Shattuck and Cedar: A Series of Impressions

Located to the northwest of UC Berkeley campus, there exists a quiet crossroad at the intersection of Cedar St and Shattuck Ave. It is at this sleepy corner of town that I will make my impressions.

[x] map

Descriptions:

Surrounding the area is the campus to the south, shops to the north, and suburbia to the east and west. At this intersection, there is an Andronico's grocery store, a couple of restaurants (CrepeVine, Am-Cha, Dawn's), and a now defunct Elephant Pharmacy. Parked cars litter the area, but without many people to back them. I sit on a bus bench to make my observations. It seemed like a good place to sit down and watch people. Next to me is a sign signaling that the 7, 9, and 18 lines will stop here, and many newspaper dispensers. A couple trashcans pepper the area. The trees and bushes are very well kept, and the whole area seems pretty clean.

First Impressions

Overcast. The area seems still. Not in lack of physical movement—as there is always a car or person passing by—but in lack of collision. People come and go, and they were not talking of Michelangelo. In fact, they are not even talking at all. Everyone seems to have their own direction. Whether it is waiting for the bus, shopping at Andronico's, or rushing towards campus, everyone seems to have a purpose and they simply do not dawdle.

On my first day there, an old man—around 70 years of age—sat down next to me on the bus bench. He sat on the farthest end of the bench from me. It happens a lot in society, everyone seems to have a little bubble of impregnable personal space. The old man and I are sitting so close, but at the same time, our worlds are so far apart. I physically could talk to him. I, however, did not. I felt too embarrassed, too shy, too respectful for his status of stranger to break the ice. He is sitting not any farther than 2 feet from where I am, but the walls of society and impersonality keep us so far apart that he might as well be not even in earshot of myself.

Second Impressions

In the vast majority of my seven days observing from the bus bench, there has been almost no interactions between the people walking through. It varied a bit day by day—I loitered around for close an hour every day, some times there would be a couple walking together talking, or maybe even a group of students laughing with each other. But other than these little ripples of voices, footsteps, motors, and silence pervaded the intersection.

The whole place felt cold. Cold as winter. The physical temperature was probably not any different than south-side, but the feel of the place was much colder than that. The wide open space of the intersection was conducive to spinal shivers as gusts passed. Also, without the crowds of Durant or Telegraph, there is little body heat from crowding keeping you warm. But much more than that, the cold bites at a deeper level. The place feels simply impersonal. Much like a gas that is high in volume but low in particle count, the population is too sparse, and all the people there seems to go about on their own ways without so much an indication that anyone else was inside their world. Even the people who walked and talked inside groups were oblivious to everyone else outside the boundaries of their clique. People could be seen and heard but yet so utterly unnoticed. It is realizations like this that make me feel like I am all on my own in the world.

Even time itself seems frozen inside the world of the intersection. If you consider the intersection a bounded field marked off by an invisible walls at an arbitrary distance, what happens inside can be be related to an infinitely repeated play preformed again and again on the stage of the intersection by the people entering the area. If the area was considered a singularity, what happens every day would be exactly the same: some people would go shopping, some people would pass by, some people would wait for the bus. Nothing else happens. People would change, the world would change, but this place would not.

Halloween

On All Hallows' Eve, everything changed. Suddenly the place came alive. I heard shouting, I heard laughter, I heard pranks being pulled, I heard screams. People came running around in ridiculous costumes, buying bagfuls of things, and wishing each other happy Halloween. Was it a simply a Halloween effect? A festival effect? A discontinuity to the wave functions of daily life? Did it happen every Saturday? Every holiday? Every Halloween? Or perhaps I was just just there to catch the only time Shattuck and Cedar came alive? I cannot possibly draw conclusions based on one day, and I can only guess at the answers extended studies would show.

Final Impression

Whatever the reason for the surprisingly boisterous was, the magic only lasted for one day. On Sunday, everything fell back into place. People once again were distant and isolated, going about their own businesses.

Things[1,2] have perturbed the silence here, but everything always falls back into its routine. Actors once again assembled onto the intersection stage, each doing the eternal transitory dance of life. The people may have changed, but the place, the feeling, the actions, and the emotions are held steadfast. In short, the essence of the place has meandered off it's fourth axis, and time has stopped to flow.

Trapped, trapped is what I feel. I want to shout, I want to scream my frustration at this stifling coldness. However, my voice catches in my throat. What would be the point? I could make a ripple in this ocean of stillness, but as soon as I left the scene, everything will be back to normalcy. With a sigh, I pack up my notebook and leave for class.

Sources

[1] http://www.dailycal.org/article/106093/two_berkeley_women_assaulted_in_their_homes

[2] http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-10-29/events