july 23I think i've finally figured out why i like talking to the crazy people that you find in the bay area. they live by a different set of rules. and i don't mean just recreationally crazy. i would almost call it a profession. this morning i was rooting around in a pile of books someone had put on the curb, labeled free, with a guy filling a shopping cart with french literature (his minor in college) and classic short fiction.
without hesitation he said "i'm losing my mind." and for a second i thought he meant he felt some inner need to stop collecting books. "i really am."
he told me about how he should find a job, "but enhhh..." to that. how he majored in history, but when he said he wanted to teach they made everything too complicated, but maybe he'll go back in a few months.he brightened when he saw a thoreau paperback, tossing it in the cart.
this man wasn't a raving bitter guy like the one in sproul plaza a few weeks ago. his lunacy was reflective and troublingly freeing. i could root around in curbside trash cuz i'm an idealistic college student, trying on different pairs of logic goggles, he can do it because people helped him see he's really the sane one.
"you want the odyssey?" "nah, got seventeen at home." "yah, me too..."
it would have been to simple to ask this man about his life, his name, his situation, how he got to a berkeley sidewalk. i should have asked him what he thinks of thoreau (i don't know much at all), if he believes knowledge leads to desire and should be avoided, what he thinks keeps people going. but i didn't, cuz we were rooting thru books, content to have someone to talk to.
i'd been itching to put up these pages, so that i wouldn't just be pretending to write dailies, so i finally decided on format and wrote up some other supporting pages, and here they are, exposed to the web naked and white and wearing a bit too much suntan lotion, waiting to get those deep amber wrinkles like a sixty-year-old swiss ski instructor. but really they're just me writing about my day, sharing some stories, havin some fun.
07.19 | july | 07.28