Ernesto, a poet and acquaintance of my uncle’s, has agreed to write one for Jen and me and send it to us as part of his Hay(na)ku Postcard Project (see our blogroll, to the right of this webpage).

Here is a hay(na)ku I wrote the other day, about a dream I had one of our first nights in Berkeley:

In
a dream,
at the church
of
my childhood,
as mass commenced,
I
sat in
the last pew.

The
black priest –
not African, American –
delivered
to us,
his sparse congregation.

He
spotted me;
he knew me.

He
strode down
the aisle, a
large
finger pointing.
Where had I
been,
he asked,
his homily redirected.

Up
front, I
saw my grandmother,
in
her usual
place, turned around.

The debate was fantastic: Both speakers were masterful, their speech loaded with eloquence and wit. Their rapid dissection of the court’s major decisions was elucidating for a layperson like me, and Choper’s rough-and-ready delineation of liberalism vis-a-vis conservatism tidied up my understanding. My alertness floated upon their every word, like a beach ball buoyed up by so many hands in a Cal football crowd. The more I learn about theories of government, much of the time from Jen, the more elusive of simple labels my own nascent beliefs become. I am glad I chose not to affiliate myself with a party when I registered as a California voter.

The invited speakers were not the only spectacle to provoke thought at the lecture. Upon Yoo’s first launch into analysis, a member of the audience (too old to be a likely law student, too casual in dress to be a likely instructor, we might have noticed beforehand) stopped him dead in his tracks. The interrupter contended that, as a war criminal, Yoo was unfit to pronounce on constitutional law. He expressed this objection loudly for several minutes, until security — reluctantly, it seemed — removed him.

The outburst granted a vague wish I had had, to see Yoo given a hard time. I imagined students would boo him when he rose to speak and that I would join them if they did. But this cloudy expectation of mine was sharply disconfirmed. After the initial shock of the rude uproar amid the otherwise placid audience, a few students spoke out. They were unanimous in ordering the troublemaker to shut up; he was a nuisance disrupting their enjoyment of the debate. One student chided the protester to save his opinions for Yoo’s office hours, stirring up much laughter. After a time even Choper engaged the man, going so far as to admonish him that it was people like him who spurred Hitler to power. What exactly he meant he failed to elaborate.

Yoo had earlier anticipated a disturbance of this sort: In introducing himself he confessed he had considered declining the invitation to speak, but accepted it in order not to deprive Berkeley’s senior citizens of their afternoon social activity (a quip that also evoked widespread laughter). On our way out when the debate was over we did pass a row of elderly demonstrators, chanting, “Torture is a war crime! Fire John Yoo!” One angrily asked the passing students whether they liked torture; he singled me out and my response, “Of course not,” left him momentarily dumbfounded; I think he was unused to getting replies.

What nagged at me after the experience — and got me into trouble when I vented my frustration and some unfair snap judgments of the student body to Jen — was the disconnect between the protesters and the students, at times manifest as mutual disrespect. I thought it was common wisdom among people like me (and my background is similar to those of the law students) that protest plays a legitimate, crucial role in democracy. But the urge to protest, its effectiveness, and the sympathy afforded protesters vary across contexts in ways that are difficult to understand. I struggle to make sense of it.

This snafu is just one of many learning experiences that has taught me that living on your own and being a real adult is neither easy nor glamorous. All the romantic comedies and TV shows I watched lied to me! I thought I’d be doing things like going out to lunch and shopping…you mean I have responsibilities? The dishes don’t wash themselves? My clothes don’t magically disappear from the floor? I have to *pay* to do my laundry?! I was tricked! Fortunately I have a wonderful partner in crime who steps up to the plate when I have hundreds of pages of reading to do and am in class or at the library for most of the day.

Getting back to the topic of residency, the only thing I have to do now in order to make sure I can claim residency for tuition purposes is stay in CA this summer. Apparently if you leave and go somewhere else to work you have a harder time claiming “intent to stay” which is what they use to determine whether you’re a resident for tuition purposes. Luckily I attended a public interest law career fair yesterday, and found out about some awesome organizations in child advocacy and youth law. There’s one job in San Francisco that I’m especially interested, but per American Bar Association rules I’m not allowed to meet with career services until November, and I can’t apply for any summer jobs until December. That takes the pressure off for now I guess, but I know some of the jobs I really want for the summer are competitive, and unfortunately more law students are applying for public interest jobs now since the hiring situation at big firms is still so grim. All of the jobs are somehow related to children and education, though, so hopefully my background in education will count for something.

Dan loves his new job (seriously, I’ve never seen someone so excited about a job before, it’s refreshing), and is in the process of applying to graduate school, namely to UC Berkeley and Stanford. There are a few other schools on his list, in random places like Wisconsin, so obviously I’m pulling for Berkeley. He’s trying to decide whether to apply to psychology or neuroscience programs, which apparently can really differ from school to school. I do not envy him during this process – it definitely puts the law school application process into perspective. I only had to write one essay, and could basically use all the same application materials for every school. For PhD programs you really have to tailor your essay to your particular interests, list specific professors whose lab you’re applying to, and make it clear why you’re applying to that school and particular program/professor.

