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As a child, I remember the thrill of riding my bicycle to the Oaks Shopping Center for the first time. Many great weekend afternoons were spent riding to the Center, catching a movie, buying ice cream, taking a pass through the bookstore and perhaps riding around Memorial Park.

Many of us in Cupertino share similar fond memories of time spent at The Oaks Shopping Center with family, friends and loved ones. Imagine how many first dates, anniversaries or birthdays were spent at the movies or in one of the restaurants at the Oaks Center. Sometimes going to the Oaks Shopping Center feels like coming home again.

Like many long-time Cupertino residents, I was saddened when the Oaks Shopping Center and the community said good-bye to the bookstore A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books in 1997. The recent City discussions surrounding the possible closure of the Oaks Center movie theater to make way for a grocery store has brought back many of these feelings. It has also raised a larger issue of concern about Cupertino losing some of it's unique history and the character that makes this such a great place to call home.

The Oaks Shopping Center is one of the core symbols or locations that demonstrate Cupertino's unique character. Though a place of commerce, its style and architecture does not match the all too prevalent strip malls along Stevens Creek Boulevard. The Oaks Shopping Center is one of Cupertino's few "town squares."

Observing the debate surrounding the proposed grocery store at this location and the potential forced closing of the movie theater, many Cupertino residents stood up at recent government meetings to express their concerns, fears and anger over the proposed transition.

It is not surprising that the landlord of the Oaks Center keeps an eye peeled for ways to generate revenue. Though many have embraced the center over the years, it has not been a financial success as evidenced by the closing of such center favorites as the bookstore, Cafe Quinn, Blue Chip Cookies and other small businesses.

I realize that the Oaks Shopping Center lacks the one anchor tenant needed to support the financial investment in this prime business location. However, isn't the heritage and history of Cupertino equally valuable, deserving of protection?

Why couldn't both the proposed grocery store and movie theater coexist? Unfortunately, there are plenty of empty store fronts in the center. Shifting the plans to accommodate the theater and the grocery store could be beneficial to both the landlord, store owners and the community. This will give the Oaks Center the anchor tenant it requires to draw patrons, which will trickle in to businesses coming back to the center with the theater remaining open, as well.

As a result, local government will also benefit from the increased sales tax dollars generated from an economically booming Oaks Shopping Center.

Cupertino is the gateway to Silicon Valley. It was Cupertino residents who helped build the Information Superhighway and this community continues to be one of the most sought after areas to live in in the United States. We have the best schools, a top-notch community college and a character that make this place unique. Thinking about the Cupertino we want for our children ought to be at the forefront of this debate.

Bringing a grocery store to the Oaks Center is an idea with merit, but let's not sacrifice the movie theater in the process. We should protect the things that are unique and fun about Cupertino, and our heritage at the Oaks is part of that. We deserve better than reducing our community to a cookie-cutter town like many suburbs in Southern California with one main street, no bookstores, no movie theaters, fast-food joints and a few gas stations. We deserve much better, and we should protect the things that make this community a great place to call home. One step in this process is to find a compromise at the Oaks Center by bringing the grocery store in while protecting the movie theater at the same time.

I am the ragged obsidian solar flare
that flies in the bright red sky.
I am the steaming hot spiky crimson
seaweed that soars by my
glowing star hands.
I am the atom floating
in the DNA strip
giggling in the brown nucleus,
shining bright smiles the plant cell,
floating in red orange fluid,
dancing happily in the narrow
parallel segment vein,
sprinting across the American seaweed,
opening a door to the earth,
spinning in the singing solar system,
twisting in silky ways,
jogging by the Milky Way,
and trying to circle the dark red universe.

What are we? How have we come to be here on this planet? Are we living a life as fully conscious beings? I suspect not. What are visions, dreams, things seen that ought not to be seen? Do we conjure such things as ghosts, aliens, fairies out of deep genetic memory? Or are they glimpses of a broader reality?

Of late, I have been exploring a number of alternate realties: ufos, ghosts, psychedelic phenomena. All seem to be pointing to some undercurrent of reality that we can barely tip our toe into. We mostly deny it, put it down to "imagination" or simple fantasy. We even deny our own directly experienced phenomena, shutting the door to a wider world. This seems driven by a larger culture intent on squashing all things mysterious, unknown or unknowable. We believe that because such experiences are beyond measure and simple human reasoning, they must therefore not real. Yet they all seem to point to a more fully realized consciousness, a kind of multi-dimensional existence. Our everyday brain seems divorced from this, almost as if there is a wall in place between our everyday functioning mind and our visioning, dreaming consciousness.

An interesting aspect to this (from my admittedly scant observation): people who traverse this consciousness divide seem to possess a high degree of creativity. A large proportion are artists, writers, musicians, or are generally creative in other aspects of their lives. Many express interest in spiritual or deep intuitive connections. Some meditate. Apart from the creative process itself (or perhaps as a part of it), I wonder if this points to a necessary admission of imagination as a fundamental key to the door in the wall.

Clearly as long as we continue doing business within a fragile planetary ecosystem, pretty much everything we do needs to change, adapt, ephermalize, regenerate. I just hope that along with these changes, we don’t loose site of the bigger impetus which this all points - which is to continue onward, upward, outward off the planet and become a space faring species.

This is the first time in our planets evolution such a possibility is upon us. Given what’s at stake (massive ecological, economic and population collapse), it’s now or never that a strong push for space development must be made. Those talking about peak civilization and mandatory de-industrialization are a depressing, anti-evolutionary lot.

I think when real-world constraints start culling the population, radical evolutionary pressures upward will re-exert themselves. I’ve never known people to go quietly in the night, especially when bigger, better alternatives present themselves.

My fellow Lifeboat adviser Brian Wang is actively working on some very radical space propulsion designs which could reduce orbital launch costs to less than $1/Kg without the need for any new technological advances.