the shop and said, for example, that I wanted to change careers, to become a bee-keeping monk in Hawaii. "The monks in Hawaii wouldn't get the property near the beaches," Frank replied.
At another point the mayor of Oakland came up. We'd seen him on TV airing some ceremonial rhetoric after an ex-con killed four cops in a traffic stop followed by a shoot-out. "I watch a lot of Western movies and it's not exactly honorable, but for the bad guy to take out four is certainly memorable." I took his silence as assent.
The conversation turned to cooking. I tell him that even though I am largely vegetarian I regularly use Israeli chicken consomme cubes in my cooking. I confess that I don't tell my vegetarian friend it's involved and he thinks I'm a really great cook. "Now I don't like Israel politically...at all...and I would just as soon boycott their products..."
"...but they are too good to do without!" he finished my thought.
There's just no one else I know of hereabouts who can cut hair like Frank anymore. Even his fellow old-timers rarely have the quality control that he has shown consistently. And that is after the decades of standing-up to work have made his walk a little slow and ponderous. My dentist once treated Peter Townsend who had broken a crown while he was here on tour with the Who. I doubt if Frank would care if he had a famous customer unless it was like Jerry Vale. I'll bet he has though, even if he didn't always recognize them. University Avenue used to be hip--the Berkeley Square (Mission of Burma, Robin Hitchcock), Keystone Berkeley (Jerry Garcia, Hugh Mundel), Lookout records (Green Day, X) to name a few lost locales whose scenes I used to make. Of course, there are many more I missed in the days, for example, back when there were "psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street." In it's heyday the old UC Theater next door to his shop was a magnet for the alternative film audience.
Ah the 20th century, how naive and complacent we all were back then.
From his barber's chair today, I could see the building for Trader Joe's going up on the corner of MLK. There is mercy in Frank's timing in that he will no longer be there when that Gordian knot of traffic starts tightening. Maybe it will be good for the locksmith next door or the hot hot-tub place across the street. Hope springs eternal hereabouts. I noticed a nice new whole wheat artisan pretzel place a few doors over. And I recently caught an art show by Mark Mothersbaugh, artist/composer and beautiful mutant, at a tattoo gallery in this patch. Naturally Frank himself will be fine, at home with his family, attempting to replicate his aunt's recipe for white beans with tomato.
Until then, he still occasionally smokes a cigar even after a local ordinance said no, again like Moe. I'd find him puffing and sitting in his chair on a slow day and other times he'd take a hefty puff while cutting your hair. I have never minded the smoke and it's a tiny place that airs-out in no time with the door open. The music is always at a good volume and is always on a radio tuned to a classical station. A real Italian, he has a authentic zest for life, a sense of humor and an open laugh. He can voice advice or opinion on anything. Or not. That's the wisdom.
Hat's off to Frank.
(He's open until May 2009 if a reader is interested)
As always with human destiny in this material world, the only constant is impermanence. It means one less cool attribute to Berkeley, at least it does for me. Like all substantial changes to dependable things: you can't imagine it could happen; it happens; you go on.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Au Printemps...
Poster for a poetry reading
Stephen Ronan and Nanos Valaoritis
Drawing by RAY with digital color-design added.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The Enchanted Tree and the Gate of Gold
I was indoors working this afternoon when I felt the bonny day slipping away...
After a week of rain and cool weather, we have resumed the sunny and mild days that have been the norm this year. Even when it is stormy, when the over-heated newscasters marvel at helicopter films of a mere dusting of snow in the hills, the plum blossoms and the green, green grass make February the first full month of Spring around here.
I broke free of my desultory work at 4:30 to walk on campus among the young and in the sunshine. Cadres of exercise comrades were beginning their routines in lower Sproul. A lone soul drummer began a timbales-style tattoo, beating his bongos with a drumstick, out-numbered and defiant. I scurried on to protect my ear drum.
Out of curiosity, because any nostalgia has long faded, I ducked into the ASUC studio-gallery. It was where I first met two of my oldest California friends who were connected to it a long time ago. The occasion was an art exhibition I had put some works in. I'd found the place after first stopping by to use their color-xerox machine. It was still a novelty then and was utilized widely in the popular art of the new wave/punk scene. (In those days "new wave" meant the more pop side of the punk movement like the B-52s, not the hairdo synth bands of the 80s for which it became a marketing term.) Color xerox was in vogue not just for fliers, zines and postcards, but for jewelry, badges, and clothing.
Nowadays it looked more focused on digital graphics and ceramics and less on printmaking and old-fashioned photography. Except for a couple of cases of craft work, the gallery aspect looked non-existent--but that was a quick impression. Too often these days things can look a little dry or unexciting to me, perhaps because I'm no longer young.
Managing to avoid areas of shade, I continued on in the warm air. A being passed me by--blond, sort of feminine, tall, androgynous fisherman's sweater--and I could not decide whether it was a man or a woman. There was no apparent attempt at gender confusion on this person's part but, even though I am as observant and as intuitive as anyone can be, I did not have even a conclusive guess. I turned around after a discrete moment and looked back just as my enigma vanished into white sunlight.
Up at Faculty glade, the scene was festive. A big circle of students sat in the hillside grass quietly playing what I assume was folk music. They were just north of the music department and maybe somewhat shy as a consequence, not like the avenue buskers who try to attract listeners.
Downhill at the Dalian dogwood tree, three little children were climbing through it's symbolist lacunae and even up into the branches. Until today I had ever seen anyone else climbing in it. I sat above on the split log bench and watched them for a while. My figurative tail no doubt was wagging, and when they climbed down to stroll on with the mom-figure, I gave into my own urge to climb.
