"June gloom," but the "May gray" version. It's like Denmark out there but with palm trees. If you don't know, Southern California shows it has a soul every late spring and early summer. It says "you may think I'm just a blonde in a bikini, but I have deep, brooding thoughts, at least from six A.M. 'til noon."
It's Monday morning, which means the real world is back. Not that my weekends are unreal, but I was formed by my formative years, and on Monday, it's back to school. Monday is also trash day in my neighborhood. Blue, black and green bins lining the street like soldiers. I hear the growl of the first morning truck, belching to a stop, tackling a black bin like an iron linebacker from hell. Up with a pneumatic squawk and flipped with a crashing bang! Then smashed back down and off to the next. The ultimate wham bam thank you ma’am.
I walk past the light green house with the apple tree, its just formed fruit shaped more like an incisor than a Fuji. It's lush and fecund, and it hurts a little because I had to move my lemon tree from backyard to front and I'm not sure it's going to make it. But the May gray keeps it cool and un-scorched in its vulnerable state.
I pass the "succulent house"/Korean retirement home, and when I turn the corner, there's my pal, the one I wrote about in these pages. He's got his uniform on (black K-mart sweatsuit and shower shoes), and is dragging two just-emptied trash bins behind him. Old, frail and tiny, he is in chore mode and will not be deterred. When he gets to his driveway and turns, I put my hands together and bow to him. He bows back with his head, the trash bins still in either hand. Now, it is “annyeonghaseyo” time. He flashes his one tooth smile, which never ceases to thrill me. "Jo eun ah chim," I chirp. He does too, and in rhythm I bang my fist twice on his bin and say "Trash man." He laughs. "Ha, trash man, I am, I am." And that's the script for today's episode.
A few steps later I look up and see a teenage Latino couple walking toward me, holding hands. I get an immediate hit of memory-- the tender, clueless joys of first love. I want to stop them and say, "It's wonderful, isn't it? To have found each other. To be something other than your parent's child. To be a lover out in the world.”
I want them to feel my approval. To bless them with my eyes and say "I was you once, I know, I know." But they have no interest, the connection going only one way. I turn and watch them walk off, taking out my phone to capture their moment. But it's their moment, not mine, so I leave it be.
There is a house on the corner of 20th and Cimarron. It is not a craftsman or Spanish revival but more like a Moorish palace. Large, ornate, dramatic, it should be the Grande Dame of the neighborhood, but has fallen into disrepair. And I don't mean it needs a paint job, I mean the place feels halfway to abandoned: the roof, a mix of terracotta and garbage bags. The yard grown wild but in a hopeless way. The wraparound porch (with its stately arches) more junk shop than resting place, and half the windows barred or broken, some covered in plywood, not glass. The house is wounded, much of the exterior plaster cracked and crumbling. There is a high walled backyard, home to three old junkers and two mobile homes that are mobile no more. The roof, randomly pocked with antenna and satellite dishes, a historical timeline of TV reception. And of course, there are cats, sometimes six or seven, looking out from the porch like they've lived there a hundred years or maybe a hundred thousand. And yet the house maintains a battered grandeur. You know there was a golden age, but how long ago is anybody’s guess.
If you were feeling kind, you would say the owner must be a bit eccentric or you might just shake your head, guessing some kind of behavioral issue or mental illness is involved.
Well, I have met the owner several times. Seen her pulling weeds between her sidewalk palm trees, watched her as she stares up smiling at the sky. She is average height, probably around sixty. A rich milk chocolate brown, she is still attractive and was clearly once a beauty. Not nearly as ravaged as her home, she has the gray braids of the medicine woman, her clothes loose and colorful, her voice clear and bright but not of this world.
Down on her purple cotton knees, she yanks at the sidewalk grass on a March afternoon. “Got to pick these weeds” she sings to me as I walk by. I smile and she laughs to herself, and it occurs to me that maybe her house isn't in disarray, maybe she’s just a decay artist. A practitioner of radical acceptance. A high-priestess of decline. Maybe her message is, make peace with chaos. Maybe living in a shattered palace is a holy truth too raw for the rest of us. Maybe it’s all of us making order and painting our window trim that are the delusional ones. Maybe we should stop fixing our roofs and learn to live wet.
I know I don’t have it in me. My ideas of comfort are more traditional. Zoila, the woman who cares for my house, more valuable to me than ten therapists. But every time I see the medicine woman, she is vibrant, smiling, puttering, a pleasure. I’m waiting for her to drop some wisdom on me. Ask me where my people are from? Give me some John the Conqueror root to cure my gout. When’s she going to reveal herself as Queen Mother and break out the Vodun? I know she’s got a story and if she won’t tell it to me, I’ll tell it to myself.
How great it is to walk these same streets day after day. To write my own legends. To wander and wonder and get lost in one square block.
Oh, the May Gray. I remember it well. These walks a cool jam, Tommy. I feel like I’m walking by your side.
Wonderful