3.31 Safeway Truck

31 March 2020. Safeway Truck.

Man or car? But that's not really the choice. I was walking up Solano a little after 7pm--the clouds over the hills against a sunset sky, particularly beautiful--pink and gray and gold, spread gently against the evening blue... You can't not be grateful each time. And the street almost entirely empty, just like last night, and the night before. A few stragglers on the sidewalk, widely spaced, one at a time for the most part, except for an Asian family, parents and two small children, walking together and laughing. Felt as if they were brave and foolhardy at the same time--or that they knew something important, in a quotidian way. I'd seen them before--a group stands out...

Very few vehicles, but there in front of the apartment building on the corner of Ensenada (somehow a landmark--that dark corner at night) I see a familiar sight. The Safeway truck. My heart lifts--absurd, of course, to find happiness in a commercial vehicle. It's scrunched up to the curb, one wheel up on the concrete. At first I think it's just parked--and why here in front of the apartments--except that they're probably low rent. (Cycle of thoughts.) But then I see a guy in a hooded sweatshirt, closing the rear door and making his way around to the open door of cab.

I walk towards him, ask about the truck, the deliveries. At first he's ambiguous, but my attitude--good will, that is--gains his confidence. Their deliveries? Last week, way behind. A week out at times, undependable. "But they're hiring more people. All the stores, 4 or 5..." He expresses this in a very basic way--words not being his thing. (I think of the California public school system for an instant--how you provide for a young guy like this, but just a flash.) What I want to know, of course, is can I order groceries and actually get them delivered.

It's the pattern that matters--something known, something familiar. A comfort, even when your mind tells you, be open to change...

_____

I ask if people tip. (I've gone out without cash, though.) Half smile. Mostly not. I tell him, "When you come to my house, I'll give you something extra for sure." Answer, "Hey," (full smile, and very much in character), "what's your address...?!"

He knows I'm thanking him, too...

_____

Note: The truck is like an apparition. Maybe because it's relatively large for a neighborhood street. A little prehistoric. They delivered to me last summer when I needed the service for a couple of weeks. Would hear it arrive in the night, sound of the corrugated door being rolled up. Face of delivery guy as he appeared on the porch, 2-3 gray plastic Safeway bags in each hand...

3.30 Out of Africa

30 March 2020. Out of Africa.

Isak Dinesen—but it’s also B, of course, and Cinde as well. I see them all here. Or maybe that each of them appear as I make the drawing--each line its own kind of remembering. We know the shapes from what we’ve touched—or from what’s touched us. It works both ways. So that the first caress (too extreme a word, but it has face a root. Cara. We wonder at the sound…) To touch someone’s cheek, very lightly, hand in a palm, turned so that it’s with just the back of the fingers. Who would try to describe this, when?

Alongside is Lulu—out at the edge of the grass. On a farm in central Africa, below the Ngong Hills. Magical name. A coffee farm, high up on a plateau. She describes this beautifully, locates us, as she must have felt, looking out into the distance, the African air…

Lulu, a forest antelope (bushbuck in the book.) A small deer-like creature, so delicate and graceful that she’s accorded the rights of a princess. But somewhere all girls have this. A total grace…
____

Africa. The Rastafari love the word—gives meaning to all…

_____

We’re reading the book together. That is, C reads it to me, each evening now. Beautifully. It’s maybe her very favorite, from years ago. I know she feels close to Isak Dinesen—it’s a pleasure to see her this way, makes me wonder (marvel) at the connection…

Rebecca at the well…

3.29 Gil's Inside

29 March 2020. Gil's Inside.

Yesterday, a difficult day, for many reasons--all of them minor in the larger scheme. How to proceed? Do you pay attention to the fine-grained stream of e-mails on the pro's and con's of virus masks? Or how to properly wash vegetables and shopping bags? (These articles always assigned to a woman on the staff.) Or, turn to something--something what? Something beyond. Not to escape, but to remind oneself that we're here because of who we are. Such a loaded expression...

The small photo online showing Gil, the owner, and his wife. Well meaning people. I project, but it looks very much like he's a war vet who went into furniture refinishing. Good with his hands, that's the phrase. She's hugging him, from the side, arms around his middle. We've seen this many times before--a primate gesture, for sure.

You go inside, and the plethora of stuff is almost overwhelming. Everything chosen with an eye for the curious--along very particular lines. How people read the world. Above, for example--an Asian- style plate, with flowers and rings, set on Gil's handmade stand, nicely finished--maybe mahogany, again in a Chinese design. A kind of cartoon, in the best sense--because it's one-off and local, not a corporate production. Sitting on an old tray, original, and the tray on a worn table with rounded corners and a large dark bronze medallion in front. The elephants are alongside.