Clouds of steam billowed out a grating between the tree and the creek, adding to the fairy tale effect. I went down and mounted the black rock at the base of the tree to stretch a moment by grabbing on a lower branch. Next, I kicked of my boots and then ascended into the smooth boughs in my stocking feet. Once again, I saw smiles of amused appreciation from passing students after I went straight up without pause. One of the two little girls with a big cute face like Shirley Temple immediately came back to the tree to join me. I asked her to be careful but, as it turned out, all the kids were confident climbers who showed real instinctive caution and balance up in the tree. It was sheer delight to talk to them a little in this situation.
More mirthful passersby reacted to the sight of an older cat and three wee ones grooving in the second story of the world. Even the youngest, a boy of two or three years, was no longer content to crawl through the hollow trunk. He insisted his Mom lift him onto a lower branch. The other little girl had meanwhile climbed onto a branch just below where I was perched against the trunk. I exchanged pleasantries with the Mom who just then got a phone call. It was for the little girl nearest to me from her friend in Pennsylvania who was having a birthday. The nearby Campanile struck five just as she took the phone and said hello. The kids all appeared to take for granted that you can talk to a friend in Pennsylvania while you are sitting in a tree in California.
As she told her friend what she is doing, the first little girl remarked that this tree is like a house. I said it is an enchanted tree, like a story-book tree. The Mom liked that notion. She told me she appreciates the enchanting weather too, that they are here only for a year, hailing from snowy cold upstate New York. Whereas this burled old survivor was already putting out its new green leaves.
This play-time went on for at least a half hour. Feeling protective of the children, I gently asked the Mom to intervene when the little girl chatting on the phone stood straight up in the tree without a hand-hold. The girl told everyone not to listen as she whispered a secret to her far-away friend. "I know the secret--her name's Rachel and your name's Anna," yelled the other little girl. The little boy meanwhile had been loaded into a stroller but he kept saying, "no, no, no..." When he was released he came right back over and said, "I want to go high, Mommy, real high." It was like being in a real-life cartoon for this contemplative loner who never gets to hang out with the under-five crowd.
Despite my genuine enjoyment, I soon had to urge things along and get down. Again, and with almost Taoist delicacy, I suggested that the Mom take the phone so Anna could have both hands free to climb back down. And so I could be free to descend from the tree myself--my feet were beginning to feel the strain. These things we did. Then I put my boots on and said my good evening. As I started to walk off, the first little girl called loudly, "good bye," and we all waved, secret best friends forever.
On tentative legs went the Flaneur, over the creek via the ziggerat bridge and around to the Campanile. There bay and bridge came into view in a blast of sunlight. Already wearing shades, I pulled my beret down half way over them to be able to look. (Biensure, le Flaneur wears a black beret.)
How far the sun has come back in the two months since the winter solstice. The clear sky was softened by ethereal clouds. It was one of those times when the entire Bay reflects the lowering sun in a vast field of light like white gold. Today this effect of a golden bay of light within the larger watery bay extended all the way under the bridge and out to sea for a distance. Then it ended at a remote band of metallic-looking ocean before another lake of light appeared beyond that. It seemed to float in the air over the Pacific horizon. I squinted into to see if I could descry the Farrallones, a wild group of islands visible from here on very clear days. I couldn't see them however. There was too much light; a different form of clarity prevailed.
Although the sun was still fairly high and warm as the giant clock hands reached 5:30, I was tiring. I had a lot of retinal after-images from trying to look at the view. I began to hear the call of my nearby pad. To which I repaired, to commence cooking a cauldron of lentils and vegetables. And over a cup of coffee and a taste of medicinal caramel, to type up another day's expedition.
After a week of rain and cool weather, we have resumed the sunny and mild days that have been the norm this year. Even when it is stormy, when the over-heated newscasters marvel at helicopter films of a mere dusting of snow in the hills, the plum blossoms and the green, green grass make February the first full month of Spring around here.
I broke free of my desultory work at 4:30 to walk on campus among the young and in the sunshine. Cadres of exercise comrades were beginning their routines in lower Sproul. A lone soul drummer began a timbales-style tattoo, beating his bongos with a drumstick, out-numbered and defiant. I scurried on to protect my ear drum.
Out of curiosity, because any nostalgia has long faded, I ducked into the ASUC studio-gallery. It was where I first met two of my oldest California friends who were connected to it a long time ago. The occasion was an art exhibition I had put some works in. I'd found the place after first stopping by to use their color-xerox machine. It was still a novelty then and was utilized widely in the popular art of the new wave/punk scene. (In those days "new wave" meant the more pop side of the punk movement like the B-52s, not the hairdo synth bands of the 80s for which it became a marketing term.) Color xerox was in vogue not just for fliers, zines and postcards, but for jewelry, badges, and clothing.
Nowadays it looked more focused on digital graphics and ceramics and less on printmaking and old-fashioned photography. Except for a couple of cases of craft work, the gallery aspect looked non-existent--but that was a quick impression. Too often these days things can look a little dry or unexciting to me, perhaps because I'm no longer young.
Managing to avoid areas of shade, I continued on in the warm air. A being passed me by--blond, sort of feminine, tall, androgynous fisherman's sweater--and I could not decide whether it was a man or a woman. There was no apparent attempt at gender confusion on this person's part but, even though I am as observant and as intuitive as anyone can be, I did not have even a conclusive guess. I turned around after a discrete moment and looked back just as my enigma vanished into white sunlight.
