The Big Ear

I’m driving to Calistoga today, on my own, in a rented Hyundai.  I don’t mind the typically grumpy treatment when I pick up my coffee at Little Flower because I’m happy!  I’m excited!  I’m off!

I back into another car in the parking lot.  Totally my fault.  No damage, but still…is this a bad sign?  Can’t be because I don’t believe in signs

I don’t believe in signs

I don’t believe in signs

50 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Pyramid Lake):

No traffic getting out of LA.  The lake below is deep blue/green and uninviting, like a thing that wishes to be left alone.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 50 AND 100 MILES FROM LA (Gorman):

An Antique Mall is sandwiched between a Liquor Store and a 76 gas station.  It has a collection of human bones from old science classrooms.

A complete hand

A complete foot

A woman’s spine and hip bones

I wish I had $450 for that hand.  It’s actually lovely.  Here’s the bathroom:

100 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Taft Highway):

It looks like the middle of nowhere from the 5 freeway, but its actually a busy crossroads where several highways peel off in all cardinal directions heading who knows where.

150 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Twisselman):

Bleak.

Someone has fenced off a small area with concertina wire.  I have no idea why.  Thousands of tiny insects cover my parked car.  Do they bite?

Answer: Yes

200 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Coalinga):

There is an landing strip here called Harris Ranch Airstrip.  I saw a helicopter land.  I saw a small plane take off.  It’s always breathtaking to watch an airplane liftoff, even a very small one.  How is such a thing possible?

It smells like grilled meats here.

250 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Rest Stop):

Oh, Rest Stops.  Why do I love you so much?  I would ode about it, but I need to get back on the road.

300 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Westley):

Dusty.

350 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Highway 12):

Still California.  But somehow not.  When did my visual definition of California change?

400 MILES NORTH OF LOS ANGELES (Napa):

I recognize the way the light slants.  I know the rolling bank of fog on the horizon.  These things sunk into my bones all those many years ago…

I’ve never met the old man who walks stooped past my house, but I know everything about him anyway.

He was born in 1921 in Pennsylvania.  His father was a functional alcoholic who hid his alcoholism behind the curtain of social norms which dictated heavy drinking after work hours for those who wished to fit in and move up the professional ladder.  His mother was sober and tired.  He is the youngest of ten children, all boys.  He flew in WWII briefly before crashing his airplane into the Sahara when the engines suddenly cut out.  He had sex with many, many women, even after he got married to Sandra, a nurse from San Diego.  Sex is all he can think of when he finds himself face-to-face with a woman, even now. Actually, he’d love to bang the nurse that comes to his house every morning at 6:30am to help him out of bed, into his clothes, and onto his feet for his regular stooped walks. He knows not to ask and just settles for those moments during the neighborhood strolls when her hand brushes against his on the aluminum walker.

He’s not the only one I know.  Even though we have never exchanged anything more than pleasantries, I know everything about the young woman behind the counter taking a million orders and making a million coffees.

She’s 23 years old. Just graduated from Occidental after five years.  Which, that took longer than expected, but what can you do?  Working and going to school turned out to be harder than it seemed. Her suspicion that those who could not handle both school and work were probably feeble turned out to be wrong. Lots turned out to be wrong.  She was formidable in her teenage years. Strong and smart.  Odd looking but beautiful, like a giraffe.  She carried herself like a goddess in the ancient sense. Imagine the Winged Goddess Nike. Like that.  Boys feared her, and so they should!  Smiles were not something she bestowed upon the fawning male. She regarded friendliness as akin to stupidity, and this belief was constantly reinforced by the giggling, super-nice!, girls that would finish every sentence with the upward lilt of a question? and then fail every science test.  But, it turned out, she was not the only formidable girl in college. There were many formidable girls. Many Nikes.  And then there was the bankruptcy.  Her parents were not entirely what they seemed, it turned out. Fraud.  And courtrooms.  And bankruptcy.  And so it was up to her to pay for college.  And while there are many other strangers I’ve never met who I know would have become embittered by their change in circumstance, she did not.  Humiliation was met with humility.  Strong and smart.  Strong enough to shoulder her responsibilities.  Smart enough to learn that people are friendly not because they are dumb but because they have to trudge through the same days that we all have to trudge through.  So she smiles when she sees me, looks at me with her bright, intelligent eyes, and wishes me a nice a day.  I believe her.

