4.30 Mountain Roads

30 April 2020. Mountain Roads.

So much borrowed, inevitably--borrowed and remembered. And I wanted the drawing to be more open, maybe the spontaneous feel of Gil's Inside. But these things only happen when necessary. Is that so? Doubts, as usual. The warm yellow at the bottom right, for example. That's how the light works in this room--which is in itself a kind of truth. So let it be? Or push for a purer white? And then C tells me (not knowing the dilemma) that the yellow cast is one of the things she likes...

A line from years ago: Roads twisted like sheep's guts. I can remember B quoting it, with great focus--like one of the talismans. And that was before David Hinton--when these glancing visions came to us through the archaic lines of Ezra Pound.

I see that Elliot Weinberger has put them side by side, though--Li Po's Night Thoughts in each of their versions. Yes, let the reader decide.

Neither being impossibly true to the world...

4.30 The Eucalyptus

30 April 2020. The Eucalyptus.

That stretch of sidewalk passing the Flowerland nursery--a photo from before shows the gates spread wide open, people inside, wandering about in the sunshine, very inviting. Such a contrast to the situation today, when it's closed up, just the sign, with a message about no winter lasting forever. And yet with the season about to become May, it seems true.

But we're in a new time, and the contradictions between what we feel and what we know are going to be a part of it.

This drawing from last night. I'd come back home, washed up after dinner, gave the plants on the porch their water, swept a little, even. Then a long talk with C--everything that had happened with Odette. Dear sweet Odette, 14 good years in a Leucadia garden. They buried her next to Chauncey--near the fence, in back. Señor Ramón dug the place for her--so carefully and cleanly, C said--and they'd laid her in the ground while C was inside for a bit...

All the events we shared--even my dropping her way back when--Odette was still a puppy--not quite ready for that, was it an accident or a new game? But we all survived, and the story became a part of our song...

_____

The eucalyptus is a large tree--one of the four that were planted in front of the nursery half a century ago. A massive trunk--you feel the weight of it, the tree's bulk--like some animistic presence. California style, of course--something that feels like it belongs here, on this beautiful dry coast. Even if they were brought in from Australia--immigrants like the rest of us.

Actually, I am a native (people like to say that, it seems). Mercy Hospital in San Diego, on the bluffs in Hillcrest, 1945. The neighborhood always feels familiar when C and I visit. But when I look for the corner with the Ace Drugstore, it's not to be found. From childhood, a memory of the long drugstore counter inside...

___

Note: It occurs to me this morning that I could have put Odette in the drawing, on the walk next to the tree...

4.27 Belmont Three

27 April 2020. Belmont Three.

I saw them again tonight, making their way up the sidewalk, just past Flowerland, passing behind the row of giant eucalyptus. That stretch is a little broken up—the trees must be a century old, and their roots have lifted the sidewalk, which has been adjusted to accommodate their girth. Recognized the three of them from the evening before, at the very bottom of the Solano—also a dark stretch, in front of the windows of the fish place—one of the many restaurants that remain closed. A notice pinned up inside the glass, alerting customers—mostly older folks—of the change. Signed with an Iranian name. The captain’s table motif—ship’s wheel and anchor—looking a little out of place even in the best of times—whereas now it’s only a gloomy run of glass, all dark inside.

They’re walking somewhat slowly, and the taller man has a slight wobble—the soles of his shoes flop into view at every few steps—and I notice the color red for some reason. Didn’t think about this at the time, but I see later that the detail has registered. The woman has a narrower presence—more agile as she stays in pace with her companion, the man with bent shoulders, who’s wearing a sports cap and has  a determined look—in the drawing at least.

I’m not sure there’s an analogy here. Seems they should be like something—play a role in a some larger story, except that I can’t quite remember what it is. More Zola than Flaubert, in any  case—but American—so let's say Theodore Drieser, or Bernard Malamud. Drieser would have made them types—and that doesn’t seem to be true, they’re quite individual. Malamud would have empathized—but here there’s no need—maybe it’s as if each of the three carries the shadow of an elaborate  previous life—the time from before whatever fates cast them together like this, walking slowly up the Solano hill.

I realize later they may well live in the  “senior” apartments on the other side of San Pablo. Known as Belmont Village.  A whole building with tenants like this—all of them people with stories from before…

_____



Note on Belmont Village. Pretty funny that I’m writing about this place. But in part it’s a state of mind. Starting with the word “senior”—descriptive in the literal sense, but at the same time dismissive (as a category) while feinting sympathy. Just like the word “village”… Maybe Belmont Post-Industrial Arms…

I should point out that I did receive  an advertising postcard when the place opened, in 2017… And the shaky lines in the drawing don’t help. However, they do make my style pretty much inimitable…

4.27 The 18

27 April 2020. The 18.

I don't now why this should be so exciting--clearly a result of my long apprenticeship as a bus rider--to no avail, I'm afraid. Or rather, not right now. It seemed to be working so perfectly--a ride from Solano to downtown, over to the Y for a swim, and then the ride back, drawing both ways--the chance encounters, renewed acquaintanceships. By implication, of course--having drawn the same riders sometimes more than once. So that when I see the woman with the square-box pull cart, fine features set in a leathery face, with one shock of blond-gray hair poking up from the side of her cap--it's as if I've met an old friend, but now she's trudging up an empty Solano in the dusk. Her home perhaps more than I realized.

As when last night, C read me a new paragraph from Isak Dinesen--a parable of sorts. Christ returned to earth, in a noisy gathering with his disciples--he turns to Peter and suggests they step outside, maybe a walk. But to where, Peter asks.We'll start at the Praetorium, then up that hill to Cavalry...

_____

Only here it's the frozen yogurt shop, now barely re-opened. Still only a very few people--they wait outside while the father steps up to the doorway to order, sitting later as a family, masks pulled down for the moment, lost in the contemplation of each spoonful...

Would this be a variety of religious experience? English spiritualists on the bluffs of the Pacific...?
Or simply an evening in Albany, in late April, heightened by the empty street...

4.26 An Open Patch

26 April 2020. An Open Patch.

Looks a bit like Hansel and Gretel, except that we're sandwiched in between the Thairapeutics Hair Salon and a CVS. One of those older neighborhood houses, set well back on its lot, with a luxurious garden--especially the tall ferns (what variety?) growing out from under the eaves. I have no idea what the place is used for--there's a walkway with a wooden gazebo, but it's easily outdone by the white wall and aqua blue awning of the beauty parlor alongside. A wooden bench in front softens the effect a little--and there's a bench in front of the CVS, too. Some of the street  denizens make use of it. I was walking by late one evening last week, and I didn't even pick out the seated figure--completely still, head turned sharply to side, almost to the wall--as if he were contemplating something stark and crucial--or maybe it's that those were his own qualities--a lost viking, thin, somewhat ragged, without ship or sword or shield...

