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I'd forgotten how much I love Berkeley. I used to live here a long time ago--I got married here the first time, my older son was born here, and a lot of my self was formed here, including some parts I think I've shut away since then. Over the last years I've paid many visits to the Bay Area, mostly in SF or Oakland, which aren't too different, but there's a kind of smaller town feeling here. I like walking most places, even though a certain amount of it is almost vertical, and I like being to see the bay from the front deck. I love the Farmer's Market with the incredible wealth of organic plums and heirloom tomatoes, piled up under white tents. And I love going places that I went long ago, and remembering those times.
I also haven't been to California in early fall since then--at first I came back in summer, but for the last 20 years I've been coming in late fall-winter-early spring. I'd forgotten the wonderful clear beautiful days, when the whole world is 3-D and Technicolor, every flower glowing as if to light up the whole universe on its own, the golden grass soft on the hills. How lucky you are, people who live here all the time!
How much I wish I could split my self and live in two places at once.
I think I've posted this poem before, but here it is again:
California Hills in August
by Dana Gioia
I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade.
An Easterner especially, who would scorn
the meagerness of summer, the dry
twisted shapes of black elm,
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape
August has already drained of green.
One who would hurry over the clinging
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,
knowing everything was just a weed,
unable to conceive that these trees
and sparse brown bushes were alive.
And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion,
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.
And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain –
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.
I also haven't been to California in early fall since then--at first I came back in summer, but for the last 20 years I've been coming in late fall-winter-early spring. I'd forgotten the wonderful clear beautiful days, when the whole world is 3-D and Technicolor, every flower glowing as if to light up the whole universe on its own, the golden grass soft on the hills. How lucky you are, people who live here all the time!
How much I wish I could split my self and live in two places at once.
I think I've posted this poem before, but here it is again:
California Hills in August
by Dana Gioia
I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade.
An Easterner especially, who would scorn
the meagerness of summer, the dry
twisted shapes of black elm,
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape
August has already drained of green.
One who would hurry over the clinging
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,
knowing everything was just a weed,
unable to conceive that these trees
and sparse brown bushes were alive.
And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion,
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.
And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain –
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.