Information Blues.

Long live Bien Fácil!

Tonight I played pool with Dmo at The Mallard. No english, no funny stuff, just straight shooting. I’m trying to resharpen my game. It feels like I’m starting from the beginning.

I almost forgot how much I enjoy novelty ball sports. We played as many games as we could, on the back table in the separate room, until the bartender kicked us off because people were waiting. I’ve played a lot of games on that table, for a long time! I was feeling sentimental on an empty stomach, drank a Bombay By Boat and let myself reminisce. About the middle 90’s shooting stick at The Duck with Matt, my best friend, always on Thursday nights when the tall, cute bartender named Wanda worked. Wanda and Matt had a dialog: they talked about me. Matt tried to set me up with her, and she flirted with me, through Matt, and I blushed. It was a strange dynamic that repeated over and over until one day I ran into her in the shoe aisle at Mervyn’s and it was so bright compared to the bar as I told her I was looking for non-leather shoes and I could tell right then she thought I was a big dork.

I remember The Duck in the back room playing pool for long johns when Elisabeth said, “It must be fun to play games with your body.” Games? I suppose eating a cream filled chocolate long john is actually quite a trick, I realize that now.

Well I schooled Dmo, sort of, and drank a Boont, then became vaguely belligerent. I wasn’t really and truly belligerent, but the beers were meeting me half way and I wanted to be there. I got happy enough that I started making shots with the bridge. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but if you knew me it might.

When we got kicked off the table we played Mars Attacks. Mars Attacks! I love pinball! Or I used to love pinball, forgot about it, and now realize I miss it. The field was set fast with a steep incline, and the tilt sensor was tricky; we played ten games and I think I only finished two balls with my bonus intact. But oh to be young and playing pinball, and happy, and yet sad because the tilt sensor is way too sensitive and you can’t stop tilting. Tilting is a natural part of the game, I’m trained to interact with the ball on every ricochet, shaping trajectories, nudging fate…

Doran did not want to get a donut afterwards. Come on! You just rode Pig Farm, and now you’re telling me you can’t handle a ‘nut?

He dropped me off back at work and I got on my bike. I was determined to sabotage myself with donuts. I had that young, free feeling, when the entire world seems open and whimsical and fun, and you can do anything you like, you’re high on freedom. The world hasn’t felt like that for a long time and I needed to grab hold of it.

I made it to Colonial Donuts at 10pm as dudes were playing speed chess. I watched as a tray of fresh frosted cake donuts were presented. I’ll take one of those fresh white sprinkles and a lemon jelly please. Oh, and a chocolate milk.

The lemon jelly was fluffy and tart. It reminded me of my dad, the first person I ever remember to order one. It seemed insane at the time. The newly minted cake had blue and yellow sprinkles; it was still warm and fragile. The frosting crunched like delicate crystals.

Today Picoso rolled me a square burrito. It was fat and squat and wide. I didn’t think this sort of burrito was physically possible, but they’ve got a new teenage burrito shaper with a knack for the improbable.

I was a little apprehensive: would it taste good? Inside it was compartmentalized like a chest of drawers. The beans were in the top drawer. The lettuce was in the bottom drawer. The guacamole was on top of the lettuce. The rice was above that. The cheese filled a few separate drawers. Thankfully I never found a drawer full of sour cream.

I sat in the breezeway at the Epicurious Garden in the Gourmet Ghetto drowning my cubic burrito in green salsa while back in the garden area a woman sat crying near the simulated stream and at the end of the corridor dudes in goatees and earrings and wraparound sunglasses said dude, it’s really f’d up that B of A just bought Meryl Lynch.

I’ve been making my way through Ken Burns’ documentary series The War. It seems relevant in so many ways: both my dad’s and mom’s fathers fought in The War. I’ve been thinking about Pops and Grandpa Frank: what did they see? What did they do? What were the sacrifices my family gave?

It’s surreal to see the United States depicted in wartime then as tightly unified, everyone struggling toward the same goal, sacrificing their blood and sweat to halt an obvious evil. In current times we seem so divided, like we live in several different countries: the red states, the blue the purple. We’re at war with each other, and we’re at war in Iraq which seems to matter so little compared to World War II. The depth of that war is difficult to comprehend: so many people died. I can’t understand losses so large. Each episode of the documentary has found me moved to tears at the stories, the disaster, the challenge and idealism.

But I also find myself wondering: what do the Japanese and Germans think? How does it feel to have something this horrendous and futile in your past, that so many nations were rallied and devastated in the grasp for power?

The War seems relevant today because it christened the United States as a superpower. It’s when our national ego swelled, and has ebbed and swollen til the last few years when we grew so incredibly pompous under George W Bush as to provoke war without merit. This seems a symptom of WWII, that this moment could only come after those that came before. It seems important to remember how the cycle started, with so much pain. It would seem obvious after that that we should use every means necessary to avoid more war, that the gains of The War shouldn’t be more war. The gain of war, if anything, is loss, and an outside chance at peace. I don’t want to see us to squander that chance. We should remember.

Lately I’m obsessed with wild fruit. There’s so much fruit out there! It’s fascinating.

It started with a mountain bike ride through Wildcat Canyon. I’d bombed Havey Canyon and was out on an exploratory mission to the end of Wildcat. I was feeling tired, yet still somewhat committed to the idea of looping back to the ridge somehow. I began slogging my way up Belgum Trail, which turned out to be not such a good idea as I was soon presented with a series of 20% vertical fire road walls. I climbed a few of them but lost focus. I stopped under a shady tree and noticed it had fruit that looked like rainier cherries. Wild plums. I ate a few and couldn’t stop. Then I walked across the trail and grazed at a blackberry bush for a while; I climbed to the top full of wild fruit.

Now I want to collect wild fruits for a blackberry pie. I want to make wild plum pie; there’s a recipe in the cookbook my sister gave to me for christmas. I walk through Berkeley and leer at the fig trees, the quinces, the lemons. I harvested some mint from the sidewalk Monday to make post Juan’s Place tea. I went over to Brian’s place last week and what was growing in front: a cling peach! He didn’t seem very interested in it, but I was overjoyed.

(And now I suppose is where I admit to harvesting a wee stalk of oregano from Bess’s garden on the way home from a hill ride a few weeks ago. It just sounded so good in my snackmaster sandwich.)

There’s a certain leap of faith involved in eating a wild thing. There’s no guarantee it’s going to taste good. It could be dusty or housing a worm. I don’t have any concern with buying fruits from the market, but out in the wilds it’s a different thing.

Yesterday I rode over the hills and out Happy Valley Road. I didn’t bring any food with me, and towards the end I was starting to fade. But I got lucky: there were millions of ripe blackberries growing out of the creek at the Orinda Country Club. So I parked my bike against a telephone pole and hung out for a while blowing off dusty blackberries. I was sweaty and faint, dorked out in spandex, foraging. But I felt so lucky: each berry tasted different. And there I was, healthy enough to ride forty miles, fortunate enough to own a nice bike and live in a beautiful place. While the suburbanites drove by, insulated from the world, I was standing around counting my blessings and scratching my forearms with wild berries.