Across the way, the diminutive Egyptian man who runs the wine cafe--Enoteca Medterraneo--also a reflection of a distinct personality. Everything about the place unique and personal, as if he'd opened up his living room to guests from the street. He bowed once when I walked past, nodding his head. A proprietor in the old fashioned sense--Fustat, or the Trastevere--as if he'd been here forever...

Maybe a drawing--he's making go of it during this endless Open for Take Out time. But you wonder just what someone might order--there seem to be ordoeuvres served on small plates--I imagine olives, and smoky varieties of spiced eggplant--but such things are best enjoyed in situ at one of the tiny tables, with monsieur in attendance, white apron around his waist...

___

Wrong again--Egypt was my projection. Maybe it was the name of the neighborhood, Fustat--or the fact that Jashmied Basseri so much resembles my Uncle Howard, whose Russian Jewish face could look like anywhere in the world. In any case, Jashmied was born in Iran--to a Persian Jewish family, where he enjoyed cooking even as a boyy. I read that his first employment here in the States was at a Howard Johnson's in New York. Adding certainly another layer to the mysteries of his establishment...

4.25 Martinez Marina II (for Ethan)

 

25 April 2020. Martinez Marina II (for Ethan)

What is the portly Chinese sage doing there with grandma, at the edge of the bay, near the Martinez Marina? It’s a blustery afternoon late in the fall of 1977. We’d made one of our excursions, bag of bread scraps in hand, heading out to feed the ducks. How did we know there'd be ducks? Well, there always were ducks. And right there, swimming around in the shallow water at the edge of the boat landing. Something particularly inviting about the place—just far enough away to feel different, which it was—after a long hour’s drive up through Tilden, down Wildcat Canyon, and then past the Briones Reservoir and right on Alhambra Valley Road, passing the old pear orchard en route. Now that I remember it, getting there was half the fun—those names remain a part of me…

And so, Ethan Alexander will be turning four. It’s happening as we speak. I tried to explain this to one of Lydia’s great grand-daughters (she’s wandering in back just now, nibbling on some fresh shoots.) But no use—she doesn’t understand time the way we do. After all, a little tiny baby, rocked by his mother, here in the kitchen on Miramar. We all sat there together—special things spread out on the small painting table. I think we shared some guacamole—Saba probably explained how the recipe came from his father. And Ariella was a fan of the Prosecco. That made Saba especially happy—no standing on ceremony as to who’d supervised the growing and picking of the grapes. After all, there’s really only one season in this long year of ours, and it’s already filled with such marvelous things…!

Like the ducks and deer and snakes and geese, getting along together as they do…

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

4.25 Martinez Marina I

25 April 2020. Martinez Marina I 

But what is this portly Chinese sage doing with grandma at the Martinez Marina? Well, it's a filtered memory--that is, all the elements are true, but they come from widely spaced places and events. The trick being to keep the whole set present. Which isn't so hard, really, when the drawing leads the way--because in the feeling of each line you sense the entire spectrum of possibility. I don't mean to make this too grandiose--after all, we're looking at a piece of copy paper with some pencil marks--but that's just the point--some pencil marks. What else do we have?

The simplicity of this theater appeals to me--impresario of the immediate, dramaturg of the everyday. The three panels could represent a play. How did Chekhov construe it--if there's a gun in the first act, you know it will be fired in the third. But why this martial analogy? There don't seem to be any weapons here--not even a brandished knife. Human beings being what they are, I know I may be leaving something out--and M and I did disagree as to Cormac McCarthy. But in my own universe, we'll go with the squirrels. Let them be, so to speak.

I've been learning to play that, actually--always a little late on the uptake. My thirty-year delay. The lyrics must have been particularly meaningful back in the late '60's. They still are. Mother Mary come to me--I always took this as an act of Catholic repentance, in an offering to the secular world. (After all, John Lennon's on there, too.) But yesterday I looked it up--Paul McCartney's life. And what registered most, but only later that night, was that his mother had died when he was only fourteen. And her name was (also) Mary. Meanings are never singular--it can be a Catholic image, too. But I like this new possibility--as part of how I'll sing the song...

4.24 Walnuts and Raisins

24 April 2020. Walnuts and Raisins.

Looks like something out of The Grapes of Wrath—there in the fields near Dixon. I’ve thought of the place often—every time I open that bag of walnuts that Alesia, our kind neighbor from across the way, brought me from an excursion last month. She'd made the drive out into the valley with her son, Gabe, to collect his things from the house in Davis--everyone in the school had been sent home, a month back already. On the return trip she stopped at one of those old-style California fruit stands, and along with her own family supplies, she got me big packages of walnuts and raisins. My request--they've become a staple around here, I must say--tasty and dependable. I even tried ordering some from Amazon, but how much better when there's still a connection to the local.

The label on the bag tells you a lot about the place. California Golden Raisins, printed out at the top, weight, price-per-pound and total--$7.26. And at the bottom, in small capital letters, the name. Pedrick Produce. No website, of course--just a  phone number, area code 707--somewhere in the valley. So I decided to look them--and immediately I see a photo of an old Quonset hut, World War II vintage, set against empty fields--and a hand-painted sign on butcher paper--Local Brown Eggs $3.99. My kind of place.


But why is that? Well, I'm a native--and this is a California I know. Growing up right at the time when these vestiges of family enterprise were giving way to conglomeration. You forget this in town--even at a place like Berkeley Natural Grocery--yes, everything's organic, but you haven't a clue where the walnuts come from. Plentiful, in  their dip-in bin (no longer, I'm afraid) but still anonymous.


Remembering how I used to walk to the produce stand near Reed--down Woodstock and over on 28th. Run by a Japanese-American family, the Okamoto's. A ramshackle Portland establishment, with beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables. I loved the feel of the place--and talking a bit with Henry, the father. This was during Vietnam, and their son, Roger was in the Marines. A Second Lieutenant--the toughest rank--leading a platoon. We learned he was killed by a land-mine near Da Nang. It came as a shock to everyone at school-we all  knew the Okamoto's, the stand was so close by. And how could you not ponder it--a Japanese-American family who'd just lost their oldest son in a war in Southeast Asia, while many of the rest of us were safe in college here at home. His Marine Corps memorial photo, framed and  mounted on a wall near the register seemed small consolation, but Henry said they were proud. Nevertheless, I knew from before that the Okamoto family had gone through the internment camps as well...

I'm not a big donor, but when I do give something to Reed, I always dedicate it to Roger Okamoto. I'm guessing that no one there today would recognize his name...

4.22 Laurel Lane

22 April 2020. Laurel Lane.

Not really a street, but neither an alley—a passageway, maybe, between the quiet houses—I remember the Berkeley professor years ago who lived at one end—a Japanese-American man, with kind face and lively eyes—you could peak into his study from over the fence. There’s a slight curve towards San Pedro, in the other direction, past the edge of a garden, and then the row of trees with houses tucked in behind, a hint of a German roofline, cars two by two, and the walk up the hill.

