VOODOO

She is red. Red shoes. Red skinny pants. Red long-sleeved sweatshirt. Red hoodie. Red aura?

            I can’t miss her.

            Coming at me down 33^rd street, taking up the entire sidewalk. Talking loudly to herself. Somehow, I doubt she’s on the phone like the blue-shirted whale woman across the street from me this morning. “Yes, I told her that you couldn’t do that. We will have to reschedule….” Obviously, she was on a phone call, or she had a very convincing fake phone voice to cover up any craziness.

            No, Red Woman is ranting. I can tell. Not only because I’ve come across her before on my pandemic pacings, but her energy emits a venomous, keep away from me quality.

            I give her a wide berth, circling out into the street to avoid running into her.

            Of course, she’s not wearing a mask. Why of course? You’ll see.

            “I DON’T CARE!!!!” she hisses into the air. “VOODOO VOODOO VOOODOO!”

            I can’t help but stare and then hurry on. She glares at me, hissing the voodoo incantation again so I will be sure to know it’s for me.

            But why? What have I done to deserve such a hex? Is it because I’m wearing a mask? Why would this be? Or is it just that she would hiss a hex out to anyone who passes by. And what is this hex? Is she poking pins into me to stop me from walking? To stop me from avoiding her?  

            To stop me from writing about her?

            How could she know that she would be the subject of my next story?

            She couldn’t, could she?

            I don’t know. She scares me. But she also fascinates me. There’s a magical witchiness to her that I’m drawn to. I wonder what her life is like, walking the streets of Richmond, dressed completely in red, always loaded down with bags of stuff hanging off her shoulders. Is she homeless? Or does she live in the neighborhood somewhere and just needs to get out for a walk like the rest of us?

            I tell Mr. Ian the story later. “Yeah, I bet a lot of people believe that.”
            “What are you talking about?”
            “That the pandemic is just a hoax. It’s all just voodoo made up by the government to keep people scared and quarantined.”

            “Really?” I shake my head. “Well, maybe. But I think she was actually directing her Voodoo at me. It certainly felt that way.”

            I know that Ian is right about how a lot of people believe the virus is a hoax. That they don’t know anyone that’s gotten it. That they don’t see anyone that is sick. That they aren’t sick themselves. That wearing a mask and staying sheltered in place is all just a part of the unnecessary accouterments to perpetuate the hoax. Yet, how can anyone believe that if they read the papers? Listen to the news? The pandemic grows in strength every day. More and more people are being stricken with it. More and more people are dying, esp. since the state tried to reopen. Now everyone is back to shelter in place. Wearing masks is required for everyone that steps outside.

            I try to do this with my walks. But it seems like too much when there’s no one around.

            Though when I spied Red Woman coming at me, I immediately pulled my mask up and over my face. I was glad for the protection.

            Maybe this set her off.

            She pauses for a moment, glaring at me as I continue my hurried pace in the middle of the street.

            “Voodoo VOODOO VOOODOO!”

            She hollers at me, and I quicken my pace, hoping she doesn’t follow me.

            She doesn’t. She turns and continues on down 33^rd street. I glance back at her, when I’m safely across Esmond.

            She’s a red bean pole figure, down the block now, swaying under the weight of her bags.

            I breathe a sigh of relief as I head up the block, but still a feeling of unease settles into my being.

            The voodoo is at work. I can feel it. And I’m scared……

SHOWERS

“She hates taking showers. But loves drying off!” The black lab confirms this love in unabashed doggie joy. Her person wrapping her in a towel, then giving her big rubs. The lab wriggles in exuberant doggie rollovers on the warm sidewalk. “Don’t stop!” she’s saying, loud and clear in her doggie body language.

            I’d seen them up ahead as I marched up 31^st street, my morning routine for the pandemic pacings. “Someone’s having a good time!” I’d hollered. And then the shower hatred. The drying off love. And I think of how my mom used to give the German Shepard baths with Suave Green Apple shampoo, taking the big dog in the shower with her. And then, once the shower was over, how proud the Shepard was of her clean and sweet-smelling self.

Or when I used to try to give the giant white cat, Pablo, baths. Well, I didn’t give them to him. I took him to the vet. They tried for a while. He wasn’t white for long. But turned an unattractive grey hue.       He was too violent though. The vet tech finally banned him from the salon. “Attacks without warning” was stamped in red ink across his files.

            He stayed that dirty grey for the rest of his life. But didn’t seem to mind.

            I, on the other hand, mind immensely taking showers lately, during this pandemic. I didn’t use to be this way, but now, taking a shower means that I’m not going swimming. My routine was that I’d wait and swim at around noon and then take a shower after the pool.