The temptation to draw them--because I love drawing elephants, yes, but also because they pull you in. Maybe it's inadvertent. But importantly, the drawing won't follow the rules. I don't really want to copy these soulless creatures, who now, in the reality of the drawing, with each new line, insist on becoming themselves...

____

A story here. I first met B in a ticket line in the downstairs of Zellerbach. 1971. I was there to get seats for my mother and a close friend (Yvette Crans, a pianist) who were visiting Berkeley together. Mozart. There in the parallel line was a beautiful young woman with dusky blond hair, wearing a trench coat. A yyoung assistant professor's wife, I imagined--all the good ones are taken... She turned around, and we looked at each other. She told me--years later--that my eyes were pouring forth light. I remember taking a packet of Rizla papers from my pocket, and with the Parker fountain pen, the one with blue ink, I made a drawing of an elephant. I gave it to her.

After she was gone, I found the drawing again, upstairs, in the top drawer of a small, well-worn jewelry box. It looks quite a bit like the little one above...

3.28 Gil's Furniture

28 March 2020. Gil's.

Two elephants, side by side, in an Albany shop window. One of those places I grew up with, so no wonder it feels so familiar. The intricate brickwork of the facade--a local tradesman, my guess--someone who enjoyed the possibilities of a limited repertoire. Wooden moldings, enameled many times over--currently a pale green, but you really don't notice this in the evening light. There's a lot of stuff in there--I used to think antiques, but I see that it's really a furniture repair. The elephants are in front--at least for now--and they've caught my eye on every walk. Additional light. Whoever placed them anticipated this, splayed slightly--they're made of bronze or brass, with a high polish, trunks raised in some kind of imagined elephant way--idealized into curves, but its the legs that are the least naturalistic--after all, how could a brass elephant truly represent their kind?

The time C and I were walking together at the San Diego Zoo. The elephants, organized into a show, moving in file, around and around in an open space near where they lived. Their cages, I mean. Visitors standing nearby, just outside the perimeter, children especially, the show hosted for them. You take this in all at once--first, the excitement because of the size of the animals, and their aliveness--but with trainers nearby--with their metal-tipped poles--the picture changes. And then the hobbling chains--not too prominent. (Am I misremembering this?) We stood to the side, happy and sad. More sad really, for there was nothing to be done. I watched one of the creatures draw near--we somehow recognized each other. I made a small wave...

C says the elephant knew--she could see it in his eye...

2.28 Redwood Tree

28 March 2020. Redwood Tree.

The house remains empty, but the tree has grown large, seen towering over the southeast fence (a bit of wattle tucked up against the concrete block of an old shed). The tree is huge--but then all redwoods are imposing. The top was crooked for a few years, took a turn to the left, but now it's righted itself and shades some of the sun each morning. We were worried about this at the time--just how much?--but in fact, the effect is pleasant, a variation in the light.

There were people there once, in the house--I think the family still owns the place. A mother alone with her rambunctious sons. I remember two of them crawling along the top of the fence here, years back--what boys will do--incommensurate. I was cast in the role of the old guy (then in my forties!)--or the enemy in any case--they had no idea what innate sympathy I had for their freedom. (I'm lying.) But not to be its unwanting recipient.

We have a lot of them today, unwanting recipients. Our cares and suspicions, if only out of an imagined necessity--because, really, you can't see the little buggers. 1/400th the thickness of a human hair. Now what does that mean?

The moon on an autumn night--coming up through the trees to the east. Succos time. A heavy golden medallion shining out from between the branches, you can almost see it lifting up.

No wonder we share mooncakes--and so much else...

3.27 Phoebe

27 April 2020. Phoebe.

A small bird with such a decisive name. Makes you want to say it more than once.  A fly-catcher, something C taught me--the narrow pointed bill, good for bugs on the wing. Not one of those grubby nut grinders, who earn their keep by foraging seeds--nor a worm-digger, like the robin. We do have robins, of course, and in the right season, the white-crowned sparrow. Tiny bush-tits, monochromatic chickadee. The color of the jay standing in for an entire pallette--that radiant blue...

One morning, many years ago, en route up into the Sierras to meet B and friends in the town of Sierraville. A small handmade house on one of the side streets. (But they were all side streets in Sierraville.) I'd left Berkeley at dawn, making good time, so that when I reached the foothills, the full sun was just coming through the oaks, filtering the light. California. I noticed a sign--Sutter's Mill, and decided to stop--nobody there--just the valley air, good smell of earth and trees...