An adventure really—even if it’s not Kenya of old. No elephants, no lions—just the sidewalk over to Solano, past the two rabbits in rusting metal, caught in mid-flight--the head of one attached to the hind leg of the other, poised on a cut-out metal spiral--a strange way to achieve continuity—but then who’s continuous? It’s contiguity, actually—one thing happening after the next. And no stopping it…

I remember when my friend Lars first discovered the word metonymy—elements juxtaposed side by side—not metaphor, but a spatial sense, crucial to the builder, even if sometimes misunderstood. The question (for me) being always the story—how we get there—along a main street, with its hotels and bars, or an almost-alley, leading eventually to the two rabbits…

_____

Note: In the drawing we see the view up San Pedro, just as I'm leaving Laurel Lane...

4.21 Interrupted by Squirrels

21 April 2020. Interrupted by Squirrels.

Well, he’s right there in the plum. My namesake—mi tocayo—but that can’t be. Two Antonio’s in one cave? On one branch, that is. The cave was Tolstoy and God, as Leonard once explained. Not room emough for both. But here the two of us, we both fit—me just inside the window, writing and drawing, whereas he goes to work on a buried nut outside. They’re good at that, those squirrels. Their forte, you might say—planting them in the ground, late fall, then digging them out as spring arrives. Not that there’s that much difference—newcomers say California has no seasons—but it’s not so. The changes, subtle as they are…

The squirrels have a way of comig back to us. Refinding what’s been lost. Although I’m quite certain that in their tiny heads, nothing is ever lost. They know the date and place of every nut. It’s a developed sense—one that we might work on ourselves. The sink, upstairs this morning—old old plumbing, so I brought out the black rubber plunger and gave it a go. Nice to see the gravitational swirl at the end of my labors...

But yes, the squirrels. I remember the headline: "Squirrel causes power outage for 45,000 in the East Bay." Started in El Cerrito, of course—my studio home—a substation failure after some choice nibbles. The New York Times ran a defense., “Too Convenient a Scapegoat.” But I’m not so sure. Seems more that their dietary habits are a form of wisdom.
____



Can we write this large? I’m looking for an overview here. How vulnerable we all are to the smallest change—and sometimes small is big. I think that’s why people call it freedom (young blond woman leaning half-way out the window of late model SUV—placard in hand—“Then go to China…!”). These conclusions we draw—so easily—not so much because they make sense, but because we need conclusions. A difficult trait. What if the squirrels were that way? Invented piles of non-existent nuts, left them in imaginary holes—only to find much later that they were hungry…

But hunger can be  a good thing. Ask Kafka—he fashioned an entire fable around the idea. Saw the contradiction—proving his point by following its absence. Yes, sometimes less is more. But not in the Miesian sense—rather, the old Chinese (to their great and everlasting credit) whose poets knew that the window over a quiet pond opened onto an entire world…

4.19 Towhee at Dusk

19 April 2020. Towhee at Dusk.

Are these too ephemeral? Only because they're so important. For me, that is--the recognition. I've been greeting my towhees for many years now. Hearing their particular small call somewhere up above when I step outside--or returning from a walk. I know they know me--how not? Just the way I know them. Not one by one, necessarily--although that would be admirable. But in the collective--a very special group of friends.

I read that these birds can live upwards of fourteen years. (Typo just now: fourteen tears...) which provides a framework for understanding on my part. Their lifetimes include past lives of our own. They've been here all along--when Lydia first appeared in back, with one of her offspring--a tiny fawn, dotted with white, and those impossibly spindly legs--so narrow but so strong...

The towhee's call--a tiny, high pitched cheep-cheep (emphasis on the first part). Someone once said it was a warning, to their towhee families--the presence of a stranger. But I think it can only be a greeting. In fact, I'm sure of it. All in the timing--just when they call out--their awareness of that particular moment. Shared...

And, of course, my response-- "Hi Tow..."

____

Last night, returning from a long walk, in the half-light. There in the street, right in front--just one...

_____

It was B. who named her Lydia--the first of the deer. Now we have I don't know how many generations, sometimes one fawn, sometimes two. I'm pretty sure they're sometimes born right here in the back yard...

4.17 Andronico's Deer

17 April 2020. Andronico's Deer.

An impromptu parade--the man in front--an older gentleman, out to walk his fluffy dog late on a Friday, close to sunset, just as I was turning down Solano from the Alameda above. I'd crossed over to the Andronico's side--that long run of blank wall with masked windows facing into the store,  a dark modern-style awning above. When all of a sudden there appeared a young white-tail deer, trotting up quickly from behind, looking this way and that--hesitant to follow, but where else to go? They three of them seemed meant for each other--a genuine trio--even if the deer could never acquiesce to becoming a pet. (Dog's having better figured this one out.) The man continued along as if all were normal--why, he walked with a deer every afternoon--but as they passed the store, and the sidewalk opened up again, the young creature was clearly spooked, took a few hasty steps side to side, then suddenly bounded into the street, making a long curved diagonal across to Colusa and down the hill. You could see her choose her path with every leap--changing course in mid-air...


All this happened in an instant, but as I passed the man alongside,  I turned back to ask him if he'd seen the deer.  Unquestionably dramatic, but he'd been facing straight downhill. "Oh yes, she followed me for the last two blocks--but what to do? So I just kept walking..."

Of course with the sequester, Solano's been largely empty these days--the cars sporadic, so why not?  A new setting for Donizetti--or a history painting by Titian, something from Ovid, as yet unseen--Flight of the Andronico's Deer...

4.17 The Beast

17 April 2020. The Beast.

That's what he called it, when I approached him from across the street. I'd been standing and watching as Doug unfurled a large rain slicker--some kind of light-weight nylon, light blue in color, which he was draping over his baling-wire effigy. The most important part being the hood--it took on an animation when he pulled it over the top of the wire form--came alive--even from a distance. I've exaggerated the height just a bit--but the whole thing must have been seven feet, and I realized that I wanted to go across and tell him how much I liked it. Give him something, too--it's probably been a month since that first night of the lock-down, when I saw him standing in front of the lighted shop window.

An encounter with Doug always takes its own direction--or maybe his direction. After all, living on the street as he does (I think he finds a place to sleep on the Key Route strip, or maybe under the Bart tracks, a choice on his part, rough, no doubt), and yesterday, as I got close, I saw that he was now missing some teeth. Like the Rastafari elders, Mortimo Planno even--and Doug has something of that gravitas, even as a lone American black man.

I told him I liked seeing what he was doing. He looked up, gruffly (always), "You mean the beast?" With that characteristic emphasis--a kind of challenge, like a cutting session among jazz musicians. But the emphasis was also for himself--came out of Doug's own inner world, a reminder of what he was about. Inner world--that's the right phrase, actually--part of the life he's chosen--a kind of street monk, or public hermit--always present, like a witness--and always working, making something with his hands.

