Peace Comes Falling Slow

The familiar strange quietude descended on Berkeley as soon as the students decamp for elsewhere.

Today the poignant skies are calling me--solid violet-gray to the north, the evocative light of broken Southern skies. Trees reveal their skeletal complexity, the beauty of organic design. I sit and savor a particular art nouveau tree, a favorite roost of the now-abundant crows. It's behind a stop-light and it goes largely unnoticed by the heedless traffic.
In Peoples Park people sleep in broad daylight, covers pulled over their eyes. Damp ground perhaps but the absence of rain keeps them from more dire straits.
I move along to Willard Park and rest on a bench where a fellow slightly older than myself plays airs from an old Joni Mitchell song quietly on his acoustic guitar. we talk and soon learn we have Massachusetts roots in common, going back to Canada as well.
The Beat generation comes up and he turns out to be a fellow child of beatitude. He mentions a film on a Beat poet he'd recently seen. How he shared the philosophy of his poem he half recalls. I paraphrase it for him: all that matters is to do the work, to lessen suffering, the rest is drunken dumb-show.
He tells me he is living in his car again. He had been taking care of a disable person in Marin but had to quit due to the person's crazy roommate.
I clue him into the network of free meals available to the needy hereabouts.
Off we go, I'm bound for a hospital visit but somehow don't find my friend Faye who has respiratory difficulties. En route I sent off a flock of cards to my late-arriving Christmas correspondents. Afterward, I join the avid consumers at the natural foods supermarket, I'm one of the more careful, frugal ones as I observe conspicuous purchases of all the delights available by those heading for New Year's celebrations. I'm headed there too in my own discrete way.
But I can't help but notice those souls whiling away the afternoon at bus stops and innocuous perches along the way. One bearded young fellow with soulful eyes lingers in my mind.
May God bless us all. May peace and the other necessities of life remain in reach for us all.

An oddly moving documentary on the band Flaming Lips, "Fearless Freaks," ends with a outtake/deleted scene of a new Year's Eve countdown. It leads to a version of "Seven nation Army" by the Lips combined with the White Stripes. Just as it finishes the bells of the campanile begin to strike new Year's midnight. They never toll ordinary midnight.
So I dress and go outside with a mug of Raven's eye organic imperial stout (an Xmas gift from Joe). I have time to prop open the outside door and step out just as last bells are tolled. They continue on in a carillon concert commencing naturally with "Auld Lang Syne."
Another nearby church begins striking midnight as the carillon chimes on and widespread firecrackers and gunshots volley into the distance for a half an hour. Signs of life erupt all over the otherwise ghostly town.
Earlier I'd eaten half of a cannabis caramel, and as twelve neared I refreshed with a few puffs and more stout. I would describe my state of being as a perfect buzz, far from over-indulgenge, as the year ran out. Overhead the about full moon is evanescent in the racing high clouds of a warmer air mass. In a clear view of San Francisco I can see the fireworks off of the Embarcadero. Red and blue predominate in the pyrotechnical blooms. helicopters can be seen flying above them, filming no doubt.
It is really a joyful moment so often scarce in these days of plentiful woe.
Just then a romp of slightly intoxicated chines student girls comes out into the backyard next door. "The full moon, the full moon..." they enthuse. We are invisible to each other behind the intervening avocado tree. They giggle awhile then go back inside.
I head back into my fleeting house myself. There follows a light midnight meal and yet another film-- undersea and outer space with Werner Herzog. The film unspools, the DVD spins, and the stars revolve into the as yet unknown.

Feverish Dreams of November

In which the Flaneur opens his unconscious toy-chest for the exploration of the over-soul.

Amid a tide of challenge and loss, there occurred to me this month not the least of them--a bout with the swine flu. I remained active despite a Dante-like tour of successive ailments and one of the side-effects was that I began to experience and remember lucid dreams. Here are a few I wrote down.

Dream #1

A group of ape-men ranging a a hillside with dim sunlight. They become confused, fearful and angry when Jesus of Nazareth walks nearby. One gets agitated enough to attempt to bite the arm of Jesus. But he is either impenetrable like superman or he is incorporeal as the Risen Christ. The ape-man is unable to sink his teeth in our Savior's arm, instantaneously my arm.