History unfolding, even our own...


_____

Note: For the non-Californians, Sutter's Mill was the place where gold was first discovered, in 1848...

3.27 Solano (China Village)

27 March 2020. Solano (China Village).

Evening--or dusk, rather. setting out just after seven, the sun not yet down. I tuck a blue cotton bandana into my bag, along with the small bottle of water, reusable, and a vial of hand-cleaner gel. Supplies. And it is an adventure of sorts--the event of the day, these days--getting out of the house come evening. I've always loved the night-time walks, but C urges me to be careful--and after all, Solano is pretty much deserted at that later hour. A few cars, maybe moving a little faster than usual, all seemingly with purpose. The Safeway truck, backed into its slot (a strange moment of normalcy). Lights on inside the store, lot half-full. I always contemplate the forbidden land...

Here above we're farther down the street--I'm into my stride. Corner of China Village--the popular neighborhood restaurant that used to look so terribly inviting (back in late 2011) seen through the big windows, each table filled with people--a family sharing an ample platter of stir-fry, or so it seemed from just outside. Something delectable braised in brown sauce. They would sometimes turn and look--a glance at the stranger, but unperturbed--the food was too good, and the company, too (especially the Chinese families, where a meal together always seemed to be a social occasion, with much talk back and forth between their animated bites of food...)

You can see the shift, of course (a touch of O'Henry coming)--the room is empty, almost entirely dark. Tables set out with place-settings, but just one waiter--or maybe the owner's son, seated farther back inside, staring down at something, reading, or more likely, looking at his phone. The window says Open for Take-Out. That's what they all say, but we're only into the second week of this, and my mind goes to after--when all that corporate dough piles in, Chipotles to the far horizon...

But not to conclude on this grim note--the walk is too good. All that fresh air, the wind off the bay, a certain briskness. So engaging that ones troubles disappear--wait a minute, I don't have any troubles... (!)
_____

Back up the hill, a man on the sidewalk farther off, heading my way. White patch around his nose and mouth. As he gets closer, I see that its a moustache and beard, not a mask.  I remark on this. His jaunty smile: "Goatee!" Hey, we have something in common...

3.27 Garden

27 March 2020. A Garden.

All a-tangle, there's no way round it. So you plunge into the midst, regardless. Yes, regardless--observations and making sense, cares and concerns, thoughts, plans--the lists and wherefore's, whatnot's and endless yes's and no's. Let's go more with the yes's, though--they're so bountiful--and so much more fun...

The yard so beautiful this morning--and I do say yard, although garden takes us back, back to the beginning of time, when a dear soul must have set the Mexican Pine into the earth as a small tree. There's no separate word, I think--not sprout or shrub, or shoot (although she did love that word in particular--using it often, the way something shoots up...as if the meaning were right there in the sound, gatherered in with the lips, then let go, all one burst... Like (of course) life itself...

3.25 Deer with Plum Branch

25 March 2020. Deer with Plum Branch.

The word for today--frescor. Popping up on the screen in the morning--I always forget they'll be there. Freshness. A reminder. Chosen by some anonymous host from the dictionary world, to educate. Or entertain. Or spread around at least. But there's too much spreading around--the tiny invisible not-quite-alive bits of matter that can carry us all away... The song came before, of course. They always do. Rastaman Chant. A dream of Zion...

One bright morning, when my work is over
Man will fly away home...

Is it better that Zion remain a dream? Perhaps. Wrote to Duffy, the neighbor, "my salvation home," not knowing quite what I meant. Always best--when the meaning comes before the sense. Describing a cherished garden in San Diego. Then C told me, just last night, Adam and Gen--the neighbors there--have it. We knew instantly what that meant. (Gen returning a week ago on a flight from Spain... )

But in the next moment? What feelings? A weight, just beginning--a new layer in the story...
_____

The deer's back legs are remarkably strong. No wonder they can leap as they do. To get this right you'd have to go running in a field...
____

Afterwards she read to me, from Out of Africa. Our beautiful time. The ornery old Dane who lived his last months on the farm. Dusk, the Scottish Deer Hound. Lulu, the baby forest antelope. And all the beautiful descriptions of Kamante. His letter, much after. "We all know you remember us..."

Which in Africa means, of course, "We all remember you...