With his tools, that is. Like the old lineman's pliers. After all, his materials are metal and plastic and wire, so the cutting and bending and forming involve sharp edges. Gloves notwithstanding. But he's out there all day, seated against a wall, creating...
_____

I'd taken the twenty out of my pocket--folded up in there over the last weeks for when I'd need it. And usually I'm not eager for these encounters--the way you have to gear up with Doug. (Having my own inner world as well.) However, yesterday was right, so, from across the street, I pulled out the bill, looking around for a  rock--a weight--so I could leave it on the metal bin top near where he was standing. I told him what I was doing, of course, as a way in--holding out my hand. He nodded, and I put the money down nearby. When I turned back to him, Doug asked, "You want something?" I always forget that this will be his question. The reciprocity being only fair. "No, I just wanted to say hello, tell you I liked what you're making." He thanked me, humbly, actually. Words are meaningful. "You want a spinner?" A moment's hesitation. "I have one in my yard!" Insufficient. "But yes, another time." (Why get into the complexities!) This he accepted--it seemed we'd found a righteous accord. Then I told him that what got me was the moment he clothed the figure in the hood...

"You're an important guy in the neighborhood." Disbelief. "Who, me?" "A lot of people are aware that you're here..."

Did I add, "They like you...?"

_____

Note: Other thoughts. Goya's hooded figures in the Caprichos and the Disasters of War. El Coco--an unnameable fear. And the pliers--remembering from years back when Claude Stoller, at school, told me he wanted his students to draw tools. Because Claude himself loved them so much--what they meant to him, almost metaphysical. But he couldn't convey this to a bunch of eighteen-year-olds, so he'd sought out my advice--as a younger friend, someone (then) closer to the students in age... But what I recall most was how important this was to Claude... Like the Henry Bertoia sculpture in his living room--hundreds of brass rods inserted into a hardwood base--the point being to run your hand over the top, letting them sound...

4.16 Walkers in the City

16 April 2020. Walkers in the City.

The question being, were they a family? More likely four friends--acquaintances, even. Sometimes it's hard to tell--their ages not that far apart, although the couple on the right were all the time in front. A kind of leisurely walk--on a late afternoon that had turned blustery. Very much like the Bay Area...

I knew I wanted to remember the them--you can never tell when the next set of angels will appear. Sometimes they're right there in front of you without you're even realizing. Here, though, I'm not so sure--or maybe I was resistant. And how could you know, till later, when you find yourself thinking about them again--insistently...

Trying to remember the Wim Wenders--it's been years, but the way he handled his characters in Berlin--the angels and their human counterparts--how the whole film had a sense of quiet. I'm not sure this was accurate to Berlin--but Wenders certainly felt it--and wanted to convey it. Or maybe it was also Henri Alekan, his cinematographer. I read that Alekan filtered his lens with a silk stocking, old and quite fragile--that it had belonged to his grandmother.  Providing the understated sepia tonality...
_____

I could have chosen any moment, but the Jean's Realty corner seemed right, there at Santa Fe. With a traffic light and the eucalyptus tree just behind. Added right at the end of the drawing--maybe I could have left them out?

Just the angels...

4.16 Timo at Britt-Marie's

15 April 2020. Timo at Britt-Marie's

Gone, gone , gone—Britt-Marie’s is no more. The dark interior with massive curved wood alter piece —a setting for a clock, most likely, in some long forgotten European establishment—shipped to America in a crate padded with straw, bound tight with baling wire—the slats of rough Carpathian  hardboard—then repurposed here in the white village—Albany—set up behind the bar of what would be become the Bacchanal, a clientele primarily female—wine, in  all its vintages—the place somewhat notorious. And later repurposed again by the wandering Czech maestro—I never knew his name, only that he had a good eye and excellent taste--with paintings on the walls, real paintings, in earnest, not cafe decorations—someone’s soul shared with the world. And many unusual kinds of beer—pilsner, budvar and the like—and that was in the ’70’s, before such variety was common. The Russians we knew used to go there—Fima, I remember—the atmosphere a kind of Moravian chic—more Brno than Paris, leaning over one of the small tables with a glass of wine, telling off-color stories in languages only half understood. That came to an end too—and then a dormant period, neither fish nor fowl—Britt-Marie a mere remnant of its former self. You’d walk by, but all was lonely—until Timo arrived. How on earth did he find the place—and transform it so. Fernanda’s friend—a girl from from one of my classes—she told me his name—but those were my walk-by days—I’d look in from the sidewalk. Timo behind the bar, in black, with the avuncular straw hat—a pork-pie, brim turned up all around, in the Puerto Rican manner—except that Timo was from México—he never wore this on his sleeve, but there was something in his eyes—and a sense that anything was possible.You only became aware of this over time—an adventurer, especially with the music. Some nights the place would be all dark, filled with Braziileiros—the tables pushed into long rows, boisterous, lots of wine in jugs, sound of Portuguese spilling out onto the street. Or, a few nights later—the rosy-faced woman with high cheeck bones and a semi-beehive—reminded me of Rose Maddox—and her guitar-player partner, older, quite a bit older, in the western shirt with carefully buttoned cuffs—and they knew their stuff—some real crowd pleasers. Up-rhythm and good pickin’. A sophisticated audience, too—all the locals from Down Home. I got their card one night—I was passing b y right after the end of their show, as they packed the instruments into the back of an over-sized camper-truck, ready for the road…. Timo behind all of this, of course—a magic attraction—how did he find them? How did they find him? Never advertised (someone told me it was to avoid buying a cabaret license)—so everyone learned by word of mouth. Just like me—I’d be walking down the street, half a block away, and already the physical  feeling of he music would reach out—make me wonder who was on… I’d stand in the doorway, crack it a bit—Timo always waved—and someone would  want me to come in—but I’d tell them, no,  I liked it better from outside—which was true, that half-way sound through the glass and the old wood, even more magical…

Well, he gave it up. Not sure when. One of the periods when I was away, summer of 2018 most likely. I’d started one of my nighttime walks, but no hint of the music, and when I came alongside the windows—Café-Wine Bar in gold and black—they were covered over from the inside, and everything dark.

I’d seen Timo once in between—at the Albany pool—he was there with a youngster--someone I didn't recognize, who seemed like family. His son, he said. Slightly awkward, I could see he was trying to give the boy all of his attention. Responsibilities—is that how he put it? But with a smile…always with a smile…

4.15 Miramar Scene II

15 April 2020. Miramar Scene  (Version II).

What makes people do the right thing? Spike Lee thought it was better as a question than as an answer. Martin Luther King or Malcolm X? And William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain, wasn’t certain, either—see his first chapter, Red Eric—our Viking legacy: “Rather the ice than their way: to take what is mine by single strength, theirs by the crookedness of their law.” Or the conquest of Tenochtitlan—the overwhelming beauty of what Cortez first encountered, and then its ruin. Maybe Daniel Boone—his woodsman’s respect for Indian ways,  over than the staid lives of his contemporaries.

