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The sound he enjoys most is of the soles of his shoes against a lonely linoleum hallway irradiated by a long line of fluorescent light. He likes to clasps things under his arm. It doesn't matter what, as long as it makes him feel important. Some days, it's the Times. Other days, it's a goldenrod folder, the top sealed with red string doubled-back and tripled-back and quadrupled-back around itself. He gets himself into a hypnotic daze, gliding through underground passages to the metronome of his stride.

He's very good at what he does; he prides himself upon professionalism. Because a professional is in complete control, has mastery of his craft. Nothing can perturb him when he is in his zone.

When he creases paper, he hunches over, aligning the straight edges with each other. He checks one side, then the other. In a swoop, his index finger crushes the bubble in the paper, the sound of a million fibers bending to his will.

He's very good at what he does.

The Tap's Run Dry

Went out to water the nursery today, but only drips came out of the nozzle. Don't know where to find the valve to get things running again. Just wish I could find that valve. Wrap my fingers around the enameled metal fitting. Give it a firm twist. But until then, only drips.

Philosophie du Jour (Part un of a series)

I used to work at the Tilden Little Farm (my boss balked at the phrase "petting zoo"). We had cows (milking shorthorns), sheep (black Welsh mountain), goats (alpine and nubian), pigs, ducks, geese, and chickens. Of our flock of 15 sheep, we had two rams, each confined to his own pen adjoined to the main pasture.

One morning, a coworker and I were opening up the farm. I was pretty new, so she was teaching me the rhythms and routines of getting the farm ready for the public. We brought our wheelbarrow over to the ram pens, and we tossed a compressed mat of alfalfa (a "flake") into each of the pens.

"And now for the most important part," she said, and stuck an arm through the horizontal wood slats of the fence. She put her outstretched hand on the kinky black wool of the feeding ram's head. "You gotta show these guys some love," she said, giving him a pat.

Take the time to show you care.

Live the Dream

The Common Buckeye

Tommy and I have a motto, and it's "Live the Dream." I think that just about sums up how things are going for me right now.

I have something of a Little Prince complex; I have an insatiable urge to find a corner of the earth and become its guardian. If you're unfamiliar with the story, it's about a little blond boy in a green jumpsuit who's the custodian of an asteroid and the single rose that grows on it.

Well, it so happens that I've become the manager of a native plant nursery on campus, with the main objective of propagating plants for use in restoring the native ecology of Strawberry Creek. It's a job that makes me aware of the ecological degradation in my immediate environment, and at the same time empowers me to reverse the damage. That's a great feeling.

We are humans, and we live in a world of our own creation. Through carelessness, greed, or ignorance, we can very easily turn our earth into a dirty, uninhabitable place. However, with engagement, charity, and education, we can make our surroundings beautiful.

In a sense, these are also the two faces of the student co-op where I currently live. It is a place where someone will bake a mixing bowl-full of chocolate chip cookies to share with everyone else. It is also a place where people throw glass bottles off the roof, if only for the joy of hearing glass break.

Why do I celebrate chocolate chip cookies and detest broken glass? I guess it goes back to my desire for order. Perhaps a good example is a wooden sailing ship. This is an example that a Philosophy major-turned-EMT-turned-carpenter once posed to me.

"Consider a wooden sailing ship," he said. "The universe wants nothing more than to see a wooden sailing go to pieces. Without maintenance, the boards will rot, the sails will tear, and the anchor will rust. In essence, a sailing ship is a symbol of man's battle against entropy, that tendency for all systems to head towards chaos. But instead of chaos, we have order, which requires a constant struggle to maintain."

I don't doubt the fact that the earth is a messy system. But that doesn't deter me from striving to create a planet that is more beautiful and livable than the one we have right now.

Update: I was brushing my teeth when I realized that the Netherlands is my dream country. Almost the entire country is below sea level, which is quite inconvenient for a country that borders the ocean. And so originate the dikes and windmill-powered pumps for which Holland is famous. There's a saying that goes, "God made the earth, but the Dutch made the Netherlands."

Richmond Field Station

Today I got to go out into the field and play Restoration Ecologist. Tromping through fields of invasive grasses, with steno notepad and camera in hand, I had a great time learning to identify native and invasive plant species.

I can't believe how much I miss working outside; I'd forgotten the power of hands-on learning. This is going to be a fun summer.

Juncus phaeocephalus in bloom.

Blue-eyed grass

Killdeer egg.

The City.

Spring Break Photodump

Finally got around to uploading my pictures from spring break, which was a couple weeks ago.


Sweet no-name designer tie I got from the Goodwill in the Fillmore in SF. I like the abstract floral pattern and the color scheme.


Had to play dress up. I imagine myself as a crazy businessman. I don't think I'd excel in the world of commerce.


You want a raise?!


Coconut autopsy part one, in which Karyn demonstrates her tool-wielding abilities.


Extraction of the essential juices.


Revelry in victory.


The soft, fleshy interior.


A tasty morsel.


Team bike. I got to go bike camping for work! We took a kids' group called the Junior Rangers. Authority figure-to-children ratio = 1:9. I felt pretty stoked about my tactical walkie talkie holster.


Falling down or flying away? One of the Junior Rangers (pictured) taught me how to fold origami cubes. We used aluminum foil and tried to pop corn in them. Tried to.


Toasty. I was the guardian of the flame.

Day 73

I took this photo yesterday on the bike trip at work. We went to an old Nike missile base in the East Bay hills.

