The clicking of coffee cups against porcelain plates, and the sound of raining falling on the cobblestone streets outside accompanies the soft chatter of conversations in languages ranging from Italian to German in a small coffee shop full of murals and books just a few winding alley ways away from Piazza Navona. The windows are foggy from the warmth of whispered words inside and the persistent downpour of rain outside on the window pane. Books splayed out before me on a table, a cappuccino in hand and a chocolate croissant waiting to be eaten. Oh how I have missed this. ...

Ruffled feathers, folded wings tucked neatly away against a lithe black and grey body, a raven sits atop a wind bent tree. The long slender tree sways under the pressure of the coming storm looming in the distance, yet so close on the dark horizon. The raven sits unheeded, the sentry set to duty atop a watch tower made before the brick buildings and red thatched roofs knew their beginning. ...

Every Sunday I go into the city of San Francisco to go to my home church, Reality SF. Located on the border of the Mission and Castro District, my church is central to some pretty cool things in the heart of San Francisco. Because I go weekly into San Francisco, I have decided to explore this giant city that is right across the bridge from Berkeley, yet seems a world away at the same time. Thus Sundays in the City is born as an effort of exploration and discovery outside of my Berkeley bubble. ...

The tremulous touch of God’s presence is the palpable essence of electricity in the air before lightning touches the barren earth and thunder roars across the sky. This was what I felt when I encountered you. The hair raising slowness of breath when one encounters the Divine. Yet you, the unassuming, the plain, the patchwork pattern of a human being, knew not what was hidden behind your graying cataract eyes. Could you possibly have known? Could it possibly have been you? Cross knitted eyebrows and deeply etched forehead disguised in the baggy weightless clothing of a man lost under his own skies; I found God. ...

Summer is winding down to an end and with that is a serious of desperate attempts to fill the dwindling amount of time with as many adventures as possible. Today’s mini adventure was to the Saratoga Japanese Hakone Gardens, the oldest historical Japanese tea Garden on the west coast. This small expanse of tranquil land fashioned with Japanese Maple Trees, koi filled ponds, and bamboo gardens is a luxurious little escape from the everyday. ...

After a short reprieve from school to visit my home in Santa Cruz, I am back in Berkeley. Back to campanile escapades, rolling down hills, blowing bubbles out my window, and for the rest of the summer, work. I am really excited to start working this summer and see all of the things I will discover. I am halfway through college and it hurts my heart to even think about that. A lot has changed and I am starting out the last half of my college career in a totally new vantage point. New jobs, new house, new roommates, new responsibilities but the same school and a lot of the same people I have come to know and love with all my heart. ...

So I have been in my new home for a few days now and to avoid the stress of moving and adjusting to a new place I have taken to long periods of time just staring out of the windows in my room. The windows of my room are my favorite thing about my new home. One over looks the entire bay, the Berkeley Marina down below, the Golden Gate Bridge in the foggy distance level with my ever searching eyes. The other looks onto the Berkeley campus over the red thatched roofs of the castle like houses between my bedroom and campus. The campanile sits just beyond grasp but fully in view. I can hear the campanile ring out ever hour, so that I never loose myself in time. ...

Sirens wail within the walls of these catacombs Reaching through the permeable loom And its outstretched strings weaving together A city of countless threads thinking they stand Independent from the unraveling yarn. But if we burn the end and watch the fire swallow the coil We will all burn together This masterpiece going up in flames Like the greatest bonfire of being That ever burst forth from the abyss of this abysmal world The powerful and strong will not reason The reckoning flame away That flicker of the snakes tongue can taste the air Filling with heat, the crackle and pop of thread Being split in twain But just alike, both will burn together.

Day Fourteen Silence weaves with delicate needle fingers the lips of eternity together to protect the world from its whispers. This loom of words, each string of sentences used to thread together the flesh of fear and tie up the loose ends of antiquity making modern the mask of mystery; giving it a grin more akin to a grimace fighting back the suture of sin that sealed the seventh scroll. The world will unravel in its own calamitous coil, we tried to piece it back together but the piercing hook that once bound now bends against the hardened flesh finding it impenetrable and unyielding even to the craftsmen that created them. But still we keep breaking our fingers trying to get a hold of your hearts to breath back life into your being and let the ruach make what once was stone, new flesh again.