As I stood on the landing this morning, the people I call Crew 14 were all standing around their front door. They were hilariously making fun of the new mustache of a mutual acquaintance of theirs. I’m assuming they were talking about a man but you never know. They were saying it made him look like an ’80s cop or a creeper. I couldn’t help but laugh. When they turned towards me, I then told them that’s why I trimmed my facial hair yesterday; that a creeper look of my own would be fair warning to anybody who wants to talk to me. I do sort of like look like a San Francisco policeman.
PS I was standing in the Harps parking lot this morning. I had just purchased a butane torch and 16 gallons of flammable floor wax. I’m just kidding about my grocery list. Someone kept hollering hey. I almost didn’t recognize my cousin Diane. I think I might have given her too many hugs. The fact that she put a taser on my neck and said I have to go was a subtle sign!
Bonus: I found out yesterday why Batman keeps the lower half of his face uncovered. I laughed and laughed at the dumb punch line. .
Earlier this week, at a very early hour, I had a human moment, one which I will write about cautiously, against my nature.
Just a couple of nights earlier, I listened as a neighbor sat outside. His mind was at high elevation, so to speak. He had his phone in front of him, singing loudly and with an absent melody. His voice carried, even against the strident insistence of insects. I couldn’t help but laugh at the content of the song he sang. I wasn’t laughing at him per se; but his delivery and vocal content were so amusing that I couldn’t help but laugh involuntarily. So much so that even days later, I find myself singing a certain segment of what he sang.
On the morning in question, I stood on the balcony. The neighbor sat below. Something about his demeanor signaled that something was amiss. His mind was clear – and that surprised me. “I just need to talk to someone.” So, even though I needed to leave for work, I did. And he told me a story about dear friends, ones who’d moved away. Betrayal had struck them like it does so many. As we talked, his mood lifted, and I gave him a practical distraction about the absurdities of human behavior and its consequences.
It’s the terrain I know too well. I suspect most of us find familiarity in the map of mixed emotions.
I went inside, petted the cat, and headed out again. As I sat in my car, way before sunrise, I looked at him again, still sitting in silence in front of his apartment.
I ignored my inner voice and exited the car, walked over to him, and hugged him. He sobbed for a bit and then thanked me.
Presence.
It’s overlooked and sometimes feared.
But who among us doesn’t want it and need it like the oxygen we breathe?
Each of us will have a turn in our own flooded boat. Perhaps it will be invisible to those around us.
The rain falls on all of us.
I don’t have a moral to the story or a tidy bow to crown it.
What a delight it is to watch two small children scampering in this heavy rain. They are squealing with happiness. But I’m also confused because they’re wearing raincoats! .
We all have nicknames for our neighbors, ones we often substitute even when we know their names. After work I came out on the balcony to let the cat roam.
The sourpuss lady on the end exited her apartment. I waved and said, “Hello Karen,” before catching myself.
I woke up slightly after midnight this morning and stayed up.
It wasn’t that the man standing there with his small bicycle outside the convenience store looked dangerous. His clothes were nice and he had a small backpack behind him. I watched to see as he approached someone who parked in front of the store. The woman exited her vehicle. Although I could not hear what was said her body language communicated that she was very uncomfortable. The man continued saying something to her and his body language wasn’t nice. As the woman walked hastily into the store, I exited my vehicle and darted in behind her. When I came out, his body language was off to me. He spoke quickly and the way he talked in combination with his body language made me uncomfortable.
That’s rare for me. I love convenience store interactions! Since I’m both weird and often unpredictable, it’s a great way to meet people. Even if they are weirder than I am.
I took two steps back and asked him to please stop as he of course he walked toward me.
I think he’s unaccustomed to people being direct. He took a step forward and I held my left hand up.
“Why you got to be like that?” he asked me.
“It’s barely 3:00 a.m. If you need money for something urgent, I would more than likely help you. But I saw you make the woman going in uncomfortable. Don’t do that.”
“Eff you,” he said and took another very small step towards me.
I laughed, even though I didn’t want to.
“Three things,” I began. “There are cameras literally everywhere. Second, you have no idea who has a concealed carry permit on them or a gun without one. Finally do I look like I’m in shape. Or do I seem nervous? I think it’s time for you to stop hanging out in front of convenience stores. And I hope whatever is going on in your life gets better. I really do. But this is going to end badly for someone because you’re making people uncomfortable and people are not quite sure what you’re up to. Fear causes a lot of needless reactions, the least of which is people calling the police.”
