2010

In Baltimore, I re-watched the 6th Harry Potter movie with my cousins. In the movie there's this magic hourglass that changes depending on the level of conversation. If a conversation is more interesting the sand slows down, but if it gets boring it speeds up. Unfortunately for me, right now I feel like my life is moving like that magic hourglass' evil twin. The New Year is quickly approaching and in less days than I can fathom I am moving away to Full Belly. Everything is moving in high gear (hence the sporadic blog entries). In these few moments of quiet that I have just before I go to bed I wonder what change the new year will bring and hope that 2010 will be full of interesting discoveries. Here's to the next chapter in life!

Travels

In terms of people watching, airports have got to be up there on the list of ideal locations. There's something freeing knowing that the person you spend a whole flight next to you may never see again. I know people who like to go on planes and put on a completely different persona just for fun. I have to say I've never gone quite so far but I can definitely see the appeal. If I were into theater I'm sure that would probably consist of most of my training.

Well, even though I didn't pretend to be someone else, I did end up befriending a few unlikely characters en route to Baltimore...

First, while standing in line we met a very friendly man who engineered satellites and told stories of his great aunt who had been a slave in the South. My mom ended up sitting next to him and I don't believe there was a single moment when they weren't talking. The two then proceeded to make friends with the man in the third seat, a young Indian man from Punjab who was on his way to a three-day wedding in New York.

With their incessant chatting going on across the aisle, I was in the meantime squashed between two other guys. The old man to my right ate his way through an entire bag of Hershey's kisses while reading "Seduce Me At Sunrise" for the entire duration of our five hour flight. 

On my left, the young guy who had been sleeping with his head against the window before I sat down woke up and was startled to find me there. After groggily rubbing his eyes a few times he introduced himself as Chris, the son of a retired Navy officer. I surprised myself by not being as judgmental of him as I would have expected. Normally if someone were to tell me they were in the army or that they just got inked and spent 700 dollars on the tatt, I would be more hesitant. But in this case, curiosity got the better of me. We spent the next three hours exchanging life stories and I learned about his home in Annapolis and his school in Monterey. He showed me how to write sentences in Arabic and told me the ins and outs of life on the base.

Then, on a bathroom break I met a So-Cal college football player whose neck must have been about four times as thick as mine. We talked about school and mostly about him: he spent twenty minutes talking about his model girlfriends, his football career, and his job at Vans. After being overdosed with information from this guy Gerard, I went back to my seat and spent the rest of the flight talking with Chris and the old man.

Finally in Baltimore we piled in the car with our luggage and drove through the city. All around cop cars had their lights on as snow began to fall and they collected the homeless to bring to shelters.

In one day, I got quite the spectrum.

Jellyfish

A few weeks ago at a jazz club I was at, a pianist told the story of a song he wrote called Jellyfish. He explained that in his mind, the lines of music wove together like tentacles. I guess that's the same image I get every time I think about that book I haven't stopped blabbing about, Farm City. Everything Novella brings up in her book keeps on finding its way into my life these days. 

1) The first tentacle, if you will, is quite straight forward. In the early months of the fall, I spent a lot of my time working at City Slicker Farms in Oakland. More than a few times, City Slickers is mentioned in the book and I can only help but picture myself weeding at the Ralph Bunche Nursery or composting at the Herb Farm every time I read about it.

2) The second tentacle is my dad's ex student. Mentioned in the book mostly as the rabbit lady and also as Novella's friend, she is one of the people who is responsible for my interest in agriculture and food sustainability.

3) The third tentacle takes a bit of background...

Mostly it's because I think Sacramento is an underrated street. It connects everything in a secret way. Grounded in the cute Monterey Market neighborhood it runs (four-lanes wide) across Dwight, Ashby, Alcatraz and even Adeline. More importantly, it swings right above my mom's house. From there, the freeway is a quick minute to the West and the rest is just a few blocks East. The possibilities are endless. 

