After a week-long heat wave Berkeley settled into its cool and breezy self. I crossed these tracks during blue hour, a time made memorable by Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. You can read her description of blue hour here.
I’ve lived in Berkeley for almost two years. Most young people land here because they’ve been accepted into UC Berkeley. They spend four years here and then take small leaps into nearby cities like Oakland or San Francisco. I moved to this collegiate hub a couple years after spending my own four years at UCLA. My velcro-fastened acceptance letter from UC Berkeley offered spring admission, which felt like a backhand compliment, like being invited to a party on the condition that you show up several hours late. As there is only so much food, drink, and room on the dance floor, you may arrive only after the other guests have settled in, only after enough of those guests have departed early.
UCLA gave me the the opportunity to live in Los Angeles and love it because I didn’t have to deal with the discomforts that would make me hate it. Admittedly, my version of LA is skewed because my travels were limited to where my feet and the bus could take me. Given that my everyday revolved around campus, I saw no utility in owning a car in a city that vows to make driving a miserable experience. “Driving” is putting it far too kindly, as what LA traffic actually requires is that you sit in your motionless car, surrounded on all sides by other motionless cars. As the exhaust slips in to mix with the stale air blowing from your AC, you unwillingly gaze at a sky littered with billboards of famous people and their movies. If I did that every day I would become anxious thinking about how much time I spend not getting anywhere. A quarter-life-crisis in driving form. It leads to daydreams of using my feet to traverse sidewalks, swimming in the color blue. Berkeley is lovely. But Joan Didion promises there’s nothing like blue hour in New York.
I’ve lived in Berkeley for almost two years. Most young people land here because they’ve been accepted into UC Berkeley. They spend four years here and then take small leaps into nearby cities like Oakland or San Francisco. I moved to this collegiate hub a couple years after spending my own four years at UCLA. My velcro-fastened acceptance letter from UC Berkeley offered spring admission, which felt like a backhand compliment, like being invited to a party on the condition that you show up several hours late. As there is only so much food, drink, and room on the dance floor, you may arrive only after the other guests have settled in, only after enough of those guests have departed early.
UCLA gave me the the opportunity to live in Los Angeles and love it because I didn’t have to deal with the discomforts that would make me hate it. Admittedly, my version of LA is skewed because my travels were limited to where my feet and the bus could take me. Given that my everyday revolved around campus, I saw no utility in owning a car in a city that vows to make driving a miserable experience. “Driving” is putting it far too kindly, as what LA traffic actually requires is that you sit in your motionless car, surrounded on all sides by other motionless cars. As the exhaust slips in to mix with the stale air blowing from your AC, you unwillingly gaze at a sky littered with billboards of famous people and their movies. If I did that every day I would become anxious thinking about how much time I spend not getting anywhere. A quarter-life-crisis in driving form. It leads to daydreams of using my feet to traverse sidewalks, swimming in the color blue. Berkeley is lovely. But Joan Didion promises there’s nothing like blue hour in New York.
I just read the excerpt and it was both beautiful and alarming to me. Mostly because I knew instantly the time of day she was talking about, but had never thought it brought on the shortening of days and not their lengthening. Very stirring, thank you for sharing.
Ah, this is beautiful. I loved your description about being “accepted” by UC Berkeley as basically being forced to be “late to the party.” This is why I threw away the 3-4 letters I got from colleges that placed me on a wait list. If I wasn’t good enough for them in the first round, then they were not good enough for me in the second. And then I ended up going to my top choice, and it worked out rather well. Funny how those things happen, no?
you make me want to read more – beautiful – Marisa