3.24 Black Tea Window

24 March 2020. Black Tea Window.

Certainties and uncertainties. Sometimes it feels as if I make the drawing just so I can write. A way of talking with someone, grounded a bit by the focus of the lines and tones. So that it's not just words. Which make so much sense and then simply vanish. Memories. As of the day when Kory came over, eight years ago--she and M and I sat on the porch steps. I'd found a note in B's chair-side bookshelves--Kory's presence always leading to the revelatory, "Speak now or forever hold your peace." I'm probably mis-remembering--one of my specialties (but sometimes a little of the revelatory as well). I found later that it came from Yates, one of his plays--the besieged king, confronting his attacker at sword point, ready to run him through. Asking for an acknowledgement--or maybe a confession? But it's only after the final brutal act that he finds the invader to be his own son...

I don't think that's how she read it, though. Maybe even not Yeats himself. Yes, it's literally true. The king murders his son. But the key is in the speaking...

There's a truly beautiful essay by Gary Snyder, about why the wild creatures come down to the campsites of the human beings (this in the old days)--even knowing that they'll be sacrificed. That is, they'll be sacrificing themselves. Foodstuff, after all. (He picks out the bear and the deer, the salmon...) What they love are the human voices--the stories--and even more, the sound of people's songs.

For this to give your life, yes...
_____

Another story, from a film seen many years back. The Siberian tribespeople who would make a long annual migration, leading their animals to new pastures, then returning. Over a great distance, with difficult rivers in between. This took place in the fall, when the waters were frigid--and the older people were not always able to make the crossing. How did they know? They knew. Choosing instead to sit on the edge of the near bank, alone,  as their families and horses and cattle crossed to the other side...
____

I wanted to add, twice now, the phrase, But never for capital. A cri de coeur...


____

Note: I did mis-remember. The actual line from Yeats--(in Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea): "Speak before thy breath is done." Mis-quotes, of course, are significant--so I leave the original in place.

3.23 Gasmask and Trees

23 February 2020. Gasmask and Trees. Graphite on paper.

The gas masks showed up as I was hunting for images of the Turoń. Life-protecting, but lethal in their own way. As always with Soviet-era production, the materials and assembly were astoundingly crude--so basic and direct, the mind of the military engineer unveiled--each part connecting to the next in the most literal way. You feel you know everything about how they work, just by the way they look. And, because of this directness, they could be manufactured in great number.

Like the story of the T-34, the Soviet tank that won the war. Produced en masse in makeshift factories behind the Eastern front--again, with the most basic production requirements--crude but remarkably strong, like so much else that came out of the Soviet effort. They rolled west by the thousand.

A German battle report: "He (the T-34) drives through our line like an impregnable prehistoric monster..."
_____

But today? That haunting quality is still there, in part from the passage of time. As with  everything else from another era--we become aware of its aura. (Walter Benjamin's definition-- the qualities of an original at a certain distance.)
_____

And the trees? A respite, no doubt--our backyard, bushy and overgrown, the leaning trunk of the olive, seeking sunlight, or the dense green ivy along the fence. And one of the neighborhood deer just came into view--always at the right moment. I know they know...

3.22 Turoń

22 March 2020, Turoń.

Yes, they're supposed to be scary. The Turoń masks from Poland--not masks to be worn (as in N-95) but rather figures or effigies--tur being the Polish word for aurochs (an ancestor of the bull)--so, wild animal-headed apparition, blunt and hairy--and (most important) mis-formed. The way the parts don't quite fit together in the details--a clump of matted fur bunched up against a slab of molded paper pulp--the horns being real (various sources) as well as their position at the back crest of the skull--and the ears and animal nostrils, all showing an intimate knowledge of the rural world. The overall form surprisingly coherent, however--that's why they're tricky to draw. More insane donkey than crocodile (what makes this so?) Elegant, even. The elegance deriving from an astute recognition of reality. Like the hussar riders with their wind-blown banshee harnesses. High up over their heads. Producing a screaming sound as they'd charge the Ottoman troops.

I read somewhere that the purpose of these masks was to frighten away winter. On first glance, seems like it might work. Other forces as well...
_____

Czeslaw Milosz on his home country of Lithuania. How every stream and tree had its own resident spirit--one knew them all--so that the landscape was populated with familiarity. When he came to the States, living in California and teaching at Berkeley--he found the landscape of the Sierra Nevada deeply frightening. Because (to Milosz, at least) it was so totally unknown...
_____

My father, quoting Lenin: "Freedom is the recognition of necessity." Sometimes a scary thought...