            But no more. There are no pools for me to swim in easily. Sure, I can make a ‘reservation’ at the El Cerrito Pool, but these are so hard to get that after one time of a crappy lane, though a heavenly swim, I haven’t been able to get another reservation at all.

            Plus, no showers there. I just had to swim, then climb out into the constant cold wind that whips through El Cerrito, wrap my towel around me and shiver home for the shower.

            Plus, the drought. I worry so much about all the water I use taking a shower. Sure, I turn it on and off when I soap up, but still…. it’s a LOT of water. And there was NO rain here last year. Something, during the current health crisis, that people seem to have forgotten about. Every evening, on my walk up 31^st street, I see this pajama-clad man hosing down his stupid lawn. No drought there! He stands with the hose, watering watering watering and I do consider going over and reminding him that California is in a severe drought, but I don’t. I don’t like confrontation, esp. with strangers who are my neighbors. I do try to have a good relationship with neighbors in this pandemic.

            So, when I see the neighbor with her happy dog, and yes, what must have been a bit of water to wash the canine—she is large!—I don’t even think of telling her not to wash her dog. That there’s a drought on. That dogs must be dirty.

            No, all I can think of is the joy that both she and the dog embody. There’s nothing like doggie joy, is there?

            Unless it’s the joy of showers. And I don’t mean the ones in the house, I mean the ones that I hope bless us this winter, watering all the thirsty plants and brown lawns and dirty white cats.  

CAT NAMES

 

She is dainty and sweet. Always hanging out on the driveway at the top of 36^th street and Clinton. Always coming to greet though sometimes a bit of coaxing is necessary. Today, Ian is with me when we stop for pets. “Her name is Cheeva or Cheefa or something like that,” I tell him as he bends down to ‘pat’ her. “Oh, c’mere pretty puss. That’s a good girl.” I know her name, sorta, cuz I asked her person the other day. And I know she’s a girl cuz she’s got those pretty torbie markings: tabby with orange highlights. Of course, she is good-natured. She’s a variation of a tortie, and as Maria Porges said 30 years ago, “Tortoiseshells are the nicest cats.”

            Cheeva rubs up against Ian’s outstretched hand, proving Maria’s point, when I notice that there’s a person tucked away behind the overplanted and lush garden behind a blue painted wrought iron fence. He’s the same man I spoke with the other day, so I feel like we have a relationship, at least where the cat is concerned. So, today I ask him again what her name is since I’m not really sure I’ve got it right.

            “Cheeva,” he murmurs, continuing with some succulent project. “She is a very nice cat.”

            “Yes, she is,” I agree. “How do you spell her name?”

            “C-H-I-F-A” he says it slowly, aware maybe that it’s a strange name.

            “Cheefa,” I repeat. “Does it mean something?” Ian and I have just finished our Spanish lesson so I’m wondering if it has some Spanish derivation.

            But no.

            “It is from the movie, Kung Fu Panda. When we got her we thought she was a boy cat so we named her Chufa from the movie, but then when we found out she was a girl, we changed it to Chifa.”

            Grinning, I use my Spanish know how— “Ah, yes, an ‘a’ at the end of the name for a girl, right?”

            “Yes,” he nods, a bit bored with us, I’m thinking. Probably we’ve interrupted some important gardening project. His garden is strange and watery. I’ve been walking past it way before the pandemic and marveled at its jungle-like aspect. Vines, and succulents and ferns in many many pots all over the tiny front yard with a rock fountain always running and giant wind chimes donging above.

            I wonder if he’s the one who climbed the high trees to hang the wind chimes. He seems so of the earth always sitting on an upturned plastic box container, hidden in the shade of his garden in the late afternoon light.

            Ian’s still petting the cat who’s not complaining, but I’m ready to move on, having finally gotten her name right. And as we continue on up and around Clinton Hill, I think about all the cat names in my life and how they all have a story or at least a derivation. It began with the tortoiseshells, ‘the nicest’ cats of Maria Porges’ proclamation: Gertrude and Alice after of course, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Owen Hill and I picked up these girls as tiny kittens in the hills of Montclair. They were in a basket on the owner’s front porch with a note: “Take one of both of the kittens.” How could we take just one?

            Then there was Pablo, after Pablo Picasso. My big white monster cat. I remember a friend’s husband, who is Mexican, asking why gringos always give Spanish names to their pets, and I had answered, “It’s a theme. Pablo Picasso is part of the Gertrude Stein era.” I’m not sure he understood, but then there were a quick succession of this era named cats: H.D, Zelda, Parker, Mina, and of course, my precious Sylvia, after Sylvia Beach, the famous publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses.

