No one sees me pulling weeds. Under the dangling paddle
cactus all things recede into shadow. I am no exception. Slivers of conversations drift in like torn bits of a love
note. Unrequited and returned to sender, they impale themselves onto lethal
opuntia spines in surrender.
“You know, it’s the way you are when you’re in your whatever
whatever mood…”
“The mayor’s press office must look like a place where they
do commie puppet shows.”
This is Hillcrest. People can say those things. In fact,
outsiders come here to look at us. They are boring. But when I am pruning the
two-story tall palo verde tree or pulling weeds from between tall euphorbia
stalks, locals always stop to tell me how they’ve watched the jungle expand
like a new universe.
“Those are PHILip’s!” (pronounced FILL ups). “Those were
Philip’s clothes back there.”
I have found shirts, socks,
condoms (people do wear them, apparently), and twice I’ve found sets of
hospital scrubs. Either a physician’s assistant was transforming into a Superhero
sans phone booth, or a sickee escaped from one of three nearby hospitals
disguised as a caregiver. The latter is more plausible. In fact I have
encountered just such an escapee, though he was wearing his street clothes at
the time. He and a drinking buddy were leaning against the side of the house,
noisily enjoying liter-size bottles of PBR when I asked if they could kindly
carry their party elsewhere. The more sober one quickly staggered up to me
confessing he really doesn’t ever drink, as he handed me the half empty bottle
and hurried off to the bus stop down the street.
The other gentleman still wore his hospital wristband
pronouncing him at least diabetic, but his problems were myriad. He didn’t want
help getting up onto his cane, which meant, of course, he wasn’t getting up. I
eventually left him to himself, at the very uncomfortable angle of between up
and down, muttering about his combat experiences and thoughtless relatives; a
toxic combination that has brought hundreds of veterans to San Diego’s streets.
When I looked for him an hour later he had reconnect with his buddy at the bus
stop.
My neighbor has a different approach. When a hospital
escapee was napping on his soft green lawn, rather than ask the gentleman to please
head over to the park, he called paramedics, who showed up, sirens blaring,
with the requisite two police cars. Pulling on plastic gloves, they asked him
how he was doing, about his meds, his sobriety, etc. Several thousand taxpayer
dollars later, the paramedics retreated with their empty gurney. The cops
gently escorted the man to the sidewalk where he sadly stood swaying, feeling
foolish, rudderless, friendless and even more in need of that nap.
“The ocean has always been wet, but it hasn’t been until
recently that you could set it on fire.”
OK, fill in the blanks. BP? Exxon Valdez, being that this is
the 25th anniversary of that catastrophe. Pick your slick. A river
in West Virginia? Sadly, there are so many to choose from.
I don’t get oil slicks. I get Snickers wrappers and
cigarette butts. I’m sure both indulgences seemed like a good idea at the time, but the
consumer suffered for that moment of pleasure later on; kinda like off-shore
oil drilling operations. So I guess oil slicks = Snickers bars.
“The white one?! The white one is all fluff, no puff!”
The magic of succulents is that a broken limb becomes a tree
in no time. Several loads of culled blue agave pups and euphorbia branches became
a flowering forest in two years. In three I was trimming it back and gifting loads
of cuttings for other yards. The second floor windows are dark now behind the trumpet vines and giant bird of paradise.
Locals who saw the planting stage now walk by and reminisce
with me about when they were just ankle high and cute. Now they are towering
and quite lethal.
The Japanese mail order bride in pink rubber boots, pink
polka dot skirt and pink umbrella from the condo on the corner comes by every
few months. She chased her white poodle into the yard one day and I gave her a
few starters in pots. A week later her Anglo husband walked their poodle by and
thanked me for making his wife so happy.
“Coming of age is like getting a concussion!”
I wonder what age that might be.
If these are all non-sequiturs, then the wall-sized
chalkboard next to my favorite Thai restaurant is about public art sequiturs. Passersby
are invited to fill in the blank: “Before I die I want to…..” and the responses
range from the inspirational “swim with dolphins” to cathartic “forgive my
father.” The one that made me smile today was “be on time.” Surely the writer
has more meaningful dreams or aspirations. But then again, this is probably the
one person who is sure to realize that goal. And at the precise moment they are
right on time for their own demise, they might see that being punctual isn’t
such a valuable attribute after all.