3.22 Goose at the Fountain

22 March 2020. Goose at the Fountain. Graphite on paper.

Well, his head's a little big--but Goose is a strong young creature, and he needs to display his strength. More extended, too--that slinky-across-the-veld look, like a young lion on the prowl. Cheetah or panther, more like it. Which makes him distinctive--like the black shading at the end of his tail. Tell-tale as well.

It's not really a fountain--rather a terra cotta planter tray set on a nice rectangular stack of old bricks. They've teetered a bit over the years, so there's a plum branch twig inserted underneath, at the far side, to maintain the horizontal. And to balance as well--has to be sturdy enough for the big crows when they fly in. (Quite a ruckus over the fence this morning, higher up in the tree. Domestic issues, no doubt.)

These things all seem to continue. and how not? The world (the earth) being continuous, in its own way. Not that we small creatures understand this perfectly. With our internets and our wars--but every once in a while there's an embrace, a tender touch to the cheek--a smile...
_____

Towhees, too, and flocks of sparrows. Three in the bathtub all at once. And the chickadee. Oregon Junco, and the mighty jay. Two of them, together sometimes...

Phoebe as well...


_____

Note:  Goose being the neighbor family's cat--Duffy and Carlos and their two young daughters. Goose has claimed the backyard on my side of the fence as part of his domain...

3.20 Wanderer and Mask

20 March 2020. Wanderer and Mask.

Well, it's me, at least in some sense, on one of the night walks on Solano. A great pleasure--I'm hoping they continue unabated. Or at least unregulated. (Other than 6 feet of distance--which actually adds an element of mysterious self-awareness.) On the right, my Teva's and socks--the outdoor pair, well-worn. And the socks--from REI, with their white REI letters too prominent, always staring back at me, so I turn them inside out to diffuse the effect.

The staff goes way back. I think I first started drawing them in the Analects. Something B once said about the powerful effect of two parallel lines. One of her astute observations--like paying attention to the expressive line of the mouth--the line between the lips. One remembers these things...

There's more, though--through my own associatios with the branch--as in the branch of Jesse. Also comes with a powerful meaning, but this from scripture--the weight of the transmission--that we sense and value it...

Like the three sparrows just now, all together in the terracotta tray there outside under the plum tree. Two of them splashing and happy. The third poised on the rim, watching, ready to join in...


The mask--also from way back. I almost hesitate to put words on it. These things being powerful, too. Maybe the etching I made at Reed, from reading Paradise Lost. A gnarled imaged of God sitting there on his throne--I made things slightly grotesque in those days. (Why?) And the other figures--Adam and Eve, no doubt. But Lucifer? Was he there too?

The source just now was a Hungarian folk image--thinking of the new neighbors down the block, John and Csilla. I knew her name was Hungarian--but she's been here since she was a young child. Their little boy, Almos,  in temporary protective headgear. The three of them--parents side by side, the child on the steps alongside, there together on their porch. As things should be...


So natural--but in all the years I don't think I'd ever seen anyone standing there before...

3.20 Dad's Mallet

20 March 2020. Dad's Mallet (drawing itself from 14 March).

>
My father's strength--I think that's the point here. But also my love for him. The way he found life beautiful and important. Always with a certain Oscar spirit--a child could depend on this. Maybe only the times when business at Walters was unsettled, and he'd jiggle the change in his pocket, which made me wish dearly for the old ways...

He carved this mallet at the bench in the Oceanside garage. Something necessary--something to work with--a tool for his sculpture. Self-evident, that. But what's hidden here is the living branch--or rather, what's revealed. You see it in the way he handled the joint--allowing for the handle on one side (following the natural form of the wood) and the truncated mallet head on the other.
____

Last night, on Solano, at the intersection at Masonic--that no-man's land where the Bart tracks run above. There's Doug, across the way, standing in his hooded greatcoat, next to piled shopping cart, under the dry cleaner's street lamp, shaping something with a hammer. Street absolutely empty. I hear each blow.

Creators all. May we work in health and peace...

3.19 Safeway 9pm

19 March 2020. Safeway by Night.

It's shocking, how much we waste--and how differently I think about this--day to day now, even around the house--when the use of something is tempered by the uneasy realization that soon there could be a limit to the supply. How much we take for granted, that is. In the interest of ease, of ongoingness--the efficiencies that allow for a semi-well-oiled machine of daily life to unfold against its theatrical backdrop of forever..

Not to make this overly apocalyptic. The six bags of Sumatra whole bean coffee did arrive. Is this hording? What's the worst I couldn't face--no decent coffee in the morning? That essential part of the ritual, gone? And yet it might be...