It feels it like a long time ago, even though it was just yesterday. I've been breaking my sleep cycle up into a shortened nighttime sleep, and an extended mid-day nap. As a result, one day effectively becomes two. I've been getting a lot done, but I also feel pretty tired. According to Wikipedia, I could still further optimize my productivity with other sleep cycles. I wonder how Buckminster Fuller did it.

Post-script: While exploring the vibrant online community of multiphasic sleepers, I came across the Zeo, a product straight out of SkyMall. Imagine an electroencephalograph machine, except for consumer use.

Days 58-59

What a beauty...


I got back from my work-related backpacking adventure today. That's right, I get paid to go backpacking. I went with 2 co-workers and 35 kids: we were at a severe numerical disadvantage. At several points throughout the trip, there were children dangling about from my arms and legs. Giving piggyback rides is a pretty good cardio workout; it definitely made me feel like my heart was on the brink of exploding.

These are some of the kids I took backpacking. As for insight into each of their personalities, I think each photo speaks for itself.







Some other cool things of note:

We caught (and released) a baby rattlesnake!


We saw a blacksmithing demo (and I made stuff)!

Day 51

There are some things about my job that make it really special.

I work in Tilden Park in Berkeley, and it's Today I was working with these kids that come in on a weekly basis for the Junior Ranger program (ages 9 to 13). They were having a meeting in their clubhouse, which is the park's old, original visitor center. It has the feeling of a ski lodge, with a cast iron stove for warmth at one end of the small, rectangular room. Chris and Colin sat next to each other in their small wooden folding chairs. Colin opened a tupperware full of saltine crackers and offered one to Chris.

Day 30

• It's not dumpster diving if it's your own trash, food items included.
• It's not breaking the speed limit (or any other traffic law) if you're riding a bicycle.
• Of my eight co-workers, I'd say two qualify as stranded-on-a-desert-island material, on the basis of survival and conversational skills.
• I'm not Filipino, though it might be fun to pretend to be.
• The self-aware haunted house is kitsch performance art in its highest form.
• Never try to capture a heathen's likeness inside the confines of your devil box; no good can come of any such thing.
• The 50% Off shelf at Safeway is a friend to be trusted.

The Out-of-Doors

I'm pretty happy that I've been getting to go outside more these days. There were times earlier in the semester when I was worried that I might start to suffer from nature deficit disorder if I spent one more glorious afternoon in the library.

But luckily, I just got back from my first ever Christmas tree cut with the Cal Forestry Club. The experience was a very new (and fun) one. We left Friday afternoon and spent the night at Blodgett, one of UC Berkeley's four research forests in the Sierras. Anyway, there were cabins for us (about 20) to spend the night in. Highlights: eating homemade pizza (and vegan carrot soup), winning at Apples to Apples, and singing the Cal drinking song (among others) with a room full of foresters.

The next day (today), I got to be a lumberjack (or the closest I'll ever get). I got up at dawn, put on my longjohns and flannel, and ate some flapjacks before heading out to the timeberlot to cut down some white fir. I'm surprised that the whole process didn't make a beard spontaneously sprout out of my face. I'm rubbing my chin right now just to make sure. All told, we filled a U-Haul with 214 trees, anywhere from 3-20 feet tall.

It was some good fun.

Unrelated (except perhaps tangentially), two weeks before the tree cut, I had another outdoor adventure, except it was through my work. I never thought I'd ever get paid to go backpacking, but sometimes you find yourself living the dream (which is a bit of a shame, since reality doesn't quite always measure up to one's fantasies).

I got this opportunity because I was lucky enough to work with the Junior Rangers (JRs) in the month of November. The way it works at my job as an Interpretive Student Aide in Tilden Park is that we get our work assignments on a monthly basis, so our work schedules have a good deal of flexibility (and unpredictability). The JR program is for kids aged 9-13, with additional spots for high schoolers, who bear the auspicious title of "JR Aide."

Most months, the JRs go on an overnight camping/backpacking trip. To be honest, it was the lure of backpacking that drew me in; kids be damned. In comparison to JRs, my Boy Scout troop was a well-oiled military machine. Maybe it was the saluting.

But I digress. There's a point I want to get to. The most surreal moment of the trip came at night, as the campfire was still going strong in the large structure we were all staying inside of, and everyone was asleep in their bags. It was only 11pm, but it had been dark since 5. Surveying the room, I got to see a cross section of childhood, from age 9 to 16. By the light of the fire, I could barely make out the lumps scattered across the cement floor, so mostly I stared at the fire, thinking.

I thought about the day, how it had gone, all the JRs I had met, the impressions I had of them. Collin never stop talking about liopleuridons, these badass aquatic reptiles from the Jurassic. I thought about the teenagers flirting with each other off in the corner, their heads clumped, their sleeping bags radiating out.

As I looked around the room, I had the feeling as if I could put myself into each person's head. There were the two best buddies, side by side, who earlier were talking about the relative merits of their favorite computer games. There was the boy who admitted to the nighttime anxiety he often felt as he fell asleep. There were the awkward teens with braces whose sleeping bags rustled together in the hush of the fire. I felt like I was experiencing, for the first time, that moment from the point of view of everyone in the room simultaneously. Maybe it's just that I'm getting older. The next morning, they guessed that I was 20.

Humbling Moment of the Day

Scrubbing off caked-on menstrual blood from the toilets at work.