Sometimes in the pre-dawn twilight, the neighbor tells me, you can spot the coyotes so close you can follow them. They prance right down the middle of the residential streets, weaving between the BMWs, Audis, Mercedes and Volvos on their way back to the green zone by the 101.
Coyotes in the city, making their home among the asphalt and cement, hunting careless housecats. It seems like every week the dog and I find a new sign posted somewhere among the picket white fences and manicured lawns: “Coyote” with a date, or an arrow.
And yet…
After prancing through the remnants of a birthday party in the park: the discarded French fries, the crumbles of birthday cake, the grouchy and overfed kids, the stack of presents, the dog and I find the bunnies again. They’re still living by the banks of the LA River, weeks later, growing in equal measure both plumper and more brave.
Their homeless keepers are still attentive, albeit displaced: they and their sleeping bags are gone from the park, moved elsewhere. As we cross the Moorpark street bridge we find them again, or perhaps anew: an encampment of shopping carts, discarded furniture, a mattress covered with a couple of dirty blankets in the dirt next to Moorpark. And ther
e’s even a television: it’s been there for days, unplugged yet you can tell it's still waiting to watched, even in the dirt.
Perhaps they have their own code of streetwise respect, the coyotes who slumber by the freeway and the people who make their home right here in the dirt. They share the same hours of waking and hiding; they’ve adapted and learned what is expendable, disposable. And both of them, these people and the coyotes, may even hide among the same green zone shadows when they’re not prowling the neighborhood for scraps.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
the shared green zone
Saturday, October 21, 2006
hemorrhoids and other near-fatal conditions
“So where’s your car today?” My lunch companion asks.
I sigh. “My mom needed it to take my 91-year-old grandmother to the doctor.”
Slightly quizzical look. “And your mom’s car?”
“My dad needed it to take the visiting Austrians on a road trip.”
“Oh.”
“My grandmother has hemorrhoids,” I explain. “She’s sure they’re killing her.”
Laughter.
“I think deep down my she's really just pissed off about the Austrians,” I say, deadpan. "My grandmother's certain that my dad is neglecting her because he’s busy driving them around the country rather than staying home to attend to her hemorrhoids.”
Doubled-over uncontrollable laughter
“It’s better than last year and the foot fungus. She was feeling particularly abandoned and attention-starved then because my parents were in Europe, so I was the one who had to take the hospital when she was convinced that athlete’s foot was about to do her in. She’s relentless.”
He falls out of his chair. Literally.
There’s one of them in every family, I guess. Unfortunately, in my family there seem to be more than I can count…
Sunday, October 15, 2006
attributes of invisibility
Because he thinks no one is looking…
I’m tired, hungry, and dinner lies a whole hillside and a half away.
I change the radio station for the fifteenth time in ten minutes; nothing suits my mood, and I've heard that same ad now at least five times. I fidget in my seat, inch forward up the hill, then come to a total stop behind the line of brilliant red brake lights that punctuate the twilight gray.
I squirm again. In the Lexus next to me, I notice the driver flicking a cigarette lighter several times. He leans over the steering wheel slightly and takes an enormous hit from a bong.
Or did I see that right?
Yes, I did.
Does he think that the windshield and traffic and rain grant him actual invisibility? Or is he just callous, or stupid, or both?
The Lexus driver sets the bong on the passenger seat, then turns to look at me. He’s dressed professionally, at least from what I can see; his hair is neat and he's well shaven. His smile is sly, direct, desperate.
At the next break in the traffic, he speeds ahead and cuts me off.
The middle-aged couple sits on the picnic bench in the park. The man wears a dramatic black felt hat with a turquoise sash, and a black suit, long greasy blond hair spilling out along the collar. The weathered woman in a long skirt with the brightly colored cloth over her head nods at him from across the table. The white boom box on the table between them is silent; on other days they blast classical music at the highest of decibles.
The man and the woman lean in close to each other as I pass; they exchange a few words. The woman leans back and breaks into a bright smile.
