We successfully moved this past Monday and Tuesday from South Berkeley to North Berkeley. So far the new apartment has been pretty much everything I could have hoped for in addressing the issues of the previous apartment. The general baseline quietness is wonderful, and having this kind of silence only underscores the amount of sound we were around in the old apartment. The apartment is much smaller but feels much cozier for it; when we lived in Warsaw we found we enjoyed the smaller apartment so much, and certainly again finding a small but well partitioned apartment is much more preferable than one with too much space…
The area is certainly much more affluent and therefore feels quite different than our previous neighborhood. A less gritty place, the people seem to not have the same kind of worries as those in the previous neighborhood. Seems to be many more smiling faces and warmer characters here, which I am finding myself fond of…
One of the greatest joys of living in this apartment so far is how much more nature there is around. We have lovely trees right outside our windows that are often frequented by birds and squirrels. The animals in the area seem very friendly and not afraid of people, which I think says something about the kind of people who inhabit the area. Taking walks here, I found myself once looking around at the trees, the people, the buildings, and all around with a certain deep observation and curiosity that seems to have been missing for the last year…
Live Oak Park, only a very short 5 minute or so walk from here, is a really wonderful place. Living closely to a park reminds me of the apartment we rented in Warsaw next to the Old Town and the Ogród Krasińskich. It’s been great walking to and through the small park, and the Picnic Area 2 has been quite excellent for practicing tai-chi in: under the cover of beautiful trees, the ground a comfortable soft dirt, a small stream ahead bubbling away a beautiful sound. A very peaceful space…
Yesterday, while on the train to the airport (Lisa is on her way to Warsaw for a three-week research trip), we looked at a video I had taken of the old apartment. I had taken the video just as a reminder of what the old place was like for future reference. We were both amazed at how quickly we had lost any connection with the old apartment, as well as how quickly we had connected with our new apartment and neighborhood…
Already I feel rejuvenated being here. The past few months in the old place were of such distress that I hardly did much personal work, but the peacefulness here has been excellent and I am now collecting my thoughts, reviewing where I was with all of my personal work, and slowly returning to these very meaningful endeavors…