Commentary: This dream may show an over-active self-association with Jesus. I never see his face and he goes from observed to observer. This dream may be related to a recent nightmarish encounter with some ant-abortion extremists on the University campus. The lesson of this parable is that even if one attempts to conduct oneself in a saintly manner there are bestial individuals who may still attack.

Dream #2

Returning from the Elmwood neighborhood along Benvenue avenue. Families coming home are on the sidewalks. Dusk is descending.
Then I am on the far side of Oakland crossing from the east past lake Merritt toward downtown. As i walk I realize that I am wearing women's clothing--even low-healed light brown pumps. It dawns on me that my route will take me past tough guys loitering on International boulevard. dressed as I am in drag. But they don't notice me among the many the crowd walking in the same direction. The sidewalk takes a diversion toward the entrance to a tunnel.

Commentary: I have never worn, nor do I ever wish to wear women's clothes. I had watched Kubrick's film "A Clockwork Orange" the previous night with similar tunnels and similar urban dysphoria and threats of gender-related violence.

Dream #3

Speeding downhill toward the East bay from mountains and foothills. The driver is a wild young man, possibly irresponsible. Trees whip past close to my open window.
At a gallery behind Zellerbach auditorium--an art exhibit, objects set up on a hardwood floor. There is a large tableaux of little men and other toys set up on the floor. But most notable is an animatronic pig the grey white color of computer terminals. It is free-standing on pointy hooves and it is giving a talk whether anyone listens or not. It is like a cartoon that has entered actuality but at the same time very palpable and "real."
As I walk past it the pig is saying, "...whether or not the CIA released this information intentionally, we can never know for certain..." is apparently a conspiracy theorist.

Dream #4

I'm giving a lecture on Edgar Poe. It seems to be taking place in the same gallery as the previous art exhibit. A silent attentive class takes notes. Then I conclude and make ready to go. At this point I notice many in the class were wearing headphones and watching a screen to my right, the notes that they were writing were based on that. Of those who did listen to me none respond to me or indicate whether they appreciated what I said or not. When I look toward someone I was thinking was an old friend--I see it was merely someone who looked like him.


Commentary: Reflects perhaps my unease as a write and artist about a diffuse and unresponsive on-line audience and on friends one rarely sees.

Dream #5

I arrive early for a stage performance that I am to take part in. Nevertheless I am asked to pay the fifteen-dollar admission. I resist but they insist so I do. The impresario of the event is Joseph Spencer, aloof and authoritarian. Then I am naked and as the show begins i am informed by him that there won't be time to include me in the show. I get very steamed especially in light of having paid admission to get in. As I rant I try to get dressed. As I begin to don my boxer shorts, I notice that I have a worn and torn pair. I try to put them on without anyone noticing. But, as is human nature, everyone sneaks a peak when someone is putting on underclothes.

Commentary: The emotions involved and the circumstances of this dream make it apparent that it relates to an Over the Edge radio program I was part of last August. I lost my temper as it was beginning, due to unrelated reasons. Joseph is clearly a stand-in for Don Joyce whose program it is.

Dream #6

A horizontal commode--the kind of toilet you see in modern buildings. It juts straight out from the wall. Marie the cat slowly lowers herself into the basin, submerging even her head (which cats are extremely loathe to do). She settles down to the bottom of the basin and remains there sphinx-like while I grow increasingly alarmed by this. She is apparently holding her breath, at least she is not drowning. After a few long seconds I know I must reach in and pick her up. This I proceed to do and I notice that the water is quite yellow.

Commentary: While taking care of this my neighbor's cat I would occasionally see her poised on the toilet seat and leaning in to have a drink. This behavior alarmed me and I discouraged it. Marie recently moved away with her owner.

The Passing Parade

How I love to sit inconspicuously in a public place and observe people passing by, especially children and young people...

