Berkeley Fog

It smells like Berkeley outside tonight, the air is damp and cool, like a typical autumn evening on campus when the fog is rolling in. Reminds me of walking to BART after hours spent in the GTU library, or sitting at a small table at the Peet’s on Domingo Ave., sipping a latté, writing in a journal.

Watched the TX-Cal football game last night, and could feel the fog in Strawberry Canyon just as if I was there. The smells, sounds, even the feel of the cheap stadium seats under my bum all so familiar. 

At times, I get so homesick for CA that I feel my insides wringing tears out of my heart. After ten years I thought perhaps I was all cried out. Alas, no. 3,000 miles away from the place I most want to be, missing my friends and family so much I feel as if I might crack vertically in half, my body no longer able to contain the heartbreak.

Life as I knew it stopped twelve years ago the day I collapsed from Lyme. Still unable to rise up, the love and appreciation for all the wonderful people in my life burn as strongly as ever.  Do they ever think of me? They all have busy lives, with jobs, kids, some even have grandkids now. I am someone they knew, worked, sailed, stitched, or perhaps sang with, who moved away and is long gone. To me, they are all still as present and as important as they were a decade ago.

Since collapsing on August 20, 2004, I have lived in a sort of suspended animation. Work, home, friendships, sailing, SF opera and baseball season tickets, and for God’s sake my home all ceased, put on hold until I “felt better.” Well, guess what – there ain’t no feeling better. Bacteria and parasites destroyed my life, my body, my mind. I am a mere shade of the person I was, now living in a town so small it doesn’t even have a grocery store or 7-11.

I constantly wonder, with much trepidation, how much more grief my psyche and body can take.  No doubt the substantial surgery and five hospitalizations in the last year stand testament to the weight with which the longing and sorrow burden this remnant of a once proud and beautiful corpus.  I doubt my friends would even recognize me. Hell, when I look in the mirror I don’t recognize me.

The thought of one of the Bay Area compadres falling ill and dying without my being able to say adieu, to tell them how much their friendship means, how memories of their making my life full and happy sustain me today. For a dozen years, this has been my only goal: To return to the life I once led.

So to all who read these words, take note: You truly matter to me, and always will.