Blog o’ Gnosis

Every so often I read a description of a mundane event which suddenly transports the observer into a mythic moment. Having just received a particularly moving account from a friend, I’ve decided to highlight these “waking dreams” in a semi-regular series of posts. I doubt I will be posting one of these each week, but [...]

Now that more than a week has passed since my birthday, I believe I can give up my handy chocolate cake rationale. This is the rule that in the two-week period surrounding one’s birthday, any meal is best celebrated with a slice of chocolate cake. Otherwise, the terrorists have already won.

The weekend before my birthday I headed down to Santa Cruz. On the way, I had a delicious chocolate cupcake at a Peet’s in Berkeley, followed two days later by two (2!) chocolate cakes procured by my friends, who sadly couldn’t agree which bakery made the best one and so were forced to get them both.

Another two days and it was my actual birthday, which I celebrated by having my lovely niece and her boyfriend over to join Jojo and me for dinner, followed of course by a chocolate cake. Two days after that, the leftovers were finished and Jojo and I resumed our normal sugar-deprived existence. The memories of a birthday well-celebrated, we felt, would last us at least to May Day, if not Mother’s Day.

On Friday I spent a few hours at the Dandelion Gathering, Reclaiming’s occasional hoe-down, business meeting and reunion of sorts. It was just a couple of hours away, and though I had a very busy weekend I couldn’t miss the opportunity to visit with friends from all over the country in a work-free environment.

The setting was gorgeous: rolling hills of meadow and oak woodland with an occasional stand of second-growth redwood. Spring in the Valley of the Moon: new leaves glistening in the vineyards and pollen floating through the air. It was deliciously warm in the sun and almost too cool beneath the big trees. Right off the bat I saw several people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and settled in on the porch to visit.

I was recently tagged for another blogging meme by Chas Clifton. This one I like, however. It has produced a lovely post by AD, another by Cat Chapin-Bishop, and undoubtedly more that I have yet to spot. And in spite of my crusty exterior and propensity of late to blog about cars, it has captured my imagination so here I go. The rules of the meme are thus:

It’s funny how the generations relate to each other. Having been born at the tail end of the baby boom, I have had a love-hate relationship with my fellow boomers since I was young enough to know what was cool. The 60’s were cool, damn it, and I had been born 10 years too late to really say I had been there.

Cutting high school to hear Daniel Ellsberg speak in Sproul Plaza in 1978 seemed just, well, derivative. Seeing Crosby Stills & Nash or Emerson Lake & Palmer around the same time was to see not a heyday but a sad, substance-laden dénouement, the dregs of a really good party a decade earlier. And don’t even get me started about the Grateful Dead.