            Today, I have Clara. Her name is simple enough from the composer, Clara Schumann, as I’ve seemed to run out of literary names. Yet, she had another name before I adopted her: Soledad, for her solitary foundling status. Nicknamed, Chole. I have a bad association with the name Soledad, a former student whom I eventually came to respect a great deal, but man, was she a pain. Her name was Soledad, Soly, for short. I couldn’t have my cat name echo hers!

            And, so as we walk on, I muse about all of these cats and their names. I know everyone has a story about their own names having taught Cisneros’s House on Mango Street --my students resonated with the protagonist's longing for name that reflected who she really was. Not Esperanza, which means 'hope' in Spanish, but something like, “ZeZe the X”.

            While 'hope' is beautiful, I can understand Esperanza's desire to have a racier moniker. 

    Like Chifa. Though, frankly, she doesn't seem to have much of a Kung Fu nature, being a torbie and all!

    I think Ivy Jell-O (Ian’s foundling cat named after the Ivy she was found in and Magellan—Jell-O for short-- the explorer) might be the best name. However, your cat (or dog) might have a better one.

   

            What’s your cat’s name? (Or dog’s?) Where did it come from? Why did you choose it?

            Lemme know! I'll look for them in the comments of this blog or on the FB and compile a list--it'll be fun and informative. As only cats can be!

           

Nothing?

Most days when I walk out the door for my pandemic pacings, nothing happens. And what can I expect? There isn’t some ‘story’ every moment of the walk. Or even for one moment of the walk. Or is there?

          

  Today, I walk and nothing happens. I don’t walk past the ‘free seeds’ house and overhear a woman lamenting her distress over planting. “I don’t know if I’ve been watering it too much or too little….can you help?” And Free Seed Lady, nods in sympathy, “Let’s take a look. I’ll see what I can do.” And I think to myself, well, at least I don’t have that anxiety! Plants! Or do I? It seems with the pandemic that anxiety takes over every waking moment. Of course, we’re all worried about this plague and if it will ever end or at least become manageable. But then, there’s also just the free-floating anxiety, about plants?

            I do worry about my plants, specifically the cherry tree in the front yard. It just isn’t as fluffy as the one in the back yard. I know they are slightly different varieties of cherry trees: one is a hanging one and the other is what? A normal one? See, I don’t know anything about plants. I voice my anxiety to Ian about the Normal One. He just shrugs after glancing at it. “Don’t worry. That tree is just fine.” And again, since he’s so authoritative about things, I take comfort in it. He has a lot of plants after all, growing in abundance in pots all over his kitchen counter, the little table by the window, the eating table. I’ve given him plants over the years that just elude me. The yellow Chrysanthemums that began to shrivel and die after my colleagues gave me them for my 60^th birthday. I think this may have been a sign. After all, 6 months later, I’m laid off this job. It makes sense the flowers follow suit.

            Yet Ian brings them back to life. Their yellow blooms brighten his kitchen. So, when he says the Normal Cherry Tree is fine, okay, I believe him.

            See? Plant worry? It’s there.

            And today, as I walk on and nothing happens, I continue to remember the times that something did. The time I spoke with Piano Man who kept his family piano near him. And this morning when I walk by and glance in the windows where I know the little piano is, I don’t see it. I can’t see it. The windows are a dark shade of purple. He’s replaced the regular windows with dark windows so I can’t see in?

            Could this be?

            No, Cj, not everything is about you. But actually it is, right? Cuz I’m in my body and brain and there’s no escape! DL and I used to joke about how we needed a Braincation. And, with this pandemic and spending so much time by myself in my brain, I find I could really use someone else’s brain for 10 days! Who would I pick? Someone calm and young and anxiety-free. Like that person exists, CJ!

           

I walk on and still nothing happens. I turn the corner where the constant barking dogs yelp at me from behind the screen door. Today? Nothing. I remember a few weeks ago, walking round this corner and their rabid barking as a UPS man, masked up and roly-poly , sauntered out from the front porch. “BABY! RALPH! STOP BARKING AT THE NICE MAN! HE’S JUST TRYING TO DO HIS JOB!” And, I make eye contact with the Nice Man, can’t see if he’s grinning or not behind his mask, but his eyes seem to say, it’s all in a day’s work. No big deal as he climbs back into his truck and whizzes off.

            I think, well, at least I don’t have a job as a UPS driver. Imagine! The risk! The pressure. Yet, he didn’t seem fazed at all.

            Maybe I could have his brain for 10 days.