Today I slipped out into the cool sunshine in the late afternoon around 4:30. I looked for a likely perch where the sunshine was still present and decided on one of the new metal benches on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Durant. Telegraph Avenue on Saturdays is as it has long been, a magnet for young folks for miles around who mingle with the University students situated throughout the South side of campus. It's not the Mecca it once was, but a few of the over-size record stores survived the down turn in that business and they still attract the kids as do the clothes stores and the other life-style suppliers.
I see deeply into people even at a glance. I have always had the knack and it has only deepened with the passing years. Given a mild cannabis cookie as I was today, this pass-time can be utterly fascinating for me. It has been said that the charm of young people is that they smile even when there is no particular reason to smile. It's their default mode as it were. Particularly when they are walking around a busy youth scene and styling the current look.
They make me smile and they see me smiling and smile back. It is a heart-sustaining loop for a loner like the Flaneur. Oh, of course some are sad. These I look at with acceptance and, dare I say, love too. Most dazzling are the little kids, their eyes so brilliant and content. And sometime they are too tired and want to go home, and that's adorable as well.
I enjoy noting the outfits people wear--young and wanting to be sexy and au courant. No matter that many of the styles are laughably ungainly--like the ones who try to get the new tight jeans to hang low on the derriere like the fading baggy hip-hop look. Rebellion is no doubt served as their parents try to get them to listen to reason and "dress nice."

The population of genuine street people has diminished these days. These are full-time denizens, usually distinctive as such in some way, not the younger summer run-aways. The reasons are many and of course an civic effort persists to run them off. One guy goes by with gray beard, thermal leggings and a skirt or dress flapping. This clearly a genre and one I don't fully understand. I have heard of radical fairies bearded old hippies who cross dress somewhat theatrically but this guy seems more understated and survival oriented-- not a show-off but someone who wants to set himself off from the squares right away. He looked lonesome. Then the loneliest loony in town bounded past my green metal vantage point. He is quite tall with a wild shock of dark hair, with sun-worn skin. He always wears a sport coat and, under his high-water fitting pants, he has his long feet jammed into too small shoes. Today the shoes achieve his absurd extreme. They are open-back sneakers meant for a small child that cover a small part of his foot. He races all over town and the shoes stay on by his momentum. With his craggy profile he resembles Disney's animated Ichabod Crane gone to advanced seed. His eyes are frantic and haunted but his activity seems to keep him preoccupied, to shield him from the fear that may catch up if he ever stopped to rest. May God have mercy on him.

I note that the new Asian majority has its own idiosyncrasies of attire. Whereas I often spot girls who are somewhat obvious in their intent to bring the sexy, the Asian girls occasionally go way over the top. I don't mean the girl with a sweep of thick hennaed hair, T-shirt torn to hang off her shoulder, hot pants, and fetish-evoking tapered wooded platform high-heels with hobnails so much as some of the really nutty stuff. Two girls bounce past in tiny flouncy skirts, lace leggings, silver high heels and scores of other tarty tat, the kind you see on manikins in store windows in seedy urban ethnic shopping districts.
I wonder if they spotted the stylish turquoise leg-warmers worn by the homeless black lady asleep on the bench I'm sharing as they skirt by her shopping cart. I was chuckling as they went and I noticed that a guy on the next bench was watching them and chuckling too.
A wholly different type of Asian went by in a flock wearing some distinctly codified out-landish gear. Several have big yarn-like wigs of pastel pig-tails. They resembled the die-hard trendies one sees in photographs of the Ginzu district in Tokyo.
A cafe-au-lait rasta with four-foot dreads put up cards for capoeira. People with clipboards asked for signatures. I conceal myself behind my ear-plugs. People came and went from the ATM windows of credit doom. And I very rarely recognized a soul even after thirty years in this town. Where does everyone go? Elsewhere, I suppose.

A chilly fog sent tendrils in this direction. As the sun faded my observation point got a little tiresome and I must push off. I bless all I see the young and old, rich and poor, disabled and able-bodied alike. May they all be given friendship and sustenance, and myself as well. And as the poet Bob Kaufman once wrote, let us give places to the homeless and kindness to the forlorn.
Amen.

Scary Monsters

In which the Flaneur examines two recent stories in the news that extend close to home...

