an Oakland glimpse / watching in transit from one world to the next

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I see pain and joy everywhere.

Clouds fill the sky, the air is moist and heavy. Yet, there is a lightness on the landscape, this city full of bodies and eras, and movement shown by the layers of trash, broken cars and garden plots.

The pain is the children moving the freshly dead parent’s things out of a house, as I walk with my double backpack, not wanting to take BART transit or Uber today from one part of Oakland to another. The mattress, the 70’s wooden furniture, the piles of books, knick-knacks. A person’s life, embodied in material things, chucked in a rented dumpster.

I stop to look at a tropical plant next to a house three shades of rusty orange.

Vines creep into broken sidewalk.

The smell of piss.

A slow walking older woman in a white sari.

A biker with saddlebags speeds through traffic.

Planted brassicas next to spray painted walls, with stolen signs, welded Burning Man sculptural remnants.

Liqueor store open at night, glowing, as I arrived late in the cool mist.

Fermentation store with all your crockin’ needs.

Buy your ‘green’ energy toliet here.

$5 coffees, golden mylk for $10.

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The art, the california poppy in full flower. The poetry, embodied in a small woman in a big sweater crying on the phone outside of the overpriced grocery store.

The rows of tents under the bridge, covered in dusty tarps. A pile of stolen bikes, empty beer cars. Empty chip bags. And I look without a house but spent $15 bucks on an Uber yesterday so I wouldn’t have to walk around the street at night with all my possessions.

Riding the BART, everyone is on their phone. Doing business. A snack wrapper falls off the metal platform onto the tracks below.

Mustard flowers in yellow and light purple in the lot behind the hostel.

Paint peels off an old barn turned apartment complex, renovated ten times over.

church, then mosque, then synagogue, then temple.

pancakes here, falafel there, superfood puddings, multiple dogs on a leash.

rows of color, monochrome. rows of white, off white, tan, grey, florescent lights buzzing.

flying overhead at dusk, the whole city a giant circulatory system, except fueled by eating the earth from the inside out. The veins do not have to be spliced in such a way.

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Marisa Anderson and Sigur Ros on my headphones mediate my movement through this land, as I come from the jungle, from the colorful Tí groves and Ironwood swaying softly, and ochre stain. My white pants, covered in turmeric and red soil. My shoes, still caked with my hike on sticky cliffs alone with rainstorms seeping into my pores.

I feel like a bird migrating through, my senses are richly filled, this too is the earth.

It’s familiar yet different, lifted, the pain and the joy I watch as an observer. I watch my own pain and joy, I simply sit with all the sensations like a newborn child. I remember the birds’ constant singing.

I stay in a hostel, it takes me awhile to fall asleep. Simple, clean, quiet. I dream about the man on the lower bunk across from me, barely having spoken. I dreamed he said to get up, and that Tran from my Spring permaculture training was going to teach yoga. I realized I was going to be late. I get up, it’s 9:10. Jet lag. I walk into the communal kitchen. He is doing yoga on the deck with the owner. I feel incredibly psychic at times. I find out after a brief chat that he is a gardener.

I pull out the Hawai’ian cotton still stuffed in the front pocket of my wool button up shirt. Filled with seeds. Soft, white, fluffy, black specs.

My pack smells of fresh holy, I picked bush basil before I left. Rama Tulsi, Krishna Tulsi.

Sore shoulders, my body not touched by another for awhile, except when Sugi hugged me after holotrophic breathing meltdown, yet I am content.

Am I dreaming? Will I wake up back there? or back in a garden I love with my dearest heart?

I put the headphones back on, the sound of a train.

Horns honk, chickens caw.

The darkness falls, the ethereal day melts away.

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A spotlight shines through my friend’s studio. Chinese food takeout. I bought a mango at the grocery store after wandering aimlessly in disbelief at boxes called food. At all the words, the bottles, the prices, the colors trying to get you to respond, but the forest, is full of color. Where is the forest.

A sea of green is not just a sea, but a world of story, of singularities that make up the whole. Swimming through, the stories can be revealed, by simply listening. The sea waves and wanders and splashed up new lift, new identity, new stories, new beginnings. Just as the dumpster of furniture signals death in this city, the salty wave, sky blue falls back into the ocean, recedes from the million years volcanic fed sandy shore. The wave a guarantee, the tide, over and over.

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Tagging a couple of people who I think might like this post... @owasco @mountainjewel @trucklife-family @ginnyannette

I love the impressionistic, stream of consciousness musing here... you really capture that beauty of the world and the edge of it, the ugliness... how they meet in play. Colour, smell, dreamscapes. I'm transported.

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i enjoy writing stream of consciousness.. some people get it and some people don't. thanks for your feedback- i take in the world like this and often don't want to form complete thoughts around it but just impressions

I do, and I should find you one or two of mine..

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It is hard to leave the pristine wilderness to come to the concrete cities - two different realities. Keep well in your travels!

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yes, its quite a whirlwind. I've been mostly grounded in it all until this evening. Time to go back to the woods!

You wrote in a feelinful way, gave every little detail around a realistic feeling.

thanks! all about those feelings...

Mmmmmm.... you're making my wanderlust itchy! Such a romantic, feeling-centred, evocative post!! Gorgeous. Funny thing is there are actually quite a few places this might be. :)


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evocative... i like that word. and yes.. totally could be quite a few places for sure..

I love the stream-of-consciousness style of this post. I can feel the trees and all the wild aspects of nature through your eyes when reading this, fantastic!

stream of consciousness yes! my favorite way to write. thanks!

The city sounds like overstimulation, or maybe that is me projecting my feelings onto your writing. Some people really like the stimulation of it all. This was really a beautiful story, despite a lot of ugly images mixed in with the pretty or the just neutral. That is good writing I think - making beauty out of everything.

I really like that last picture.

i get overstimulated a lot and certainly was navigating that...

@ofsedgeandsalt this is so beautifully written. I enjoyed reading it as I followed you through your journey in Oakland. You have a knack for writing and drawing the reader in. I’m intrigued by your experiences and wish you the absolute best in your journey. Hoping to catch more opportunities to read your posts.

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thanks! i appreciate the feedback. i write like this in my journal as much as i can to try to process places in my travels...

thanks for tagging me @riverflows, this is beautiful @ofsedgeandsalt, I have experienced this, the two worlds that collide, and the pull to get back to the wilderness xx

indeed... and what is the wilderness i continuously ask myself..