There are things you have to see and hear in downtown Berkeley sometimes. Like the experimental yodeling. Or the tenor saxophone guy who thinks that hours of frantic major arpeggios are the path to godliness. Or the insane screaming and posing by rowdy packs of chain-smoking Berkeley high schoolers, and the angry, Tourette's-style vocals of untreated minds, violent threats and profanity startling your caffeinated eardrums from thirty feet away. One time I saw a guy calmly walk across the street and then proceed to lean over and vomit loudly into a bush next to a parking lot, at 3 in the afternoon. There was also the time a woman decided the cough syrup aisle in Walgreens was as good a place as any to ‘utilize the facilities ’. There were so many magical, mysterious moments. The wet jeans, inexplicably abandoned in the stairwell of the parking garage. The shit stains smeared on walls like confusing disgusting art projects, the visual texture of feces assaulting your senses too early for breakfast, the piles of food and trash I stepped over every morning on the way to the office. I’ll never forget the scented clouds of bacon and piss, wafting in the morning air. Somewhere in that din and stench, as the droney rush of BART trains underground rumble and punctuate each hour, some commerce happens, textbooks are studied, and decent burritos are consumed. Some of the most brilliant people on earth earn their PhDs, unleashing the future for the rest of us, as the homeless peddle junk, babble scattered thoughts and waste away, a testament to our collective apathy and the city of Berkeley's startling exhibition of hope and success, and utter failure.
though I’ll never complain about the street kids nimbly playing folk songs on the accordion. Or the teenage oboe duet I once heard one evening, two double reeds, perfectly in tune, defying a brisk dusk, and the girl who sang arias with her eyes closed as the world rushed by, down an escalator that smelled like machines, grease and noise.
No comments:
Post a Comment