Mischief and Creativity

Sunday was a day of laughter, creativity, emotion,  a chance to spend some time in awe at the beauty of the natural world, the trees and the mud and the grass and the rain, and a chance to spend some time letting the children in us take over our adult bodies and reek splendid havoc and mischief.  In short, one day to make up so many of the rest of the hours that most of us spend engaged in those horrendous but somewhat necessary activities that dry up our spirits. 

Took the train to the East Bay and met one of the dearest people in my life, and we wandered out into the rain and hills of Tilden Park (or at least, we think it was Tilden Park, and not just a big giant expanse of wilderness behind some peoples’ houses), equipped with a palate of gouache paint, Haribo Peaches, and a bottle of honey whiskey.

We wandered up mud slides, into worlds of giant mushrooms and fallen trees covered in moisture and moss. We found a spot with an exquisite view of the Bay piercing light through the trees, huddled on the forest floor underneath some thick coverage, and talked about life, and love, and laughed and painted for hours.  It’s not everyone you can convince to go out into the cold and the rain with you on an adventure like that, and love every second of their company. My lady friend is quite a special one.

Sufficiently creatively spent, and now slightly drunk, we made our way back down, spending most of our time sliding. We were both completely covered in mud by the time we got to the bottom, so we thought, what better idea than to break into the construction site we found there. We arduously scaled the fence (actually, I ended up just picking it up and pulling it aside), and made our way around some obstructions to face the downward-pointing innards of grand stadium in ruins and crawling with trucks and construction workers. Oh. Who would’ve thought, on a Sunday. So we promptly decided to run away, but not before grabbing ourselves a keepsake, in the form of a giant orange cone. It wasn’t until we were running back to the car with our spoils that we realized there’d been a man watching us the whole time, who was now on the phone – it was speculated that he was “calling his friends to tell them you guys are dorks.” Now, on the run from the law, we sped away, and sought  a safe-house. Another one of my dearest friends was kindly willing to harbor us – fugitives that we were. 

She answered the door in her underwear and we sang and played the piano and her little dog barked at us violently now and again. After a while of carrying on like this we decided it was time for food and drink. Loud and obnoxious and enjoying the hell out of ourselves, we sat at the bar at Lanesplitters, ate, drank, laughed, and were marry, bothering and amusing the many bar flies who surrounded us. I love my friends. I love rainy Sundays outside.