This is the third time in three years that I have been bumped into by two bees fucking in midair.  I don’t like it.  It doesn’t feel magical.  It’s vaguely menacing.

Oh, Los Angeles.  Thank goodness.  I see you as I crest the hill.

Who would have thought that the sight of you would ease my sadness?

Certainly not me. The only way to survive that first year was by swallowing a pill.

Looking at your streets, that first year, I saw nothing but madness.

Ugly. Loud.  Hostile.  Stupid, even.  Mean.

When did that change?  Was there a single instant?  I don’t think so.

How does an unwanted, disliked place become home?  For me?  My home?

One little step at a time.  A stride on the hillsides, olive green.

A stride down a side street, where a fence holds up bougainvillea all aglow.

A stride in Venice, a stride in Hollywood, a stride in the arroyo—a never-ending roam!

From hate and loathing to love.  This is my rom-com.

I tried to hold you at bay, Los Angeles, because of your uncouth ways,

But you have your charms, damn you!  And, damn it! I love that palm

The one that stands impossibly thin and impossibly tall as it sways, sways.

And you wait.  Some people will go on hating.  Some people will love.

You wait for the decision.  Hate me, you ask.  Love, me?

Ah, whatever you want, you say.  It’s cool, you say.  We’re cool.

Confident of your overt ugliness and sneaky beauty.  Proud of.

That’s the thing!  I had to learn how to really look so that I might see.

You are my teacher.  You are my school.

Now I see as I sit driving my car (of course I’m driving my car)

I see your abundant, unstoppable sunshine in my children’s hair,

There in the rearview mirror.  They want to know, are we far?

We’ve been driving for so long.  Hours and hours to get there,

Which is to say, here!  Home, where our lives wait.

Where my husband waits.  Where I have a house with a sycamore tree

Where two dogs, one ebullient and hungry, the other aged and wary,

Run and dig and shit and bark with authority at my gate.

You contain all these things for me in your sprawling body from mountain to sea

Rambler.  Thief.  Angel.  Seemingly infinite, unabridged dictionary.

I went roller skating with my kids.  We walked in together and examined the rentals.  The skates were lined up along the back wall and reached all the way to the ceiling.  The skates were brown with orange wheels.  We examined the skate-mates.  Valentina asked for a skate-mate.  I saw fear in her dark eyes.  Fear of roller skating.  She got a skate-mate.

Desmond put his skates on and waved his arms around in circles when he stood.  He requested a skate-mate.  I suggested we all share the one skate-mate.  Take turns.  Valentina told Desmond could go first.

Desmond and I made our way around the rink.  He leaned on the skate-mate and gripped the bars with white knuckles.  I leaned against the carpeted wall and skated along beside him.  My butt muscles were sore in under two minutes.  Desmond passed the skate-mate to Valentina, who was waiting at the opening at the far corner of the rink.

Valentina and I made our way around the rink.  She white-knuckled the skate-mate.  I leaned against the carpeted wall and skated along beside her.  The fear was still in her eyes.  Actually the fear had grown.  Her mouth was pulled into a tight, straight line.  She did not smile.

Desmond wanted to try the next round without the skate-mate.  Valentina kept the skate-mate and went around the rink with Kevin.  Desmond and I held hands and made our way around.  I kept my right hand against the carpeted wall.  I kept my left hand wrapped tightly around Desmond’s right hand.  Sometimes he lost his balance and squeezed my hand more tightly.  He didn’t fall down.

Desmond sat down for a rest.  Valentina and I made our way around the rink.  She white-knuckled the skate-mate.  I skated beside her, both of my hands by my side this time.  The fear was no longer in her eyes.  It would come back during moments of imbalance, but only briefly.  She smiled.  She pulled her skate-mate over to the side of the rink and high-fived people on the other side of the low wall.

This went on for many hours.  Valentina with her skate-mate.  Desmond holding my left hand.

Around and around and around.

