I was unable to access the blog to make this post last week, so I'm doing it not because it still seems relevant.
Less than an hour ago I was sitting in a restaurant in Berkeley, California looking out of the window while I was drinking coffee. For some reason, I happened to notice what appeared to be a large, articulated bus in the intersection of the next block. It turned the corner and headed down the street toward me. Strangely, the second section of the bus began elongating and getting smaller as the front of the bus became larger. it took me a minute to realize that I had actually been looking at two different buses, the second being so close to the one ahead of it that they looked like they were joined. While the first bus turned toward me, the second actually tuned and was going directly away from me. What a wonderful optical illusion! How easy it is for the brain to be tricked. I think that Berkeley is just the kind of place for me to see the unusual so I guess that I was open to unexpected perceptions.
I had known one of my college roommates for several years before we roomed together for a year. He was one of the brightest people I had ever met and had vast stores of information at his fingertips. I was in awe of his mental prowess, but he always seemed tip-of-the-toes anxious. When he and my other roommate left the university, I stayed on for another year to complete a master's degree. I saw my friend once more about a year after he left, then lost complete track of him. I hadn't heard from him for years until I received a call fro him at my office one day. He told me some of the things he had done and was dealing with. He was currently living in Sausalito, California, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. He told me of his experiences with and EST cult some years before and how he has given them all of his money and was now going to sue then in the "biggest thing ever to hit the news." He sent me page after page of his writings, most of which were about his obsession with a female pop singer who was very famous and who lived in the Bay area. And, incidentally, he mentioned that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder after his experiences with EST. His writings consisted of his stream-of-consciousness thoughts, with only the occasional glimpses of coherence, but loads of emotion. Rightly or not, I wrote to him and suggested that he should give serious thoughts to getting back on his medications. That might have seemed cruel, but it seemed necessary. I didn't hear from him afterwards.
Why mention this story here? I think I was reminded of my friend because I saw a number of people like my friend on the sidewalks on and around Shattuck Avenue near the University of California. They weren't necessarily homeless people, although some were clearly sleeping in the local open green spaces at night and pushing shopping carts filled with their possessions. One black man who appeared to be in his mid-30's walked by with seeming purpose while proclaiming loudly that the US military was ruined by allowing women to serve and that the country was falling apart because of that. Others were clearly involved in conversations inside their heads and only peripherally involved in what was going on around them. One man stood at a corner looking into the distance and talked intently to himself, lips moving but no sound coming out, while punctuating his points with jabs of is cigarette in the air in front of his face. One tried stopping person after person walking by to show them something in his hand. Some just sat, looking disconnected, and smoked weed. It wasn't very hard to separate out those with serious mental problems from those who were just disaffected and protesting. There were those who claimed to be homeless veterans who were begging on the street. There were the bearded, guitar-playing young men with torn jeans who may have been there just to have the experience. There were also people who were living pretty normal lives who were on the sidewalks to try to earn a living selling crafts or who were performing music for money or to support a cause. A trio of black men was doing close harmony in the praise of Jesus. The sidewalks were also crowded with students who seemed to be doing the normal things that college students do pretty much anywhere in the world.
I looked around me and realized that all of what I was was "normal" for where I was. Everyone seemed to take things in stride. Nobody reacted like anything that was ongoing on was particularly unusual. A group dressed in pink shirts and hats were walking fro Breast Cancer Awareness Week, weaving in and out of the shoppers, beggars and sidewalk performers. One their group was a large black man wearing a pink hat and a pink bra over his black sweatshirt. Everyone was tolerant and polite as they intermingled, like this was what happened every day on this street. I tried to remember when and where I had experienced this kind of tolerance in the past. That is the subject of my next blog entry.