i walk the streets, past the homes west and north of campus, and i sense leather, trumpetvine, old green glass, bluebells and hyacinth, berry pies. Berkeley sunday afternoons like this i always relish... the charm and intensity of this college town has never grown old for me. and yet the sensations i'm getting... the colors, the smells, the feel of things, seem oddly flat. but i do know why, and so do you. another summer at ATDP has ended. and for the past seven summers, this ending has come for me with Angel's leaving for home.

like all stories of human connection, this one is deep and textured. i suppose that, by reading my weblog entries, or other personal web pages of mine, you might get a sense of what this particular kid means to me. (of course, he's not really a kid anymore, as you can see in the picture.) suffice it to say for this weblog entry that, if i were to choose a permanent symbol that would stand for the idea and reality of an ATDP summer for me, Angel would be that symbol. he is, for me, the embodiment of what i do with my life, a significant part of which is what i do with my summers here in Berkeley.

i've been mentoring ATDP kids for some time now, over the last dozen years or so, and something i realized a while back was that letting go was an important part of the process. equally important was that it didn't mean my leaving. the distinction is crucial. it's almost like parenting, in that sense... one's kid leaves for college and the parents have to let go. and yet, they'll always be there, too, at 'home base.' i first met Angel in 1994 when he came to ATDP as an 8th grader, and we bonded instantly, like we had known each other in a previous life or something. as i look back on it, there was something mystical that summer, as far as it had to do with me and him. by then, my identity and life's work as a mentor had already been set in motion, and it seemed a natural thing for him to consider me and my life here in Berkeley 'home base' for him, during the summertime.

so Angel came to live with me during the summers since he first came to Berkeley, and with him i had my own little primary family, alongside the extended 'family' i had with my students in The Internet Classrooms. as for Angel himself, he grew from being a student in TIC/AIC, to a TA in it, a Mentor in the Study Lab for it, and a co-instructor in class. he and i learned much about life, about learning, and about ourselves, together. much of this learning was experiential and inchoate, but in the end we always understood it all so well. so you can imagine what it's like for me when the summer ends... it's a microcosm and a pure distillation of the larger feeling i have for ATDP and my classes as a whole: it's always piercingly sad for me to let go, to get to the end. but what it really means is that i'm sad at the ending because i simply had so much fun learning, playing, and being, when it was happening.

a common theme that recurs in conversations and weblogs about this summer (and other summers) is that our time here in Berkeley goes by so fast. there's no mystery to this, really. when we're having great fun learning, time paradoxically both stops, and flies by infinitely fast. before you know it, it's over. but that has always been the case, and evermore shall be... if this teaches us to savor the moments during which we are alive and learning, whether in bliss or in pain, then that paradox would have not been for naught.

the berkeley light begins to shade into gold, as the day begins to wane. i look up from my walking reverie and meditation to realize i've walked for miles and several hours. at one point, i remember my face becoming wet with tears, but that's okay too... sadness, and the expression of it, is part and parcel of the human condition. i begin to rise once again to the stars, as i contemplate the round of existence, the images of you in my mind, and writing the next page on my weblog... levitating, letting go...

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