Claremont Canyon overlook   High up in the fading light of a perfect fall day: Berkeley a field of diamonds on black velvet between me and the Bay, and the rose velvet horizon beyond San Francisco, beyond the Golden Gate. This town beats me and bullies me and it never lets me forget how beautiful it can be, and how much there is to keep me in love -- hopeless, helpless, and in love -- * * * I am become Shiva, a hundred-handed Hindu god -- that's who I am these days. And in every hand is a baseball bat, or a baseball mitt . . . and arrayed around me in every direction, to this side and that side, in front and behind, above me and below me, there are pitching guns, each something I've said yes to in this life, or was unable to say no to, or failed to say no to . . . and suddenly all at once they all wind up and fire, unleashing a fearsome volley of questions to answer and demands to consider and orders to obey and bills to pay and deadlines to meet and essays to mark, mountains and mountains of essays to mark (and who's the dope who assigned these accursed things?) . . . and I snag some balls, snapping them up smartly and whipping them to first for the out, and I drop some balls, some that were probably impossible and some I should have pulled down; and sometimes my bats swing uselessly in the breeze, but I hit some ground balls too, and a couple of hard shots to center . . . and all the while my fans are milling about, restless, and some leave the stadium even as more wade through the turnstiles, but coming or going, each one trundles up to the rail with another damn pitching cannon: firing firing firing --     © Michael Fleming Berkeley, California October 1995