In a town in New Jersey, a police officer, a young woman, approached an unfashionably dressed individual who was walking in the rain. He wore a raincoat with his hood up and black sweat pants tucked into rubber boots.
Someone had phoned in suspicions about an individual who seemed to be prowling. He had entered the yard of a house-for-sale and looked in its window. The man who turned out to be sixty-eight years of age was asked for his name and identification.
He lacked an ID but he gave his name as Bob Dylan. The police officer later said that she had heard of this well-known name. Although she was not particularly familiar with what he looked like, she was pretty sure that this weather-beaten fellow was not him. She assumed that he was playing cute or was delusional, or both.
He told her he was in the area to play a concert. He said he was just walking around. This neighborhood was where Bruce Springsteen had been living when he wrote his first two albums of songs. It is not known whether he offered this as an explanation at the time.
The officer disregarded his claims and demanded that the police accompany him back to the concert venue where his identification would have to be produced.
This was done with no objection from the rainy night-walker. Back in his own environment Bob Dylan's passport was shown to them. The police accepted that they had been told the truth and departed. Mr. Dylan said he harbored no resentment over the incident.
He apparently had been making an effort during his down-time while touring, to visit the homes of fellow song-writers he admired. He had gone to see the childhood home of Neil Young in Ontario. In Liverpool he had joined a regular tour bus group to visit the old home of John Lennon.
Perhaps this supplies evidence of Mr Dylan's eccentricity. Some people enjoy having their smug assumptions confirmed. The sight of celebrities who have lost it is very popular--look no further than the hilarity surrounding celebrity mug-shots. Just think, there was nearly a new one of Bob Dylan. Everyone looks like such a loser in a mug-shot.
To me it says more about the bizarre conditions prevalent today in these united police states. Cops think their primary duty is to menace anyone who looks poor or alone in the world. To subject them to floating check-points, to make them feel unwelcome wherever they are, and to prevent them from finding peace and rest. Most of all to target those who complain, who don't have their ID, who exhibit any contempt for these bullies in their squad cars, those who don't bow down to "His majesty, the Policeman."

Berkeley likes to think it is different from the other more intolerant reaches of the country. That's why the slippery eel of a mayor and his cohort piped-up loudly when a study identified Berkeley as one of the ten meanest cities to the homeless. He actually defended laws targeting the homeless by unintentionally paraphrasing the old French tongue-in-cheek canard. The one that says that the State in its justice enforces the law against sleeping under bridges equally to both the rich and the poor. Meanwhile you see multiple police cars roll up to disgorge burly cops scowling at one malnourished guy sitting on a sidewalk.
On campus, they have a plaque commemorating the Free Speech Movement, but there's scant free speech these days. If you attempt to voice anything anti-establishment you will be observed by agents and cops who will slyly videotape you for future use. That is unless you are at an "Israel wants Peace" table or at a demonstration demanding regime change in Iran. If you want to demonstrate against, oh say, John Yoo's presence on campus you will be strictly monitored and regulated. And videotaped.

But cranks and crack-pots continue to turn out on Sproul plaza nevertheless. Most are paranoid enough to assume that they already are under constant surveillance anyway. I live nearby and I walk there often so I sometimes see them, and on occasion I encounter them.
So it was on a recent Summer afternoon.

I recall the cartoons of Basil Wolverton in the old Mad magazine. He specialized in drawing portraits of the ugliest gals and goofiest guys in minutely cross-hatched pen and ink. He was really a modern master of the Boschean grotesque.*
On one late afternoon as I crossed busy Sproul plaza, an individual walked toward me extending some printed matter. If Basil Wolverton was given an assignment to render his most devastating portrait of a "super-creep," it could easily look precisely like this creature.
He approached under a shadow of his own malodorous tidings, staring with a needy, beseeching look as if at a target, as if at prey. He rapidly tried to get me to take a copy his screed. I gave him my Irish cop look, fixing him in a scrutinizing glare. "What the hell do you think you are doing here?" read my unmistakable thought balloon as I ignored his gesture.
I was stirred to smite this demonic thing, like any saintly knight would do.
He pivoted away after another easier-going passerby. I watched him a little then went on in my intended direction, disturbed to a real but fading degree.

Was it two weeks later in August when word that a girl taken eighteen years ago had been recovered in the hands of her kidnapper? She had borne him two daughters while confined to a semi-concealed backyard compound in Antioch, California. Not far away.
Another cruel story of the bizarre that at least resulted in continued life and in triage for the years of psychological trauma. Yet as the story unfolded, how utterly bizarre it evidently all was. Subject to grandiose delusions, the perpetrator, Philip Garrido, was a cut-and-dried sexual criminal of long-standing well-known to the authorities. The police and probation officers had visited his home while on-duty a number of times. Yet somehow they never had been troubled to actually look around to the back of the house. To the squalid shacks and tents where the girl lived with her two daughters by the lord of the manner.
"Repeat sex-offender with a secret backyard compound, that sort of thing doesn't interest us."
The police were informed by a neighbor of his that a "psychotic with sexual addictions" lived there and had children living in tents. Even then he received only a front-door courtesy call concerning laws about inadequate housing.

