VISITING BERKELY
"...the cat with future feet
looking like a Jack of Hearts
mystic Jack Zen Jack with the crazy koans
Vegas Jack who rolls the bones..."
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "The Jack of Hearts"
We were damaged goods.
Used or broken, scratched, dented, half price or less,
streaming radiation from split atoms, strewn
across the floor of the valley
Like broken bricks.
Detritus, unuseful, unmortared, dissociated, blind, scarcely
even scuttling claws
on the floor of this long ago evacuated sea.
That was years ago, before we learned to discern the ostrich, to know
what the ostrich sees in the sand; before we came to know
that anytime is the time of the ostrich, before we began to understand
that the final wisdom is ours for the taking.
See how our strides have lengthened? We no longer
sound our barbarific yawps
into the empty sky between El Portal and the Altamont Pass. We are here
to silently, slowly, insistently, prove a point: We are here.
2
We skittered through the wastelands of Dublin, California,
slung out of the far end of the valley by centrifugal force
sliding up the edge of the bay into Berekely
intractably, inevitably dropping
Into the corner pocket
of this place we shouldn�t be, surrounded by the victims
of denial, anger, bargaining, repentence, and death
in the land of the ostrich and the fashionably numb. The map
on the wall insisted YOU ARE HERE. We stood before the map
and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the map
berated it, bargained with it, prayed to it;
We called it mother, we called it whore and slut,
called it our beloved, called it Abraxas. It didn�t do us any good.
The map insisted YOU ARE HERE, and it was clear
the time had come to ask ourselves: are we truly the cats
with future feet? Do we honestly see
what the ostrich sees in the sand? We strode the campus, seeking
free speech, dissidents, dissent, desecration, Descartes, dessert,
something, anything, eventually concluding that all the angels
were away on spring break.
The cats with future feet know how to deal with these things.
Descending into the dark corners behind the storefronts we sought
the legendary wisdom of Berkeley: sounds so dear we dare not speak,
the immense imaginations of the Being Human
We reminded ourselves that we were there
to bear witness, to provide informed consent,
of our own ultra-free wills. We made our choice, and now we had to make room
for this tide of zombies and hipsters.
Somewhere inside our rolled gold souls Final Wisdom prevailed, and we spun off
towards Mill Valley and Muir Woods. Looking back on the unabashed sprawl
of the Bay area, scenting the air for a taste of sea salt and cedar, I began to think
perhaps we are not the Real Revolution, maybe the Real Revolution has come
and gone, or maybe it never was to begin with. Maybe rent control
is the best that could be hoped for, and perhaps it�s a satisfactory outcome
in the final analysis. Maybe we were not needed there; perhaps
the angels of Berkeley will get on just fine in our absence. Perhaps, just maybe, it would be okay
To spin across the bay towards San Quentin
To wind up the ridiculous roads of Mill Valley
To stand on the hillside, gazing across the bay,
bearing the revelation
that we were just visiting
in Berkeley.
James MacFarlane Williams