74 Years Young
I arrive at SFO following a longer-than-usual flight as our plane skirts around the ash-cloud. What, me worry? I watch two movies including George Clooney's "Up In The Air" about a dude who travels 240 days a year to fire people. Of course there is a love-interest and hard lessons learned &c and etc. but what I find most interesting (other than a film about the soothing emptiness of air-travel) is the relationship between Clooney's character Bingham and his younger protagonist Natalie Keener (played by 25-year old Anna Kendrick) - I side with Bingham and not the the fresh-faced Keener which, I suppose, makes sense as, well, I am middle age. From where I write, in my parents' living room facing westward and looking straight across the bay at the Golden Gate Bridge in the house where I grew up, it is easy to be swept away by youthful nostalgias. This morning, for instance, I jog in Tilden Park on the Nimitz trail where I have memories from age-five, then high-school and college followed by Christmases and holidays over the years and a third or fourth date with Sonnet when she dragged me one summer morning and I couldn't think of anything else but her. That was in '93. After my run I hit Peet's and watch the Berkeley weirdos who sit about and drug up on coffee. Everybody is super friendly and no doubt this is their scene today and every day. Make love not war, man. Sadly, around the corner one of Berkeley's best book shops, The Black Oak, has closed.