The Daily Bread—Carolyn North’s project from the 1980’s—taking leftover foods from local emporiums and delivering them to people in need. Dave, above, who continues the tradition, once a week, from the Acme Bakery to a homeless shelter. Sometimes he shares with us as well—a basket of madeleines propped on a car hood as we gathered to sing on a recent evening. Our faces covered with masks—some hand-sewn (thank you, Alesia) or cowboy-style (green bandana)—and always Dave’s query, “Any favorites…?” Which might be something Tanya or Barbara have came up with—an ode to Dr. Fauci, or the admonitory “Wash Your Hands,” repurposed Beetles songs, so that we all know the melodies.

At first I resisted—and still hum along more than sing, trying to make sense of it all. Why it feels right. And I’m not a Jackie de Shannon fan—even tongue in cheek—so Put a Little Love in Your Heart seems forced—too obvious. (Wrong here—they were following the cover version by Annie Lennox and Al Green. And who could not like Al Green?) What the Russians call poshlust’—a reaching for the over-easy emotion. And yet it feels necessary. I look around and everyone’s participating—OMG myself included. Professor David from UC, just across the way, all the rest.

Tanya and Dave swaying back and forth, hitting the counter notes… A sense of what we need…

_____

Another culprit—the Vietnam War. You couldn’t live through that time—feel the exigencies of the state (local draft boards and all the rest) without a measure of cintense scepticism. Being led into demonstrations—the shouted mottos and chant—which highlighted our dilemma, but always at the price of a more thoughtful response. Not the time for measure, perhaps. That came later. But the essential wariness stayed with us. We were raised on it…

4.15 Miramar Scene

15 April 2020. Miramar Scene.

You can't make this stuff up--that's the current phrase--except in this case I did, myself at least (concertina included). Always specific, maybe because I put on those articles of clothing each day. But it's not just the clothes--also the sense (and it is a sense) that this way of standing--this specific, now-and-for-all-time posture--will tell the story. Except that there's no story. A gathering, perhaps--but that's too easy. A gathering isn't a story.

Harold Rosenberg's question, in the old Brownstone on East Tenth Street, in 1974--"Are these scenes..? I had spread out my pale pale drawings--the ones on large sheets of bristol--trekked them to New York, the logistics were demanding, but there they were, spread out on the floor--and the total shift from California to Greenwich Village--how I saw them now--involved far more than geography...

I didn't know how to answer, or why I found his question so interesting (that was only later)--probably mumbled  something, no doubt. And in any case, he was in the business of questions--and that was the right one. Out of a genuine curiosity, perhaps. What does make a scene?

If you believe in the meaning of a gesture--Degas's figures in The Young Spartans, for instance--or some of Lennart Anderson, then the story doesn't really matter. We know from the first glance. A story is just pretend. An excuse. It's more a sense of how we take in the world--an interest in this. A kind of  exploration...

Which is why these drawings can be spontaneous, but also more patient...


_____

And thank you again to Tanya and Dave...

4.15 Doug Again

15 April 2020. Doug Again.

 I look for the dark mass of his shape—sometimes it feels that he’s really the only one on the street—even though today we had the first warm afternoon, probably 75, so that by the time I headed out, at 7, it was still t-shirt weather. But Doug is unchanging—that same heavy parka coat, hood up, the same dark trousers and unidentifiable shoes (bags over them when it’s wet)—it’s basically his house, transported like a carapace, along with the cart (now from Safeway—what happened top the old Flexi-Flyer wagon?)—but this must be more practical. If that’s the word.

He’s always there, so dependable that I know by heart where to look. Somewhere on the north side of Solano, near the Albany Key Route strip, often sitting on a low bench provided by the city—as if made for him—and they do seem to let him be, or at least I never see police action the way it used to happen in Berkeley, when one of the neighbors took it into his head to complain. After all, these properties are expensive. All that’s been jostled now—just how much so it’s hard to say. There will be some feinting and pretending—adamant open-house signs on Sundays, pulled from the trunks of a nondescript late-model cars, propped up near the appropriate intersection corners. But I have a hunch that doubt may have set in—they’re saying till 2022, the first useful vaccine—which could have been developed long since, but such programs are a drain on the economy—or maybe they simply represent the hopes of the Obama years. He was back today, President Obama, his hair more gray in the photograph, his face more drawn—how must he feel, after all, to have given so much—all he could—and then this new, ungrateful time…

Late evening, yesterday or the day before—Doug making his way up the north side of the street, pushing his cart—I’m imagining he didn’t want to leave it down below—he's now about to the block of the CVS. I’ve crossed the street ahead of him, but as I glance over my shoulder, I see that he’s parked the cart ythere in the dark alcove of the old Britt-Marie’s, and is heading across the street as well, with plans to enter the store.

He was standing there, one night last month, in front of the refrigerated cold cases—looking back and forth, making a survey of their contents.The clerk, barely any English, looking uneasy. Well, it’s Doug—he is a presence. And I have no idea where the money comes from.

But he's always working--making something—the wire forms he bales together with clippers and pliers. This evening’s was approaching seven feet—a tall mesh column, slightly misshapen—I couldn’t see it that clearly from across the way. But I made note—I always do—of where he’s taking his gift…

Other end of the avenue, also today—a small soda-bottle pin-wheel, attached to the top of a metal newspaper rack. Round and round in the wind. Also Doug…

4.14 Car Window on Solano

14 April 2020. Kathryn (Car Window on Solano).

She was always beautiful--over the years--I remember, of course, from the pharmacy, when I'd see her at the counter, or in the aisle, coming out of the back as I waited in the line for a prescription. But preoccupied, or maybe a touch edgy--sometimes forthcoming, but then she'd pull back into the mask. I could imagine her from somewhere in Germany, a long century back--or some other place in Northern Europe. Slightly deepest eyes, a mouth on the edge of a long square, like her cheeks, dropping down to the jawline. I usually don't pay such close attention, but her youthful beauty (is there another word?) always seemed to have a source...

She once, out of the blue, warned me of a financial scheme--something about stocks and buying back credit in advance--I was surprised, it seemed extreme--unexpected--and then she never mentioned again.

Then, one late afternoon in February (before the current state of things) I was walking down Solano, after the bus--I got off at the top of the hill, taking in the magic of those early evenings--and there in the window of the new storefront spa (the name Sundhari, painted in elegant narrow letters) I saw her behind the counter--and wondered whether she was working here, too--or was it somehow her own?

She looked up, saw me at the glass, and smiling in recognition, invited me in. The new place was hers--Kathryn, of course--who proceeded to take me on a nicely elaborate tour, the Buddhist massage tables, ayurvedic river stones--to all of which I responded with a genuine enthusiasm. After all, small businesses are in the blood (my dear father) and concern for their ongoing welfare...

