THE UNDEAD
OCTOBER 16, 2011
So anyway, a last ditch blast of a heat wave sizzled the Bay Area, and the Island in particular this week. The Island, of course is our hometown set here in California on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. Really. It is! Right on the edge there. You stand on the beach there and you can see we are living on the edge. The edge of a vastness that evokes the Great Plains in its expanse. Fields of wheat or waves of ocean -- it makes no difference.
Most of the Island's accomplishments and notables tend to the modest and the long-ago. We used to have a fabulous seaside family water park, but it was not as big or storied as Playland by the Beach and its long gone now.
The Doolittle raiders started from the former Navy base here, but the Base is closed, and the raiders just left on carriers quietly because they didn't want to call attention to themselves.
Dancing was outlawed here, briefly, as it was felt it might lead to salacious acts. But that didn't last long because the people at the Senior Center complained.
Someone recently tried to set up a comedy club on High Street, but too many people didn't see the humor or the point, so that fell through.
You might hear a native speaking this way: "So a duck walked into a bar, that's not so funny. What you say there's a punchline? Well I am not so sure about that and I do not care about why some poultry crossed the road either. Don't have time for such foolishness. Those people probably all came to California from someplace else expecting hippy flowerpower. I tell them to just go away. It aint funny. . .".
Out on the base, with all that open space where the airfield used to be, the least tern has found a home. You can lay an egg or two out there in all that concrete and grass and nobody will come along to step on it and no idiot landlord is going to be charging some kind of foolish rent. The least tern is somewhat endangered as a species, or so they say, and it just fits us by nature that instead of the Greater Tern, or the California Condor, or the Glad Auk of Aukland we get the modest and unassuming least tern to settle among us. Him and scads of Canadian geese who have decided that Rio is too far a piece to get to each year. Most of the geese do head on south, party a good deal, then turn around and head back to Canada or Minnesota or Vancouver where the food has gotten better because of all the ex-pats from Hong Kong who have settled there.
You can choose lutefisk or you can choose egg rolls; we know already what we have chosen, so we leave it to you.
Now we are a good deal different from Minnesota and Vancouver and Edmonton. We have better weather and everyone agrees about that. We have been to Winnipeg, where a lot of those geese come from and we are not going back. No one should live in a place where your pee freezes before it hits the ground. We don't have Minnesota Ice, which we just learned about, and we don't have Canadians with all of their hockey puck issues and crazy people trying to befriend grizzly bears.
That might be Alaska, but if that place is full of people like Sarah Palin, who goes around shooting wolves from helicopters, the Canadians can have it. They'll fix it up proper. Woman you just shot that wild animal? Well you just go back now and eat it, and you better clean your plate girl. You eat all of it.
You know what wolfmeat is? It's dog. Boshintang. Dog soup. That's what Koreans eat and they are hardly American. So you just eat your dogmeat, all of it and you clean your plate or no TV for you, girl! Now then!
Yes, the Canadians could fix Palin proper even before she can quit and disappear.
Here's the difference between all we are talking about. You know the start of this story already. A man goes into an ice cream parlor on a hot day, gets a double dip ice cream cone and turning, the ball of ice cream falls to the floor of the shop before the man can even taste it.
In New York, the counterman insults the fellow, calls him stupid, clumsy, a fool and related to Neanderthals, then hands him a replacement ice cream cone.
In San Francisco, the counterman apologizes, rues the man's ill luck, says it's a terrible shame, life is hard and then you die, hands the man a replacement ice-cream cone -- and then charges him $4.
In Minnesota, the counterwoman says it's a terrible shame, the makers of bad cones are all to blame, life is a bitch and then you die, what bad luck, how terrible the things that happen and how ugly fate and destiny, there's this phrase in the Bible that comes to mind, then hands the man a pail and a mop and orders him to clean it up quickly, please, just think of the children . . .
As the season segues ponderously into Autumn, folks around the Island respond each in their own way to the changes. Or flip-flops, as the case might be. The Almeida family has inspected all of the lunch boxes, obtained the most current ones where necessary, and stocked up on lunch meats from Costco.
Each morning Ms. Almeida sets up the assembly line for the kids on the counter there hours after Pedro has left on the boat. A piece of fruit according to the season, the slices of whole wheat, dab of mustard, meat, cheese, lettuce, top. Next. Then each out the door to bus or walk. For some a few words. No fighting today. Mind the history. Seven times nine is what? Tuck in your shirt! Then it's on to the chickens out back. No raccoon visits for a while and the hens busy themselves with chicken business.
Eugene has brought down the long box from the top shelf and popped open the military surplus ammo cans. He opens the long box -- you know the long box, yes that one -- and takes out the old poodlegun. Yes, that time is coming up. After Halloween.
There is a special shiver that goes through him as he lays the weapon across his lap, gleaming with a dull gleam of oils and care from many years of hunts along the Strand. This year will be the 13th Poodleshoot and it promises to be really grand in the old style.
At Marlene and Andre's the ironmongery garden is now falling into tatters as the beans have all been harvested, the carrots pulled and taters dug. The Great Recession still bites hard and shows no sign of letting up on the little people of California. Xavier and Marsha have gone off to join the Occupy Wallstreet people with little to offer other than their bodies for all the want and lack of money. Little Adam is back in school and Marlene goes to pick him up each day by foot to make sure the wily kid of the streets does not beat some foolish middle-class scion senseless. He is a lot harder than the kids all around him now, and he is only half aware of that. He is still a tenuous player on a chessboard which has no clear winner but a lot of certain losers at this point. So Marlene walks back with Adam each day and they kick the leaves falling from the Oaks on Central Avenue, as if Oaks had a reason other than tradition to turn their leaves.