            I turn into my drive and think about Carl Nolte’s “Native Son” column last Sunday, (7/19/20)—how he bemoaned the loss of tourists on the streets of San Francisco. He actually surprised himself by how much he missed the tourists, not only for their economic contribution to the City’s well-being, but just for being there! They were life!

            And, I think, as I open my door, where is all the life now? When I go on these walks and don’t see a soul, where are all the people? What are they all doing? What will become of them?

            Who knows the answer to these questions, esp. the ones about the future. We’re living in a hellish sort of limbo with this pandemic and that’s the anxiety of being in limbo. You have no idea what’s coming next, and nothing does come next for who knows how long. And then?

            Nothing.

            This might be a good thing, I think, as I unlock my door, scoop up the kitten, and try not to get scratched. I turn on The Young and the Restless.

            Nikki has big blonde hair and she’s scheming to take Sharon’s child away from her.

            At least something is happening in Genoa City, I grin, plopping down on the couch, and turn up the volume. 

The Poldark Parrot

“There’s a parrot in the tree.” As happens so often on my walks, people appear out of nowhere. Even though I walk the same route mornings and evenings, I never know who’s going to appear.

            Today, a woman of middle age dressed in a tent-like tomato colored caftan stands in front of Taxidermist Man’s (more on this later) house. Ian and I stop at her proclamation. Follow her finger pointed up to a mammoth redwood tree in the lot next to hers. Sure enough, there is a parrot. I spy its bright orange belly and green head even though it must be 4 stories up. It’s squawking up a storm. No Polly want a cracker here. It’s a distress cry.       

            And Caftan Woman has come to its rescue. Or at least to its call.

            “I was playing the piano and I heard this tremendous squawking and so I came out and discovered it.”

            Ian and I nod.

            “I will get it some food. I hope it’s all right.”

            “Yes,” I say, “it seems distressed.”
            We all gaze up at the tree for a moment, taking in the parrot’s call. Where did it come from, I wonder?

            “I think it belongs to the family across the street,” she intones, seemingly reading my mind “they have a sign on their garage door about a parrot.”

            I wonder why she doesn’t just go across the street and knock on their door if they have a sign about a missing parrot, which is my assumption. Instead, I ask her about her piano playing. I’d been told by the Opera Singer more than a year ago (whom I was going to teach piano to but it didn’t work out) that there was a piano teacher who lived in this house. We’d discovered that we knew of this house because of the taxidermist. Who is a big %**hole! I think this is another blog, but he let his dogs lunge at me one day, barking ferociously, but I didn’t know they were restrained and when I screamed, he laughed and laughed and laughed. “Don’t worry your pretty head!” he’d leered at me. “They’re tied up!” On an earlier walk, I’d  spied him in his garage with his massive taxidermy collection of raccoons, deer, birds and other assorted dead animals. Well, obviously they’re dead. I sure hope the parrot wasn’t going to be added to the collection. Was she not letting the neighbors know for just this nefarious purpose?

            When the opera singer had told me that the piano teacher was married to the taxidermist, I was curious about her. It’d be cool to know another piano teacher in the neighborhood though as Ian pointed out later, she might be my competition.

            “I play the piano too,” I offer.

            “Do you?” She still is gazing up at the parrot.

            “Yes, and teach. Do you teach?” I already figure that this is the piano teacher that the opera singer had told me about. I want to find more out about her. I’m nosy that way.
            “Why yes I do. For the Fiat school.”
            “Ah…..I teach for IMC and then also privately.”

            “I also play the violin,” she said. “We should do a duet sometime.”

            “Well, yes, maybe when the pandemic is over.”

            “I was playing the theme to Poldark. The parrot must like it. Do you know it?”
            There was something a little crazy eyes about her--you know what I mean? She had a quality of floatiness that crazy people have. The theme from Poldark didn’t help with this assessment of mine. A show I know vaguely of on PBS that features a dark hero and many windswept heroines that need rescuing. At least from what I can tell by the ads.

            Now I tell her that no, I don’t know the theme for Poldark. Want to mention that I’m working on Corelli’s keyboard pieces, but decide against this, thinking that this might sound a little snooty.

            “You should play it. It’s beautiful….” She sighs, still staring up at the parrot who continues to squawk pitilessly all this time. Ian’s standing next to me, staring up at the tree saying something about this isn’t a really good climate for parrots: it’s not the tropics.

            We all laugh. Yes, Richmond is not the Caribbean. Is that where parrots reside?

            Now, getting antsy to continue our walk, I want to close the chat: “What’s your name? I ask.

“Cecilia.”

“I’m Carol. Nice to meet you.”