At the end of the night, Desmond, Valentina and I took one last spin around the rink.  Valentina was to my right on her skate-mate.  Desmond was to my left holding my hand.  We didn’t speak as we took our final lap.  I watched mutely as Valentina, without announcement and without looking at me, released her grip on the skate-mate and made several unassisted strides.  Grip and release, grip and release.  She did not seek approval or attention.  I watched mutely as Desmond slackened his grip on my hand before shaking loose of our grasp.

My hand was still warm from his sweaty grip as he skated off ahead of me.

Grip.

Release.

Grip.

Release.

Around and around and around.

I’ve spent nearly every morning for the past two weeks at a veterinary cancer center.  Bazooka has been coming in for radiation treatments, which take several hours.  While she is back there going through what I can only imagine is her worst nightmare, I sit in the waiting room and work.  It seems, at first, an unlikely place to work.  It is overly-air conditioned, there are no proper tables or desks on which to work, and people are constantly coming and going with dogs—and sometimes cats, but mostly dogs—for chemo, radiation, consultations, follow-ups.

It is actually, it turns out, quite a suitable place to work.  I wear a sweater despite the infernal February heat outside (so wrong, this heat.  God, I miss winter this year).  I balance my laptop or notebook on my lap—no big deal, and it turns out that the stream of people and dogs is actually an enjoyable and often much needed distraction.

People are funny with their pets, particularly their dogs.  I am including myself when I say “people,” obviously, but because the ego is so super terrible at looking at itself with anything like distance for perspective, I don’t know where I fall among those observed.

I’m learning, I think, that our dogs are a proxy for ourselves.  It is very common, for example, for us to apologize for our own shortcomings via our dogs:

“You weren’t afraid of the scale yesterday, Pearl!”

“You are so nervous, Bear!”

“He never barks at home!”

“You put on weight, Nugget!  You know you’re not supposed to do that!”

Versions of these words are spoken at decibels unnecessary for communication with the staff member standing inches from the speaker.  The words are spoken with anxious giggles and too-loud, like I said.  “I’m sorry,” we seem to say through our dogs, “I’m not perfect.  It’s embarrassing to you and me, and I’m sorry.”

I wonder if this is the reason, subconsciously, that we get dogs.

We are aware of our fallibilities and fear that they make us unlovable—abandonable—so we are attracted to these cute, friendly, loving, loveable animals.  They will present a much more acceptable face to the world.  We can give voice to their flaws loudly in a crowded, overly-air conditioned cancer vet waiting room:

“Lily can fly all the way to Europe without a peep, but then we get to this place and…Stop it!  Shhh!”

“You see, everyone?” we say, “I am well aware that this is a problem.  Don’t worry, everyone.  I am aware.  I apologize.”

And everyone understands, everyone accepts our apologies.  Why?  Because our proxy is so goddamn cute!  Because our proxy is an innocent who deserves understanding, acceptance.

“Kiwi loves to be scratched behind the ears.  She just loves attention.  Such a big baby!”

“Love me.  But if you can’t love me because people are complicated and untrustworthy and risky, then love Kiwi!”

Bazooka comes out of radiation relaxed and happy.  She eats Milk Bones.  Tomorrow she’ll come in trembling and unhappy.  I will walk in and out with a smile on my face, light on my feet, as if none of this is any big deal.

Is this what I use Bazooka for?

Do I let her show the world what it feels like to be scared so that I don’t have to admit that I feel sad and fearful somewhere deep down inside; fear and sadness being unacceptable and requiring apology?  I get to come and go outwardly unchanging, leaving Bazooka to deal with the burden of the normal, socially-unacceptable expressions of extreme fear and extreme relief?

Probably…

“No problem, Bazooka.  Here we go!”

Because he obviously needs it

Because he’s on the street and I’m in my car                                                                                   Because if I lost one dollar I would never notice                                                                           Because he’s asking for it                                                                                                                     Because I have it

Because his belongings are spilling out of a plastic bag and include a t-shirt and a bag of chips and some papers that look like they are going to blow away

Because his skin has the look of too much sun and the sun is out again

Because the median is small and unsafe

Because my car is big and the safest I could buy

Because we live in America and America is about buying:
food
clothes
water
a hat
a car
exercise pants
shoes
a mortgage
yoga classes
drugs
health
wine
whiskey
a shot of something:
tequila
courage
morphine
love