Up at Faculty glade, the scene was festive. A big circle of students sat in the hillside grass quietly playing what I assume was folk music. They were just north of the music department and maybe somewhat shy as a consequence, not like the avenue buskers who try to attract listeners.
Downhill at the Dalian dogwood tree, three little children were climbing through it's symbolist lacunae and even up into the branches. Until today I had ever seen anyone else climbing in it. I sat above on the split log bench and watched them for a while. My figurative tail no doubt was wagging, and when they climbed down to stroll on with the mom-figure, I gave into my own urge to climb.
Clouds of steam billowed out a grating between the tree and the creek, adding to the fairy tale effect. I went down and mounted the black rock at the base of the tree to stretch a moment by grabbing on a lower branch. Next, I kicked of my boots and then ascended into the smooth boughs in my stocking feet. Once again, I saw smiles of amused appreciation from passing students after I went straight up without pause. One of the two little girls with a big cute face like Shirley Temple immediately came back to the tree to join me. I asked her to be careful but, as it turned out, all the kids were confident climbers who showed real instinctive caution and balance up in the tree. It was sheer delight to talk to them a little in this situation.
More mirthful passersby reacted to the sight of an older cat and three wee ones grooving in the second story of the world. Even the youngest, a boy of two or three years, was no longer content to crawl through the hollow trunk. He insisted his Mom lift him onto a lower branch. The other little girl had meanwhile climbed onto a branch just below where I was perched against the trunk. I exchanged pleasantries with the Mom who just then got a phone call. It was for the little girl nearest to me from her friend in Pennsylvania who was having a birthday. The nearby Campanile struck five just as she took the phone and said hello. The kids all appeared to take for granted that you can talk to a friend in Pennsylvania while you are sitting in a tree in California.
As she told her friend what she is doing, the first little girl remarked that this tree is like a house. I said it is an enchanted tree, like a story-book tree. The Mom liked that notion. She told me she appreciates the enchanting weather too, that they are here only for a year, hailing from snowy cold upstate New York. Whereas this burled old survivor was already putting out its new green leaves.
This play-time went on for at least a half hour. Feeling protective of the children, I gently asked the Mom to intervene when the little girl chatting on the phone stood straight up in the tree without a hand-hold. The girl told everyone not to listen as she whispered a secret to her far-away friend. "I know the secret--her name's Rachel and your name's Anna," yelled the other little girl. The little boy meanwhile had been loaded into a stroller but he kept saying, "no, no, no..." When he was released he came right back over and said, "I want to go high, Mommy, real high." It was like being in a real-life cartoon for this contemplative loner who never gets to hang out with the under-five crowd.
Despite my genuine enjoyment, I soon had to urge things along and get down. Again, and with almost Taoist delicacy, I suggested that the Mom take the phone so Anna could have both hands free to climb back down. And so I could be free to descend from the tree myself--my feet were beginning to feel the strain. These things we did. Then I put my boots on and said my good evening. As I started to walk off, the first little girl called loudly, "good bye," and we all waved, secret best friends forever.
On tentative legs went the Flaneur, over the creek via the ziggerat bridge and around to the Campanile. There bay and bridge came into view in a blast of sunlight. Already wearing shades, I pulled my beret down half way over them to be able to look. (Biensure, le Flaneur wears a black beret.)
How far the sun has come back in the two months since the winter solstice. The clear sky was softened by ethereal clouds. It was one of those times when the entire Bay reflects the lowering sun in a vast field of light like white gold. Today this effect of a golden bay of light within the larger watery bay extended all the way under the bridge and out to sea for a distance. Then it ended at a remote band of metallic-looking ocean before another lake of light appeared beyond that. It seemed to float in the air over the Pacific horizon. I squinted into to see if I could descry the Farrallones, a wild group of islands visible from here on very clear days. I couldn't see them however. There was too much light; a different form of clarity prevailed.
Although the sun was still fairly high and warm as the giant clock hands reached 5:30, I was tiring. I had a lot of retinal after-images from trying to look at the view. I began to hear the call of my nearby pad. To which I repaired, to commence cooking a cauldron of lentils and vegetables. And over a cup of coffee and a taste of medicinal caramel, to type up another day's expedition.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Night-crawler
Night-crawlers was the name given to the large worms that appeared only on certain summer nights. The long bulbous worms stretched themselves across a particular moist green lawn under a street light in our neighborhood. They were prized by the older guys as bait for fishing and we learned how to catch the worms from them. It involved grabbing the worm's exploratory end before it could rapidly retract itself back into the earth. Once grabbed you had to ease out the rest of its length or risk snapping it in two. It was marvelous game for a young boy and for once the somewhat cruel treatment of small creatures had a redeeming purpose.
The worms only came out later in the evening when it finally gets dark. Although any boy would have loved to take part, really only those of us with cool enough parents could be out that late. My Mother was among the coolest and my brothers and I gained the status of kids who could stay out late in the summertime. By association we were ourselves night-crawlers, and I have always remained one.
In this column allow me to ramble around in musing and anecdote on the subject of night-life. Perhaps I should confess right away that, although I on occasion still night-crawl, as I have matured I have evolved into something more aptly called a night-owl.
From quite a young age I was in competition with brothers two and four years older than I was, to postpone having to go to bed. As they conquered new later hours, I griped that I should be allowed to stay up late as well. As a last resort, I would sneak out from my darkened bedroom to watch TV from the threshold behind a chair. Because it was almost always television, that great opponent of wholesome bed times, that was the crux of the matter.
