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!