Some of What I've Learned Starting Adulthood

Now that I have officially submitted my final grad school application and gotten over my typical post-long-term-project-of-any-sort-cold I have decided to make a list of a few things that I have learned, things I'd like to remember, and things I have realized at Berkeley as an undergraduate. Of course, I'll forget to add a ton of stuff onto this list, but for now the following:

1) NEVER buy anything but tea from South Side coffee shops, unless the only thing you value from coffee and espresso drinks is the caffeine. Any drink made in less than thirty seconds is probably not very good unless it's hot water and a tea bag.

2) Those people who you see around campus, who reply "how's it going?" with "I'm so busy. I have no time for anything. So much school work. I'm so busy," no matter what time of the year it is probably spend more time wasting time than they do school work. Honestly, if people study as much as they actually say they study we'd all be serious geniuses.

3) There are beautiful blackberry bushes in front of VLSB behind the willow tree. They're delicious and most people don't even know they exist.

4) How to learn as much as you can from a textbook without reading all of it or even most of it. In other words, BS my way through reading and discussion, though this is a skill that takes practice and cannot be learned through a blog.

5) The homeless in Berkeley are incredibly smart. My favorite: the man with the shopping cart, from which a solar panel sticks out, charging his laptop (?) that is playing incredibly loud techno music.

6) Second-hand clothing stores are amazing!!!! Favorite: CrossRoads Trading Co.

7) Squelch is only funny the first and maybe second year at Cal. Then the fact that the only humor they can sum up is vulgar and sex-related becomes boring.

8) I wrote this in my journal at my first semester at Cal, so I guess it's only fair I add it here: They no longer have "school dances" in College. It was pretty new for me then.

9) The trees that line the entrance of the University are engineered so that they are in full bloom during the Spring, but in the fall when they're leaves fall, they are meant to look like roots sticking up out of the ground. As if they're heads in full bloom are underground. I'll miss them.

10) Don't bother putting up flyers on Sproul. They'll be covered within a few hours.

11) I'll miss the Eucalyptus Grove.



There is one thing that I realized at Berkeley that I think has changed me, possibly one of the major things that transitioned me into the realities of adulthood. We grow up learning about the Civil Rights Movements, Slavery, the Holocaust, Apartheid and we think, "How could people have supported that?" And I know at least for me, that was always a genuine question. It seemed absurd, beyond comprehension. "How we could we have supported injustice to this degree." But after being involved in the SJP's movement to Divest UCB from Israel and the long debates and protests that occupied the weeks leading up to the final vote, I've learned how it's possible.

Because the same type of people who can sit through seven hours of stories about the oppression facing the Palestinian people and children, who can hear first-hand accounts, who can see with their own eyes on video innocent children and people being massacred and then argue against divestment are the same type of people who could see Black people and Jewish people being dehumanized and remain silent, refusing to fight against the oppression. People are afraid. And the emotions, politics and power struggles involved complicate the injustice. It takes bravery and courage to fight against what those in power say. Perhaps now it is obvious to us, unquestionable that Blacks deserved the right to equality, but in its time it was a "complicated issue." Perhaps now the question of whether we should take out a university's money from purchasing bombs and fighter planes that massacre civilians is a "complicated issue," but years from now we'll look back and wonder, "How could people have supported that?"

Revisiting my Blog

I suppose I would like to write in here more often. I've been thinking about the point of writing in here versus writing in a journal versus merely thinking about my thoughts. I haven't come to any firm or convincing solutions yet. When I read other people's blogs I find it fascinating that I can see their views on the world. It's like that moment when you're reading a book and you've gotten to a scene that takes your breath away and you forget where you are, who you are, what time it is and you're in awe. Complete awe that this is how another person sees the situation, the world. That's the beauty of writing. It's so intimate. It's the transfer of my thoughts to the page; it's the closest one will ever get to me. So it's been difficult for me to convince myself to write more often and more personally.

But then again, isn't that why there are 6.8 billions of people on the earth rather than 1, myself or yourself? So that we can create those moments for one another? Perhaps at some point in my writing someday, one person will feel that intimate connection with me through words even if it is for a fleeting moment.

Joyas Valadores by Brian Doyle

Beautiful!

An excerpt from "Joyas Valadores" by Brian Doyle.



Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.
So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a
woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

Aging

Last night I had the privilege of seeing a ninety-three year old man. While visiting our family friends, his son and daughter-in-law, he was out of sight, in his room watching TV and reading. At one point, he appeared at the living room doorway holding onto the edges with his weak, bony fingers. Ontop of his pajamas he wore a navy suit jacket. It must have fit him in his earlier days. Now the seams of his shoulders rested on his arm, halfway down to his elbows. He lowered his head and said hello as we rushed over to him. His son held his hand and lead him to the table.

In a trembling voice he began to tell us of aging. Rather than tell us of pains in the joints or trouble with his sight he spoke of his memory. He told us, how during his youth, he was able to say a classical poem from memory using any word you would provide him. "They would say any word like 'cow' I and would read them a verse from Hafez that was about a cow. But I no longer have a memory that can wrap the world around its finger."

He brought out scrolls of glossy paper and unrolled them. They were covered in Arabic calligraphy. "My hand trembles too much now," he said. Each page looked as if it was covered beautiful, black strands of hair waving over and under each other, some braided, some unraveling.

After several minutes, he stood up to say goodbye and retire to his room.
Just as he held on the edge of the living room doorway, we asked, "So what was the verse with cow."
He turned around, cast his eyes to the ground and began to laugh. Then lifted his head and recited several full verses of Hafez that spoke of a cow.
Brought his hand to his heart, lowered his head and said goodbye.

I watch the moon unravel
weaving slivers of itself in waves.
Tossing beaded threads of light,
watching waves scamper and chase, curl and twirl in play

And when the beads scatter,
on the sandy shore
a mirror reflection of the night time sky they form
Tickling the shore to giggles
as the sand lifts up and glitters
And the Pacific already looks up and
eagerly awaits another.

All night, I watch the night play its silent games
Mesmerized by the moons blushing cheeks and the Pacific's soft flowing hair
their laughter like hums and lullabies rings.

Until, from behind the sun slowly chugs
thumps over my back
clamps its locks in the tossing waves
with every minute anchors and tightens its chains
quelling the growing beauty and color of the game.

All dawn it screams in envy
with displays of color and light
but I keep my back turned
saying my goodbyes to the playful, humble night.

Seasons

Fall

As she squeaks open her rusty, rickety chest
She takes another look at her always almost finished canvas
She lifts her palette and a thin tailed soft brush and begins

Gliding her hand over the edges
Of vibrant green leaves with a shade of yellow
And knows tomorrow she will be back
To fill other edges with a rusty red-brown
On every tree
On every leaf,
She’ll set her brush, and it’ll do its deed.

In several weeks
She comes back again
Her fingers squeeze through the openings of small, red scissors
She snips away one by one
The thread that keeps
The leaves with trees
Some leaves she leaves untouched for tomorrow.

Winter

Again, she sits down at her page,
With a small, wooden file
She begins scratching and peeling
Bit and pieces of the sky
And watches as they
Tip and tap, pit and patter.
The deeper she scratches
The thicker the drops
Until at last, her art lays covered.

Spring

With a sky wide open
She sets to work
Recreating and renewing
And her elbows and arms
Slowly blow away the residue of the sky on the plains.

With her canvas clean.
She takes new colors with bright shades.
And mixes and flicks
She fills the page with slivers of color in every corner.
Colors and textures unimaginable as compatible.

Vibrant red dresses, white speckles, deep green bangs.
Dark green spinach against purple cabbage.
Cliffs bended brown and gray with a string of dark gold.

Of course not all of it she fills today.
She draws the orange buds of some.
The green stems of others
Some, she said
She’ll finish tomorrow.
Others, she smiled.
Are meant to dry.

From My Grandmother's Window

Motorcycles fly so fast by
They paper cut the sky

Leaving just enough time so

The girl and boy who walk towards each other
Can gently bump, slide each other their number

Passing

Vendors hold worlds in walls
Piled cucumbers the hills
Oranges the sun

Scooped

In the bags of old ladies
Holding out their hands in front of
Long lines of cars
Black Exhaust

Trailing

Lovers on a wooden bench
Her heart fills up her cheeks
As he turns his chest

Blocking

Smoke, gently writing stories in the air
From cigarettes held in a teenager’s fingertips
Slowly lifting it up to his rosy lips

All of it nestles in a reflecting bubble
That gently floats
Up to my grandmother’s window.