Besides its convenient location, it also houses various interesting spectacles. On any given day, anyone passing down Sacramento can see any range of businesses: from the eccentric birdhouse crafter to the various nursing homes in the more timid Berkeley side, the street then ploughs through a tougher neighborhood where a handful of questionable cafés have sprung up,  and a produce stand is set up in the middle of all the gunshots. Further along are various sketchy jewelry stores, a jiu jitsu studio, and the ever crowded gas station which seems to sell more beer than gas.

Driving down Sacramento, this corner has always been very central. There's a stoplight and I guess something about the way the lights are timed, you always have to stop there no matter what. I really don't think I've ever gotten to that intersection with a green light. But no matter, waiting for the light to change gives you time to look around, to watch the old guys sitting on plastic beach chairs at the station conversing, the clunker cars tricked out with spinners filling up on gas.

Lately though, there hasn't been much action there. Ever since the gas station became Berkeley's BioFuel Oasis, I don't see people hanging out around there. Ever.

Well, as Patrick (the intern at City Slickers, refer to tentacle #1) told me, it's Novella's newest project. I would be critical and say that her project kinda took out the the life of the party but having now finished her book I've learned a thing or two about her. Even though she can be irritatingly full of herself sometimes, I can say with confidence that she is trying, and working hard at it. From what she's written, her projects always seem to work themselves out in some way or another. And at least she's someone doing something in this GhostTown anyway.

november november banana fana fo fember me my mo member, november!

Well in all honesty, November was a rather dull month. Crops dwindled and temperatures dropped, I spent a lot of time indoors reflecting (not that there's anything wrong with inwardness, it is just easy to get caught up in). December is already starting to prove quite different. Unlike sluggish November things are moving along very quickly. Old friends are returning and already my plane ticket to Baltimore seems to be approaching rapidly. Then when I come back I will have less than a week before I move to Full Belly. I find it hard it hard to picture myself there in less than a month (!). Nonetheless, I am excited for yet another change of pace and will try to take it in stride.

Now as I look back, all the time I spent in November wishing December would hurry up seems silly...How quickly things can change!

Peacocks in Berkeley

To update a bit on the reading front I can tell you this morning I curled up on the couch and made a considerable dent in Farm City. Which is, by the way, getting much more exciting now. I have finally reached the part of the book in which Novella purchases two new piglets for her urban farm. 

This is really exciting news for me since I've always been into having strange animals. As a kid I constantly begged for more pets but of course all my pleas went unanswered. After much frustration, I ended up finding that the only way I could acquire animals was by saving them. Over the years we nursed several baby squirrels and birds back to health. The problem with this plan was that the patients never stayed around for long because as soon as they healed, they left. Not even the kitten we rescued from the park was welcome after it had regained its strength. Yes folks, that's how cold my parents' hearts are, not even a kitten can melt them.

My first real pet-breakthrough was also unplanned. It came in the form of a gift from a scientist neighbor: a little white lab mouse. (I'm sure my parents must've been thrilled) I named her Lily Belini and at the time she was probably one of the most loved mice in all the world. She sat next to me as I did my homework or else kept my parents awake by running on her wheel all night. But in true mouse fashion, her era came and went rather quickly. After Lily, we lived for a few years without pets until my constant begging must have hit a nerve, one Christmas I opened a shaking box to find a baby bunny. I was in ecstasy.

I think that must've gotten us on a roll because then we somehow got two chicks. And at the same time as the chickens came another bunny, a few dozen goldfish and later, my puppy. (The dog definitely took the most work -- years and years of begging until she finally materialized -- but it was totally worth it.) Needless to say, after a few years of hard work on my part, our house did get pretty crowded. It became known as the Teletubby house to all the kids that walked past because they likened the bunnies grazing on our grassy hill to their favorite TV show.

I now remember having criticized Farm City after the first few pages but I have to say, it's growing on me. And at the very least it really did tickle my imagination. It got me dreaming and thinking about all sorts of untraditional pets: little piglets running around an Oakland garden, the ostrich that lives in Point Reyes, two weasels I once saw on a leash in Norway, the legendary peacocks that used to roam the streets of Berkeley...