I remember the wild style of Friday night horror movie showcases on TV when my Mother would bail out early and my brother and I would stay up until midnight, the breakthrough of staying up that late. This naturally led to the nocturnal sybarite's other requirement-- sleeping late the next day.
And of course many more of the night's thrills would follow.
The stars and the planets were closer in those days, before night-time illumination pushed us into a mole-like existence, into a tunnel of ambient light pollution through particulate mist. One night we looked up at a designated time and saw a tiny traveling blip that was Sputnik or a maybe it was Telestar, the data flickers in the mists of time. This all took place in the common back yard of a housing development where a floating community of kids flourished. We were united in the egalitarian order of the night world, maybe after a game of hide-and-go-seek.
Sunday night when Walt Disney came on one or another kid's Mom would call him for it and all the kids would disperse to very similar home lives.
Trick-or-treating was a gas, a lot of home-made costumes in those days. The Hallowe'en archetypes frequently encountered included gypsy fortune tellers that could be boys in drag, hobos with burnt cork beards that could be girls, and candy-driven pirates, as well as the witches and ghosts. I remember my particular delight in seeing a backyard kid in perfect a beatnik get-up--striped boat neck shirt, fake goatee, sunglasses, sandals, and a black beret. "Hey, Daddy-o" he yelled to me. I suspect there was some sort of foreshadowing of my destiny in my immediate fondness for the Beat generation--their art-loving laziness, their kohl-eyed women pale as vampires, their rejection of the square life so full of tedium.
Just beyond the dark end of the street was a rough-hewn lot known as "the rocks" where Xmas-tree snowball forts were built and untold illicit kid rituals took place out of sight of parents. Alongside was an old New England estate with stone walls and a tall stand-alone wooden tower where actual bats were seen swiveling about. This was locus of our most haunted nocturnal imaginings. I can still feel the frisson I felt at the time while regarding the Goodrum house under a bright moon with its great trees newly bereft of leaves in the expressionism of the vast nights of childhood.
Once a week, on summer nights for a few years, block dances were held in the next yard. I stood still for a hair-combing and gleefully donned my Sunday pants to make the scene. I remember a friend getting red chino slacks and all my Mom scored for me was a black pair, being miffed about it-- what was I thinking?
These affairs consisted of light bulbs on wires strung between clothesline fences to create an enclosed "dance floor." The people running it hauled a record player outside and spun 45 rpm singles--""I Want to Walk You Home" by Fats Domino was huge. They operated a concession table next to it selling bags of potato chips and small bottles of coca cola.
I loved everything about it. I loved the suspension of everyday dullness and the great American pop and rock'n'roll music of the period. I enjoyed observing the ardent teen-age couples dancing and the bonhomie of the older, less steamy couples. And I wasn't one of the boys who watched shyly and did nothing--I got out there with a little girl and tried to learn to dance myself. An incipient Dionysian, I was again setting a pattern for life.
(more to come soon)
The worms only came out later in the evening when it finally gets dark. Although any boy would have loved to take part, really only those of us with cool enough parents could be out that late. My Mother was among the coolest and my brothers and I gained the status of kids who could stay out late in the summertime. By association we were ourselves night-crawlers, and I have always remained one.
In this column allow me to ramble around in musing and anecdote on the subject of night-life. Perhaps I should confess right away that, although I on occasion still night-crawl, as I have matured I have evolved into something more aptly called a night-owl.
From quite a young age I was in competition with brothers two and four years older than I was, to postpone having to go to bed. As they conquered new later hours, I griped that I should be allowed to stay up late as well. As a last resort, I would sneak out from my darkened bedroom to watch TV from the threshold behind a chair. Because it was almost always television, that great opponent of wholesome bed times, that was the crux of the matter.
I remember the wild style of Friday night horror movie showcases on TV when my Mother would bail out early and my brother and I would stay up until midnight, the breakthrough of staying up that late. This naturally led to the nocturnal sybarite's other requirement-- sleeping late the next day.
And of course many more of the night's thrills would follow.
The stars and the planets were closer in those days, before night-time illumination pushed us into a mole-like existence, into a tunnel of ambient light pollution through particulate mist. One night we looked up at a designated time and saw a tiny traveling blip that was Sputnik or a maybe it was Telestar, the data flickers in the mists of time. This all took place in the common back yard of a housing development where a floating community of kids flourished. We were united in the egalitarian order of the night world, maybe after a game of hide-and-go-seek.
Sunday night when Walt Disney came on one or another kid's Mom would call him for it and all the kids would disperse to very similar home lives.
Trick-or-treating was a gas, a lot of home-made costumes in those days. The Hallowe'en archetypes frequently encountered included gypsy fortune tellers that could be boys in drag, hobos with burnt cork beards that could be girls, and candy-driven pirates, as well as the witches and ghosts. I remember my particular delight in seeing a backyard kid in perfect a beatnik get-up--striped boat neck shirt, fake goatee, sunglasses, sandals, and a black beret. "Hey, Daddy-o" he yelled to me. I suspect there was some sort of foreshadowing of my destiny in my immediate fondness for the Beat generation--their art-loving laziness, their kohl-eyed women pale as vampires, their rejection of the square life so full of tedium.
Just beyond the dark end of the street was a rough-hewn lot known as "the rocks" where Xmas-tree snowball forts were built and untold illicit kid rituals took place out of sight of parents. Alongside was an old New England estate with stone walls and a tall stand-alone wooden tower where actual bats were seen swiveling about. This was locus of our most haunted nocturnal imaginings. I can still feel the frisson I felt at the time while regarding the Goodrum house under a bright moon with its great trees newly bereft of leaves in the expressionism of the vast nights of childhood.
