We are approaching that time in the Pacific Northwest when one goes to bed with sunlight and wakes up with sunlight. I have windows that face north. Around the time of the NBA playoffs the earth has rotated far enough on its axis that I'm getting a shaft of direct sunlight into my cluttered studio at sunrise and at sunset. It is a strange time of year.
The letter below is another one of those beer-tear retrospectives that I sent off to my beloved friends back in the Bay Area telling them how much I missed them and how I had loved working in the library at U.C. Berkeley. To this day I still consider it the best job of my life. Often we would begin each morning, the students who staffed the special book search and retrieval department within the university's august Doe Library, at an espresso cafe that bordered the northside of campus. There we would drink cappuccino and eat pain au chocolat and decide who would tackle which branch libraries, some of us, usually Paul, reeking of tobacco smoke and alcohol from the previous night; others, of last night's sexual climax.
I could go on for a long time about various stories associated with my tenure at the library -- the people I worked with were family: we partied together, went on outings together; we basically lived together -- but I want to get out on a long run this morning while I still have the mojo to do it. So I am going to cut it short and mention only the time that Paul and I went out together -- we were usually paired up -- on a book retrieval run that hit the branch libraries on the westside of campus and the little golf-cart-sized delivery truck we traveled the campus in tipped over. It tipped over because Paul and I entertained ourselves during the completion of our route by looking for "jumps" we could careen over in the old, "county-orange"-colored golf-cart-sized delivery vehicle. (Imagine an old steel golf cart with a metal canopy soldered on the back.) The best jumps -- high curbs or small embankments or other opportunities offered by paved hilly terrain -- were found on the eastside of campus.
But on this particular day we were on the far west end, near Edwards Track and Field Stadium. Paul, who always drove, took us as fast as the vehicle could motor up the drive that led beneath the stadium seats and then he cranked the wheel sharply and drove us off the edge. The vehicle couldn't taken the sharp turn and tipped over. The cab of the vehicle was open -- no doors. So I slid out immediately as soon as the vehicle tipped, Paul sliding right behind me. But like something out of the Iliad, I landed on my feet and caught hold of a bar on the cab and held up the vehicle and walked it upright again.
Paul slammed back in the driver's seat looking a little shaken. I was sort of surprised. The vehicle was at least 500 lbs. I think we got lucky; I think I caught it right when it was at the zenith of going all the way over, and by propping it up for those several steps I bought us some time for gravity to come to our aid.
Autumn 1988
You got to love them A's. By the the time you guys get this little missile it'll already be game four, and the Dodgers'll be fighting for their stinking Tim Leary lives. Wow! How about that review of the Praise Jockeys in the VILLAGE VOICE? I tacked it up on our wall for good luck and good measure. This week there is an article by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon; it's kinda nice; it made me feel how much I've been passed by by life. But hope springs with a cup of coffee in the morning, and the daydreams shoot out of my head. Unfortunately they evaporate as soon as I step into the office, refusing to return until the next morning. I think about California, about going back to school, about slaughtering everyone at work with a shotgun, about what I got to read, about Kim Gordon meeting me and falling in love, and on and on.
Ashley is studying hard for midterms, going to the library, staying up late and waking up the same. I watch TV, the Olympics, the news, the Championship Series, football (I've pretty much given up on the 49ers), and I drink beer. I read on the weekends. I do actually have a small but nonetheless wonderful storehouse of stories to relate -- drunkenness, a brawl with a big asshole bouncer, etc. -- but I feel either too self-conscious or overwrought to relate them. Suffice it to say that in all the cryptically mentioned above I upheld East Bay honor and integrity.
In the mind's eye I am always comparing every work scenario with the Baker scene, and, well, you know, beer tears and all, nothing ever stacks up. That long old library table that we all sat up at, jawing away, like a commercial, like accident was a necessity (there's a Derrideanism); the two-hour coffee breaks; the golf carts, running them into the side of a building or a metal pillar; Sue Gallup, who you wanted to pistol whip with a machete; Greg Olin, and his insight into the Transcendentalists; me, leaving freshly-purchased vinyl albums in the sun; Dan Tirtawatanata; Jefferson and the MEMBERS ONLY jacket. it all adds up -- and that was only one generation, one layer. The real big hitters were you guys, and Ben, and Sloper, and Clanon and Pomerantz. But as you can tell, this is jaundiced, beer jaundice, and I hope you guys don't mind it. We all need a golden age, and we need it over and over again, and this was one of mine, and we shared it. And I never stop telling people that you guys changed my life, and that that time charged my life (Oh, boy, does this sound maudlin, and I hope by calling attention to it, I am not somehow ruining it.) But I'm a firm believer in delivering credit where credit is due. So I sit here, my weenie a sow's tail for the brew's release, puffing on the last bit of a Te Amo cigar before Ashley comes home to reprove me, and all I can think is that I really love you, Oliver and Lyn.
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