Doc Nagel & I visited Berkeley back around the end of March, 2001, essentially because we could. I had never been to Berkeley; Doc's take on it was that Berkeley was basically Berkeley. Center of the Free Speech Movement, protesting poverty & Viet Nam, Getting People Involved, lead, follow, or get out of the way, all of those things associated with Berkeley, well, that was then, this is now. I still wanted to go, just so I could say I'd been there.

So we got there, parked in the municiple parking garage, which smellled strongly of urine at 11 o'clock in the morning, made our way over to the campus, which was deserted, since it was Spring Break, headed back into downtown, & had lunch at a place that wasn't quite a British pub & wasn't quite a Bennigans. While we ate sandwiches at a table overlooking the street, a tough looking, mean looking, dirty, BIG bum sidled down the sidewalk & took up a post against the building about six feet from our table. I remember feeling insecure, all of a sudden. This was the prototype brute. Steely, smoldering eyes, filthy, but still proud: tough enough to live on the world, without visible means of support, and not about to take any crap. Was I scared? What of? Was I thinking he might give us a hard time? Mug us? And, if so, what kind of crappy thinking was that? While I was wrestling with all of this, another (obviously) homeless guy came up & went to take a post against the building. My brute broke into a huge, wide grin when he heard the other guy speak to him. They shook hands. And, quite suddenly, I thought, "Huh. Colleagues, greeting each other."

This isn't about any of that.

Doc Nagel kept asking me what I was after here, & for a long time I couldn't give him a real coherent answer. What I have now is: it's about not being as smart as I think I am. It's about going to Berkeley expecting insight & wisdom & leaving with this sinking feeling that I'd lost more ground than I'd gained. And it's about that stupid damned map in the piss-smelling parking deck that kept mockingly insisting YOU ARE HERE.