Then lo and behold! The on-line version of the old Oakland-based local news ran the in-court photographs of this maestro of hill-billy grand guignol. That skull the way the upper-jaw looks balanced on a severed spine and then reanimated. That protuberant artery snaking down his temple...
Then the camera caught his eyes! It was the demoniac from Sproul!
"Phil the Creep" as he was known to his neighborhood kids. He'd been nabbed when he showed up to ask the UC cops for a permit to hold a religious recruitment event. He had apparently arrived with two little blonde home-schooled stepford children. Obviously unstable, he nonetheless agreed to come to another meeting. In the meantime they at last connected his horrendous record as a sex-offender to the reality of his current daily routine life. The next time he came in he brought his "older daughter" along too. She was in fact the twenty-nine year old mother of the two young girls. She had taken by him outside of her home near Lake Tahoe, on her way to school when she herself was an eleven-year old girl.
The children are said to have cried when they learned Garrido had been arrested.

A miscreant named Carpenter who they called the Trailside Killer, made taunting phone calls from a Telegraph avenue public phone. The Unabomber once lived on a nearby street behind the supermarket. And of course the infamous Charles Manson visited Telegraph avenue in its hey day. They all seem to come here and sometimes you pass them on the street. You are usually unaware of it when it happens. Or perhaps you may be momentarily put on guard as instinct tells you that you are in the presence of one who has given himself or herself over to evil.



*Wolverton's work evolved into a visceral, Hans Bellmer-like pop surrealism with figures said to look like atomic radiation casualties. He prefigured Zap comics in going over the top whenever possible.

15 haiku poems Summer 2009

The Flaneur returns to his seemingly inexhaustible trove of three line poems of enigma and epiphany, of mystery and mirth.

...

Crow in a furrow
on the vacant playing field
a drink and a bath






Three police squad cars
with elaborate roof lights
on prowl for lodgers






Little cautious cat
hides on the vacant plaza
vague lightning tonight






A place in the grass
long shadows move up the hill
bells fall through the trees







That yellow hornet
looks like a catamaran
resting on water






Kites swim in place
a helicopter tours the coast
the climax species






The bottle-picker
rattles his carriage under
a pendulous moon






Angelic sunset
all those violet wings
outlined in gold






In the vast twilight
a hawk drops from a high rise
summer remains cool






The eucalyptus
at the edge of the graveyard
are like old white bones






A hummingbird drinks
from the morning glory gate
on my way outdoors






Out over the Bay
ships sit on the horizon
the terns parliament






The students moved on
left this victory garden
green onions won't wait






Geologic clouds
one stratum across the sky
jewel-bird on a wire






Over the golf course
comes a far cry from Saturn
an erratic bat

...

The Scanned Cat, a Postscript

The Flaneur concludes the science-fiction tale he began in the earlier blog entitled, "The Shiver of Original Sin." In a pulsing saga ripped from today's headlines, he survived storms of radioactivity to allow his heart to be imagined in a kind of virtual reality. In this concluding chapter he lives to see the actual virtual artifact itself.

After I was lowered from the particle laboratory again, I left without an appointment for a follow-up. When I called Cardiology the next week, they spent a good many of my phone minutes before telling me to call the general appointment number. This led to ten minutes in voice-mail limbo and a hang-up before my phone service cut-out.
So when I saw my regular doctor and she heard my dilemma, she gave me an office with it's own outside line where I could call and wait as long as it took to follow through. When the hospital appointment operator suggested a late October date, I was mildly astonished.
The CAT scan had been such a radical experience for me that to be kept so long in suspense afterward was comparable to going to the moon and being asked to wait four months to see the film clip.
The operator sensed that I sounded less like the average county hospital patient and more like staff. She switched me over to cardiology again. There followed a strange moment with the nurse saying that there was no record I had received any treatment at radiology. Again one pleads nolo contendere in such matters. One can't speak about what the records say with any authority, but one maintains one's belief in something one really thinks did take place.
She suggested that they call me back. I told her to take her time, that I was at my primary care clinic. This seems to do the trick quite well as the actual cardiologist called back. He is a big beaming avuncular fellow, German maybe Jewish, in his sixties. I certainly didn't expect himself to call.
"Your arteries are fantastic!" he declared, "really in fantastic shape." It was delightful to hear this. We talked good-naturedly a moment then he suggested I come to see him in one week for the follow-up.

