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   He has been feeling restless the last few months. Restless in a good way. Interested. Hopeful. Hence his enthusiasm for the mass picket at High and Bay, where the City on a Hill, the University of California at Santa Cruz, meets Surf City. The real Surf City of Hawaiian princes, O’Neill, and the big waves of Mavericks, not that shit suburb in LA.

   Hence also Calliope... "There is still something there," he muses as he drives up Walnut, over on Mission, then up again on Bay. 

   "I'll just drive by and check it out," he tells himself. Then he's upon it and it is a bit of a shock. Easily a thousand people or more he calculates, scanning the crowd efficiently, the old patterns flooding back. A great crowd actually. Workers and students mainly, of course. Lots of women, Union signs and t-shirts from UAW (grad students) and AFT (lecturers, librarians) and AFSCME or CUE (staff) along with arm bands and antiwar banners (students) predominate. The union placards bob wildly as half the crowd, maybe 500 people, slowly tramp in a great circle crossing all four crosswalks of the intersection, pretty much cutting the main link between the U and the city below. Kelly drives slowly through the intersection, honking and smiling and then goes up toward the other entrance. It too is blocked, by a smaller crowd.  

   He parks on Western Drive, a few blocks up from the Village, and walks back to the picket. The crowd is focused and feeling its power. The few police try to keep the intersection at least partially open, moving traffic past the blocked front gate. But every time a Muni bus comes up and turns back with much friendly waving with the driver (United Transportation), or a delivery truck (Teamsters) or a construction crew (Carpenters Union, Pipefitters), does the same, the crowd grows in every sense. 

   Kelly sees Crystal and his son Zack walking across the street slowly in front of irritable UC police. A heavy woman with Occupy buttons and a large AFSCME sign stops to carefully tie her shoes. Suddenly there are two cops over her, prodding with clubs, barking.

   "Get up. You're blocking the road. You are un..."

   People flow closely around and among the woman and the police. Conscious water. They are swirled apart. The officers bristle and swing their clubs in tight close arcs, hitting a few people glancing blows. They chase the woman but find they can only move at oblique angles to her. Soon they are on the outside of the intersection which is full of people and completely shut down. The crowd cheers. 

   Kelly looks around again for Crystal and Zack but sees his daughter Kirsten instead. A "turkey-baster" baby as they say, the gift of sperm to lesbian friends. Does that make him a "turkey-baster" Dad?

   She looks annoyed, as she usually does to him. "So you've come? The revolution must really be here for you to get off your ass. Done saving the birdies?"  

   Before he can craft an answer, Crystal comes up with Zack. Kelly greets them instead.

   "I like the Bruce Willis look Crystal." He's referring to the 12 Monkey's short short hair, which goes with gray-blue eyes, a short silver-white beard, blue jeans, and some sort of black t-shirt with Celtic designs. Zack is in his early twenties, heavily pierced but otherwise somewhat conservatively attired, shortish hair, a dark blue button down shirt and shit-brown slacks...a sort of "possible punk" look...he might be a punk, but maybe not.  

   Kirsten chimes in, "Hi Prof. Crystal. You in the streets too? What, no theory to write?"   

   He smiles. "Hi Kirsten. I am writing theory actually... by coming here."

   She groans; he laughs. 

   Before there is time for any more pomo repartee Zack interrupts. "Cops are coming!"

   Police reserves have arrived in the form of a UC tac squad and dozens of local cops. Kelly goes down in the first wave and is surprised to find a cop kneeling on him while another pulls at his hair. The contradiction is resolved in his body; the synthesis is a sore back for three days.