Law school is going well. I’ve met some really great people, and so far Berkeley’s reputation for being academically and intellectually rigorous but not super competitive has held up. I can honestly say I like all of my classes and professors, of course some more than others, but I really have no complaints. Everyday I’m reminded why I chose to attend law school, and I become more confident in my choice of career paths. That being said it is challenging, and there’s really nothing that prepares you for law school. People from certain academic backgrounds may initially have an easier time with some assignments – for example, a science background might make it easier to write a brief concise memo (what we’re doing now in Legal Writing and Research), but I don’t think that means anyone has a particular advantage over anyone else. Law school seems like a great equalizer, and it’s comforting to know that most of us are in the same boat, and struggling with similar things. It also helps that the students at Boalt (1Ls, 2Ls and 3Ls alike) are all extremely friendly and supportive — I really cannot imagine myself anywhere else. It’s no Mount Holyoke in terms of the 24/7 smiling and being surrounded by a gorgeous campus, but it comes in a pretty close second

The apartment is coming together nicely! We will take pictures and post them soon. For now I’m providing a link to more pictures from our road trip. Sorry it’s taken us so long! I underestimated how long it would take to get settled, and both of us really hit the ground running as soon as we moved in. Overall we love our apartment and neighborhood, and are adjusting well to our new lives in CA. I must say, the quality of life out here is pretty great, and the Bay Area strikes a perfect balance between the East Coast and West Coast vibes.

Here are some more road trip pictures. It’s a link to a Facebook album (if you’re not on Facebook you can still see them), so the quality isn’t wonderful. We’ll post more soon on Piccasa or something that allows for better quality once we get pictures or video of the apartment up!

This is the first weekend I’ve driven to Hartford to see Dan in…over a month. Shame, I know. In my defense I was finishing up my last week of teaching, then we were away in Cape Cod with my family, and after that I was in California apartment hunting. Most recently I have been at home, packing all the clothes I haven’t donated or tossed into Space Bags – yes, as in the As Seen on TV vacuum sealed Space Bags. The skeptics are just plain wrong, these things rock! However, talk to me about it when I’m halfway through the road trip – I can just envision all of these vacuum sealed bags bursting open when I’m somewhere between Missouri and Colorado.

Dan has kept me quite busy since my visit. This morning he woke me up around 6:00 a.m. to attend a 7:00 a.m. “Yoga for Abs” class. I reluctantly attended, and by about the third downward dog ab series I realized it’s not a great idea to attend the last class of an 8-week series. It was difficult to follow, I found it to be too fast paced, and I didn’t get much out of it because I either didn’t know how or couldn’t do many of the poses/series properly. I’m finding it hard to strike the right balance with Yoga. Some instructors have been way too, how do I say, in touch with their inner beings…and others have been like drill sergeants. I’m looking for something in between. Hopefully I can find that at a studio in Berkeley or in one of the classes the school offers. Anyway, my complaining aside, it was better than no exercise at all, especially since my plans for a run have been thwarted due to the (very welcome) rain.

After Yoga Dan and I shipped more books he sold on Amazon (he’s sold over 40 now), dropped some clothes off at the Salvation Army, packed posters, played indoor baseball with one of the posters we decided not to bring to Berkeley, did laundry, and are now cleaning up what remains of his apartment. I’m cutting this post short since a) I’ve run out of interesting things to discuss, and b) we’re going to see Inception in a few minutes.

Before I conclude, I want to update you on our plans for posting about the Road Trip. We decided that, rather than haphazardly posting quick updates from the road, we’re going to blog about the trip once we’ve arrived in Berkeley. We’re going to keep the same schedule, alternating who writes each week, that way we can provide a more detailed and insightful account of our experience on the road. Close family and friends will obviously be updated throughout the trip via phone, e-mail, and of course, Facebook.

For a while now, Jen and I have been crushing it. First she got into Berkeley, against the odds. Then I recouped a good amount of cash from the speedy sale of my things, which divested us of the stuff that would not fit in Jen’s car. (I am going all-out and giving most of my clothes to the Good Will; Jen will probably have her parents ship some things flat-rate.) Then I landed what seems to be the best of all possible jobs, and finally, and here is the new news, Jen secured a lease on a one-bedroom with a view two blocks from the UCB campus. Barker Hall, where my lab is, and Boalt are on diagonally opposite corners of the university, and the apartment is a stone’s throw from my corner.

To round out this post I’ll share an anecdote from my current job. One of my responsibilities is to interview people with a history of psychosis, with the aim of making a differential diagnosis for research purposes. Though the delusions, hallucinations, and thought disorder that characterize these patients are among the wildest psychiatric symptoms, for the most part my interactions with them are little different from my interactions with ordinary unfamiliar people with problems: sometimes evoking mild feelings of injustice or sympathy, sometimes trying, sometimes boring.

