Picture perfect

It is a beautiful day and for once, I stroll across campus without seeing anything strange.

The sun glows across a cloudless sky with the warm colors of spring and summer, not the cold pale light of winter. Students stretch out on the grass with books, computers, blankets. Frisbees float randomly through the air, and there is a generally growing feeling of optimism with every day that midterms become last week’s unpleasant memories.

Its warm in the sun but the breeze is cold, winter hasn’t completely faded yet and spring is still pushing its way to life. Its perfect for me, my Scottish blood intended for such melancholy environments. I begin to wish I had shorts on.

I wander past faculty glade, and into another area of the campus I don’t have a name for yet, somewhere above barrows hall and the field next to Hearst Gym. The field is filled with people in identical shirts and shorts, with one or two wearing something that seems almost military. I wonder if this is the airforce ROTC program I’ve heard about.

Then I see the girl.

She’s gripping a large camera in her hands. It doesn’t look particularly worn, but there’s something slightly antiquated about it. It doesn’t seem digital, I think it might actually use film. She’s taking pictures of the redwoods that run through the center of campus, a dividing line that stand over strawberry creek like its guardians. There is a space in the grove she’s shooting. An emptiness. The trees themselves are closely bunched. They seem to flow into each other, and there isn’t one that stands out.

The girl who talks to trees, the girl who takes photographs of trees, the people who live in trees...I love trees as much as the next liberal but seriously. There's a meme here.

I keep walking, but something about this itches so I give in and decide I’m just going to have to scratch. I turn and start strolling back up over a grassy hill. She’s changed positions, and now her camera is pointed nearly straight up, photographing the near empty branches of some seasonal tree just above her.

I ask her what she’s photographing.

The tree. She answers, smiling. My brain adds the fact that she’s rather lovely to the fact that she’s a girl. Yeah, look, I’m a guy. These things come up. I try to look curious or put on some kind of expression reflecting the fact that I am actually paying close attention, but I get the impression her cheerful countenance is being met with something closer to the dour somberness peoplele tend to interpret in the default of my features.

At work I tend to smile a lot and joke often. I find that when I don’t I give people the impression I’m about to jump on my desk, pound my chest and start hurling coke bottles at advancing heroic plumbers when nothing could be further from truth. Although, if I did decide on such theatrics there are a few girls in the next department who would make attractive additions to the proceedings. It’s tradition: every giant plumber hating monkey needs a girl.

Where was I again?

So the tree. “It’s for a class.” She explains, gesturing to the mostly barren branches above. She explains the tree has been assigned to her. She’s supposed to draw it over the course of the semester. I agree with her that it’s an appealing specimen and start away, back over the hill.

As I leave I look back just the hill occludes her from view. She’s forgotten about the tree above her, and once more that slightly out of date camera is pointed at the grove of redwoods. Again, something about this just itches. I watch for a moment, her fingers carefully adjusting the large dials around the lens, and suddenly I know what it is. Her camera isn’t actually pointing at the trees, its pointing at the empty space they enclose. The more I watch her, the more certain of this I become.

For some reason, this makes me uncomfortable, so I turn and continue on.

I was probably wrong. She was probably taking pictures of the trees.
After all, there was nothing there.

The Tree Remains Silent

There is a girl stabbing a tree.

She’s standing there with a short stick, poking the bark of the tree with some dedication. She’s not standing on the cement path, she’s standing in the little island of dirt and nature around the trunk as if to better commune with the wooden tower.

She seems utterly determined, poking the tree, demanding a reply.

The tree does not offer one.

I find myself wondering what she expects to learn from her interrogation.

No, really.

I'm walking between California hall and Doe library. Its sunny, a little cool, but then its Berkeley so what do you expect? You can stare straight down Addison to the bay and see the Golden Gate holding the hills open to the ocean, letting the breeze in

Some days I’m sure it rains, but only on campus.

Anyway, I’m walking, and then I see the clones. I know! I know. You're going: Ok, I was willing to read this far and then you open with clones? Clones?! Or maybe not. Maybe you’re one of those people reading and going “Yeah? So?” In which case, you have been in Berkeley waaay too long.

But, I’m serious. Clones. They were walking along pavement going the other direction, out toward Sather gate. At least they weren’t dressed the same, I may very well have blown a gasket. They had the same hair, a gigantic poofy brown afro thing, and they were both talking on their cells. One of them laughed at something. A few seconds later the second one laughed too.

It was the same laugh.

Introductions

Yeah. Ok, so. UC Berkeley.

Everybody knows Berkeley’s weird right? I mean, if you grew up out here, maybe you can walk down the sidewalk on Shattuck without a double take every few blocks.

Then you end up moving away, somewhere tame and urban where everyone’s idea of the place to go on the weekend is the freaking mall. Like, say, San Jose. Somewhere you can’t spit without hitting a Lamborghini, and churches are housed in abandoned school buildings like hermit crabs cheerfully caring for a discarded shell.

I still don’t get the mall thing.

But then, UC Berkeley. Chance of a lifetime right? So you move back. And then, when you walk down the street, you really see it for the first time. It’s not just this place you’ve grown up in and always had as this distinctly skewed basis for normality. It’s like your eyes are open. It's like now, suddenly, you’re actually seeing the place.

So. Lets go for a stroll.