A Paean to Youth

globular, aesthetic

like the sun on your face
a post-cappuccino dream
everything that's right/safe
beautiful, delicate, intimate
loving, caring, sweet
"in here we protect, comfort"
swings with that quarter-sized
pendant between tangible sensitivity
helpless/sirens
milk-drunk, mesmerized

Am I allowed to write that? :) Ha.

There it is ...

Went running this evening in the new neighborhood, which is, ironically, near the Oakland Flea Market where I scoured for my just-stolen $1400 bicycle about two weeks ago.

The run was prompted by one of those moments where physical exertion needed to happen. Traffic! Oh ... My ... God. Don't ever drive east on Alcatraz Ave. toward Adeline/Shattuck/Telegraph in Oakland/Berkeley at rush-hour. The light at Adeline is surprisingly congested going east; it's really short. My theory is that it's short because to the west the neighborhood is grittier, poorer and the traffic patterns may suggest not much need for a longer light. The area might be blowing up!? Catch up lights!

Like any new move, it's nice to get a feel for a place on the ground. The location I'm in has all the indications of American ghetto: lingering, shady guys and girls on various corners and along the streets nearby, shady bodegas, liquor stores, burglar bars on every house. (Everyday that I wake up to see my car still on the street - relief and surprise, honestly). But there's also something amazingly alive, one of those pulse-places in the city, where poverty, striving and opportunity meet a gritty stagnancy. The house across the street encompasses some sort of band; my roommates: guy works at Burning Man (Is that actually a corporate situation? It is; office (40 employees!) in San Francisco!); girl does modeling for the Art Insitute in San Francisco and makes jewelry (was looking at one of the books she checked out from the library on ancient Asian art (Iran included) that was left on the kitchen table - was intriguing and prompted me to look up the root of the word votive - vow); guy works at the Berkeley YMCA and is studying to get into a Naturopathy school in Portland; girl butcher (butcher!) of organic, cared-for animals; and me, writer, on the hustle ...

The run was really good. The streets are gritty, but just north the area gets notably more affluent (not "better") with Berkeley Bowl West and a glorious jewel in the night seen from many blocks away that lured me like a beacon does a lost ship on some mild-stormy, cold wind-whipped sea; a glow, approaching gold, lit up the cold see-your-breath night. It attracted me with the same mesmerizing humming comfort-glow of a mosquito zapper (I remember some of those full nights outside in Austin, Texas, with my dad and full family; a table outside - picnic/potluck, the long evening under a huge 500-year old live oak, bordering Boggy Creek, bamboo (with body-sized paths through its seven-foot thick, and at points much, much thicker, thicket) making up the back alley border. The image brings up my father strongly. Bittersweet. Something so right about a young, sincere, striving trying-to-do-it-right man heading a family. The fruition! What happens to a family? Life? How does it disintegrate? So much beauty? The weight of the world, holding the sky aloft Atlas-like. So necessary, so whole, so full, complete, loving, right, perfect, sweet, harmonious, sing-to-the-sun glorious, cry-to-the-gods lovely. The apotheosis of our family came when we took road trips to Taos for skiing from Austin: a Suburban family-deep, blankets, the long soul of northwest Texas, Lubbock, flatlanders, American hippy/country soul music - Bob Dylan, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Cash, a touch of Sweet Honey in the Rock, my Dad laughing and happy, relaxed. :). The railroad-tie-straight fencelines of eastern New Mexico mountains and plateaus surrounding in the forever-distance, the loggerhead shrikes' canvas, skewered insects, hawks on wires, the approaching enchanted-land. Happiness.) I miss him. I miss that.

Anyhow, the fields lured me and I slowly approached; the glow seemed to shift, like some far-off flat shoreline. I couldn't place it, it shifted with the northward run. Finally, I caught it. Young black kids in football pads practicing. Younger ones practicing next to them. A line of older black parents/uncles/moms on the dark sideline talking among themselves in groups and everynow and then bantering with the kids on the field, "Y'all are getting sloppy now."

The fresh-cut field gleams, a golden hue emanates from the damp, dew-like wet grass with the tracks of the mower still visible across it, creating glorious lighter/darker shades of royal green.

And once again this reminded me of my father. He says he won't start playing the Dobro because he's not ready to give up hardball (baseball). He's 64-ish! "I feel like a kid on the field, heaven." I understand. The sunset over the green expanse - field of dreams. A revolving, dimensionless dream, the comfort of ages, a soul exposed in green, a room open for all the world's hopes, ready to accommodate. I understand.

And this night on the run, I understand again. The bitter, sweet smell of the fresh-cut, wet, gleaming grass - you can almost smell milk and begin to wobble, drunk off the grass's unmade/cud-unchewed milk.

The run continued from that glorious climax. Returned to great-smelling food by the YMCA roommate. I decide to do the food-share; he says it works.

Adios.