Chapter #19
[Scrap #1] There was an anniversary at the Trannyshack and the Sun Machine is Coming Down was a song that could best describe my mood. I was comprehensive, scared, and the zeros from the loans and other obligations were slowly started to making an appearance again. And the radiator, for as long as tried to pretend the problem did not exist, was surely not getting any better. I would take a walk in the morning to the Pol Sci 3 discussion and played the Precious moment on the mp3 player I brought in from China. Original Sony heckled at the Silk Market to twenty dollars or so. A bargain packed in a generic box. I brought myself cigarette to mark the moment to which I told myself I was surely going to be coming back. On Monday morning I would take BART to San Francisco and transfer onto a tram heading to the congress lady's office. Answering calls from people complaining about UFOs, medical bills, too many Mexicans and, on occasion, a PATRIOT act. At 11 o'clock Mark would call just to check in. Wednesday was my afternoon shift after which I would go to class wearing a tie feeling slightly depressed.
[Scrap #2] My inadequacy would deepen during the Chinese Law class. It had too many smart and committed students taking the average class up. The teacher was an older law professor starting the class with a local folk story about a horse or other subject and then jumping into the subject of the day. I liked the class. It was after one of them that I discovered that Berkeley had my great grandfather's book. A medical thesis all wrote in German from his time serving as a doctor during the first war. I found it in the records out of boredom. Judge Dee was the book I decided to write a paper on for one of the final papers. I drove to San Francisco on a rainy days to a really old bookstore and to my surprise discovered it was there. Professor's Bering's comment was that I was too harsh and idealistic in regards to my ideal type of the judge. I didn't mind. For full disclousure, I was making most of the things up putting as much of my opinions and referring as little as possible to the substance of the book that I only had one afternoon to read anyway.
[Scrap #3] It was all Brian Lin's fault. I arrived back into San Francisco and I quickly felt into a sort of depression. No one would answer my calls and it was raining outside. At least Tim and Barbara would now go out for most of the weekends so I had the apartment all to myself. With the balcony overlooking the hills. I watched the Terminal with Tom Hanks and I thought I could somehow relate to him. Stephen, or Esteban, invited me to his birthday party. I wore the stripped pink/salmon shirt that among other things I inherited from Darren. The party was good. There were people gathered around the table in the kitchen talking politics. As now an intern of the federal government, as well as a student of the subject, I thought that was the right place for me to be but I quickly realised there was not that much I could contribute. When I first met Brian, he came over to my house and then we drove to an Asian supermarket in his Toyota Tacoma truck. It was not going to work out but it was nice to have someone around to put his finger in my ear.
[Scrap #4] The Monday morning routine was now an early BART ride to the Embarcadero station and then transfer to the F line going along the piers to the office. First answering phone call and then a half an hour or so lunch break. Just enough time to walk to the Pier [39] and watch the [sea lions]. Then back on the F line via an old Milan tramcar if I was lucky and back to Albany. On Wednesdays it was back to Berkeley just in time for the lecture on what makes countries competetive. Wearing a blue shirt, black trousers and a tie. Darren had been long gone, Vu was in San Diego and Trevor wasn't really talking to me due to the Thai soup incident. My classes were Eastern European Politics who a professor who converted from Physics into Politics, the Chinese Law with a half lawyer half philiosopher, Intro to Statistics with professor Stoker whose lectures were true art and Political Economy with a guy who prominently displayed his CV on the syllabus but eventually turned out to be quite all right. I knew Jana from the previous semester and got to know Justyna who looked like a drinker.
[Scrap #5] By the time the spring arrived I met Alvin, a PhD student living just down the hill, and I was fine again. But I knew I wanted to leave and I would find myself driving down to Los Angeles more and more often. I would continue picking up craigslist people but once I took Ryan, a student from the national security class, with me. He was visiting his girlfriend. We had good time talking about politics and his experiences of war in Iraq. We stopped to get some gas off the Freeway 5 and got a portion of the Famous Star and fries and fries. I liked Alvin because he sort of put up with me and I could tell him whatever was on my mind. I talked about the theories I learned in the political economy class, drew charts on the board and then we would continue conversation in his room. The relationship was in a sense of an abusive character most of that was, deservingly so, probably coming from me. He was there for me when I needed him and it was working for me just fine. But we laughed a lot and shared many fun memories together.
