A Place Apart

We have been in Berkeley, Ca., a little over a month. C has started Seminary here, and I am practicing Architecture the best that I can. It is a new chapter, a new space on this world to explore, and we are loving it. It has been quite a while since my last post. So many changes, so many splayed roads to get here, yet they are slowly converging into one.

Manna and I have found a new avenue of exploration. The Berkeley hills are full of surprises, and so full of beauty. We have walked the winding streets before the sun has risen over the hill, chilled by the morning air off the bay. San Francisco just appearing from a fog shrouded envelope of night, white and orange in the new sun, its' streets just awakening to the long shadows of an approaching day. C still snug in bed, though awakening now I suspect, to move toward a day of classes and knowledge I will never know.

But Manna finds her own sources of God, standing as still as ice when she spots a wild turkey crossing the road, or a deer, down from the hills, feasting on someone's garden while they still lie still sleeping, unsuspecting in the terraced houses of redwood, stone and cedar. I walk this early hour, along the redwood trails of Cordornices Park , and emerge from the emerald canopy to look at the sun-tinged crescent of fog on the bay below, pearl and citrusy colored in its half awakened state.  At the terrace above a rose garden, a man stands with a cup of steaming coffee, his face alight with new found day, surveying the cobalt Marin County hills just appearing now out of the dawn. Manna stands looking, gives herself a shake as if breaking the night's final bond of closely held arms, and looks up at me wondering why we are standing in this one place for so long.

We shall walk these edges of life for a while now. We are here to begin a new chapter. I do not know its outcome, and yet, that is its beauty. That is its song that plays so empty at first, but fills and fills with lyrics we shall come to know so personally, so completely, so universal in its acknowledgment of our own fears, yet will reveal I suspect, a life that is worth what we thought.

 Manna is ready to head home. A fresh cup of coffee in hand for me, a treat to slip a lip over for her.