Wild Turkey

23 years old, living in America. Oakland, California. 

Today I woke up late, around 11 am or so, with my little love Anton next to me. We got up slowly, hung out for a little while with my brother and his friend Jessica who are visiting this week, then ate some cereal. Anton made a mix cd and we went on a drive. We drove to the Berkeley Hills where we came to the top of a big hill where we could see all of oakland and the bay, including san francisco all the way out to the ocean. It was so beautiful. It is nice to get out of the apartment and into the trees, even if the trees are squished between two freeways. We got out of the car and walked down a blocked off road. It wove along the edge of a cliff and led to a water tower. Anton tried to climb it, but razor wire on the ladder made it too difficult. Then we drove a little further and came across a little path leading off the side of the road, so we pulled over and went down the path. It went into the bushes and up a mound that eventually led us to a paintball field, with tree forts and trenches. At first I thought it was a camp, because there was a fire pit, but then we saw the paintball splatters. We watched a robin fluffing up a bunch of leaves. We kept walking and found an old nursery log that hung over the edge of the hill, and from there we could see hills even further that were grassy and green, like the label on a ranch salad dressing bottle. We watched the shadows of the clouds roll over the green hills and we listened to the steady swoosh of the far away freeways as we sat on the log eating dark chocolate and nuts. After a while we drove on, and as we were winding down the hill, we came around a curve and there were two wild turkeys standing in the street. We stopped the car and watched them walk up the hill. Wild turkeys are always kind of amusing to see in real life - I guess the only turkeys I really think of are the factory farmed ones that are only living to become a Thanksgiving dinner. After the turkeys, we went down to a park in Montclair where Anton used to play as a kid. He told me that his nanny took him and Hayden there and one time Hayden was pretending to be a statue, standing on a rock wall, and the nanny walked away unamused. The nanny was later fired. After the Montclair park we went to the Piedmont cemetery that has a crazy pyramid shaped tomb and lots of statues. We drove to the top where we could see the bay.  We sat on the grass near some graves with pinwheels and flowers around them and ate bananas and peanut butter. Then we went to the Berkeley bookstore Pegasus and I got two books, Epicurean Simplicity by Stephanie Mills and The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind by Rupert Sheldrake (really excited to read both of em - should be interesting) I haven't done much nature writing since I was enrolled at Evergreen, but I think I might get back into it. Funny writing about nature as if it is something so separate from me. It is kind of funny when humans try to distinguish themselves as separate from nature. Like we are better than disgusting, dirty nature. Animals, beasts. We are not one of them. We must control them. I personally like being an animal.  And the trees and the little turkeys reming me that I am in nature too. I love it. 

Last night I had a dream that I went to a high school reunion. It was somewhere in Europe. I don't know where, I just know it was really far away from here. And everyone I had ever known was there. In particular, every boy who has ever loved me was there. And I talked to them and I think we all still loved each other. 

The night before, I had a dream that I was in a bathroom stall when some unidentified man appeared over the stall and told me that if I did something (don't remember what) he was going to kill me. He kept returning to tell me that he was going to kill me. Eventually I went outside the bathroom I told him I wasn't going to do it, so he couldn't kill me. He got really mad and turned into an alien and flew into the sky. And the whole time, Pam from the Office was looking at herself in the bathroom mirror.