Because he loves someone and someone loves him

Because I love so many and they love me back and that is worth more than one dollar

I roll the window down just as the light turns green.  The line of cars in front of me moves sluggishly so he has enough time to reach my window.  He is standing in the African Irises struggling to grow in the un-irrigated median between six lanes of traffic.  He’s already expressing thanks as he reaches for the bill.  I’m creeping slowly forward, hoping the car behind me won’t lean on its horn.  Our fingers touch and there is a shock between his fingertip and mine.  I don’t know who originated the electrical charge.  I don’t know how these things work, and I suspect that nobody really knows since even scientists don’t know if lightning  originates from the earth or from the cloud.  In any case, I imagine there has been some sort of ionic or covalent bond between my atoms and his, that we are both different on a molecular level now.  I consider this as the tingle in my finger fades away, and I accelerate through the intersection.

In the past few years, every time I travel I try to make little recordings of the surrounding environment.  I’ve added three of them below.  They are not meant to be movies in any narrative or even visually compositional way.  They are souvenirs.  What strikes me now as I watch them again, is how selective my hearing is when I’m out and about.  There is much more “other noise” in the world that I don’t hear in the moment.  Thank you, brain!

Since they are not movies, don’t feel like you have to plant yourself in front of the computer and watch.  Just click play, turn up the volume and do your crossword puzzle or unload the dishwasher.

This is something I wrote 10 years ago and was reminded of after a roller skating experience that I will write about later.  I consider the fact that I was able to ONE: find this file, and TWO: rescue it from the clutches of a laptop so old that it took 20 minutes to turn it on, a small miracle.  In light of my last blog post, I was also surprised to find that apparently I write a lot about Santiago, Nonno Luis, Nonna Maffi.

Here it is, unearthed and unedited:

My 90-year-old grandmother lives alone in an adobe house that is cracked here and there from resisting a century of Chile’s frequent tremors.  I was at her house last month with Desmond, my boy.  (I say “boy” because he is no longer a baby, though before I became a mom I would have considered a 17-month-old like Desmond a “baby.”)  The two of us were walking around her ancient and overgrown backyard.  I think you would be surprised to find such a yard in back of this old adobe that lays right smack dab in the middle of a gritty and dirty working class neighborhood in the heart of Santiago.  However, at that moment, I was not thinking about the incongruity of finding this greenery in the middle of the city.  I was watching Desmond intently, ready to swoop down and break his next fall—which could happen at any moment given his extremely wobbly gait.  I watched as his impossibly unsteady step stumbled over pebbles and the occasional clothespin or twig.  Once in awhile, he would reach his right arm straight up into the air and flutter his hand around.  This is the sign for, “I need your hand, mama.  I want to step over this obstacle.”  I gave him my hand, and now we were walking through a patch of dirt on the far side of the yard.  His footsteps caused little puffs of dirt to escape from under his shoe.  Each little puff carried with it the dry and pleasing smell of earth.  Puff.  Dirt.  Puff.  Dirt.  Puff.  Chicken shit.  Chicken shit?

Oh my goodness, yes.  Yes.  There were chickens here once.  And a rooster.  And a canary in a red cage that hung in the doorway.  And there was a dog!  Titan.  He bit me once.  Or was that my sister he bit?  If you were surprised to find this large, wild backyard in the middle of Santiago, then you would be even more surprised to know that it was once an Eden.  When I was a little girl, we traveled back to Chile often.  My mom and dad left the country in 1974, after the coup, but both of their families remained.  This adobe house belonged to my dad’s parents.  When my grandfather was alive, he kept chickens that laid blue eggs, trees that bore so much fruit that the branches nearly touched the ground.  Lemons.  Apples.  Peaches.  Quince.  He trained the canary to do tricks.  He died when I was twelve years old after being very sick for many years.  I think I must have been six the last time I saw this garden in its full glory.  After he passed away, my grandmother, Nonna Maffi, was too stricken by his death to maintain the huge lot behind the house.  It was not that she couldn’t, it was just that she didn’t.  It was his realm.  He created it.  Perhaps it was most appropriate to let it go with him.  So after my grandfather was gone, I was no longer woken up in the mornings to my grandmother singing a song and carrying a blue, soft-boiled egg.  I was getting too old for that anyway.  A dozen visits have passed since that time.  I forgot about it completely.  Well—not completely.