In the Old Same Place Bar, Dawn and Suzie have been hanging up cardboard skeletons, ghosts, bats and cobwebs hung with furry spiders from Big Lots. Each table has a skull or a pumpkin with an LED candle inside. It's the annual Bay Area Holiday coming up, and everyone in there was talking about what to be for the Native Son's Annual Fright Ball. Jose and Javier were discussing how to transport their ofreta for the Fruitvale District Dia de los Muertos, which is the largest such display in the world outside of Mexico. Javier thought he could get Jeff the Scoutmaster to loan the bed of his truck. They would need a truck, for the ofreta was pretty elaborate and was in memory of Jose's abuelta, while Javier had his uncle from Sonora in mind. They had made some 400 artificial marigolds out of orange crepe to line the ofreta, which should give you some idea of its scope.
Yes, in the last days of October, going into November, strange occurrences are to be expected. The dead -- and the undead -- walk again. What are the undead? Well, they are ones who have no life to their credit. They have surrendered their souls, but something has not passed on spiritually to whatever exists for all who have left the eternal cycle and recycle of life, and so although they possess physical bodies, they do not enjoy their physical presence here among us. Their senses are dulled, they have no feelings and no appetites other than a craving for brains and blood, they add nothing to the world but devour its fecundity and its joy. You might call them zombies, ghouls, vampires, but the end result is the same. They are bodies without soul. Richard Cheney might be one, and perhaps Ashcroft, but that is sheer speculation. Most of Congressional seats of a certain stripe might be occupied by vampires. It must be admitted it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between a zombie and a person who has feelings.
The only way to tell is by looking into their eyes to see if some spark still lives there, and since this takes time, it can be difficult to do if they are trying to rip your skull off and eat your brains. Here now, stop that! Stop! O for Pete's sake! I am talking to you!
The undead are a kind of problem, but then there are the honestly dead who move among us all the time, and who choose this time to appear. It can be pretty disturbing to see limned in the limbs of a young girl your own aunt Betty. And then the girl says exactly as Aunt Betty used to, "Would you like a slice of rhubarb pie?"
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRG!
Mister, do you have a problem?
Night falls. Clumsy night. It does that at the end of every day. Or perhaps night falls like a dancer, gracefully, planned, into the arms of the fog and the waves lapping against the dark shore. Perhaps night is a lovely woman, dressed in a filmy black peignoir, dancing and spinning en point, leaping, then swooning into the blackness for her lover, the moon, while the stars flicker like millions of candles in the canopy above.
The Editor trudges about the offices after all the staff have gone. Something from the music desk about a group called "Tennis Pro". Here's a late communiqué from Dave Elias in memory of Paul Pena.
Miracles Take Time
by David Elias, in memory of Paul Pena
On and on now
Don't be late
Silver weights on silver plates
Autumn lingers
Can't escape
Miracles take time
Sing me now
Your hands must rest
Your body leans against the fences
Of its own strength
Time has tested
Miracles take time
Tell me now
Remind me soon
How silk roads wind under the moon
Carry a windless silver tune
Miracles take time
Lightly now
And none to bear
Words to hear and songs to share
Silent tears your heart has bared
Miracles take time
Yes, in this time, the Dead walk among us again in some form.
The Editor would like to ease some of David's pain. The dead do not really return; only the memory does. That's why we make the ofretas. So as to celebrate the days we knew them and the brief time we enjoyed together.
He goes over to the player and puts in a CD. Soon the sounds of a folk singer from his early days begins playing over the speakers in the otherwise silent office with its banks of desks and LED lights glowing from all the devices.
I'll sing you this October song
There's no song before it
The words and tune are none of my own
For my joys and sorrows bore it
Beside the sea the brambly briars
ln the still of evening
Birds fly out behind the sun
And with them I'll be leaving
The fallen leaves that jewel the ground
They know the art of dying
And leave with joy their glad gold hearts
In scarlet shadows lying
When hunger calls my footsteps home
The morning follows after
I swim the seas within my mind
And the pine trees laugh green laughter
(Words and music by Bert Jansch)
His friend Drain, a punk rocker with enough hardware embedded in him to really annoy the TSA folks got married in the Grass Valley graveyard there. That's the ticket: carpe diem and all that. He went to the black glass of the window. Outside the ragged silhouette of the Old Man, a coastal Sequoia which had been growing there several hundred years before the White Man came, leaned to the side wearily but held up the moon nevertheless in its branches.
A flying vee of Canadian geese passed overhead, honking in the darkness. Suddenly, a powerful urge to learn Spanish and take up skydiving overtook him. Or at least do it once. Because it was such a long time to be gone.
He returned to the white pool of light cast by his desklamp and sat down, his remaining white hairs flying about his head in an aureole, and bent to work. Then he looked up.
What to be this Halloween? Not a walrus again. A narwhal would be difficult to manage. Perhaps an hippo. He'd come up with something.
Such a long, long time to be gone. And such a short time to be
here.
The long howl of the throughpassing train ululated across the autumn leaves blowing among the haunted grasses of the Buena Vista flats as the locomotive wended its way past the shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, headed off on its ghostly journey to parts unknown.
