Re:turn 2:4

Last night I discovered a Christmas card propped on the desk in the bedroom where I am staying in Berkeley. Because I thought I recognized the naïve winter landscape on the cover I took a closer look to see if the artist was familiar. No, but on the other hand, when a loose page fell out of the card I recognized the handwriting. It was my own, and the ink was still green.

The fact that this was a Christmas card that I had written to M years ago made me not only curious, but obliged to reread. It seemed to be stamped with “Return to sender”. No need for furtive glances, painstaking research or theoretical studies when life in the specious present simply appears before my eyes. What could be a better point of departure for a chronicle of my current Re:turn.

The message inside the card was dated in Stockholm on December 10, 1983, over 26 years ago. Strangely enough, neither the card nor the letter paper had become discolored, nor had the green ink faded. The letter looked as though it could have been written yesterday. Where in the world, but in this old house in Berkeley, might such clear evidence of my past, simply turn up?

To this day, I continue to go back and forth at least once a year between Sweden and the US, gravitating to the San Francisco Bay Area where my parents and their parents grew up and where I went to high school and college. As I began to read the old card, my initial sense was that nothing in my life had changed much. Christmas holidays come and go.

Dear M
Just thought I’d let the good will of the holiday season take priority over your chronically unchronicled (for me) life. So what’s new? Got caught up on you a bit on my visit last March. In fact, that visit somehow helped me to get caught up on myself...

So perhaps I’m getting caught up again on old friends like M whom I visited just six months ago, but more importantly with myself. It appears that M is a harbinger, somehow instrumental in my life. Our relationship began in the fall of 1965 when she was heckling her brother C who had called to invite me to see the Nutcracker at the Hyatt House, off the Bayshore freeway. As it turned out my very first date with C in December 1965 was the beginning of a long and memorable first love that spanned several critical years that would include many more incredible performances at The Hyatt House Theater. We quickly became an institution among friends and family and viewed as ‘intended’.
We were both young and ambitious. I was an energetic young undergraduate student of history at Berkeley, and C was a tall, dark and handsome Stanford fellow who had just begun Berkeley graduate school. His clever tongue, his wit and antics were charming. He was also full of adventure.



...Time flies and we hardly reflect over what is happening. This year seems a bit different. Why? This year marked my first feeling of being able just to "drop in" on the Bay Area...nothing I planned and saved for months to do, but just happened..and can and undoubtedly will happen again...with the job I have now. I pay a price for this mobility...