What's the Point?

I guess the point would be to make as many bad puns in the title of these posts as possible.

I'm checking in now because in about an hour I'm off for a 16-mile run. Who knows after that when I'll ever feel like writing again. I plan a tour of the Berkeley waterfront--Aquatic Park, the I-80 section of the Bay Trail to Gilman and back, a tour of the marina and the pier, a jaunt out to the Emeryville marina, and then a limp on home.

The above photo was taken with the camera phone yesterday. I was standing on the footbridge over Clay St., just north of Embarcadero One, looking west.

A little-mentioned fact about my city-based job is that it forces me to walk almost two miles every weekday, that is, between BART and my office. If I take the bus home the distance is extended by about a quarter mile as I cross Market going south and head for the Transbay Terminal. I credit the daily walking with keeping me strong for running (also, most days in the morning I walk from home to the North Berkeley BART station--about 7/8 of a mile).

I have a love/hate relationship with the city. It is beautiful in its own city-ish way, and when I'm trying to appreciate civilization I take romantic photos and embrace the urban bustle. Many days I'm appalled, and see the paving over of so much geography as a tragedy, a sin, a cancer. But it's part of life, and I'm alive, so-- so-- so-- well, there you have it.

I got news yesterday that one of my old colleagues was killed in a car crash on Christmas day. She was 57, a brilliant thinker, talented musician, and relentlessly moral person. I hadn't seen her in a number of years, and now never will. That just feels wrong. Philosophically I accept that life is a river that never ends, and that we who are alive are allowed to dip in, swim along for a while, and then dip out--maybe dipping back in again later, farther downstream and in some other form. Yeah, fine. Great, even. But still I mourn for Wanda. Her swim was cut short, and that sucks.

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