Picaresque

What a... mixed bag this week has been. This really should have been put into about 5 posts, but time is not my friend lately so the smooshing commences of past posts and present observations.

7-5-08

I'm having this weird reaction. I drove up to Berkeley for class tomorrow. As I started heading west toward Altamont Pass, and seeing the vast open expanse of rolling golden hills studded with dark green and grey oak, I started getting all sentimental about leaving. Not about leaving SoCal. Just Cali in general, I think. I mean, it's pretty uniquely cool to live in a place named for a warrior queen. Even so, I can't really think of any place I'm burning to go to live. I found myself wishing as I was bumping along the margin of the Oakland Hills that I could want to be there, but I just felt weary and overwhelmed, and like I arrived to the party about 40 years too late. As usual. Am I really this old?

I found my hostel soon enough. I even got rock star parking right in front. The beautiful 3-story Craftsman with garden in front and big porch to the side looked so inviting; I walked inside, and... kind of a dump, really. I mean, I've stayed in plenty of hostels and I certainly wasn't expecting the Ritz. But for what they were charging I was hoping for a place where I at least didn't have to unscrew the light bulb to turn off the lamp and the trash was more than a plastic grocery bag lashed to the door handle, half full of previous tenants' trash. Oh well. I found my check-in slip and discovered that my room was directly across from the front door. This would become infinitely more annoying late into the night when every late arrival woke me up from my tenuous slumber. But the place has potential, as all old houses that have been uglified to make cheap rooming houses do. The woodwork has miraculously not been painted over, the hideous oilcloth carpet covers what could be lovely wood floors, and I have one half of a once-magnificent boarded-over stone fireplace in my room. The artist and mother in me wants to undo it all and restore it to its original splendor, not for vanity but for love.

Other than that, the management is too stereotypically Berkeley for words. The check-in slip exhorted that my stay in Berkeley (and my life!) be "filled with joy and purposes." Boy is it ever. Pass boards, move, find new car, get new life. But I'll get to that later. The best part was the contact info in case of problems, reprinted here exactly except for area codes 'cuz publishing cell #'s without people's permissions is rude:

Jian (555) 464-9828
Justin (555) 849-4800
Dearl (***) ***-**** (telepathy)

I thought, if they are serious, that's pretty dorktastic. On the other hand, if they are being ironic, that's pretty brilliant. After the frat party incident though, I'm leaning toward dork.

Ah, the frat parties--goddamn kids are annoying and get the hell off my lawn! I came home from walking around at 9:30, everything seemed quiet. I got hopeful. I thought maybe since it was summer and most of the kids are gone...and maybe that giant chalk drawing of male genitalia (not to scale!) on the sidewalk (and helpfully labeled for the anatomically illiterate) was from the previous night's bacchanalia in honor of the 4th, and everyone was out late getting totally fucked up and tonight they are quietly wallowing in their own crapulent (it doesn't mean what it looks like, look it up!) wages of last night's many sins...

Sadly, no.

Around 11:30 it began with a bang and devolved from there. The most precious part by far was the withering rejoinders of the hostel staff to the oblivious reveling next door, like repeated (repeated, I say!) shouts of, "It's a quarter past Sh-h-h-h-h-h, PLEASE close your door or keep it down!" Um, yeah. You can guess how effective it was. I thought of the scene in Canadian Bacon where Rhea Perlman's character is up in the CNT with an automatic rifle and the mounties are buzzing about in helis begging her to please put away her gun and come down. Fortunately all things are impermanent, and I think most people were passed out by 2:30.

Now I am drinking a pint of coffee (that's right, served in a bona fide pint glass) with my bagel for breakfast. I love that we are listening to Bach's B-Minor Mass, one of my favorite oratorios ever. And there does seem to be a preponderance of ridiculously cute puppies here. My favorite so far is the little black lab mix who couldn't have been more than about 3 months who has tied a pretty sound tournequet around the tree to which his leash is girthed while waiting for his human to get coffee.