10 May 2020. Laurel Lane II.
The tree may be a way in--a venerable pine, as in the old Chinese poems. Behind a wooden fence, where a small room has been built onto back of the house on the corner. Dark wood, with one tall, narrow window. Maybe a study or a studio. Inside, quiet, just a single rice-paper lamp hanging from the wood-beamed ceiling. Always a feeling of peace...
But I couldn't remember the story, from many years ago, when we'd make this same walk--someone distinguished, a Berkeley professor, but I wasn't sure it was this house--and I couldn't recall his name. Always meant to inquire, but there was never anyone about, just the largish dog snoozing inside the front window, a great dane, who looks up sometimes as I pass...
This is the problem with stories. They can get so elaborate. And here I am already weaving back through the layers--why the house seems so familiar, wondering yet again about the small room in back, the hint of mystery to the whole thing.
Which fits with one's thoughts while walking...
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The house, it turns out (I looked into this) belonged Ron Takaki, a much admired teacher at Berkeley, and central to the founding the ethnic studies program. Born in Hawaii, to field-worker parents, he grew up during WWII, enduring the taunts and prejudice of those years, and understood first-hand "the inequities in Hawaii's tough and ethnically divided plantation system." Experiences which later animated--gave focus to--his distinguished work as an historian. And to his campus activism--and his ongoing and deeply held belief that learning about other cultures--other shared cultures--thinking and writing about them with critical acumen--could in itself become a revolutionary act...
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"He embodied kindness." "I don't think I ever heard him utter a word of anger."
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About the figure. The importance of remembering these stories, of honoring them. Making them a part of yourself--as a way of sharing. Nothing literal here--a kind of play, even--you remove your hat, make a small bow. Ron Takaki, sitting alone in that quiet room, might have smiled...