“Yes, Are you on Nextdoor?” I tell her I am and then ask her about the house with the parrot sign before we take our leave. She points across the street to a nondescript grey abode with birch trees overhanging the sidewalk. Again, I wonder why she doesn’t just go over there and let them know she’s seen their parrot. But then, since she does have that crazy eye thing going on, maybe there’s some sort of estrangement between her and these neighbors?

            Ian and I decide to go over and check out this house, leaving her to continue calling to the parrot.

She’s right, there is a sign on the garage door with kids’ paining, ‘Parrot come home.’ And then a painting of the parrot, all oranges, greens and blues. We go and knock on the door. No answer. I suggest to Ian that he write a note on the parrot sign and he does, “Parrot across the street in redwood at 919. Tuesday, July 14^th”.

            We leave it at that and continue on. I glance back. Celia is still standing on the front lawn, singing up to the parrot. I wonder if she’s singing the theme to Poldark. There’s something haunting and dark about the tune. I wonder if the parrot will come to her.

            I hope not. She just doesn’t seem trustworthy. And maybe this is just my innate prejudice against her because she is married to the Taxidermist, or maybe it’s more than this.

            Ian starts in talking about how he’s still not heard from his optometrist about his new glasses. “Why don’t you call him?” I say for the 100^th time.

            We turn the corner and head up McBryde. I still hear squawking in the wind.

            Poor parrot….I worry….I hope his family sees Ian’s note!

The Kissing Swimmers

JMWTurner: Sunrise with Sea Monsters

At first glance, I think they are some weird welded together two-headed sea monster. One in a no sleeved wetsuit, black and shiny. The other in a bikini ensemble, orange floaty attached. They look like one person, meshed together, bodies tight against each other, heads attached…oh! They’re kissing! Kissing swimmers! They stay in this embrace for a long time. It seems like 10 minutes, but must be only about a minute? I glance over at Ian, who grins at me.

            “Kissing swimmers,” I state the obvious.

            “Yes,” he winks.

            Maybe it’s a ritual before submerging in that cold bay water here at Keller Cove? The kissing warms them up? Or maybe they’re saying goodbye to each other? Who knows what dangers lurk in the bay? They may never come back?

            Or maybe they’re just horny. (I hate that word!! Isn’t there a better word? Maybe they’re just amorous!)

            In any case, they do finally part, turning toward the sea and heading into its embrace. I watch as they saunter down to the edge of the water. I can tell they’re serious swimmers. They’re athletes that are built for the cold. He’s in his wetsuit, so maybe he’s not a built as she is---and she is—tall and muscled and tan. I envy them their substance. I feel so small.

            Especially once I’m in the water myself. As I turn to swim on my back, I have to fight against the icy waves to follow the Kissing Swimmers. They’re way ahead of me, out of my sight. They’ll swim to the pylons for sure!

            Back on the beach, I know Ian is reveling in Crow Communication. We’d plopped down under a shady tree once we’d done staring at the Kissing Swimmers. A nosy crow had swooped down and was pecking near my stuff. “Watch out for That Crow!” a basking in the sun swimmer man yelled at us. “He’s mean!”

            “Oh, I think he’s cute,” Ian had exclaimed.

            I didn’t care. I just wanted to get prepped for the swim and get in the water.

Now, as I floated for a moment, I could see Ian’s red shirt on the shore. Evidently, the crow had lost its allure and Ian was being my ‘lifeguard’—I wish he’d come in with me! It’d be so fun! He would be cold, of course, but I think he’d like it. It’s so exhilarating, esp. the first time you take the plunge into the bay. I still get a little bit of this euphoria from my first-time swimming in the bay a few weeks ago. I just can’t believe I’m doing this!

            Today, as I follow the Kissing Swimmers, the water is tough and murky. It’s low tide and my hand brushes against long flowing seaweed. I shiver a bit more. Yes, from the cold, but also from the tingling slime that brushes against me. I like the ocean and its moving waves---lakes scare me. I’ll never forget the time I swam at Lake De Valle in Livermore, and when I swam out into the middle of the lake, huge slimy trees were submerged under the water. It seemed like they harbored all sorts of scary monsters! I didn’t last long swimming in this lake. Just too nightmarish!

            Today is a little like this, though as I swim out farther, the seaweed is deeper and doesn’t touch me. It must still be down there; I just can’t see more than a few feet in the brown murkiness. I swim parallel to the shore, for what seems like 30 minutes, and then turn around. My mask is leaking, probably from the choppy sea that pushes it off my face. And I’m getting cold. There’s a muscle in the back of my left arm that feels like it is getting tired even a little crampy.