I looked down at Desmond who was now fully captivated by some sort of large, flying insect.  I get caught up, everyday, with the immediate needs of this bouncing, curious toddler.  It’s easy for me to forget what he is.  It is easy for me to forget that he is more than my son.  He is, in a way, my future.  He will go on to do and live things that I will not do or live.  It is easy to see our children as potential, as future.  But what I did not realize until the moment he kicked up the sour smell of chicken poo, is that he is my past.  He is my link to memories, and by extension, he links me to people both alive and dead.  He is a connection to my mom—a person with whom I now have a very adult relationship.  But once, long ago, she used to wear a gold, heart-shaped pendant on a thin chain made up of the smallest links I had ever seen.  I loved that necklace because it represented her, because she wore it, and because she was everything to me.  Today, I see the way Desmond marvels at the ruby on my wedding ring.  I know the look on his face.  I know what is stirring in his heart, and in my mind’s eye, I can see my mother the way he sees me now.  On that afternoon last month in my grandmother’s backyard, he let me see the garden paradise again.  I saw my grandfather scattering chicken seed, my grandmother caramelizing condensed milk over the stovetop.  I could see the way Nonna Maffi looked then—black hair streaked with grey—and now.  And though her hair is silver and her shoulders stoop, she is still the same woman.  Same eyes.  Same good and true intentions.  What a rare and unexpected gift from my boy.  What will he show me next?  What other memories will he dust off with a wave of his hand or a stomp of his foot?

I believe in ghosts.  I can’t help it.  I used to try helping it but not anymore.  Used to be I was embarrassed because I should know better.  Because I was raised by scientists.  Because it seemed simple-minded and retrograde to believe in what basically amounts to magic.

But now?

Fuck it.

***

My grandfather, Nonno Luis, died when I was twelve.  He lived in Santiago, Chile so I didn’t see him often, but I loved him very much.  He loved me too.  He had been sick for a long time with some kind of cancer that remains a mystery to me–bone cancer?

One night he visited me in a dream.  I did not usually dream of him so this was unique.  He told me that he had come to say goodbye.  I awoke and sat up like a bolt–like in the movies, like in that way that seems fake in the movies.  I sat up breathless  in the pitch dark and spoke these words aloud:

“Nonno Luis died.”

I didn’t feel sad at that moment despite the fact that I knew my words to be true.  I felt calm and happy.  I simply lay down and went back to sleep.

At breakfast the next morning, my mom came into the kitchen and told me:

“Nonno Luis died.”

I remember watching the cereal in my bowl turn into a watery blur as tears filled my eyes.  I felt very, very sad, and I cried.  This was the first great sadness of my life.

***

Over the decades that passed after my grandfather’s death, I travelled to Chile often to visit family generally and my grandmother, Nonna Maffi, in particular.  (One thing I have been most grateful for in my life has been this opportunity to transition from knowing my grandmother as a child into knowing her as an adult.)  Nonna Maffi was a discreet person by nature but not an overly- guarded person, and our conversations were some of the most open and surprising I’ve ever had.

After a two year stay with our family in Irvine, she returned to Chile, and I went to visit her shortly after her return.  One afternoon during that visit, in her little house in Santiago, during tea, she told me in her plain and straightforward way that Nonno Luis had visited her.

“Welcome back!” he had said.  She told me that she had wanted to embrace him, but he said that he was very tired and had to go.  He promised to come back.  And then he was gone.  I learned over subsequent years of conversation with Nonna Maffi that he had kept his promise and returned regularly for brief visits.

My grandmother was no mystic.  Do not be tempted to pin some sort of South-American-magic-realism cultural influence on her.  She was traditional–conservative in many ways.  She died a few years ago with every synapse still firing accurately and on time.  I can’t explain her experience or mine.  She couldn’t explain it either, though–truth be told–she seemed wholly uninterested in explanations.

***

Are my poor parents’ scientific evidence-based ears burning?  Probably.  Sorry guys.  I can’t help it.  (I will mention though…you did make me.  It’s not like beliefs come out of nowhere like magic.  Just saying.)