Coeds gazing out on the concrete, iron balcony toward the bay and islands in the bay, smoking, heads going nuts, zigging and zagging trying to physically remove themselves from the very spot where they smoked and gazed, petrified of where they had ended up and wanting to get out; either through a career or a man. They were undecided by it all.

The students were, generally, arrogant and full of themselves. Life was their oyster. They were going to cook in its pulp and come out smelling like a rose. Nothing seemed to bother the students; they laughed uproariously at any suggestion that life was not what it appeared to be; a vast moveable feast of good liquor, dope, sex, a kind of nutty world performing in front of them for their amusement.

Bookstores, restaurants, clubs, and apartments. These seemed to be the venues for myself. I also enjoyed buying chicken and pork bows at the Chinese stand on Shattuck Avenue by the BART station. Food became a major component of Berkeley. I lived a few blocks from Chez Panisse and frequented more than few of the excellent restaurants that Berkeley seemed to thrive on in the 70's and early 80's. That and coffee shops. There was Peet's and one up along College Avenue I used to go to quite a bit.

It was a town of books and resources. I loved the feeling of reading book when many thought, even in Berkeley, that reading was passe. I always questioned this: Do you mean that thought and knowledge are passe? Those who downgraded reading usually went into money and wanted money more than anything and didn't relent until they had it. I read and researched all the bookstores and libraries of Berkeley because I was curious and I was angry at the state of the world, which, to a mind, seemed easy to figure out. The more complicated it got the more I read to try and figure it out.

I read anything that struck me as interesting, studious, or forbidden. It was a great joy. Many days and nights I spent at the university libraries reading on one, two, three levels of the building, going outside to smoke occasionally, sometimes the only person in the library. The books I read became a part of me, no question about it. I owe a lot to those days.

I was terrified often of the split between nihilistic types and stone frightened types. I didn't think anything generous would appear between these clashing rocks. The nihilist types were smart but empty; intelligent but superstitious and wanted nothing to do with the real world. They would destroy the real world given half the chance. The frightened types didn't recognize the historical changes going on, didn't move in the pathway of historic reality, couldn't control the vast fear of change and distance that permeated the culture at that time.

David Eide
January 24, 2014