Sublimity and Synchronicity

Why was today so sublime? Well, it was one of those incredibly busy days that comes along every once in a while where everything is spontaneous, creative, positive and productive. It's all about flow - like a great guitar solo, except your words are the notes and your feet are the fingers as you transition seamlessly from conversation to conversation, event to event, fret to fret. It's the feeling of being up in front of a classroom of students - your students - and knowing you're on. It's playing Hold 'em at lunch with the CAS Poker Club, founded by yours truly and some young gambling enthusiasts on the soph retreat at the Marin Headlands two months ago. It's hanging out with DeAndre after school, como siempre, and finally doing the Big Backpack Organization. We bought a dozen folders, went to an Italian deli, then sat in the sunshine and cleaned out his backpack, putting papers that had been missing for months into their newly titled homes.

Afterwards I went to my flamenco lesson, and we worked on Alegrias, and then David told me about discovering the Bay Area flamenco scene in the late 60s, which at that time had already been around for half a century at least. How did he know? One of his teachers, a Mexican musician who emigrated to SF in the 1930s, said that when he arrived during the Depression there was flamenco all over the Bay Area, and that it had been there for a long time. Increible!! What a privilege to have begun this journey in Sevilla five years ago, and to now be connected by this amazing music to such a uniquely creative and pasionate part of the world. Ole! Viva la Bahia! Viva el duende! Viva hyphy! Que vivan todas mis relaciones.

Oh yeah, and speaking of all my relations - why was today so synchronous? Olivia graduated from Columbia with a Master's in Historic Preservation!!! Wish I could have been there, but Mom, Dad, and Granny represented in NYC for me. She and I are just finishing as DeAndre is just starting to formulate his ideas about college, y todos estamos unidos. Cosmic circles. After my flamenco lesson I drove to the house of one of my freshmen to pick up a car-full of food for our daylong retreat tomorrow in Tilden Park. Memories of bulk shopping at Cosco for the soph retreat, cramming the back of the Subaru wagon, unloading it all into my fridge, then loading it all into the car again the next morning. Memories of waking up at 5:30am to transport more mountains of food last spring for our MexEx brunch fundraiser. What an unbelievable two years in Berkeley it has been!

Whole Earth?

Caught a ride to Davis last night to see a couple of bands perform at the annual Whole Earth Festival. On the way, we stopped at the quintessential Berkeley co-op, The Cheesboard, and listened to a great jazz trio (who always perform in the store) as we stood in line waiting for our garlic pesto choclo cilantro pizza.

I always enjoy going to Davis because it connects me with rural California, which is an amazingly short distance in any direction from the Bay Area metropolis. Nick worked his usual shift at Little Prague, 3pm til 3am, but I woke up when he came home at 4:30 and we talked for a while about our respective stations in life. I told him how after two and a half years of public school teaching a missing piece of my humanity has been restored - namely, the non-white piece. However, even though I've become a more understanding white person, and learned how to be an ally to non-whites, I am increasingly despondent about the fact that I am at the absolute top of the social ladder as a straight white male. This may sound like a conradiction, but I feel like I'm part of a woefully disconnected minority of people who are out of touch and out step with the rest of the peoples of the world. Straight white males are like overstretched empires and kings gone mad with greed, we sit alone on the throne in an empty castle while the rest of the world laughs (at us) and enjoys a life we're not capable of knowing. Maybe this is the source of my desire to learn other languages, travel, and be a part of other cultures. Maybe not. Probably a mix of reasons. Anyway, we agreed that the next step is to read Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (recommended by Olivia when I explained to her my dilemma).

Now then, this realization doesn't mean I'm going to go around carrying the burden of white guilt. On the contrary, I'm going to continue being me and being open to all people I meet. Case in point: I took Amtrak back from Davis today and then got on the bus in Berkeley to go up University Ave to my apartment. After one stop, a man sat down next to me, and of course, I ignored him. Then he suddenly asked me how to get to campus, and if the bus would stop there, and it became apparent that he was a stranger in my town. I soon found out he had just arrived from India at 1am in the morning, and was in the USA for his very first time. As soon as he told me this, I grabbed his hand, shook heartily, and said, "Welcome to America!"
Keep in mind that ust a few weeks ago I invited a panel of immigrant students at Berkeley High to talk to my class, and they said they were miserable here, and that no one had ever given them a proper welcome, as they would have naturally done for any newcomer to their native communities.

The Indian man - whose name I asked but did not properly understand nor can remember - and I continued talking, and I told him a bit about Berkeley's political history. We got off at Telegraph Avenue and I walked him up to the student center. We shook hands again and he went off to meet his Indian friend, also a PhD student studying here for the summer. Small world, or whole earth?