This week, however, I was struck with the poignancy of one man’s unselfconscious resilience in the face of what is an insidious and devastating illness that weirds out onlookers more than it elicits their compassion. Following a few years of prodromal “emotional problems,” this patient experienced his psychotic break at age 17, the final straw that broke the back of an otherwise auspicious childhood. His auditory hallucinations were the voices of his classmates disparaging his character. This spiraled into most of a decade spent in and out of mental hospitals, lost in a paralysis of distorted cognition: Lying on a couch in a locked unit, he would stare out the window for who knows how long, “watching the trees grow,” as he says.

After leaving the hospital and stabilizing on a slew of neuroleptics, he accepted the fallen, quiet life of a schizophrenic whose positive symptoms have mostly abated. He lived with his mother until she died a few years ago, and now he lives alone in an apartment. When he was laid off from his job in the warehouse of a department store, he started work as a crossing guard for a local school. In between his morning and afternoon duties he hangs out at a social club for mental out-patients. He doesn’t have friends, but he goes on picnics and hikes with the club, and he’s met some good people. “Everyone is dealing with something,” he said about them. With a smile, he added, “You know, it comes in all types.”

Though he scored poorly on some of the standard measures of IQ I administered to him, our discussion revealed immediately his only-somewhat-wavering keenness of judgment and understanding. He paid for his own travel and lodging to come to our center, despite having little income, because his interest in advancing the scientific understanding of his illness is genuine and selfless. When the MRI schedule demanded that he wait at our center for three hours to get a scan, he did so without complaining. And when a bogus positive screen for drugs nearly disqualified him at the beginning of the first day, he asked politely whether his odd mannerisms had led me to make up a lie about his testing positive to get him to leave.

Luckily, for both of us, he was able to stay, and after we finished he said he felt pretty good about having participated. I walked with him to get brochures to send to his brother and sister, to show them what he’d been up to lately. They live far away, but keep in touch via mail and telephone. He hates where he lives, but has no plans to move closer to them. “Do you travel often?” I asked, considering his willingness to come to Hartford. “Yeah, I try to,” he said. He’s saving money to take a bus to New York City, to go to a nice restaurant by himself.

Meeting people like this man has a tendency to shake my beliefs about the human condition to their core. So much of my energy is spent on concerns about external validation, and here is a man with none, and without the intimacy and mutual understanding of a single friendship, without even the respect of his peers. (My guess is he is the creepy guy at the crosswalk whom mothers tell their children to avoid and children surreptitiously mock.) Though perhaps deficient in some ways, he is fully aware of his plight. And yet he toils on in fairly good spirits, appreciating those experiences he can enjoy. Who other than someone of his demeanor with a stigmatized, pervasive disability could display such fortitude? I value him more than I value humanity’s touted heroes: There is no cult of personality about him, nothing at all to hide his shortcomings.

I apologize that this post is coming a few days late, but you should know that this lackadaisical behavior will only continue or worsen over time.

The camping chair keeps breaking. I stopped bothering to staple it back together.

In other news, we just spent a few days in Cape Cod with my family to decompress, and I’m flying to Berkeley tomorrow morning to hunt for apartments. Dan is staying in Connecticut so he can get as much time in as possible at his current job, so my brother is accompanying me on the trip to CA. He’s pretty savvy and recently rented an apartment in Brooklyn, so I’m sure he will be an asset during what could possibly be a stressful and chaotic process. Because of the location of Dan’s new job, we would like to be within walking distance or a short (10-15 min. max) bus ride away from the Berkeley campus. We have a relatively tight budget, and we’ll have my car so availability of parking is a concern as well. Otherwise we aren’t very picky, but hope to find a place that suits our needs at least for my first year at Boalt.

That’s all I have for now. As I’m writing this I’m staring at the pile of clothes in the corner that needs to get packed into my suitcase before the car service arrives at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow to take me to Newark. Hopefully next week when Dan posts he can tell you all about our apartment!

Thank you for reading and following us on this journey!

So orienteering is a metaphor. One task is to navigate to the other side of the country, but the greater responsibility is to navigate around the pitfalls that threaten our relationship vis-a-vis our fractious selves, and to achieve our individual ambitions, a stepwise venture. Our competition is all the little things that get in the way: our incompatibilities, our insecurities, our personal shortcomings, the uncertainty of the future, and in particular of our success. And the map and compass are the other little things we can rely on when times are tough: a stable, underlying belief in and support for each other, our fairly safe material and social footing, our personal strengths. It’ll be a big battle of little things against little things.

From the cloud of dust, something interesting will emerge. After more time together in a car than we’ve ever had before and may ever have again, Jen and I will pull up to our apartment in Berkeley and begin a life together, for the first time. Jen will be a law student at Boalt, and I may have a job. I’ll apply to PhD programs in psychology and neuroscience, and hope I get into a school in the Bay Area. And this blog, so the plan reads, will chronicle it all.

Thanks so much for reading.