Once a week, on summer nights for a few years, block dances were held in the next yard. I stood still for a hair-combing and gleefully donned my Sunday pants to make the scene. I remember a friend getting red chino slacks and all my Mom scored for me was a black pair, being miffed about it-- what was I thinking?
These affairs consisted of light bulbs on wires strung between clothesline fences to create an enclosed "dance floor." The people running it hauled a record player outside and spun 45 rpm singles--""I Want to Walk You Home" by Fats Domino was huge. They operated a concession table next to it selling bags of potato chips and small bottles of coca cola.
I loved everything about it. I loved the suspension of everyday dullness and the great American pop and rock'n'roll music of the period. I enjoyed observing the ardent teen-age couples dancing and the bonhomie of the older, less steamy couples. And I wasn't one of the boys who watched shyly and did nothing--I got out there with a little girl and tried to learn to dance myself. An incipient Dionysian, I was again setting a pattern for life.
(more to come soon)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
A Christmas Stroll in Chilly San Francisco
A new tradition has taken root in my experience over the last three years--the solitary Christmas walk in San Francisco.
The holidays and a cold have slowed me down on writing this column. Also there's work to do on my latest blog, "Trans-Canada, Trans America," so I may take a temporary hiatus on Flaneur columns presently. I thought perhaps the best way to to fulfill this one now would be to transcribe the fairly raw notes from my notebook for Christmas day. They were written late, late at night and don't pretend to poetry or prose. Make of them what you may.
The first section concerns a walk on campus after midnight Christmas morning; the second was a midnight musing; and the third section describes my sojourn in San Francisco the following afternoon.
Christmas Quietude
1.
not one person
until an umbrella man
in a black suit
white shirt black tie
newsprint photograph
rain water rushing under
the footbridge
I think I spooked him
praying at a sundial in the rain
under a black umbrella myself
a few mesmerized cars venture past
storm clouds from over the sea
the Gate still has its teeth
blurred Xmas lights on Telegraph
no insight, no key
just rain sounds in drain pipes
all else even the hard luck cases
are still tonight, are not at all
flags snap furiously
high over a vacant facade
no explanation
a night of rain
2.
poetry is incense smoke wafting
over broken glass
poetry is the incense
is the wind
is the broken glass
3.
the key is the Christ we seek in ourselves
and find in others
across railway expanses
the enlightened clouds
cold sunlight delineates all
the wind awaits in hollowed streets
clang clang clang went brittle sound-scapes
almost hysteria hand claps
"I'll fly away O Lord"
every few feet a hustle
my head's up on buildings
so sharply printed
Union square aflutter
with shutterbugs
can't avoid my picture taken
last shaft of sunlight between
Christmas tree and skating rink
the kids go 'round and 'round
to Enya's "silent night"
blow into St Francis hotel
a golden castle encircled by a train
big teddy bears over the desk
open seating in the warm lobby
rested braced by brandy
and back into the wind
life-size iron lions
on Grant street sidewalk
new euro-kitsch emporia
at the dragon gate
the impending bells of St Mary's
totem tower of a monk
in the frigid square
too cold for the lonely few
who dart across the pavement
today no children play
in the spongiform playground
only lonely Chinese windows
gazing out of red brick buildings
for a hundred years
the black clock face strikes four
but St Mary's is locked
in the Christmas cold
so it's the film noir tunnel
through fun-house Chinatown
toward the shrine of Saint Francis
to kneel a while and pray
in his Porziuncola
a painted chapel
transported from his mind
before our eyes
the docent is one Redwood Mary
from Berkeley a kindred soul
from this highpoint
I start to descend again
through ages past
Columbus Avenue City Lights
"No Money for Bankers"
scrawled on wrapping paper
in upstairs windows
approaching the underground
entrance somewhere
behind the pyramid through
the prehistoric redwood grove
trunks studded with bulbous light
cryptozoa in rainwater blobs
on a great glass slide
over Sansome street
and down all the way
to the submarine trains
to the lights and the decorations
of a crepuscular world
The holidays and a cold have slowed me down on writing this column. Also there's work to do on my latest blog, "Trans-Canada, Trans America," so I may take a temporary hiatus on Flaneur columns presently. I thought perhaps the best way to to fulfill this one now would be to transcribe the fairly raw notes from my notebook for Christmas day. They were written late, late at night and don't pretend to poetry or prose. Make of them what you may.
The first section concerns a walk on campus after midnight Christmas morning; the second was a midnight musing; and the third section describes my sojourn in San Francisco the following afternoon.
Christmas Quietude
1.
not one person
until an umbrella man
in a black suit
white shirt black tie
newsprint photograph
rain water rushing under
the footbridge
I think I spooked him
praying at a sundial in the rain
under a black umbrella myself
a few mesmerized cars venture past
storm clouds from over the sea
the Gate still has its teeth
blurred Xmas lights on Telegraph
no insight, no key
just rain sounds in drain pipes
all else even the hard luck cases
are still tonight, are not at all
flags snap furiously
high over a vacant facade
no explanation
a night of rain
2.
poetry is incense smoke wafting
over broken glass
poetry is the incense
is the wind
is the broken glass
3.