[Scrap #6] The office of the congress lady was located in the north part of San Francisco, in the quiet part of the piers, on a second floor of a low rise building. There was a restaurant downstairs, Phoenix, which would serve free coffee to all of the employees. The regular tasks would be to sit answering the phones and assigning cases to the appropriate case workers, after entering details into the computers. It also required noting down the topics that constituents would dial in about. The more regular ones would receive their own topics on a piece of paper in front of me and a tally of sets of five crossed lines to give an idea of how much interests each attracted. We would be told in advance, if because of debate on the floor, we should expect an increase number of calls. Those were usually more about passionate ones. Other than that most people called with their health problems and once in a while someone would to offer a vhs tape of sighting an UFO or asked to speak directly with the president. In the afternoons I would help Nicole to politely call various organisations and politely decline their invitations.
[Scrap #7] I discovered the great grandpa's book by an accident. I had to walk to the DOE library so it could be retrieved from the archives to be picked up the next day. It was a sunny day and to make it to the library I walked in front of the Le Conte building with its view across the bay onto the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the same building I had my Eastern European history class and the view would always somehow [force] me to remind my myself why was I really here. The purpose of life that soon, in a few months, would be gone and in need of an urgent replacement. Like the radiator under the hood of my car. The book was thin, a thesis all written in German. I scanned and copied that over and sent back home. Grandpa said it dealt with medical observations from the time of the world war I. At the end of the book was a dedication and thanks to the great grandfather's family. How it ended up in Berkeley library was a mystery but after few weeks of holding onto it I returned it figuring that was where it belonged.
[Scrap #8] Five page papers and unreadible notes I'd what the semester now looked like. 'Your whole life will consist of five page papers' whether it was to be a memo or a book. Times New Roman, the font size twelve, double spaced, margin of one inch. That's what we were supposed to squeeze the hours in library and studying in. As for the notes, I had to borrow a typed in ones from Jana as I had been using the old school method of just writing things on paper, never to be fully deciphered by anyone, filtered by the passing time, association and memory. At the end of Political economy class someone wrote in the feedback to the teacher that he wasn't as big of an asshole as he seemed to be at the begining. The professor took it as a compliment. For the final paper we were tasked to write a research about the international system. I guess that most would choose United Nations so I wrote about planes. How the aviation became an international challenge which over time grew into bringing countries together and setting wildly recognised rules. It wasn't all complete but the originality got me an A.
[Scrap #9] Czesław Miłosz was a distinguished poet, a Berkeley lecturer and a Noble Prize winner. Justyna and I decided to pay him a visit or rather drive by the house he had lived for years before his death. I had found the address somewhere online. We climbed the Berkeley hills in my Honda (always on the lowest gear yielding to the oncoming cars as they did not have to stop) and parked outside. I was going to just stay there for a few moments, look at the building, pay my respects and leave but Justyna had different plans in mind. She got out and proceeded to walk to the front door. Before I could stop her she knocked and after a few moments a young man turned out at the door. When asked whether 'this is the house where the famous poet lived' he confirmed. He did not let us come inside as the house was now of his friend's but he did invite us to walk around the garden and look at the views. The very same views of the Bay area that inspired many other philosophers and scientists before the poet. We let a few minutes pass and left.
[Scrap #10] Tomek had arrived a few days after my parents made their first landing in the United States. I was so excited about their arrival that after drinking a coffee at Berkeley's Starbucks and using the toilet I drove straight to the airport expecting their appearance in the door. I even cleaned up the car finally taking out the Coca-Cola stains from the ceiling. We drove past San Francisco, the Embarcadero boulevard with me proudly showing off the places I was now calling mine. The next day I still have to go to work so I left them near my office for them to walk around and see the lions by the pier. We took an old tram and I got them tickets as seniors, we went to the Chinatown where Dad got a toilet key attached to a wired basket. We drove to Napa, Berrineger winery, where Dad tried on hats and Mom was complimented for her nails. In the evening I took Tomek to the campus where in front of the Moffit we met a guy from the Political Economy glass. He gave me a donut and I wished I had more time to hang out more with him.