I finally decided to reach the hospital by taking BART to Lake Merritt where a free shuttle zips you up the hill. Even with a walk downtown to BART station it was really quick for a change after all my previous trips by bus. An afternoon appointment, despite the glacial slowness of the wait, meant I could just mosey-in--no early-hour stress. In the waiting room, my earplugs in place, I finished an Elmore Leonard novel that I found on campus. It was the source material for a Tarantino film and many of my present company looked like they might have stepped out of it.
Then at last my name was called. I went from the crowded room into the sparsely populated precincts to wait on in quietude. A preliminary interview with a different doctor awaited me, this time an Indian lady. They take their time with you here and I had never been more thoroughly listened to via stethoscope. Talking about myself I eventually mentioned that my elderly mother passed away this year. In our reverie on mothers, I wondered rhetorically if anyone else on earth would ever really care about me. She agreed and said even though she was married and had family she sometimes asked herself the same question. It was the human condition we concluded.
This visit I was better prepared for the moment when the patriarch himself arrived. Last time I was spaced from a long wait and a lack of refreshment. So this time I jotted-down notes ahead of time and I ate a banana at the last moment.
He immediately announced that there was nothing physically wrong with my heart, that you could drive a truck through, that you could sail a boat through my arteries. There were no signs of disease present or prior. No tobacco, very moderate drinking, exercise, and a low-salt, low-fat diet--there's no secret to it. He said I have a large and slow heart, which is good. The old notion is still true--that we are only given so many heart beats in a lifetime.
"Like a humming-bird," I riffed. I also mentioned that I'm a Leo and known to be big-hearted. General amusement at this--the first doctor hangs-out for the chat with the big doc. I ran through my questions then I finished with, "Can I see the CAT scan?"
Well, it isn't the policy...
I said that was alright, I had just thought maybe he could twiddle a few keys and it would come-up on the computer screen next to us. And what do you know? He agreed. After expressing regrets that this station didn't have all the colors of own set-up, he brought up the screens. And there was my big art pay-off.
At first the image was of my ribs swathed in red-purple muscle. "That's my breastplate," said I. "Hang on a minute," quoth the snowy-haired physician.
Then he clicked on the "remove bone" option, and the naked, sacred heart itself is revealed. The colors are all deep, intense and jewel-like. There indeed were my fantastic arteries looking like massive rivers seen from space. Then, mind-blowingly, he turned my heart in virtual space. Like a magnifying satellite we sail around the south pole of my heart and note more of my arterial splendor. I feel like I am in some meta-world sitting in front of a visionary simulacrum of my heart and mind. Both of which are encompassed by my soul which itself emanates from a universe of love.

"OK, I'm going to restore your bone. Do you want you bone back?"
"I still have to get home."

Climax Mime Troupe

Berkeley lends itself to advanced people-watching on yet another mild summer afternoon. The San Francisco Mime Troupe is in Ho Chi Minh park which is now renamed Willard park after someone no one remembers. The Flaneur is there providing his eyes to a readership worldwide.

After 1 this afternoon. Wasn't there a reason to get up? The day's vague plan materialized in front of me like the room I left last night to venture off in the dream time. Just time for a bagel with almond butter and a coffee before I dash off outdoors. I'm bound for the park where today the SF Mime Troupe is putting on its yearly free show in the parks, this one entitled "Too Big to Fail." You wouldn't call it agit-prop any more. In these days of melting glaciers and an even slower thaw from Dark Side of the previous eight years--more like liberal persuasion.

Have you wondered why the investment banker crooks are getting all the money with no comprehensive work programs in sight and only a watery health bill coming down the pike? Have you asked yourself why the president doesn't want to hear about the serious crimes recently and still committed by this nation, why Cheney is still affecting US foreign policy instead of being on his way to prison, and why the corporate media continues to manufacture consent and suppress dissent?
Why is all the self-righteous anger still only on the right? The right never compromises; liberals always do.

