#freespeech memories friends darkcoffee

[anisolar]

Moving on...

On a regular Sunday, I woke up in this old city by the bay. I am here to walk on these familiar streets once more and inhale the fresh air full of the morning moist and all types of memories. To be honest, sometimes I find it hard to breathe in the city where I live now...

This old town is all about memories. While here, I have no other choice than going back in time, remembering faces, embracing all the ups and downs that I once had experienced, and feeling happy. 

I used to live here once. Years spent here were a bit challenging and sometimes stressful, yet the best two years of my life. I was lucky to be surrounded with the nicest and the brightest people, who helped me shape my identity and made me believe that there is no limit to my abilities.

I head up the Center street and make a left on Oxford. Then there is the Li Ka Shing building where I had my first ever lecture at Cal. The little cafe, which is always full with people brainstorming their next research ideas, is all empty today. I walk past the Tallman hall and see familiar squirrels who take advantage of semi-empty campus and run around more fiercely.   

I cross the tiny little bridge protecting the creek and I say hi to my favorite buildings. 

I stop at the  Free Speech Movement Cafe to get my small dark regular coffee with no sugar or cream in order to honor all those long conversations with my friends aimed to escape from studying. I am still waiting for the day when they will put the statue of Procrastination in the middle of the FSM.

I continue to hike and pass by all my favorite libraries- Moffit, East Asian, Doe. Then I see this guy, standing tall as usual. I pass it but, then, how could I forgive myself not taking this picture? So I go back.

I keep hiking the hills until I exit the campus, cross the Bancroft, and get to cafe Strada. Impulsively, I get another coffee here: this time it’s latte. I sit at the corner of the cafe and honor all the relationships that ever started or even ones that ended in Strada. 

Who knows maybe this is the point where I end my own relationship with this town.. After all, it seems like the long-distance is not working for me.  Everything is simply stated in the poem by Robert Frost:

Nature’s first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour.

 Then leaf subsides to leaf.

 So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay. 

Frost does not explicitly write but he gives us the idea that it is up to us to find gold in things that surround us. If I made the happiest place out of this ordinary town, I can do the same wherever I go.