Lake Merritt Goslings (I Remembered my Flip)

Old Habits and Dying Hard

Image by kukkurovaca via Flickr

Happily, I am back to my old habit -- which the events of the past semester interrupted -- of driving E. to work, parking our car and walking home past Lake Merritt. I wish I'd taken the camera this morning.

In spring and early summer, sometimes you see geese and goslings. Today next to the lake I saw a whole ... clutch? clump? I saw elder geese standing by while the little ones -- their stubby wings as flightworthy as thumbs -- huddled together next to the lake.

That's the lesson of warm blood. It's good to get close.

But then they/you/me grow up.

There were about 20 of the brown little dandelions, as fuzzy as mold. E. told me that when you see so large a group of young geese and only a few adults, that's because the stronger geese seize the offspring of the weaker geese and create a little tribe of ours and everybody else's. So somewhere bereft parents honk plaintively, instinct rewarded and then thwarted.

Still, I wish I had a picture of the babies and their bandit parents. Mother Nature's a Rorschach, isn't she?

The Long March

With E. out of town, I need to keep my spirits up through means other than spirits....

That's just clanking words together. It's easy to submit to apathy -- in dress, in personal hygiene, in rummaging around for le mot juste -- when it's just me and the cat on our own.

Poor cat can hardly wiggle, so old and arthritic is he. Just trying to keep him going until E. gets back. Mutual grief is still grief, but solitary grief is horror. (Clank. Clank.)

Back to my droopy spirits. Exercise is an antidote, so three out of the last four days I've walked around Lake Merritt, starting at our front door, which is a mile from the lake. I think I'm doing five total. It feels like five, which makes it exercise. That is, it feels like work, since my body is quite the load to tote.

So that's it. This post is like a promissory note. Now that I've said I'm walking, I'm committed to documenting it through photo and video. Today just past the boathouse where the lake tapers to a finger in front of the Kaiser building and the new Catholic cathedral (which looks like a cracker barrel) down through the trees I saw birds in the water. They were white egrets, perhaps two dozen, and they took wing, flying low across the lake, legs trailing.

My spirits improved, just for a minute there. But then you turn and there's no one to tell, no echo for the pleasure. Among other things love is a habit, one which I'd rather not break.

Practice: We're Going to Do an Audio Slideshow in Class from Scratch on Monday. So the Aim Today is Speed, Not Elegance.

The restaurant is actually called the Terrace Room. As I say above, one really needs a script.

Home of the Brave

Can't deny that beautiful Oakland where we have laid our weary heads these last 28 years has had a spate of takeover restaurant robberies, which (I am told) has spooked some folk. I'll admit I wouldn't like it if some thug threatened me with a gun, emptied my wallet, felt up my wife -- and quite possibly felt me up as well if I was looking particularly fine -- and fled into the night, trailing giggles and fumes of boo.

But what the hell? Late yesterday, Miss Baby, Caroline and I took a long slow walk around Lake Merritt. By the time we had looped back around to the pergola at the lake's north end, it was a little late, and we lacked the patience to go home and warm up the big pot of lamb shanks Miss Baby had so lovingly prepared for "the mister," as she calls me.

And there before us was Zza's on Grand Ave., so named because of the half of the huge neon sign that once said PIZZA attached to their back wall. A fine night, warm and thus a surprise since I am always surprised when it is warm in these parts. Freedom from the heavy hand of warm is one of the reasons we live here. But still sometimes one enjoys a balmy night.

We got a table next to an open window that provided a nice view of the lake's Necklace of Lights. Apparently, the youth were equally stimulated by the fine evening -- it's that kind of place -- and it was packed and perhaps a little understaffed. But that was fine. We drank cheap wine and had pizza, pasta and gnocchi, and it got late and later.

Finally, we got the waiter's attention, trumped the bill with some plastic and rose to go. It was about 9:30.

"Wanted to get out of here before the takeover guys arrive," I told the waiter, making a head gesture in the general direction of the door.

"Did you see somebody?" he said, his happy face collapsing.

Never give up, never surrender, as a great man once said.

P.S. And here's the real story of the name.