First Month back in Oakland

Today marks one month since my partner and I returned to Oakland, CA, to the Redwood Heights neighborhood, in a lovely ranch-style home that I previously lived in back in 2015. Since then, the backyard garden has grown tremendously: aloe and matilija (fried egg) poppy plants are taller than me, there’s a pomegranate tree, and a kumquat tree (which I rescued from the trash) has doubled in size and is starting to bloom. This morning I picked figs and apples. Later I’ll pick some cherry tomatoes and use them in a salad or an omelette — if they make it back to the kitchen. There are a few final zucchini. The space and the home feel familiar, so our California re-emergence feels natural and has luckily been smooth.

Yes, it’s great to be back in the Bay for many reasons — for the first time since I accepted the role of Chair, I’m able to do the work in person. I’m on campus at least once a week, and love running into students in the café and casually advising them on their assignments of the day. I’m lunching with faculty and convening meetings and making introductions, all in person — in other words, building community.

As we drove across the country, seeing friends along the way who I knew from other parts of life and other cities we used to both live in, and even still met up in person with people I’d only met online, I realized we have (or can build) community everywhere. But it’s the concentration and intersection of all the communities we’re part of that brought us back to the Bay. The design and tech communities, the entrepreneur and startup and venture capital communities, the queer communities. My friend and colleague communities. And my chosen family, my godson, and my business partner and oldest dearest bestie — now in SoCal.

We rode out the peak of the pandemic in Philly. It’s a fantastic city — affordable, walkable, diverse, delicious, got its own culture, close to NYC, easy access to the Jersey Shore, and DC — and we loved getting to know it as much as we could. Given we were there during a time when most everyone was at home, building community was challenging. But we managed to make a few new friends who’ll be waiting for our return visits.

Sunny Sunday morning, French press with cardamom pod, almond horn

My mother is 77. Her near-constant pursuit of delight, delivered via baked goods, pastries, and cookies, is adorable. It possesses an unbounded glee from deep within childhood.

She has reintroduced me to the almond horn. As a kid it was never my favorite, but I bought one yesterday at an Italian bakery. In the assortment were pignoli and ricotta cookies, and torrone. While I’ve always loved torrone — softer is better, I’ve had braces twice — asking for the almond horn made me think of Mom.

As she is 77, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to things that bring her joy. For her birthday last month, I brought her favorite flower (hydrangea) in her favorite colors (blue and white), along with a bottle of St Germain, which she recently fell in love with.

And now I’d like to arrange, the next time we are together, an almond horn-off. Six or seven of them from local shops, blind tested, likely devoured over a day or two, and rated. We’ll go back to the source of the winning horn and share this story.

Mom will go back to New York with a box of the winners. She’ll freeze them and enjoy them for the next several years.

I take pleasure in grinding my own coffee beans — the aroma, the sound, the process, the adjusting of the grind for drip or French Press — and every so often I’ll pop in a cardamom pod into the grinder if I think those flavors will mesh well. I did so this morning with nearly the last of the dark roast (which means I’ll be picking up some more at the Farmers Market today).

I started drinking coffee my junior year of college. I was purely tea beforehand. (I still reach for both.) My alma mater was piloting a new major, Media Studies, from which I was the second to graduate (my friend Bill was the first). I was also an English minor, a work-study student in the Writing Center, and got the Dean to fund a critical culture zine, Mediahead.

Coffee helped my brain and I to start achieving more. I can’t say if all of a sudden there was a lot to do, or if coffee helped my mind and I snap into place and become more high-performing. There’s certainly a correlation.

After college, my coffee game was elevated even further, via my friend and roommate, Kirstin. She introduced me to the french press style of brewing. We would sip it super hot before dashing to catch the T into Boston, or pour some into our commuter mugs while reading a half-folded The New Yorker. Her homemade ceramic coffeemugs would sit half empty in the sink all day. If there was anything left in the press, maybe it got warmed in the microwave the next morning.

In my late 30s and well into my 40s, I could finish an entire 8-cup press myself in one sitting. These days I sip slower (though no less fervently), and I do own two 8-cup presses in case company wants.

Poem, August 20

Making the bed (a meditation)

tonight, we made it to tonight,

because we made what was unmade,

so many days now. mornings in order,

smoothed over with care, despite how

(over night) we wander. how ever much we

tuck into our restlessness, we fold ourselves

in together, back to back.

Poem (Superku), August 8

comes a hummingbird —
there! right! at the moment when
i felt most vulnerable;
two, possibly three seconds.

— human generosity
synchronized environments —

(the needy mind. traps itself.

how we view the world is based
on perception which is based
in the mind so each moment’s
filtered through this needy mind.)

