Yesterday, at the greyed-out bus stop, the overcast sky dampening the thought of sound and thoughts themselves, the Asian dude who was doing calisthenics -- squats, push-ups -- on the first day at the stop drove up in a van and asked "Do you want a ride?"
The open way he asked, spontaneously, since we rode the bus everyday together, made me spontaneously say yes. Plus, something about him seamed interesting and hardcore. His left eye, I noticed when I got in was slightly puffy, as if from a fight. He started complaining about the van. And I said it's not bad. He said he used to have a Benz. I asked what happened. He said the Feds took it, money laundering. Spent five years in jail, was in a half-way house near my new place. In jail for five years ...
Went to Mt. Tam this weekend and finally hiked its southwestern flank, the one that pours into movie-worthy and mad-tourist-hangout Muir Woods. It's heavily forested, and from Panoramic Highway, the road you take to short cut from Highway 1 on the south to Pantoll Ranger Station (and beyond, including a shortcut to East Peak, the mountain's stone ranger-hutted tallest point) -- passing the scone-spot Mountain Home Inn -- this section of Tam offers mysterious, fog-shrouded views of its redwood underbelly and possibly the only side of the mountain with all-year-running creeks.
Everytime I go to Tam, I'm impressed by the variety of landscapes that a single trail offers; it's a constantly-shifting landscape - one point open, with dry, dusty soil, another forested and rain-forest wet, another just woodland-like. Rolling, soft-footed paths, hard, up-and-down rutted trails, ocean-view meadows, powerline vapidity.
The redwood trees themselves in Muir Woods -- which is larger than you initially might think with its curated, bulk-touristed presentation and is actually free anytime (saving you the $7 per adult entrance fee and a much more organic, in some ways impressive intro) by backcutting in from any of the many trails that network into the park -- like the old-growth giants elsewhere defy the brain. Their heights keep going up and up. For the video above, I had to limbo back, almost bending over to get the crowns and rainy sky. Makes the chest swell ...
not reading this blog, Barkada Bakery + Cafe in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood is the bomb.
For those of you wondering what baking books the cafe, which makes Gibraltars and other good coffee drinks among croissants (not that flaky, though) and petit desserts, has on on a shelf near a window that looks into the buzzing bakery room, they are:
Two mama's boys talking loudly, walking down the purple-flowered street that pours on to Grand Ave. "She didn't call," said one to the other, loudly, "because either she didn't like me, which would be the simplest and most likely reason, or she was so busy she just hasn't had a chance to get back to me yet.
"If I didn't like someone, I would wait four days and then call them and say, 'I'm calling you out of courtesy to say I don't want to see you.'" Whoah!
A girl at the bottom of the hill in a bright, floral skirt stands outside the door of the chaotic, dirty neighborhood corner store, which seems to have everything from hookah pipes to spices to yellow onions to a dirty-@$% ATM. She stands tall-ish, waiting but not waiting too hard with a white pit bull-boxer mix, who's a little overweight and is definitely waiting for someone to come out of that store.
Went swimming in the glorious Temescal swimming pool, that gets swam in several times a week, where you see lithe bodies swimming their laps, resting -- a little bit of a sexy place.
Sharp purple. Jasmine milk. A still-sunny sunset. Boys running. Teacher-student emptiness. Little bicycles with big wheels. A stone courthouse more stately than thought. Two good-looking girls. Boy, girl running. Wooded, shadows. The sun behind buildings.
The mountain circles in the distance very close, exposed, known, a burned-out expanse in the sun-hot day, a cleared, overexposed floating sensation, obscure by the very nature of the light, a two-tone filter over everything. Yellow and lighter than light blue.
The Bay mud, a sticky, clogging-feeling mess -- hair in a drain catcher, mucous in an exhausted, overworked, slightly asthmatic pair of lungs (like just having breathed in the air to power an overweight body's legs on a bicycle up an insanely steep trail through the woods) -- merges with the sensation of the mountain's sight.
The known. The unknown. "Not knowing is most intimate." It's always best not to know, to see everything with fresh eyes, moist-new to the world. Whatever.
Floating in a vapid, treasure-less space, pierced by the image of the fire from a .45mm handgun's thick-ass ammunition when fired. What is a day? A thought never to be known?
The day went slow and halting, but it, as days will do, went.
Sitting now in the sunshine, semi-full of rosemary-olive bread soaked in olive oil and a Gibraltar, the leaves of the large oak? overhead filtering a clean, glowing East Bay light.
People -- including a woman in big sunglasses and a purple bandana, Tom's shoes, a yoga mat-showing backpack locking up an old, red 10-speed bike with a cheap-a$@ lock of the same brand that failed to protect my Bianchi fixed-gear (I'm not a hipster!) from some thief who enjoyed slicing the lock and freeing it -- drift by on the sidewalk.
An ambulance passes and the toned-down Miles Davis-like jazz filtering overhead slowly melts the day.
The day starts greyly and a little late. Roll out of bed in the cool East Bay air that swirls in our room, pass the piano keyboard that crowds my side of the queen-sized bed, which is a smidgen too small, along with the super-comfy comforter, for us.
Tired body opens the bedroom door, seeing grey morning light fill the room and the little cat, lonely sleeping on his bed, which is actually a sitting cushion rolled up.
It's island-in-the sky quiet; at 6am you'd expect more noise. The walls themselves, and the blinds, appear to be sleeping.
Walk to the bus stop a hundred yards away over the not-busy-yet highway.
Arrive at the bus stop, an empty "Cup of Noodles" cup rolls on the healthy sidewalk gently in the slight, steady dawn breeze. An Asian dude does calisthenics, including squats and holding his body against the bus pole. He's doing something that looks like a glorious stretch - folding over his toes into a forward fold and then twisting his chest to face upward along with one hand.
I sit on the narrow, painted-wood bus stop seat. The woman next to me on the miniature water lily-colored seat has some rhinestone-laced open-toed flats on. The rhinestones make up the middle of a flower. Her black-painted toenails have fireworks of colors painted on them, exploding.
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