Current mood:

exhausted

Miguel and I played ricochet robots downtown. Friday I left for Berkeley around 6 pm after doing nothing all day. I brought my bike. The 17 bus arrived two minutes after the bus for Fremont left, so I was stuck in San Jose for an hour waiting. Eventually the bus came and I rode Bart to Berkeley. There was hardly anybody on it, but this girl got on around the middle of the trip. As I got off, I was like, hmm, I'm never going to see that girl again.

I arrived in Berkeley around 9:30 or 10. I rode my bike less than a block to Matt's place to unexpectedly find Devon and Alix waiting outside the fucking door. We had no idea we would be seeing each other there. Matt didn't either because I didn't tell him. I gave him a CD of noise that I have found and made. I guess it is an album. Matt was having a small 4th of July party; we hung around and Alix convinced me to smoke, so I had the tiniest bit, and the floodgates to ridiculousness blew open. I received a MMS message on my phone. I had no idea who it was from, but I figured phones couldn't get viruses so I downloaded it. It was tons of pictures of naked girls, from Joey. What the hell year is this when naked girls appear on people's telephones? I guess his phone got a virus. Maybe mine does too, now. This is the type of thing that ONLY happens when you are stoned.

I left Matt's and I found out that Oren was living with his friend Mikey in a fraternity. So I would be staying in a frat house for the weekend. I dropped off my bike and we went to a party at some other fraternity. It was a huge house. The first person I saw was this kid Michael that I had a class with in Santa Cruz. After the class had finished, a group of us smoked weed and then me, Michael, and this other kid Andrew climbed tree 9 (~200ft. tree). I hadn't seen him since. I was tripped out enough at this point. Next I saw two of the girls that I had just met at Matt's house a few hours before. I had no idea they would be there. Then I saw a girl that I had met once, through an obscure friend, over three years ago. Hadn't seen her since. We recognized each other. I was very tripped out. And then, of course, who should come up to me and introduce herself but the girl from the BART, who recognized me from earlier. She was with a tall guy visiting from Ireland. Of all the places she could have been going, of all the times she could have been riding BART, of all the cars on BART she could have gone into, of all the things to do in Berkeley, of all the frat parties in Berkeley, of all the ways we could have avoided each other while we were both at this particular party, the universe decided that it desperately needed to tell me something.

I staggered, bleary-eyed, brain popping, outside to find Oren. He was talking with three other girls that were visiting from Ireland. I figured they must have been friends with the other Irish guy. Listening to them talk with their accents was very entertaining. After leaving the party, we decided to go to Top Dog but Oren and I took a wrong turn. It was frat row so tons of people were walking around (12:30am or so). We met fifteenish people on that one block. About thirteen were Irish, and in groups of two or three. None of the groups knew each other. In fact, one of the Irish girls is working at the same water park in Concord, CA as the first Irish girl I had met that night, and they had never met each other. By this time, I'm screaming bat blood insane, trying to figure out why there were so many fucking Irish people walking around Berkeley, but all they said was that they had vacation, that America was an easy place to vacation to, that "Berkeley's where it's at." They could have some of them gone to another country or another state or another city or even some other block of the exact same street that I was walking on with Oren, but no. The universe was screaming wordless at me on Friday night. I went to sleep after washing cracked desert sweat off me.

Saturday we got drunk during the day and played music for a few hours. I realized that two of my old friends from Hebrew school happened to live in the same fraternity as Oren and Mikey. Of course, we recognized each other when I found their room. Just another coincidence to throw on the pile. We then went to San Francisco to hang out with Adam, who's great. We had the best coffee I have ever had (fucking hate coffee) and walked around. We found ourselves in a cafe, where they were playing Ariel Pink. New favorite cafe, surely. Adam paid $7 for a loaf of bread. We came back and went to yet another party. At this point I would like to assert that Berkeleyites are out of their minds. Fraternity folk are out of their minds. I will not elaborate here. Inquire within (city limits). I left the party staggeringly drunk after forgetting somebody's name and walked back to the house, where I was convinced to play drums loudly until 1:30am. No cops showed up. My brain was flashing color gem lights so I turned it off at this point.

And then today I hung out with my grandparents all day in peaceful Walnut Creek. We had brunch at their house, walked around their Rossmoor community, played Scrabble, looked at many photos of me and my whole family in younger times, and ate an early dinner.

My bus misfortune doubled on the way down. The bus from Fremont arrived four minutes late and I had to wait two hours for the next one. It was almost five hours from the time I left Lafayette BART until the time I got to my house. And the weekend dragged to a c l o s e.