            I head back. It’s easier going this direction. I revel in this ease. Feeling my body move through the water inspite of the cold. I almost run into a swimmer man. He sees me before I see him, waving at me. “Oh, sorry!” I stop for a moment. “I didn’t see you. Did you see me?”

            He grins, “Yeah, I saw you coming in on my right.”

            “Cool,” I beam. “Thanks for not crashing into me.”

            “No problem,” he says, before waving goodbye and heading out to sea.

            Really getting cold now, I turn and head toward the beacon that is Mr. Ian’s red shirt. But up ahead, I spy 3 swimmers, bobbing in the water, their orange hats attached to wet suited arms. I swim closer, “I like your orange head coverings!” I holler at them.

            They are treading water, smile and wave at me. “Thanks,” one of them answers.   

            “Do they keep you warm?”

            “Oh, yes!” they all call out, one of them I can see is quite elderly, her big smile encased in decades of sea sun wrinkles.

            “I need one!” I call out, beginning to turn to head back in.

            “Yes, you do!” one calls out to me.

            And as I emerge from the water, the sea weed soft now on my legs, I grin widely. Ian’s there with a towel. What a great swim caddy! “18 minutes!” he hollers at me. “Did you see my fingers? I was holding up two fingers to show that if you stayed in 2 more minutes, you’d make it to 20 minutes!”

            I shake my head, “No, I couldn’t see that.” I am shivering as we walk back to out spot. A strange man sits on the wall, staring and eating potato chips. The Crow has a chip in its beak.

            “I see Mr. Crow is having lunch,” I joke.

            “Yes, he was trying to eat the stuff in your bag!”

            I laugh. Happily, chilled and exhausted, lying down in the sun for a few minutes as Mr. Ian covers me up with another towel.

            Potato Chip man takes out a joint and lights it up. He has no mask on, obviously, with ingestion of both pot and chips. He’s still staring at us.

            “That guy is giving me the creeps,” I say to Ian.

            “Yeah,” Ian nods.

            “Let’s go,” I stand up and begin the process of the futile shake out of sand from the towels, cap, rash guard and leggings.

            On our way up the path to the showers, a woman stops us, “How’s the water?” she asks me.

            “Well, I was cold, but I’m not used to it yet.”

            “Ummm….” She nods, assessing me up and down. “It felt pretty warm out there yesterday.”

            “Really?” I can’t believe anyone would call that water warm! “Do you swim with a wetsuit or just in your skin?”
            She grins, proud. “Just my skin.”
            “Wow. How long do you stay in?”

            “35 minutes.”

            I shake my head, “I lasted 18 minutes today!” We both laugh as she starts to head down the path. “What’s the tide like?”

            “It’s low tide in about an hour,” Ian tells her.

            “Slack tide…” she nods, then turns and walks away.

            “Did she say Slack tide or Black Tide?” Ian asks.

             “I dunno,” I answer.

            “I can look it up on my phone,” he offers.

            “That’s okay, maybe later.” I wring out my stuff with his help. Glance down to the beach and see that the Kissing Couple are finally emerging from their swim. Man! They musta been out there for 45 minutes!

            Kissing helps with endurance, no doubt.

            Next time I’ll have to elicit Mr. Ian’s help with this.  I need all the endurance (and kisses!) I can get!

The Whistling Woman

I see her and hear her simultaneously. And, yes, feel her. She emerges from her driveway, a slim woman, all brown. Short brown hair. Brown long-sleeved shirt. Tan slacks. Beige sandals.

            She’s whistling. Not exactly a tune, but a steady whistle.  As she wanders out of her driveway and onto the sidewalk, her whistle steady and maybe beginning a little tune, I think, oh, she’s calling for her cat. That’s what she’s doing. I know I whistle for my cats. Of course, being cats, this doesn’t always work. It’s a better call for dogs. Unless you have a dog like cat. Pablo was this breed. He’d come when I whistled. Follow me around like a dog.

            So, maybe whistling woman is whistling for a dog?

            Yet, somehow it doesn’t seem so.  

            And, then, she sees me watching her. I admit I’m rather blatant about this staring, esp. on these pandemic walks. Everyone wants to chat and, if I make eye contact, they often will. Like the guy this morning, busy watering and trimming his immaculate succulent garden while I was petting a very vocal torbie cat. “Is this cat yours?” I’d asked since he’d stopped his work and was staring at me. “No, it belongs to a neighbor. But she likes you.”

            Then he’d gone back to his project, the chat over. The cat sauntered away from me into the middle of the street so I had to call it back over to the sidewalk. With a whistle? Now that I think of it, I so!