the key is the Christ we seek in ourselves
and find in others
across railway expanses
the enlightened clouds
cold sunlight delineates all
the wind awaits in hollowed streets
clang clang clang went brittle sound-scapes
almost hysteria hand claps
"I'll fly away O Lord"
every few feet a hustle
my head's up on buildings
so sharply printed
Union square aflutter
with shutterbugs
can't avoid my picture taken
last shaft of sunlight between
Christmas tree and skating rink
the kids go 'round and 'round
to Enya's "silent night"
blow into St Francis hotel
a golden castle encircled by a train
big teddy bears over the desk
open seating in the warm lobby
rested braced by brandy
and back into the wind
life-size iron lions
on Grant street sidewalk
new euro-kitsch emporia
at the dragon gate
the impending bells of St Mary's
totem tower of a monk
in the frigid square
too cold for the lonely few
who dart across the pavement
today no children play
in the spongiform playground
only lonely Chinese windows
gazing out of red brick buildings
for a hundred years
the black clock face strikes four
but St Mary's is locked
in the Christmas cold
so it's the film noir tunnel
through fun-house Chinatown
toward the shrine of Saint Francis
to kneel a while and pray
in his Porziuncola
a painted chapel
transported from his mind
before our eyes
the docent is one Redwood Mary
from Berkeley a kindred soul
from this highpoint
I start to descend again
through ages past
Columbus Avenue City Lights
"No Money for Bankers"
scrawled on wrapping paper
in upstairs windows
approaching the underground
entrance somewhere
behind the pyramid through
the prehistoric redwood grove
trunks studded with bulbous light
cryptozoa in rainwater blobs
on a great glass slide
over Sansome street
and down all the way
to the submarine trains
to the lights and the decorations
of a crepuscular world
Sunday, December 7, 2008
A Walk Up On Holy Hill
On the second Sunday of Advent I take my archetypal restorative hike up to the theological library and environs...
At last the seasonal crispness seems to have set in; maybe now we'll see rain. Folk music and beyond on the radio helps comb the sleepiness out of my eyebrows in early afternoon. Outdoors, streamlined gray clouds dominate the dry sky. I note that a dog at one of the sidewalk cafe tables is wearing a sweater today.
The campus ceremonial assembly line has another yet graduation going on at Zellerbach hall. Black gowns and bright bouquets dot the concrete landscape. It is after all good for local business--Telegraph opens its maw wide, a tunnel of Christmas lights and consumptive traffic.
I walk rapidly along the central campus path, doing some upper body exercises like the somewhat oblivious person that I am--I behave the same way here at 1AM during vacations when there is not another person to be seen. I have had to reinsert my ear plugs due sensitivity and someone pulling a metal hand truck alongside me. So I'm in my own world as usual, the inner life always close at hand.
In no time I am cresting on the North side of campus, passing the cool geological sample slabs and I'm not out of breath. Friday at a doctor's appointment I learned that I weighed 143 pounds--a personal best for my mature years and nearly 40 pounds less than four years ago right after Thanksgiving. My new doctor viewing a recent blood test marveled at how low my cholesterol was--yeah baby. I mention all this not to flaunt it, but in the hope of inspiring others. You feel so much more in tune with life when you are not dragged by excess weight.
The key to shaping up for me was primarily a return to the vegetarianism of my young adulthood, but with greater understanding and cooking skills; and secondly, a determination not to eat more than I need. Another big help was my decision, after a lifetime of indulging a sweet tooth, to eliminate cookies, pies, cakes, pastries, ice cream and candy except in rather infrequent social settings. When I was a child I ate from the candy-booze food group and now I am an adult. I even like my coffee black.
In previous decades, the North side of campus seemed to be a more lively place. There was a cool record store here back in the day, Rather Ripped Records on the western corner of Euclid. It was a great place for underground platters--the Clash's "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" 45 was my first cop there. Among the many underground musicians who passed through it, Patti Smith and Jim Carrol had once made the scene.
There was an atrociously small cinema then, the Northside I believe it was called. Despite its dimensions, it showed hip stuff and could be fun. These days mainly various eateries seem to thrive on the business end of Euclid. One place looked crowded, a cafe that kept up the time-honored tradition of campus-side establishments everywhere by having a "clever" punning name, the "Brewed Awakening."
And the Seven Thieves variety store still held its corner; whether it is still called that I know not. A ridge of the Berkeley hills looms precipitously over this part of town. Autumnal reds highlight the deep green of the trees that shelter a latticework of the wooden buildings, homes and residence halls of this slightly nervous version of Hobbiton.
Christmastide hereabouts seems a little slow in coming on this year. But there is a fragrant green wreath welcoming me at the door of the Graduate Theological Union library. The population of soulful scholars today is sparse. I glance again at vitrines and gallery walls which displaying abstract paintings comprised of woven colors that themselves represent walls. I had already taken a close look at them on my last visit in October.
My object, quickly located, is a 1992 English language edition of The Gospel of Thomas, The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. It has en face facsimiles of the original scrolls, legendary papyri uncovered at Nag Hamadi in Egypt. That is to say, they are not in the canon of the New Testament. It is entirely comprised of quotations of words of Jesus without any of the back-story or on-going narrative. It offers a Jesus who is the enigmatic, proverbial teacher of the Gospels but without making a claim of His divine identity as the Son of God who was crucified and rose again from the dead to redeem mankind. One can if one wishes not involve oneself with the divine Jesus. Here one encounters Jesus solely as a mystical teacher, offering one hundred or so maxims on to how to gain God's kingdom and how to recognize the chosen of God. In a commentary to the edition I read, Harold Bloom, a rather pompous Shakespeare professor from Yale, describes this gospel of hidden sayings as "creedless, proto-gnostic, Orphic, and post-Christian." He sort of tips his hand on the last term--he wishes.