Anyway, back to the pleasant afternoon.
Or first to last evening and my first encounter with the troupe this year. For whatever reason they didn't schedule the usual two afternoon shows at 2 PM that they always do. They were doing a Friday evening performance instead. So I was pleasurably surprised when I stumbled on the scene on the way to my post office box in the Elmwood. I was enjoyably entertained during my customary rest stop at a Willard park bench. There was the stage and there was a rehearsal with the live band. The stage is not a transformer this year but it's nevertheless a charming representation of a village presumably in North Africa. I watched for a while as a few early birds took up positions in front of the stage. To the south two young women and a guy were in a circle doing yoga asanas in the grass.
Beyond them was a more hyper-active zone where dozens of little kids were playing games. They were all running around like frolicsome gazelles amid day-glow traffic cones. I love to see them and I certainly wish them well but the situation does claim a large portion of the park for a day-care operation. This is on top of the generous fenced-off playground by the tennis-courts. It seems to me that a more suitable place with a schoolyard of it's own is located nearby right behind the Willard school. But again oddly the city seems to have leased that out to a Chinese Christian group. At the same time, yahoos play over-aggressive sports and the area of the park open to any peaceful use continues to shrink. This is the only park for miles around in a fairly densely-populated town. Add to this the arrogant cops on bikes who demand identification from anyone who lingers too long looking poor. One simply has to face the fact that the old warm-hearted Berkeley is gone.

Off in the distance over the Bay, an ominous gray mass of marine influence was heading this way. Onward. I passed the yogis picking up a move from the obvious initiate who led the others. My route takes me past the front gate of an amusingly festooned property on Hillegas.
The owner adorned his mailbox and gate with first a wooden apple and snake (gone now to vandals), photos on wood of jazz singer Anita O'Day, and numerous bendable white poles with messages attached. Lots of other kookie objects and signs--Pebbles Flintstone, a ceramic jack-o-lantern, various indicia of European origin--enamel plagues with French writing etc. Looking down the driveway gives one the sense that the whole place is decked-out with fun in mind.
I took care of matters in the Elmwood including a stop for DVDs at the Claremont library on Benvenue, then by my post office box. Next I stroll College avenue to look at all the different businesses that have come in--a wine store notably. The travel place that typically features great window displays doesn't disappoint with its current offering. On the wall behind a selection of globes is a giant hand-painted banner for the 40s film, "Now Voyager." It features an iconic portrait of Bette Davis in a nautical travel outfit. Painted on heavy canvas, it could be a reproduction but it certainly looks like an original item.

Two sweet little boys come out of the toy shop with Mom. I turn down Russell and land on a bench for a moment. The mother and kids come by that way too. She stops near me for some reason and I say hi to the two little boys when we find ourselves on eye level. One--he's holding a glossy box of Star Wars toys, is so dear. He says to me "I saw you before." Oh yeah? ... I had to have a rest. I feel like the wee ones instinctively love me now that I have snow on the roof, maybe I look like their grand dad. They know that oldsters are often gentle and kind, and not the task-masters and disciplinarians parents must be.
The mother ignores me and herds them away. I cross the street to a shadier bench this one made from a redwood burl. A Chinese elder and his daughter come by soon afterward walking their little boy. They stop right by me to load the kid on Grandpa's back--he's like four years-old I'd say. He sees me smiling and says a strong "hi". Hiya...you're getting a ride now. "Yeah!" he laughs loudly, "...Bye!" So aware and full of life unlike his dour, dutiful guardians who, once again, don't acknowledge me. They seem instead to be silently reciting warnings to themselves to drill into the kid later. Talking to strangers and all.

So I follow my own bliss, revivified by the clarity and brilliance of the kids. I note all the splendid flowers evident in the moist cool summer we're having. Back at Willard park, I sit on the hula-hoop rack occasionally still used as a bench. The stage is far away but the sound is still good . The musicians are often the best part of the show and I savor the live music in such a casual atmosphere. Considerably more people have arrived. Earlier Ed Holmes and the tall black lady who can actually sing were on stage running through moves and musical notes. Now it's overture section.
A table representing a satellite installation of Food-Not-Bombs has been set-up. I am heading home for tofu vegetables and rice in black bean sauce, and I'm peckish. A snack would help me linger a moment longer, so I beat it over to the table. A nice couple of young folks man it and have pizza-bread, punch and great pickled squash available to everyone at no charge. I chat a bit then go over to the bench ring-side to back-stage and refresh. A silent gal in a mime troupe t-shirt sitting next to me reads intently over her kindle.
A fairly large tortoise is walking around near us. Ed Holmes walks past and I ask him if he saw the turtle. "Don't know what kind of crowd you people attract..." I quip. It's a great vibe and nice sunlight for the moment, but it's getting cool and I have other plans.
Just as the play begins I can be seen leaving the lower park for home. I give me best serves-you-right smile to the dog-slobs. They are forced to look on from the margins as the park they usually take-over has, for this night at least, been taken-over from them.

