Its two weeks out from my Christmas holiday which I have erroneously forgot to plan for. Plane tickets to anyplace I would desire to go, mainly out of the country with forests and warm water, are all way out of what I consider reasonable. I begin looking to see what I could pull off locally and realize quickly that I have seen most things I want to see locally, I get sweaty palmed at work and hit the internet. No deals on Travelzoo, Kayak, Amtrak or anything else. I turn to Craigslist. The word “Roadtrip” brings up some interesting posts; putative cross country trips, some trips up the 5 to Portland or Seattle, but then a post grabs my attention: Couple seeks other to drive or split gas on trip down to Baja. I check their dates and shit they are my exact dates. I read they are scientists, one with a PhD and one on their way to a PhD, so I figure the chances of them being serial killers is well sort of low, so I email them. We do a quick exchange and then decide to meet up at Pacific Coast Brewery in Downtown Oakland on Monday night. Marty and Amber disclose to me that they bought tickets to Cabo for $600 and are going to forgo the road trip unless their other friend decides he can get the time and will drive. All of us are sans vehicle for apparently pragmatic reasons. We chit chat a bit and I find out that Marty attended Reed College up in stumptown. I share my one anecdote of being on the Reed campus when I was teaching at DLSNC up in NoPo and how I was in the bushes taking pictures of some rhodis when I hear this ffffffFFFFFFMMMMPPPP!!!…………..sssssSSSSSSPPPP!!! Child hood memories ran back to the front of my mind quickly, “Spud Gun!” I hurried out of the bushes to see a couple guys shooting a spud gun from the main part of campus roughly into the direction I was photographing. Marty laughed and asked if the spud gun was silver. I was at a distance and I vaguely thought it was wrapped in duct tape as was the fashion with spud guns that were made out of cheaper plastic. I thought it was a physics class and was thinking, “dam I wish I went to Reed.” Marty tells me that this was him and a couple of his friends shooting their non-combustion based spud gun that used dry ice and water. We continue to talk about where we are from and when I mention Calaveras, Marty pauses and says, “Do you know Ben Cook?” I went to junior high and high school with Ben. Ben, his girlfriend Cathy, and I camped out for one of the most amazing lunar eclipses I’ve ever seen just a couple years back. After a little more discussion I realize Marty and Amber’s house is the place Ben told me about that he picks up his CSA from and that they have a big Tuesday night dinner there every Tuesday – 3 years straight. I probably won’t follow Marty and Amber down to Cabo, because I was looking to keep the budget a little tighter, but definitely a fun connection to have with 2 incidences of connectivity.
Amber and Marty (photo courtesy of Craigslist.com)
Ben Cook (courtesy of CHS yearbook 1997)
Nearly a month ago one of my tenants, Bohdi, who often stops by to talk about his studies (he's the reason I'm reading the Buru Quartet) and just about life events in general told me he was going to start taking mixed martial arts classes from Jake Shields. I went to junior high and high school with Jake. I remember once wrestling with him 7th grade year. He made quick work of me, which was good, because up until that point I thought I was the toughest midget around. Just so happens that in the year since Calaveras, Jake has become a world wide known MMA fighter and just recently opened Gracie Studios in Berkeley to train fighters and no doubt make an income that doesn’t rely upon getting in a ring and getting beat around.
Jake (photo courtesy of JakeShields.com) - sorry no photos of Bohdi
This one might partially violate the month time frame I’ve framed this in, but the connectivity discovery event itself happened just a couple of weeks ago. This rock climbing, strong willed, amazing women named Doris that I met via craigslist that I’ve gone climbing with a couple times was mentioned out of the blue a couple weeks ago that she knows someone I work with. People often hear that I work with LBNL or LLNL and they assume the campuses are small and that everyone knows everyone else and we don’t. I hate to say it, but I don’t know anyone at the ALS intimately enough for me to go, “oh yeah Bob, I know him.” However, Doris asked if I knew Craig Furman. I play volleyball with Craig quite routinely during the warmer months and now via Doris I know Craig climbs as well.
Doris - can't find a picture of Craig
Monica Storss is someone I originally started writing when I moved back down to the bay and was heartbroken, little pieces of the soft fleshy thing were still spread all over NoPo. Monica is a writer and we traded some poems, some emails and then silence for a year or more. Monica, though I know her not well has a lot of connectivity in my arena. Two year ago I get a playful email from her saying that she has moved closer and that I must guess. After a couple of failed attempts and then disclosure I find that she was starting an MFA at UCD. Next I find that my old English teacher, Joshua Clover, is the one that recruited her. “You know Joshua?” It was one of those types of moments. Then due to the clairvoyancey that is social networking sites I realize that Monica is also in the same program as Tiffany Denman, someone I knew from Saint Mary’s due to radio and journalism stuff. This morning due to Facebook I find out that one of the people I live with at 1502 Alice has a good friend Sasha that knows Monica.
(photos courtesy of Facebook.com)
Needless to say this is a lot of ah-has in a month. It is a good reminder of just how small the world is. How everything I do, you do is ultimately public knowledge, because the world is so small and thus a place ethics may still inhabit (in the Aristotelian polis sense….see Alasdair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue”) . I remember the first time I realized this in an existentialism class at Saint Mary’s College my senior year. I was being my usually philosophical class self, which was devils advocate, and I was trying to refute either Sarte or Marcel about everyone living a private life and a public life. Partly to spur the conversation and partly to put some heat on a relationship I was having with my resident advisor for my dorm who was also in the class, I said, “The concept of a private life is a myth, ultimately everything [action, for this is where ethics manifest] about every individual is knowable by others in their totality, so thus there is only the public life.” Every time I have one of these connectivity moments and my life is riddled with them, I believe even more so that everyone’s life is ultimately public knowledge and thus bares the ethical weight of everyone else’s eyes.
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