The Gospel of Thomas is held by tradition to have been written by Judas Thomas the Twin who was Jesus identical twin brother. It's prologue begins with his words:
"And he said , 'Whoever discovers the interpretation of these saying will not taste death.'" This great but apocryphal document affords the intrigue of discovering an esoteric teacher in Jesus almost as if He was outside one's own more orthodox faith background--like reading Ramakrishna, or maybe more like Kahlil Gibran. The goatherd found the scrolls in a cave at Nag Hamadi housed in a large jar. When he broke it open, he later swore, a numinous golden spirit, a guardian djin, emerged from it and rose up into the air. The archaeologists later insisted it was merely tiny fragments of the scroll stirred up into the sunlight by breaking the vessel. By way of stating my approach to this Gospel, I will say that I prefer the former explanation.
49. "Fortunate are those who are alone and chosen, for you will find the kingdom. For you have come from it, and you will return there again."
That sort of thing can make a stoned loner, mystical and contemplative, feel quite a bit better in one's overcast Sunday afternoon solitude. For folks like myself, it is one of the original self-help books of affirmation. With this visit I begin to incarnate my spirit of Advent--tonight the manger goes up. Recalling the words of Arthur Rimbaud, I ask,"When will it be Christmas on earth?"
Lifted up and back out of doors into the last muted daylight. I follow the crisscross sidewalks to go out to the end of the plateau of sanctity, enveloped by divinity and by school. I note the symbols of various religions carved into the stone wall outside a chapel--signs in stone planted for the amusement of the archaeologists of the future.
At the view spot, another stands silently gazing out at the distant sky over the sea beyond the Gate. An unseen sun forms an intense gold dish on the waters. Leviathan cloud continents have fissured enough for a celestial curtain of sunlight to fall for miles and miles across the middle distance. It is the picture that inspired the idea of heaven, the darkening world and the light that saves us.
Postscript: Reading this a week later I observe that I had, as usual, made myself into more of a loner than I actually was. I left out a pleasant meeting and conversation that took place at the view spot at the western end of the divinity school courtyard. When I arrived I found that the view of the emergent sunlight on the Bay was best from a spot off to the right of the walkway--so far south does the sun set around the solstice. From one spot alone, one could see the direct light of the sun's reflection on the water. While above one could look straight at the clouds where the sunlight poured through, this body of reflected light, gold and miraculous, was too bright to look at for very long.
As I contemplated this quantification of the spiritual in the physical, an older woman came climbing with the support of a cane the substantial concrete stairway from the street below. Past the age of eighty, she seemed frail yet noble in her determination to reach the higher level of the lawn. There she turned with satisfaction to see the Western sky. I greeted her in a neighborly way, and shuffled over to encourage her to see the vista from the optimal standing point. She had glimpsed that light on the Bay and came right over to see it. We struck up a conversation--she was from Chicago, lived a long time in Hawaii, and now lived here. We chatted about the weather in these places and my native New England, our experiences of them, and how for me Hawaii remained terra incognito. I told her that when I confessed to my doctor that I thought I was burned out, she told me I wouldn't be if I lived on a beach in Hawaii. Sometimes I ponder how I could manage to switch to that life--a sustaining myth, I suppose.
This kind of talk arises among locals hereabouts as soon as the weather brushes forty degrees.
I append it here to defeat easy diagnosis of this columnists apparent self-isolation. Many more such encounters occur on walks that I later write up but I tend to leave them out. One neither wants to appear to be vainly painting an over-nice portrait of oneself, nor do one want to blow the concept of a deliberately uninvolved observer that a flaneur is rightfully assumed to embody.
At last the seasonal crispness seems to have set in; maybe now we'll see rain. Folk music and beyond on the radio helps comb the sleepiness out of my eyebrows in early afternoon. Outdoors, streamlined gray clouds dominate the dry sky. I note that a dog at one of the sidewalk cafe tables is wearing a sweater today.
The campus ceremonial assembly line has another yet graduation going on at Zellerbach hall. Black gowns and bright bouquets dot the concrete landscape. It is after all good for local business--Telegraph opens its maw wide, a tunnel of Christmas lights and consumptive traffic.
I walk rapidly along the central campus path, doing some upper body exercises like the somewhat oblivious person that I am--I behave the same way here at 1AM during vacations when there is not another person to be seen. I have had to reinsert my ear plugs due sensitivity and someone pulling a metal hand truck alongside me. So I'm in my own world as usual, the inner life always close at hand.
In no time I am cresting on the North side of campus, passing the cool geological sample slabs and I'm not out of breath. Friday at a doctor's appointment I learned that I weighed 143 pounds--a personal best for my mature years and nearly 40 pounds less than four years ago right after Thanksgiving. My new doctor viewing a recent blood test marveled at how low my cholesterol was--yeah baby. I mention all this not to flaunt it, but in the hope of inspiring others. You feel so much more in tune with life when you are not dragged by excess weight.
The key to shaping up for me was primarily a return to the vegetarianism of my young adulthood, but with greater understanding and cooking skills; and secondly, a determination not to eat more than I need. Another big help was my decision, after a lifetime of indulging a sweet tooth, to eliminate cookies, pies, cakes, pastries, ice cream and candy except in rather infrequent social settings. When I was a child I ate from the candy-booze food group and now I am an adult. I even like my coffee black.
In previous decades, the North side of campus seemed to be a more lively place. There was a cool record store here back in the day, Rather Ripped Records on the western corner of Euclid. It was a great place for underground platters--the Clash's "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" 45 was my first cop there. Among the many underground musicians who passed through it, Patti Smith and Jim Carrol had once made the scene.
