dangerous compassions

I call you / from the comet's cradle

Monday, July 10, 2006

a good Sunday in Berkeley

Yesterday we slept in as long as we could and then went to Berkeley. We had lunch at the vegan Japanese place Cha Ya. The meal was extraordinary. I had some cold soba noodles and veggie tempura and crunchy spring rolls with asparagus in them. Erik had some miso soup, lovely fried tofu, and a little sushi. Then we shared a red bean dessert with chewy rice-somethings in it. I'm not explaining it in its full glory, but we were in heaven. Everything was fresh, flavorful, exciting. It was kind of expensive, and the place is tiny. We had to wait for a table. But the menu is kind of complicated, or at least extensive, and we used the time to study it.

Then we went to Elephant phramacy, which is sort of like a dream-store with some cute stationary almost all recycled or not made from trees, lots of good soap, free water to drink as you walk around, lots of loose teas. This excellent soap was on sale, and I bought many bars of it: brazil nut, pecan, linden, verbena, cucumber. So now we have soap for months.

Then where did we go? We went to the Cody's on Telegraph, and they're about to close. Their last day is today--all the store is 20% off. I bought many postcards, lots of art ones. And I found a book for a dollar that I had been wanting very much and never thought I would find. Poor Gary Young got remaindered. Our teacher in grad school Jim has a blurb on the back.

Then we were going to Vedanta for vespers, the Berkeley Vedanta, but it didn't happen. The door was locked at the appointed time. The accouncement board said SUMMER RECESS--maybe the swami isn't home.

So that was too bad, but we were starving, and we picked up my dear R for dinner. We went to a different Naan and Curry than Erik and I had been to, the one on Telegraph. We spoke of all and nothing. And then we went to a cafe too for more talking not too cold, but I was cold, because I had not brought a sweater since Sacramento is so hot beyond all thought of sweaters.

Then we took R home and went home ourselves, arriving home at 10:30 or so, and we put the fan in the bedroom window to cool the room down to 90 and went to sleep. It was a wonderful adventuresome day, and we didn't even have time to go to the beach or to Long Haul Infoshop. I always think we'll run out of things to do, but quite the contrary.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home