“It’s not a crime to talk to people,” he replied.
“Loitering is. Unless you have demonstrable evidence that you’re conducting business inside the store, someone is going to call the police and you’ll have to explain it to them.”
He stood there a second and I did wonder if he was going to threaten me or lunge at me.
So I ignored him and turned to walk to my car. I half-expected a hand on my shoulder. When I opened the door and sat down inside my car, he was already peddling away furiously on his small bicycle.
The convenience store I went to is one of the nicest, safest, most brightly lit ones in the area. It is immeasurably better than Wild Bills over on Garland. That place is a magnet for crazy. That’s probably why I like it.
I’m certainly no badass and I have yet to implement the new self-defense moves I learned last year. I rely on the fact that all but a very small percentage of people are either good-natured or have enough sense not to threaten other people. The biggest danger to me is still pepperoni or potato chips.
A very small sliver of me would like to know what I would have done had the man reacted differently. That little piece of Bobby Dean in me makes me nervous!
Because I’d been boiling myself off and on on the landing and baking in the sun, I turned the AC to 70. Because my AC and heat had to be completely replaced, given that it was from 1976, the new unit is incredibly powerful; its loud sound is relaxing. Güino decided to slumber in my office chair. He’s wandered the landing and the lower floor today several times. Instead of bothering him, I rolled him a foot away and pulled my red rocking chair up to the desk. It felt like I needed to write a couple of hundred words. A few thousand words later, all of it expunged from me in a single burst, I sat looking at the prism hanging outside through the slats of the window blinds. My metal front door is over 170 degrees again. I thought of all the energy reaching us from our nearest star, the sun. We only receive a sliver of its output. It provides enough energy in the form of light to power the entire world – if we’d let it. I think the same is true for each of us. Most of us have the gift of massive kinetic and potential energy inside us. It’s in our nature. Somehow, we allow our lesser forces to override our natural tendency toward power and movement. In my case, I’ve been busy. Being busy or productive isn’t always the best use of my time. It negates introspection and examining the things I’ve said and done with sufficient scrutiny. Life flicks by on lightning skates. It’s easy to live superficially, and sometimes this ease lulls us into thinking it is the preferable way. It’s not. A moment of thought, especially one of gratitude or appreciation, becomes twice as memorable when considered after the fact. Those thousands of words that poured effortlessly from my fingers as I sat here in the zone? They are some of the best words I’ve ever written. I feel it in my bones, the ones that now creak a little as they realize how long I’ve abused them.
Here:
though the sky is blue, you look to the ground out of caution caution saves, but it also reduces though the world is a palette of individuals, you seek understanding by viewing them through your own filter though the world shall never spin according to your whim, you waste your allotted moments by wishing it not to be so the pond will fill if you hurl enough stones into it, though it will take years your life will fill if you stop looking toward what lies behind you and spend your hours subtracting and adding according to your desires the sky is blue, just for you and for me if we but let it be
My pet dinosaur Redactyl sits looking out the suddenly barren fence line in the background. I know he will have a lot to say about it. He’s stuck staring at a lifeless, dilapidated scene now. Color once brightened his perspective.
I’m conflicted. I spent countless hours meticulously assembling the decorations for the longest fence where I live.
Nothing is permanent.
It was great fun, finding pieces and creative ways to use things that aren’t intended to be used in the way I chose.
It was also a lot of work. Work that put me in the zone and challenged me to keep going.
I heard nothing but delight from everyone about how much color and character it added to this ugly apartment complex and the area. Friends drove by or over to see it. Several people posted pictures of it on social media without me realizing it until much later. That made me smile.
This is precisely the kind of place that needs and needed color and something wild and different. Otherwise, it’s just a plot of land and a container that many find temporary.
Two days ago, in a blaze of adrenaline, I began to take the tiles, metal pieces, and assorted decorations off. It led to my shorts’ pockets being so heavy they were about to fall off, which led to the dreaded keys-in-the-dumpster incident. Hundreds of screws, washers, tiles, and assorted pieces. I wasn’t mad, but the disappointment grew as I looked at the fence. But seeing it this morning in the dim light made it dreadfully plain and lifeless. Nothing is permanent; I kept telling myself. But in the back of my mind, I wondered about minds so small they have to complain. 1% of me negatively reacted, given how much work and cleanup I’ve put into this place. We’re supposed to do that sort of thing without expectations.