There was an atrociously small cinema then, the Northside I believe it was called. Despite its dimensions, it showed hip stuff and could be fun. These days mainly various eateries seem to thrive on the business end of Euclid. One place looked crowded, a cafe that kept up the time-honored tradition of campus-side establishments everywhere by having a "clever" punning name, the "Brewed Awakening."
And the Seven Thieves variety store still held its corner; whether it is still called that I know not. A ridge of the Berkeley hills looms precipitously over this part of town. Autumnal reds highlight the deep green of the trees that shelter a latticework of the wooden buildings, homes and residence halls of this slightly nervous version of Hobbiton.
Christmastide hereabouts seems a little slow in coming on this year. But there is a fragrant green wreath welcoming me at the door of the Graduate Theological Union library. The population of soulful scholars today is sparse. I glance again at vitrines and gallery walls which displaying abstract paintings comprised of woven colors that themselves represent walls. I had already taken a close look at them on my last visit in October.
My object, quickly located, is a 1992 English language edition of The Gospel of Thomas, The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. It has en face facsimiles of the original scrolls, legendary papyri uncovered at Nag Hamadi in Egypt. That is to say, they are not in the canon of the New Testament. It is entirely comprised of quotations of words of Jesus without any of the back-story or on-going narrative. It offers a Jesus who is the enigmatic, proverbial teacher of the Gospels but without making a claim of His divine identity as the Son of God who was crucified and rose again from the dead to redeem mankind. One can if one wishes not involve oneself with the divine Jesus. Here one encounters Jesus solely as a mystical teacher, offering one hundred or so maxims on to how to gain God's kingdom and how to recognize the chosen of God. In a commentary to the edition I read, Harold Bloom, a rather pompous Shakespeare professor from Yale, describes this gospel of hidden sayings as "creedless, proto-gnostic, Orphic, and post-Christian." He sort of tips his hand on the last term--he wishes.
The Gospel of Thomas is held by tradition to have been written by Judas Thomas the Twin who was Jesus identical twin brother. It's prologue begins with his words:
"And he said , 'Whoever discovers the interpretation of these saying will not taste death.'" This great but apocryphal document affords the intrigue of discovering an esoteric teacher in Jesus almost as if He was outside one's own more orthodox faith background--like reading Ramakrishna, or maybe more like Kahlil Gibran. The goatherd found the scrolls in a cave at Nag Hamadi housed in a large jar. When he broke it open, he later swore, a numinous golden spirit, a guardian djin, emerged from it and rose up into the air. The archaeologists later insisted it was merely tiny fragments of the scroll stirred up into the sunlight by breaking the vessel. By way of stating my approach to this Gospel, I will say that I prefer the former explanation.
49. "Fortunate are those who are alone and chosen, for you will find the kingdom. For you have come from it, and you will return there again."
That sort of thing can make a stoned loner, mystical and contemplative, feel quite a bit better in one's overcast Sunday afternoon solitude. For folks like myself, it is one of the original self-help books of affirmation. With this visit I begin to incarnate my spirit of Advent--tonight the manger goes up. Recalling the words of Arthur Rimbaud, I ask,"When will it be Christmas on earth?"
Lifted up and back out of doors into the last muted daylight. I follow the crisscross sidewalks to go out to the end of the plateau of sanctity, enveloped by divinity and by school. I note the symbols of various religions carved into the stone wall outside a chapel--signs in stone planted for the amusement of the archaeologists of the future.
At the view spot, another stands silently gazing out at the distant sky over the sea beyond the Gate. An unseen sun forms an intense gold dish on the waters. Leviathan cloud continents have fissured enough for a celestial curtain of sunlight to fall for miles and miles across the middle distance. It is the picture that inspired the idea of heaven, the darkening world and the light that saves us.
Postscript: Reading this a week later I observe that I had, as usual, made myself into more of a loner than I actually was. I left out a pleasant meeting and conversation that took place at the view spot at the western end of the divinity school courtyard. When I arrived I found that the view of the emergent sunlight on the Bay was best from a spot off to the right of the walkway--so far south does the sun set around the solstice. From one spot alone, one could see the direct light of the sun's reflection on the water. While above one could look straight at the clouds where the sunlight poured through, this body of reflected light, gold and miraculous, was too bright to look at for very long.
As I contemplated this quantification of the spiritual in the physical, an older woman came climbing with the support of a cane the substantial concrete stairway from the street below. Past the age of eighty, she seemed frail yet noble in her determination to reach the higher level of the lawn. There she turned with satisfaction to see the Western sky. I greeted her in a neighborly way, and shuffled over to encourage her to see the vista from the optimal standing point. She had glimpsed that light on the Bay and came right over to see it. We struck up a conversation--she was from Chicago, lived a long time in Hawaii, and now lived here. We chatted about the weather in these places and my native New England, our experiences of them, and how for me Hawaii remained terra incognito. I told her that when I confessed to my doctor that I thought I was burned out, she told me I wouldn't be if I lived on a beach in Hawaii. Sometimes I ponder how I could manage to switch to that life--a sustaining myth, I suppose.
This kind of talk arises among locals hereabouts as soon as the weather brushes forty degrees.
I append it here to defeat easy diagnosis of this columnists apparent self-isolation. Many more such encounters occur on walks that I later write up but I tend to leave them out. One neither wants to appear to be vainly painting an over-nice portrait of oneself, nor do one want to blow the concept of a deliberately uninvolved observer that a flaneur is rightfully assumed to embody.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)