            This eye contact is key to making ‘connections’ with mostly strangers that are my neighbors. So, when I make eye contact with Whistling Woman, she doesn’t talk to me, or make an overt recognition of me, but….she starts to DANCE! I’m not kidding. She starts to snap her fingers, and skips into a little dance step to the rhythm, all the while continuing to whistle. Wow, I think, is she dancing for my benefit?

            I want to join her, but then don’t of course. I don’t know her. I can’t dance. It’s a delightful musical interlude in my walk this morning along with the whistling. Dancing!

            I admit I’m obsessed with all the dance shows on TV. So, You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, and this summer, World of Dance. On this one, the dancers are world-class competitors. They move with a musicality that just boggles my mind. Two purple swirls, a brother and sister from Ecuador, cha cha chaing at a speed that defies physics. Their rhythm and attunement to the music is effortless and phenomenal.

            I love dancers! I remember when I worked at Double Rainbow in The City in 1984 and one of my fellow soda jerks was a dancer. I couldn’t help but stare at his amazing ass every time he bent over to scoop. I mean, I was shameless about it. He liked it or at least this is what I told myself. I can’t even remember his name. but I remember his ass!

            So today, when Whistling Woman turns into Dancer Woman, I am struck by how she suddenly becomes of this world of dance. Out on the street. Clicking her fingers.

            Just for me?

            Grinning to myself, I can only hope so as I do a little skip before continuing my walk down 32^nd street.  

You Rock!

Rock Journal Sketch by Cj

As I approach the Imagine the Possibilities house, I see that the green lawn has been shorn, the blades of grass now showing brown edges at the top. Oh, no, I think. I hope the Imagine the Possibilities rock is still there! I hope it didn’t get eaten by a lawnmower! Imagine the possibilities of that happening!

            I slow my pace to scan the lawn for the rock. I don’t see it, at least not at first. But then, aha! I spot the lime green oval in a slightly different spot, not quite at the edge of the lawn, but a bit more in the grass itself. I stop to take in its message, when lo and behold, it’s a different message.  Huh?

            I gaze down at the new message, “You Rock”, in bright blue paint. It’s surrounded by a few cute symbols painted in red---a spiral underneath---I can’t remember what that means, but do remember K the Librarian at Woo Woo’s Berkeley campus was obsessed with this symbol. It meant something like never ending possibilities? Okay, so now the possibilities aren’t spelled out anymore? They are encased in this tiny red spiral? And then a star on one side—again, a star symbolizes what? The heavens? The sparkles? Star Trek? And finally, a few seemingly random red markings. They don’t appear to be specific symbols at all. Maybe the artist just ran out of ideas?

            But the main message was clear, whoever stopped to read this rock rocked!

            I do?

            I honestly can’t think of any reason why I rock except for one. Nursing little Clara kitten back to health after her spay surgery.

            Of course, this was supposed to be ‘routine’ but it’s been anything but. The women at Berkeley Humane society where the surgery was done were super sweet, but when I picked up Clara, the woman who gave her back to me said “Clara is NOT happy!” And when I had dropped her off, warning the woman of Clara’s propensity for feistiness, she said, “Well, she is an orange female tabby.” 

            The point is—Clara is not an easy cat, which seems to be my lot in cat ownership. Pablo. or as Owen Hill called him, “Moby Dick” was the great white monster. He bit all my partners, attacked my neighbor when she tried to take care of him, and the vet had labeled his chart with “Attacks without warning” in bright red felt pen.

            I thought he was my most challenging cat, that is until I got Clara. And so, this last week, when I’ve been trying to help her convalesce, she’s been most uncooperative. It’s not her fault. It is major abdominal surgery. Why when I remember my own hysterectomy, well, let’s just say my body did not cooperate either.

            Donna, at BHS, gave me the dreaded cone to keep Clara from licking her wound, adamant about keeping it on her for 10 -14 days so that she wouldn’t infect it. Yeah, right. When I got her home, Clara was having none of the dreaded cone head. So, I gave up pretty quickly. I also tried the ‘sock’ shirt that my niece, Thea, told me about. This too was more than a little challenging though I did get it on her for a night.

            But the biggest challenge came this week when Clara stopped eating. And then barfed up some food she had eaten the day before, and so, I knew something was terribly wrong. Rushing her to El Cerrito Animal Hospital where it was Wait in line Covid mayhem, the Vet finally came out to talk to me: “She’s in severe pain. I couldn’t treat her. She tried to bite my tech. Here’s some liquid meds for you to give her. If she’s not better in 48 hours, then bring her back and we’ll hospitalize her.”

            Damn! This all sounded really BAD! And no shots of antibiotics or pain meds? Nope, she wouldn’t allow it.

            “But ….” I almost started to cry. How the hell was I going to get these meds down her? “I don’t know if I can get administer these meds….”

