It was one of Berkeley's chilly and deserted evenings. We were sitting under the circus roof lights of cafe Strada, at one of those round tables with a piece of world map imprinted on its top, reading Baudelaire and sharing our thoughts about the meaning of his poems in Russian, English, and French simultaneously. We broke out laughing at the unwanted attention that our trilingual conversation had stirred, and then it hit us - Berkeley - so many languages, so many cultures, so much life and no literary publication to embody and unite all of it!
Berkeley is host to all kinds of musicians, artists, poets, clowns, jugglers, bucket drummers, dancers, fat squirrels, realists, pessimists, romantics, cynical raccoons - one cannot but feel as Alice in Wonderland, wandering through subconscious labyrinths of this magical life. When we take a closer look at one another we see more similarites than differences, and it's by sharing those similarities while respecing and truly understanding and accepting the differences that we can create a more coherent world. Well, to quote John Lennon: "They may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..." Berkeley is place for all vagabonds.
-Anastasia Namsaraeva and Tatyana Shmygol