“once one gets one’s mind and one’s
desires out of its way”
is what cage said about it.

and yet, and so, instantly (!)
releasing anxiety
transporting mind and body
— unexpected joy.

Tradition(s)

This morning, for the first time since I can remember, I went to Saturday morning religious services, with my mother and brother, at his conservative Jewish temple in Bethesda, MD. We walked there, like good Jews, echoing the more Conservative practice of not working (nor driving cars) on the Sabbath.

With decades of distance between me and any practice of organized religion — other than as a tourist at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, or at a ceremony and celebration of life those recently and dearly departed — I had fresh eyes to observe some particulars of Jewish religiosity.

First, some context: There were about 50 people in the sanctuary, socially distanced and masked, in a space that could hold 250. The two hour service consisted of Torah readings, singing, chanting, and a guest sermon from a Rabbi delivered via Zoom.

While there was one main focus — say, this morning’s reading from the book of Numbers — there were many other distractions: the Rabbi walking off the bema (altar) into the congregation inviting someone spur-of-the-moment to do a reading; people talking with each other at what they thought was low volume, and hugging and kissing; people standing up and walking out, or new people arriving. The Conservative and Orthodox traditions also feature davening, what sounds like murmuring, looks like rocking back and forth, and is an an individual response to the Rabbi’s call.

It’s not like a play or movie with a quiet, rapt audience, nor like a classical music or stage performance that attempts to minimize interruptions by clustering attendees at an entrance until a segment is complete. In fact, it felt more like participation, interruptions, and commentary are expected.

One page from the Bomberg Talmud

Maybe even required, given the actual content of the service and structure of sacred Jewish texts. The Torah and the haftorah both contain commentary and footnotes. The Talmud — the most holy of Jewish books, the genesis of Jewish laws, and the primary source of rabbinical training — has a page layout that accommodates source material, no fewer than five sources of commentary on the source material that’s been compiled over the centuries, two sidebar locations to cross-reference other material, and even printer’s notes [see image]. So it’s not surprising that one Saturday service, even after years of absence, would embody this hodgepodge of simultaneous commentary and confusion.

I was raised in the Reform tradition and became a Bar Mitzvah at the traditional age of 13. Although that ceremony marks the transition out of boyhood, it wasn’t until years later that I became free to make my own decisions about religion. What I appreciate about Jewishness is the space created, in texts, for interpretations of the stories, allowing for resonance and meaning. With that approach as my guide, what follows are some of the traditions I appreciate:

  • On most Friday nights after a long week of work, a delicious candle-lit dinner, and a special grace-like blessing over food and wine becomes Shabbat.

  • Even as a kid I loved Sukkot, the agriculturally-oriented harvest holiday, where you hold woven-together palm fronds, willow branches, and a myrtle bough in your hand, along with the fruit of a citron tree, and wave them north, south, east, and west, to honor and bless mother earth.

  • Tzedakah, in my interpretation, is giving — typically financial donations — to those less fortunate, and without expecting anything in return. Sounds like the gift economies of a certain burning man I know, and generally exuding kindness.

  • Music. Because I was born in the 70s, I have many memories of singing Jewish religious songs in small groups accompanied by guitar and clapping, in lieu of the more formal professional cantor or organ. Even this morning I could recall many of the melodies, and I’ve written previously about my experience singing my Torah portion.

  • Food. Grandma Mollie’s chicken matzoh ball soup, Grandma Moo’s brisket, hamantaschen cookies, pastrami on marbled rye with mustard, rugelach of any variety (but mostly the apricot walnut ones from La Farine), and on and on.

Poem, May 26

Count the seconds between Lightning and Thunder, L comes before T and that determines how far you are away. Alice calls crying. He’s lost it all, he had it but he has lost it — all of it. You travel back to the place, the very spot, you’ll be flooded with remembrances. Count the hours, the years. I’ll be 50, he’ll be 37. We respect each other, we push each other but not past comfort, of a Kind. I get all the questions and I see all the inconsistencies, always. It’s always shocking when it shows, those. She’s further away now. His voice, always turning on the sweet, where is that accommodation for me? I’m difficult. I require communication. Talk, since you’re here. Talk, tell me everything. The more I know the more I can do. It’s a kind of never-forgetting, also a kind of learning. It’s summer. I want to learn new things about old places. Let’s go back to some together, for the first time. The rain is blocking the moon, but I know it’s full.

to name things

in

long before this time this

pile of rock in front of us

had a different name,

long before us its name

meant another thing. we claim

our time with names. each name,

one life. other times, other names.

another epoch, another time.

our time isn’t named yet –

someone else’ll do that later.