She sensed all this, no doubt--but primarily my goodwill--and when I left (it couldn't have been more than ten minutes) it was as if we'd become good friends. and who knows, perhaps we had--for the recognition--being near to someone as they tell their story--was something we now shared...
_____

How surprising again, then, yesterday evening, at the very top of the now empty street, to hear a knocking on a car window just behind me--the urgency of it--I turned, and there was Kathryn, leaning over on the seat, happy to see me, wanting to know how I was doing. (I seem to be a vehicle for such questions these days--but they're well meant.) I've probably got the car model wrong--I made it an older model, one that felt familiar. So forgive me, Kathryn--but this too makes our friendship feel at home...

Just like your smiling face, seen through the glass...

4.14 Children's Games II

 
13 April 2020. Children's Games II.

Reinvented here--the previous drawing being so elaborate, and thereby hard to read. The two children playing on the walkway along the inside wall of the car passageway in the building on Solano, just below Colusa (a place I've walked by many many times--in fact, M told me their design firm has an office upstairs.)  In attendance, the children's father...

The characters have changed--the children older (grown up enough to play on their own) and the father a more specific type--in fact he was cribbed from a photo on playing catch. However, the connection between the three off them, with the mother standing off to the side (previous drawing) seems right to me. The kids on the narrow ledge, the man caught between auto stanchions, his arm outstretched...

Where the persona shows, transposed through time, from some earlier moment of anticipation. Anxiousness, perhaps. A parent's unending concern for the well-being of their youngsters. (Not transmigration so much as a recurring presence--the feelings and responses that link us through time--so that the image of Queen Dido loosing her Aeneas reappears in that of a young woman I know today.)

What makes the feeling pervasive, though, is the universality of the threat. Or at least the way we perceive it. Invisible, unending, everywhere...

4.13 Children's Games

 

13 April 2020. Children's Games.

Got away from me, I'm afraid. Too complex--or I should have pulled in closer--I was split between whether to show the whole run of the street (a temptation) or just the dark opening of the passageway for cars. That being really the focus--something strange from the outset, maybe influenced by the general emptiness of the town--particularly on a late Sunday afternoon--and why were they standing like this, halfway into the dark drive-through, the man supervising the dashing youngsters--they'd claimed the narrow walkway along the side, but he was in there right in the middle, between two auto stanchions. The woman--I saw her first--had her back to the street, standing silently, watching, or lost in what might have been a kind of stoned amazement--that she was there, as if alone at that moment, with everything else unfolding around her--her children especially, who were running along the edge, unawares...

Several families like this, actually--where the bond between the parents and the kids remains taut, but now the foursome is placed in a larger psychological surround. The comforts of their connectedness--at least for the parents--only partly enough.

The source here, I think, would be Pavel Tchelitchew, the Russian-born surrealist artist--his painting Hide and Seek, which I must have first seen as a boy in Oceanside. I remember those interlocking whorls that he worked with--a head made up of a skein of linear hoops--white lines against black, like light... An image can register like this--stay with you for a lifetime. Or maybe it was the title...

Also here, Philip Guston's painting with children playing--Martial Memory, made during the war. He didn't continue with this kind of work after returning to New York, but the process, the way of thinking, stayed with him.

And one more. A drawing by Walter Hood--one in his early projects, in West Oakland. A boy running along pushing a balanced hoop with a stick...

_____

Note: Pavel Tchelitchew's nephew, Andre Tchelistcheff, an architect, was a student at Berkeley in the late 1970s. I always liked him--his angular Russian face, intense curiosity--and the way he smiled.

4.13 Sad Street

22 April 2020. Laurel Lane.

Maybe I'm channeling Bobby Blue Bland, and the place is Memphis--his beautiful song, Sad Street--except that the song is people-filled and urban, whereas here--at the top of Solano, yesterday late afternoon, the view is heart-tuggingly empty. Not even sure why I included the one car, which feels out of place, except that I needed it to make the street-ness clear, whereas in reality there was just the one long strip of asphalt running into the distance,  dark patches of trees--atmospheric shapes, a mile off, bracketing either side of the road, and the orb of the sun, a sliver at the top,  disappearing over the Marin hills. The view has always been there, just like this, in the past--when you'd catch sight of that cold gray-blue strip of the Bay--but the presence of everything else--city life, by contrast--would render it fleeting. Yesterday evening there was nothing else...

George Inness gets something of this--or maybe we learn it from his paintings? Where an empty landscape becomes a mirror for the fullness of feeling--even as we recognize that same emptiness. And in any case, empty isn't the right word...

There was one figure, though. I saw him first on the steps of the line of shops just below Colusa--24-Hour Fitness, Marie-somebody's Wellness and Skincare, North Berkeley Investments--a plausible microcosm of what brought us to this juncture (I was going  to say juncture of emptiness, but that would be  too much)--and in any case, the young guy was appealing--I'd seen him many times before, one of the denizens of that part of the street--tall, even elegant, with his long hair and narrow frame--an explorer, maybe, or even a model--except that his clothes were soiled, and as he appeared again rounding the corner a few minutes later, I heard a bit of his crazed laughter...

Walking from the top, all the way down Solano, unbelievably peaceful--if for all the wrong reasons. Same sensation earlier when I first looked up at the mist on the hills--as if that were their true state--just that way, forever...

4.12 Tanya and Dave

12 April 2020. Tanya and Dave

Sounds like a backup duo from Muscle Shoals--or maybe the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band--but no, it's Tanya and Dave on the corner of Miramar and Capistrano--in front of Inna's house, on a blustery early spring afternoon. They've lead us in one of Tanya's tongue-in-cheek coronavirus covers--Stay Inside, to be sung along with something by the BeeGee's--except that I missed the BeeGee's, and most of everything else from '70's pop. Well, somewhere in the back of my consciousness there's a brief flash of John Travolta taking a dance pose, one arm in the air (very late Elvis) and then the mirrored disco ball in the office of the last architecture dean at Cal (that didn't last too long). Taxi Driver (1976), of course--that's indelible, for good reason, just like Mean Streets, (1973). When you remember that the Allende Coup was in 1973 (Nixon, the CIA, et al) it throws the rest into perspective--and the mess of our final withdrawal from Saigon  (the people clinging to the runners of the last helicopter.) So it's a mixed bag...

But Tanya and Dave (better sound order?) approach this with their inimitable enthusiasm, and one of the other neighbors dances along--and it's certainly not a bad thing to gather together as we seem to be doing--stragglers sometimes (yesterday being so cold), but necessary stragglers. And anyway, I found that I could approximate the organ part in Lean on Me--brought to us by Tanya after Bill Withers died last week. Best way to commemorate, that's for sure--and as I played the rising chords, just like the Hammond B-3 on the record, they got it right away, and suddenly we were all in church--yes,  in church, even on the third day of Passover--on a cold early-spring afternoon in Berkeley, and our voices filled out the dusk...

