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…
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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...