From a distance, they could be just another couple overdressed for a midafternoon picnic beside the LA River. If only the shopping carts full of their belongings and the brightly colored tatters of a child’s sleeping bag over her shoulders didn’t give them away.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
follicle nostalgia
My high school yearbooks recently found their way back into my life.
They're damn heavy. That was my first thought when they showed up in a paper bag from REI.
The books had taken a hiatus from my closet about this time last year. In the middle of a somewhat innocent conversation, I discovered that a friend was dating someone I actually knew, a guy who had been in my high school graduating class. It turns out that this guy now shaves his head, and has been doing this for years. In fact he seems to have buried any and all photos which show him with hair.
“You still have your yearbooks!” she squealed with excitement, and she’s not normally a squealer, so this was big. “And you even know where they are. That’s impressive.”
Not really. A few years ago, my mom was cleaning out all the closets in her house and decided that every piece of evidence from my childhood had to be evacuated from her house. Immediately. Not only do I have yearbooks, but art projects from second grade, out of focus photos with thumbs in the corners from long-forgotten family vacations, and an “all about me” journal/book I wrote for a 6th grade English class.
My friend arranged to come over to my apartment for a yearbook viewing. And she found what she was seeking: photos of her guy with hair, big hair and lots of it; it was the 1980s after all.
After laughing quite hard, my friend asked to borrow my yearbooks so that she could show the guy the photos and one-up-on him in the whole “I’ve seen your true follicle display” department. Since the yearbooks hadn't been opened in years and were only occupying valuable real estate in the back of my closet, I said, "Why not?" and lent them to her.
Flash forward to my 20th high school reunion early last month: I decided to go, despite my general non-reunion disposition. Of course, one of the first people I saw there was the the guy.
“How dare you!” he greeted me. Most everyone else started with something more polite like, “Oh. Wow. You. How’ve you been for the last 20 years?” Or, "You look great" (unconvincing, but still nice), or at the very least, "Well, isn't this weird?"
“How dare you!” the guy repeated.
I stared at him, not quite remembering the yearbook link.
“I mean you had every single yearbook. Every one. Who keeps every yearbook?”
They were expensive, I thought.
“And then who dares to show them to other people?” the guy asked.
I shrugged. We all looked bad. As I’ve said: it was the 1980s.
“I had those damn socks pulled all the way up to my knees,” the guy continued; he was referring to the track team photo.
“Sorry,” I said; it was the best I could come up with on the spot. “I didn’t realize…”
“I’m going to get you.” The guy wagged his finger at me. “I don’t know how, I don’t know where, but I will. When you least expect it, I’m going to embarrass you.”
And then the guy turned and ignored me in order to schmooze with some other long lost and now follicly challenged classmates who probably also wore athletic knee socks back in the day. And I wondered: what makes him think he's so special?
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
rabbit keeper revealed
The dog and I spot her refilling the water dish alongside the LA River. Even from a distance it’s obvious that her clothes are worn and in need of washing.
She lingers over the water dish, rinsing it several times before refilling the bottle. Then she pauses to consider the food: the dish overflows with cabbage leaves and the ends of carrots. The woman pauses for a moment to observe the stillness of this bright morning, not even a breeze. She shrugs then turns to walk along the edge of the concrete embankment, toward the park where bags of anonymous belongings poke out from the bushes and a solitary body lies still in his sleeping bag despite the mid-morning sun.
And the bunnies?
“She’s just fattening them up for the coyotes.”
Perhaps. But they’re still better cared for than she.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
An irrational constant and a proposal
It turns out that a good friend of mine is an Ellis Paul groupie. Which was something I didn’t really know about her until Ellis Paul’s latest tour came to town (or perhaps I did know this somewhere in the back of my head, I just didn’t process it very well since I didn’t really know who Ellis Paul was).
About a month ago when she asked whether I was interested in seeing him (Ellis Paul) at McCabe’s Guitar Shop – she was organizing a small group of friends, getting the tickets, taking care of all the details, all I have to do is show up -- I said, “Sure.” Which is often my response to these things. Why not? McCabe’s is a great place, although I've never seen a concert there, I have been meaning to, for years. So what that I’ve never heard of the musician? That makes the whole thing even better, potentially. Often I discover music I love this way, by going to concerts with friends even when I don't know who's actually playing. Or I discover great stories (of awful bands). Or, sometimes, I get both in one evening.