4.11 Figure in White

11 April 2020. Figure in White.

What’s the best way to spend the day after your seventy-fifth birthday—a trick question, especially after I feel I delivered so poorly on Down in the Valley to the neighbors gathered (at respective intervals) on Miramar at 6pm. Dave had forgotten to post the right lyrics to their song, so he turned to me and asked if I’d fill in. I wanted to of course—but even more, I wanted the occasion to be right—that the song be necessary—and even as we started in I could see that everyone would be pulling in their own directions—on top of which, I’m not really used to leading a group on concertina… But a beginning is a beginning, we made our way through it—I felt they were humoring me—and soon enough Tanya had the white binder open to one of her Beatles-melody inventions—picking up the slack…

On my walk, later, I began singing it again—sounded good in the open air, a cappella, with the wind off the bay, as I tapped my hand against my chest to keep the beat, to see how they had done it—a little differently than the way I’m used to. When there near Safeway a figure all in white—I thought he was a young guy—asks me for a quarter. From several feet away, but I was rattled at the thought of our having to approach each other for me to give him something, so, unthinking, I shook my head. Immediately feeling badly how I’d handled it. I turned to look—and he’d turned as well--pulling a small wagon of some kind. I guess we both knew there was a question. But I turned back again and headed down  the hill.

Quite a bit later, after I’d made my full Solano circle back to the top of the hill, I noticed someone sitting on the ground, near the bus stop—looked like a wrapped doll, the white garments pulled all the way around, even his face—but the thought wasn’t clear, I wasn’t really paying attention—and it was only when I came back down alongside that I realized it was the same man. He looked up, I saw his eyes under the bill of his cap, and the part of his face that wasn’t swaddled—he wasn’t young, though, if anything middle aged—I stopped a ways off, found the change purse in my bag, pulled something out.

Clearer now, I told him I wanted to stay at a distance, but that I could put the bill on the sidewalk. He nodded. Then I noticed the squarish stick he’d been carrying, placed flat on the sidewalk, just in front of where he was sitting. Hand-lettered, looked like he’d done it with a ballpoint—just one word (I could almost hear his tone) money…

_____

Thoughts the next morning: The Rod of Joshua, given to Michael Manley by the Emperor Haile Selassie--a symbol of authority. Also, why didn't I consider more carefully that the man was sitting there in that way?

Walking back on Solano--Down  by the Salley Gardens, from Yeats...

4.10 A Thank You

10 April 2020. A Thank You.

A thank you, Duffy, for the green onions (4 bunches), very fine, the radiant romaine (!), 2 striped squash, I know not which, 2 onions, the same, bok choy, baby-sized, 3 small, and the incalculably valuable celery, also 3--let's see, what else arrived in the mysterious new bags from Monterey Market?--oh yes, tomatoes, little ones, del Cabo--just like I have with C--and the carrots, at  last--10 or so. Wait, ginger--a multi-fingered root--plus the spinach boxes--Organic Girl...

What can I say, so generous of you to take on this errand each week--in friendship (which I trust)--and because it means you want me here, ongoing... Also in trust...

Gracias, from Antonio!

4.10 Near Miss

10 April 2020. Near Miss.

I think I just did a passover drawing—but actually it’s a homeless guy on a bicycle who just about clipped me as I was making my way up Solano, walking in the street. I didn’t hear him coming, and when he passed—inside me, next to the curb, it was quite a surprise—just the whoosh of his bike, and a glimpse of his dark garments and worn knit cap. I took it all in in an instant, stepping farther out into the street, reflexively holding my breath. How strange, to live in a time of these micro-particles—where tiny invisible fragments of amazingly advanced genetic material can leap (aha, another failed metaphor) from one body to the next—in this case, from his to mine, with unanticipated consequences. I was on the right-hand side, so his approach was warranted, but still, I think in retrospect that he was playing with me—like the woman in the market who coughed intentionally over the meat bin and they had to throw away $35,000 worth of packaged beef. Never mind that such beef represents environmental folly of the first order—the fields and feed required for its production being the ruination of the atmosphere—
methane released, calories burned to add those marbled layers of fat…

And tonight is the seond night--we read from Exodus, Chapter Twelve, the story of the pesach lamb, that same word—pesach--and I shall pass over the houses of Israel...
_____


Indian photographer this morning--black and white pictures from Kashmir, "A land of permanent sorrow." I think of Kingfisher's Fire, the Rumer Godden novel that I read with B, towards the end. How much in it that was beautiful. We both found it so...
 

4.9 Casa Oaxaca

9 April 2020. Casa Oaxaca.

Casa Oaxaca--that's what the banner over the doorway announces, but lettered delicately in an arc on the window glass we read, Mi Casa--which gets to the heart of the matter. Closed up now, along with almost everything else, but as I walk by in the early evening, wind blowing in off the bay, the effect is almost the same--always inviting, a panorama of color, everything hand-made--artesaneria--crafted, all from Oaxaca. Just like the man who's run the place for all these years. I should know his name by now. A little formal, in the Mexican way, I'd notice his presence behind one of the counters, adjusting a hanging figure of a skeleton (Día de los muertos) or one of the small folklore dolls in front. He invited me in once--although I think he thought I wanted to bone up on my Spanish. Argentine, in any case, which misses that Mexican lilt--and sometimes the sly humor that often pretends to be what it's not. He pulled out a large map--like one of those Miguel Covarrubias paintings I discovered only later, with dozens and dozens of small images of people, animals, fish, birds--a tiny woman in traditional Mayan dress holding a child in the crook of her arm, a clump of green bananas in the hills above Tepíc--the passenger steamer putting in at the port of Veracruz, or a sheaf of grain (?) on the edge of the Sonara desert. all with a glowing red-gold Precolumbian sun presiding over the violet waters of the Gulf. Just like the shop itself, in fact--that same array of beautifully colorful detail everywhere you looked... But actually  the map was to teach me something--how could I not already know?--that there were some 200 native languages in México, he said--even more--and I think he was proud of them all--in the collective, and one by one... Just like the beautiful things he'd chosen for the store...

I found out later that the man's son, another Antonio, had once been a student of mine, years before. Saw him emerge from the doorway one day, we recognized each other. I'd always liked him. We smiled back and forth. I'd had no idea of the connection. Made the place special in yet another way.
____

Next door, at night sometimes, through the window of the Acupuncture shop--the Chinese man at an old desk, covered with papers and brochures, leaning forward over a bowl of food, small black-and-white television on a low stand just opposite. Everywhere else darkness...

4.8 Chaichana and Peter

8 April 2020. Chaichana and Peter.

There's Peter, in the music room, on Fowles Street, overlooking the canyon. And somehow Chaichana has emerged from a forest in Thailand. Brought together, as they both might enjoy. He's playing something from Beethoven--we'd never heard him do this before, but how not, on this last day before a seventy-fifth birthday--(my own) and the first evening of Passover as well--so that these marvelous overlaps--coincidences, that is--how could they now not be possible?

