Chapter 1 

There were three people in particular who I saw quite a bit of, who came in and out of the picture no matter where I happened to live. And Berkeley allows for that generosity of spirit that permits one person to live everywhere or, at least, walk the city up and down and across in a very short time.

There was Fid, the poet or he said he was. He didn't believe too much in the art but he talked a lot about it and, to be truthful about it, I could stand to be around him for only short periods of time. He made demands. I'm not sure he was conscious of them but I always felt obligated to do something for him. "I need a book can you buy it for me while I'm at work?" "I need ten bucks to buy some food." Things of that nature.

There was Ull, the philosopher who I suspected was a bit crazy but who spouted off some opinions based on his readings in Heidegger and Schopenhauer. He had low tolerance for anything he deemed trivial.

There was Bor, the wannabe saint who tried to practice every sacred mission he came across. He was always high strung, never settled or content but always talking about peace.

I realized at that time it is more provident to surrender to knowledge and curiosity than it is to movies or a novel. That escapism was the great drug of the age and I didn't want it and didn't want to produce it. "Give me a knowledge of society and my experience in it and then I will write through what I know and experience." That was the real source of epic poetry. It was not escape and blathering entertainment for 500 pages but a blasting voice through the world the poet knew. That is the thing. That is the only thing in the long run.

Berkeley taught this more than any other area I've lived in.

When young, at this time, I studied organizations; the organization of life. This was central and probably changed the direction of my writing from novel writing to poetry and philosophy. Novel writing was the study of human society for the most part. But society was only one sort of organization and had been studied to death. At any rate, science and philosophy led me to this study; a study without any final conclusion except that we, as people, are determined by the nature of organization we give our loyalty to or that subdue us one way or the other. This is why "freedom" is a reality and something to be taken utterly seriously. Without this reality in place all is predicable and predictability leads to a kind of kindly slavery. And as the world get more complex, more organized, more fierce in loyalties it becomes harder and harder for people to see their freedom, their possibilities, their own spirits.

What I learned, finally, from all this study, random as it was, profound as it was at times, is that the two greatest values to have are boundless curiosity and "learned ignorance." Christ is absolutely true: What benefit is there for a man to conquer the world and yet lose his soul? Which I take to mean, what matters if you know everything but don't have an inner core of "stuff" that allows for compassion, tolerance, pity, and the rest of it. Well, it's obvious what you have: Sick intelligent people running things.

To study something is not to kill it. And there is an art to it. As life, itself, is a kind of harsh art. This was a lesson I did not learn until the next phase of development, in the midst of family, in the LaMorinda area.

Berkeley taught me that the pursuit of power without discover of soul is a most dangerous proposition. A dangerous one.

I was never certain whether the openness in Berkeley was evidence of a dysfunctional breakdown or some new opening arising in the possibility of the new world.

I owe Fid the Poet, Ull the philospher, and Bor, the Saint all of my stretches, as I called them. They showed me the resources and introduced me to people that were mind-boggling to say the least. I met Fid at a wild party that was attended by whatever refugees were left of the infamous period. The atmosphere was husky with pot and songs. I felt completely out of place and told myself, "you are a writer, you are here to observe." But the trouble started when people figured out you were observing and not participating. Then they started to get on you and put pressure on you to do something they were doing. Fid pulled me aside and introduced himself and asked me about my writings. He mentioned a few local poets I had heard of and told me he would introduce them to me if I came to one of his readings. "Yes, I will go to your readings," but I lied because, frankly, I never wanted to see any of those people again, including Fid the Poet. I didn't even care about poetry at that time. I had heard some of the readings and they were bad; bad poets, bad poetry which equaled a bad atmosphere. But then, it was a very bad time so maybe it made sense and all. I couldn't shake Fid the Poet and finally we went outside and we smoked our cigarettes. The night was wet and cool. I suddenly felt elated for some reason and told Fid that I wrote poetry once in a while but I was mostly a prose guy. "The rutting season, I get that." I asked him to explain. "You learn after a time that poetry is written during specific times of the year. I call them the rutting times. All life stops. It's as though someone close has died or you've been diagnoses with a terrible disease. It all stops and then you devote this rutting time to conceive of, write, and then shape some poems. If you get fifteen or twenty during that time you're doing well." I nodded my head and said I understood. That night what he said stuck with me for some reason. I hadn't thought of it in those terms. Writing was something you did every day. It was the will of life.

Ull the Philospher came into the picture because of mutual friends. I had worked on a newspaper a few years before moving to Berkeley and kept in touch with the editor. The paper was an "alternative" paper that flourished during those times. It had been whisked away by the times like most everything else but he knew I had read philosophy and wanted me to meet his son-in-law. I didn't trust any philosopher who was married but I needed to stay in contact with the editor and so agreed to go to his house, high in the Berkeley Hills to have dinner and meet this Ull.

David Eide
January 24, 2014