I’ll admit it was at bit embarrassing when I couldn’t tell people who was actually giving the performance to which I had indirectly bought a ticket. “Uh…something at McCabes.” Note to self: next time this occurs, do try to at least recall the name of the band/musician you signed up to hear before standing in line outside the door.
Because my friend is a groupie, we have to get to McCabe’s a full hour before the concert starts. “To get a good seat” she explains. “You don’t understand these groupies. They line up really early.”
An hour early? To see a singer-songwriter/folk musician? In
It turns out she’s right about this (she’s the groupie; I don’t know why I ever questioned her wisdom on these things). I am the first of our group to arrive, 50 minutes before the show, and there’s already a substantial line on the sidewalk outside. So, I stake out a spot and join the other groupies, an eclectic but seemingly mild-mannered and unpretentious enough bunch (this is folk music after all).
While I stake out a spot for my friends to arrive, I start chatting with the guy next to me in line who is holding a spot for himself +3. He’s wearing shorts, and I notice he has a “π” tattoo on the inside of his shin.
“Are you a mathematician?” I ask him.
“Sort of,” he says. “How’d you know?”
“You have a π tattooed on your shin.”
He glances down at his shin, as if checking to see that the tattoo is still there. “You’re quite observant.”
“Unless it’s some fraternity thing from college,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No, no. Not a frat thing, although I do get that a lot.”
“Is it about the movie? Are you into kaballah? Is that it?”
“That was a weird movie,” he says. “No, that’s not it.”
“So what’s the deal?” I can be quite perserverent when I want to be. “Why the π?”
Fortunately he’s friendly. All these Ellis Paul groupies really do seem quite friendly.
It’s a bit of a long story, he explains, and then proceeds to give me a somewhat condensed version: π is a constant. No matter how big the circle, π doesn’t change and it’s always a part of the area, the circumference. But the number π also has another interesting quality: it’s an irrational number.
“So, at the same time it’s both constant and irrational,” he says. “Sort of like life.”
Just then my friend arrives and rescues the tattooed groupie from any further inquisition (at least on my part) about his chosen body art.
The concert is very good, fun and inspired, and there is something really wonderful about hearing music in a room where guitars and banjos dangle on every free inch of wall space. At one point in the concert, Ellis Paul is in the middle of his guitar-tuning introduction for a song called “The Speed of Trees” when he stops tuning his guitar and says, “Larry? Is Larry here?”
He looks out into the audience. We’re dark and he’s staring into a spotlight. “Larry?” he asks again.
“This has happened to me like 4 or 5 times,” Ellis sighs and sets down his guitar. “This guy named Larry keeps calling me to tell me that he wants to propose to his girlfriend during one of my shows and…”
“Hey Ellis!” A voice from the back row shouts. “It’s me. Larry. I’m here. Standing up in the back row!”
A pregnant pause.
“I’m so glad,” Ellis says. “But I think I just spoiled your surprise.”
Larry doesn’t seem to mind. The lights come up and we can all see Larry.
“So, okay, Larry,” Ellis says. “Here you go.”
“In my fantasy of this moment,” Larry says, “I’m up on stage with you.”
“Fine,” Ellis says. “Come on up.”
Larry gets on stage, stands at the microphone. “I’m really nervous,” he tells the whole crowd. “I’m three days sober, too.”
He tells us all, this audience of now-intimate strangers, that in their three years together he and his girlfriend have “lived a lifetime.” And a new lifetime is about to start, he says and asks his girlfriend to come up on the stage; talk about pressure.
It turns out the “new lifetime” isn’t metaphorical: she’s hugely pregnant. The finacee-to-be waddles onto the stage, he gets on his knee, they share a sweet, un-microphoned moment to seal the deal and then, smiling so broadly that they don’t need the house lights to illuminate their path back, they find their way back to their seats among cheers from all the Ellis Paul fans.
Constantly irrational: a proposal accepted.