We tell stories--like dreams--and pictures are stories, too, of course--where sometimes the meaning is clear (they way the line of Chaichana's back takes us to the day  that C and I stood in front of the case of Indian miniatures, in a small room, upstairs in the San Diego Museum. How unexpected, to be transported together, back through the centuries, to a garden where lovers recline, in a wilderness, resting on silk divans...

The Queen of Sheba and the hoopoe, who brings a letter from her king, far off in a biblical land. But really, just here on Miramar--he folds it with care, now ready to send, the message is one of love...

4.3 Kains Street View

3 April 2020. Kains Street View.

Unavoidable, turning left onto Kains, one of the narrow neighborhood streets--this mask business is getting serious. That is, you pay attention to everyone ahead and behind, stepping out onto the pavement as need be--at least that's how I handle it. Solano a little after seven--I live for these walks, especially late at night, but I've given that up for the moment. People being unpredictable. Like the homeless guy, the evening before, on an old bicycle, riding on the sidewalk by Wells Fargo, at the top of the hill. He zooms by on my right, almost touching. The bike chain making a creak creak...

Here, the bottleneck (funny idea) at the Bart tracks, where a few people are still running on the greenway below, appearing unexpectedly to wait for the light. The compact girl in tights who slams the change button with her knee, then dances back and forth for those few seconds.  Doug across the way, on the Albany city bench, his gloaming presence in heavy hooded coat, holding a wire effigy in both hands, creating something. Well past dusk...

So I decide to take in an extra block--Solano to Marin. The street is narrow, you pay attention to this, too--and entirely empty. Desolate? A third of the way, there on the right, a narrow house set back on its lot. Unexpectedly narrow--I'm guessing because of the Bart tracks right behind--they no doubt claimed the right-of-way when building the system in the early sixties. The effect is strange--the house being formal, with its pitched roof and double chimneys--but it feels like something out of a Potemkin Village--as if the placid facade were nothing more than a  theater of normalcy, when what was really at play was eminent domain.

A very long block, walking in the evening quiet, not a soul. But then, remembering that moment on waking this morning, I did see one figure--he was wearing a bucket hat, sweatpants, dark blue vest.

Somebody I knew...
_____

Where to begin, always where to begin. What are the moments that matter in all of this? According to each one of them...
___

Note: I got my streets mixed up. The view above is on Key Route, the route of the old streetcar--I didn't see the sign, and it was only the following day that I realized my mistake. Kains is similar, though--one block up from San Pablo--so, a small narrow residential street one block inside a major thoroughfare. The structural relationship is familiar--like Iberville in New Orleans, one off Canal Street--or Mercer Street in New York, one off Broadway. None of this is fascinating, I admit--but I think the word "desolate" above  is connected. something about larger moments and veiled opportunities alongside. Also, Kains (even the name) has a history--the street of last resort, you might say. Where what's-his-name, Ken Knabb--the long-time editor of Situationist writings for American readers--had his place in the old days (back when "having a place" was less impossible...) And where will we be on this now...?

_____

I'll keep Kains because I love the name...

4.2 Flowerland

2 April 2020. Flowerland.

A longtime neighborhood treasure, Flowerland--the old Albany nursery----you become aware of just how valuable these places are only over time. But that's true with many things. Possibility of their loss makes them sweeter still.

 I like it best by night, of course--the dangling incandescent lights, strung on old-style wires, impromptu fencing this way and that, profusion of growing things--layers and layers--especially in front, along the street--where a winding concrete sidewalk skirts the inside of several giant eucalyptus. Intended to be uneven, this-way-and-that. Layers and layers.

Seventy years, they say. Established right after the war.--just like me. My parents would speak of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on April 12, 1945--four days after Tony was born. I grew up in a family that revered him. and how not? FDR had us all in mind--says a lot--an administration predicated on this... Alicia, in our talk here last month--what was it people felt then, together? And why?

Flowerland--they've kept the old sign, the letters in themselves speak of a history. That touch of art deco, a post-war continuity. And just below, the panel of movie theater marquee. A signboard with moveable letters. Someone changes the messages regularly--or at least often enough that you always seem to notice a new one. A certain wry thoughtfulness. Makes you try to imagine who it is that comes upon with them--these horticultural haiku. Her age, in particular. Does she climb up on a ladder at some early hour when no ones about--never a hint. Gray hair, well-combed--like Aunt Lita, no doubt--my mother's closest friend back in San Diego, when they were both single mothers, working for the schools in the late 1920's.. Lolita's people were English sectarians--freethinkers--they founded the town of Leucadia--another garden. Gave all the streets names from the Greek myths... Orpheus, Vulcan,  Hermes... Lolita, whose outrage at the schools' segregated bathrooms--white / colored--led her to a life of political commitment. Things can change, They must. 

Instacart workers today--blue-collar, in effect, like the Amazon employees. Why should their economic need expose them to greater risk. As Peter (my dear brother) once put it in a song, Where Is Love?
Could have been on the hoarding at Flowerland, yes.

YOU ARE THE GARDEN...

_____

Note: My existential gaucho-Cantinflas pose, and the Tlingit hand...

Peter's song, Where is Love? was recorded by Junior Marvin and the Wailers Band, on their 1994 album, Jah Message...

3.31 Big Antonio

31 March 2020. Big Antonio.

Dear to my heart, I wish I'd caught his features better. But the drawing does convey his expressive side--when he catches sight of me, walking by, or bending over to give him a wave through the glass. Standing there at the grill--he's the head cook, and the iron platform is his theater. Long spatula, flashing this way and that, tending his fixin's. La comida, more like it--for the feeling really is México. Started with the tile work--talaveras--hence the name, worked in squares and rows all around the room, the Virgin de Guadalupe prominent in a ceramic tile version right in front of the counter. The whole place beautifully overdone, from the get go, but the tiles being so handsome, the feeling is one of coherence. All of one piece.

And big Antonio is at the center of it. I've known him for close to 10 years now, from the time when he and Rocío (charming Rocío, who seems to have long since moved on) and a couple of the others would hang out in the old Camry in front of the house, smoking, listening to the radio, carrying on. But now, each time we catch sight of each other, it's always new. That quick smile, leaning forward, his arm raised in an animated thumbs up. Hola, Señor! Hola, Antonio...

The crazy thing is that I almost never go in--just a couple of times in all these years, when I'd see friends at one of the tables. Don't really know why. Maybe I like the anonymity--or the fact that we have this connection which perhaps requires that very distance. But last week, I did dash in--to put a twenty into the propina jar. I want to see them continue...!
_____

Note: Tocayo is the word ion Spanish. It's usually translated namesake, but there's another meaning that's lost in English--when two people share the same name. He's my toacayo, Which creates a strange bond, a kind of affection, recognized by both--maybe reflecting a culture that lives in a more communal way. The two Antonio's...