On the other hand, I put in a proportional amount of work apart from the countless hours I spent brightening up the place. Most of my neighbors don’t do their share to keep the place better than they found it. It’s disappointing that someone took the time to complain they weren’t happy. Some people aren’t happy no matter what – and unfortunately, some take delight in ruining other people’s happiness. The problem with such people is that they will never be satisfied; they thrive on such effort. They are dramavores.
I will redirect my urge to color and brighten to something else in small places and wherever I roam. I’ve left dozens of decorations and pieces all over.
When people ask, “Oh my god, X, what happened to your art project on the fence?” I’m going to shrug and attribute it to the impermanence of everything. For a few weeks, it was something to behold. The entropy resulting from complaining took its price.
Now, as I look out onto the fence I repaired out of my pocket and with my labor, I see an ugly board fence, looking out onto a dismal parking lot. I think it traps us rather than keeps others out, especially now that an expensive home is being built on the small lot between us and the trail cut-through from Gregg.
In my head, though? I can’t look at the fence without imagining it filled with color.
As places like that should be.
I’ll put up a single tile in the middle of the fence at some point, one which will read:
“…Site of recent memory’s largest personal art project. It’s gone, but color remains if you seek it. X”
The train horn sounded in the distance. A curtain of insects chirped and announced their presence. The surprisingly cool air enveloped me as I sat on the landing, my cat uncharacteristically sitting next to me so that I could scramble his ears with my fingers. A cup of coffee set precariously on the landing rail in front of me. Below me, a neighbor coughed as he sat in the chair facing the shadows and the dark parking lot. In front of him were the remains and carcass of the failed air conditioning that had been replaced. As the train passed, its horn was replaced by the sound of industrial trash trucks doing their daily rounds. You would think the urban sounds would be a distraction. They’re not. Though I sat motionless, already dressed for work, I wanted another minute or another hour or another day to remain there. Thinking, but motionless. I looked up into the clear sky and watched stars twinkle. My inertia of the moment was almost insurmountable.
Color. Magic. The universe inside the bottle lights reminded me.
The drug shed in the back corner of the area I’ve painstakingly cleared… A tenant, long gone to greener pastures, put it there. The years have not been kind to it. Once I found used syringes inside it, the impetus toward disposal only increased.
I gave people more than enough time to lock it, haul it away, or 4th-of-July the thing. (I carefully worded that due to FB’s ridiculous interpretation of jokes.)
This week, I accelerated the process of taking a few hundred screws out, fighting off an army of spiders, and compressing the supports and metal for disposal. I hope the neighbor doesn’t notice that the back of his pickup is full of discarded metal; or, if he does, that he can’t determine w-h-i-c-h butthead might have placed it there.
Reaching this point, I realized that I’ve managed to get to the level of ‘redneck gazebo.’ I’ll sell it as is for $5.67. Spiders included. At least the snakes have abandoned it.
If no offers are forthcoming, I’ll attempt to remove the top of it. It’s very heavy and though I’ve sprayed it repeatedly, the spiders seem to have gained superpowers by ingesting the professional-grade insecticides I’ve sprayed on them. I’m pretty sure one of the spiders was actually smoking a cigarette.
If you’re wondering if the chest in the picture holds anything valuable, the answer is ‘no.’ There were things of value in there. But the weather and people of dubious reputation ruined everything. This shed is an excellent example of entropy. And inattentive landlords.
I don’t know what day the urge to potentially crush myself under the rest will strike me. So act fast. I hope you like spiders.
If you climb a tree way before the sun rises, sometimes a magical moment happens. The dormant fireflies that believed their night of intermittent luminescence was finished… they will take flight as the jostling and vibration startles them into motion – especially if you shake your cell phone to cause it to flash. For anyone who has never thought of this or carefully ascended a tree in the dark, it’s one of those childhood moments that never fails to delight. And if it does ever fail to cause my lips to curl upward in a smile, I will climb to the very top with abandon and launch myself to the bottom.
The images from yesterday, the ones that reached back billions of years, they were beautiful. But there are things hidden in plain sight all around you. Sometimes you just have to look or be willing to do something different to see them. Close your eyes for a moment and then open them. There will be something fascinating around you. If you want there to be.
PS It’s pointless to caution me to be careful. Such advice is practical, but at my age I’ve learned that even the most cautious and careful people don’t have to look far to be besieged with calamity. The universe is not a fair place.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 