            “Try putting them in her food.”

            “She’s NOT eating.”

            A shrug. A call back to the office. Pulling his mask back on, the vet turned to deal with the next crisis.

When I got her home, of course, the idea to put the meds in the food was a no go. She wouldn’t eat. So, yes, I got the pink syringe down her with only a minimum of fuchsia goo on the floor. And the pain meds, too, gabapentin? That’s what I take for pain. Well, at least I knew it worked. This, too, I managed to get down her.  I had to repeat this every 12 hours.

            She started to improve the next day.  But still not 100%. I continued with the syringe down the throat, and finally that night, she began to eat! I tried putting the meds in the stinky tuna that Mr. Ian had brought over. Voila! She ate the meds in the tuna!

            Finally, she continued to lick her wound. The vet had told me that this is why she got so sick. She had infected it. So….I bit the bullet and slammed the cone head on her. She tolerated it! Though, man, she was mad! And disoriented. I felt so bad. But realized that if she was going to get well, that she had to keep this on.

            And she has for the most part. She continues to improve and is almost back to her old self.

            So, maybe yes, I rock, but mostly, Clara Rocks!

            Now if I could only get her to stop attacking Mr. Ian! Then, I would really Rock!

The Shoes!

“Good morning!” I hear the hearty hail before I see the source. Pause for a moment on 31^st street near the end of my morning walk. She’s across the street, a tiny little old lady. You know the type: 90 lbs., strange colored dyed beauty parlor helmet curls hair, generic leisure suit. But this one sports something else that catches my eye:

            Tie Dye shoes! They are a phenomenal vivid florescent colored rainbow; even from across the street, I can tell that they float her above the pavement by at least a couple of inches.

            I call back, delighted as usual to talk to my neighbors, most of whom I haven’t met before the pandemic. Now everyone wants to chat. It’s one of the good outcomes of all the isolation. “How’s it going?” I grin, still staring at her shoes.

            “Fantastic!” she beams back at me.

            “Cool….I like your shoes!” I can’t help it; they call out for oral admiration.

            “Thanks! They’re very comfortable!” And this is the most important thing to little old ladies, and,  well for all of us, isn’t it? I glance down at my own worn sneakers. Damn. They are a sight. They used to be white 20 years ago, but after tromping through the moonscapes of China’s city and rural streets, back and forth to BART here in the Bay Area, and now my Pandemic Pacings, well, they are a dirty grey hue. And….they are no longer comfortable.

            Were they ever? Those days in China when I was so lonely and walking was my solace, even in the freezing cold winds and dust, I’d venture out behind the university where I was teaching and march around the dusty track. Students and neighbors would jog around this track, wearing face masks (Yes, this was almost 20 years ago to keep from breathing the polluted air. China knows about face masks!). I’d keep my head down, trying not to be noticed, but this was a challenge with my blonde hair and Gianna Panna’s gigantic purple coat. I was a target for staring at the very least and an opportunity to practice English at the very most: “How old are you?” Damn, I got so sick of telling them that’s not a polite question to ask a middle-aged Western woman; they would nod at me and repeat the question, “How old are you?” till I finally, after a few weeks of this, just gave up and told them, “43”. Which is so young now, right?

            Yet, these shoes, that I wear now, still get me where I want to walk. And though I know I need new ones, and am curious about Tie Dye’s shoes origin, I don’t stop today to ask about it. I wave goodbye, even though I can tell she wants to talk. I’m tired and hot and need to get home to set the VCR to tape The Young and the Restless.

            None of the women on Y&R wear walking shoes! They all just click click click along in their high heeled summer sandals (It’s summer fun week on Y&R). These women aren’t really walking anywhere except around the pool or to get cream for their coffee at Crimson Lights. Nope. The women of Genoa City aren’t walkers. They have more important things to do: plotting corporate takeovers from sinister rivals; stealing shenanigans to seduce their daughter’s boyfriends; and recovering from medically induced comas and/or amnesia at Memorial Hospital. None of these activities take much walking.

            But I can tell, that Tie Dye Lil Ol Lady is a walker. At least as much as these women walk. Like Owen Hill’s mom, Dot, with her ‘Turtle Walk’ around the block. It’s slow so slow and methodical, but she does it!

            And at 86 years old that’s something!

            I only hope I make it to that age and, if I do, I’m still walking round the neighborhood.

            Though by then, I hope I’ve gotten some new shoes, preferably Tie Dye, of course!

            I turn the corner and head up Roosevelt.  Murray the Mockingbird trills a hurry home to me as I pass the cactus house, my worn shoes plodding along for another day.