So it is that I find myself approaching the same scene today in somewhat warmer sunshine. Before I reach the park I pass the baseball diamond behind the school. No games there this summer as the whole place is torn up for a refurbish. I think of the strange midnight last October when I passed by and the moist earth of the field was covered in big geese.
Today clouds of dry dirt rise up around a bulldozer and several manual shovellers. This marvelous city with all it's highly-paid planners and bureaucratic aparatchiks evidently couldn't arrange for the work to stop when the adjacent park was filled with local citizens. The entire time I was there they were kicking up a lot of dirt just on the windward side of all those unprotected lungs.
I circle around back of the stage to my trusty bench. Can I squeeze-in here without making things awkward? The same kindle-reading girl from yesterday is back and gets to share the bench with me again. Then I hastily dig into my coffee and cannabis cookie, a shortbread with a blackberry jelly pool on top. Then I turn my attention to a sidelong view of the stage and the lively amplified sounds emanating from it. The high comes on like going up in a hot-air balloon as opposed to the jet-like take-off of smoking.
There's a view of a lot of the process from where I'm sitting--you see the costume changes and the characters before they enter, including actors crawling under the stage to emerge from a trap door. I spend as much time watching the audience as the stage play. Living as I do in a district of adults and young adults, I find children, so rarely sighted, completely charming to observe. The ones here with their mild and educated parents are so very sweet. Wearing hats with big sun-visors they pay rapt attention to the often slapstick antics on-stage, even the ones too young to fully understand the words. One little guy lying on his stomach with his chin resting on his fist looks so thoughtful as he rests his bare feet over a pair of rubber shoes made to look like toy cars.
Dragonflies criss-cross the air-space over the crowd seated on the lawn. A great yellow butterfly appears and almost seems to ride the music. Later, just as the play reaches its anti-capitalist crescendo, the sputtering engine of a plane dragging a Geico banner pollutes itself in circles overhead. Think you can sit in a public park and listen to free speech without being advertised to? Well, think again.
Before long I have removed my shoes, pulled-up my pants, and half-unbuttoned my shirt. Then I can no longer resist joining the others in the grass in front of the stage. At this point there is only the very front of the stage available. You really can't attend half-way from that vantage.
The play is a parable or allegory of how profit insinuates itself into human life and makes slaves of all. How people become consumers on credit and lose their freedom and prosperity.
It takes place in an ancient Middle-eastern land in a time immemorial with the profuse inclusion of tell-tale anachronisms should anyone be uncertain exactly what society it is talking about.
I depart from the stage-front to stand a while in the shade of a tree still watching, then I return to my favorite bench for the conclusion. It has a cool scene where Holmes dressed as a demon in a business suit lays-out the whole royal scam for the innocents in the play and as a sermon to the choir. Then a little mad dancing and singing and it's over for another year. The hard-working actors grab buckets and, without a pause to catch their breathe, are out among the crowd collecting donations. Clearly they like meeting this crowd too. The mutual admiration is also reflected in the rip-snorting business at the t-shirt booth. These shirts, black with a red star, are seen around the world. Young and old snatch them up.

The dirt is still billowing amid the green belt of trees below the park. I don't linger long after the show is over and the crowd slowly disperses. I take Hillegass and experience a sidewalk garden profuse with July violets in a state of suspension of ontological fixity.
On Dana I watch a young man skateboard slalom, zig-zaging along the street while holding a bouquet of flowers. I am in a smiley frame of mind and can't help but watch this big lug in a t-shirt with his incongruous nose-gay. He looks tired, bags under his eyes, and he's frowning. He notices me watching and maybe is a little embarrassed that another guy sees him with flowers. He only wants his girlfriend to see how sweet he is.