Last night, heading back up Solano, a bit after 9pm, just three or four cars in the Safeway lot. A surprise--maybe a good time to go in, non-existent lines? Reduced contact? I walk towards the doors, just one set open now--peer inside. That familiar ark of not-quite-so-wholesomeness--but part of the life, regardless. All the way back to Oceanside, when I was a boy--and the first Safeway store opened, to the Dubow family's great excitement. The beginning of unendingness. Must have been 1954, when we first moved to North County. The Korean War still in the air--and WWII before. So that these events (at least to my parents) must have felt like part of a new beginning. An uplift. Things the way you hoped they'd be...
____

A story made the rounds (my mother must have told it, with a raised eyebrow and one of her sly smiles) that an enterprising Oceanside hooker had parked her U-Haul trailer there in the newly-available lot--doing business with young Marines. Another new beginning...

But yesterday evening, it was just the strangely beautiful blond girl--the clerk with the long, fine-spun white-gold hair, which she always keeps combed and impeccably straight, all the way down her back. Whenever I'd see her it felt as if even in weighing vegetables she might get it tangled--but this never seemed to happen...

She's a manager now, with that same blank, on-the-edge-of-dissatisfied expression. An unending background-level consternation. I've tried to say hello over the years, many times, but I think it's the very blankness that gets her through.

Tonight the store is already closed. New schedule for this impossible new time. And now, with one other clerk, she's there alone, at one of the registers, closing up...

___

You want to be sympathetic here--a vignette carries the experience of life,  after all. But these feelings have so much to do with noticing how we all live--in ways we could change. That in itself being positive... a form of hope...

3.17 Solano, Night

18 March 2020. Doug the Artisan-Man at the Yarn Store Window on Solano, Night.

After 9 o'clock, on the first night of Shelter in Place. (These pretend-tender names.) The street is largely empty, although there near the Chinese place is a familiar foursome--Alesia and David and Michel and Gabe, walking towards me, four in a block, almost in formation. Parents in front, the two sons behind. I'd encountered them the night before, just three...

Farther along, I see a figure standing in front of a shop window. It's Doug, the artisan-man, who sits during the day with pliers and wire and tin-snips, bits of aluminum can, folded soda bottles, dissected and reassembled into spinners, windmills, zig-zag whirly-gigs—all then mounted on straws or sticks of wood, and attached to lamp posts, signs, nearby trees.

Always alone, and a little mad, he appeared here on Solano maybe seven years ago, a presence on the street. Red children’s wagon someone gave him to haul his gear, piles of cardboard and black pastic bags, somewhere his materials and tools. I always made some kind of acknowledgment--we're both artists, after all, but his life, so different. Hard to fathom. He needed a regular bathroom once, asked me to help. I was sure the copy store would agree, but to my surprise, the manager (also a  friend)  immediately said no. "Insurance issues..." This was painful—I remember that he took on an aggressive tone (maybe even with himself) to make it stick. Out of character…

But last night we were all out of character. Cold (unusually so for March), and a certain grimness in the air—no one quite knowing where this virus thing will spread, or how...

I passed in silence, this time--but saw Doug again the next night, too. Near the bushes next to Church on the Corner. This time I turned back and immediately asked, Can you use a twenty? To repair the previous night's passing. Or maybe to repair everything. And unlike himself, he stood there, looking down towards the sidewalk from out of his huge hooded jacket, and simply held out a hand. I saw his palm and fingers, soiled, probably cold, too, even if he's more used to this life on the street. (Can anyone really be used to it?) I gingerly placed the bill in his palm--all this precarious social distancing... And I was afraid.That troubled me.

I turned to walk on, but then heard him say something. (In encounters past he would always ask if I wanted a token of his craft.) Nevertheless I waved him off--again feeling bad about it—realizing in almost in the same moment that his words were an attempt at connection... No doubt what he really needed most...

3.15 Transition

The drawings and writings above continue the work begun on a previous blogsite--Town  which I'll leave as it stands--just the way each of the posts evolved, the bus rides and responses--up until the changes that have come upon us with the coronavirus. (I write this on 20 March 2020.) The shift there begins with the last four posts... Town 
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To be clear--here are links to my  three current blogsites, running in parallel:

* Town. The bus drawings (January-March 10). Stands complete as is.
* Time and Around. Drawings relating to this new time we're in. After mid-March 2020.
* Rastaman Chant. Drawings on Rastafari themes, ongoing.