Get Published. Easier to give birth to pigs.

Get Published. Easier to give birth to pigs.

My pal, Alex, wants to do a ChapBook. He writes awesome poetry and deserves to get his stuff into strangers’ hands. I have Adobe, InDesign, but have rarely used it, and that was ten years ago. Once learned, after spending days overseeing the San Francisco Bay and writing long, award-wining newsletter on Quark, I thought InDesign would be easy as one, two three thousand.

It’s not and I’m now too poor to hire a professional. So, I dabble with it, hoping to find a shortcut.

Piecing it all Together

Life here is remarkable. There are more hills than I experienced in San Francisco. More rain, in all forms, too. The windows of this building were supposed to be washed yesterday, yet a 30-mile-per-hour wind barreled across Puget Sound, up Vine street and blew over an ancient tree on the corner.

And, the owl, the plastic one that has planted itself on the shelf below the sixth floor apartment, it finally moved. Three feet west and then back two feet east. Head remains buried in the sawdust.

So, Friday the windows will be washed. Yesterday, in spite of the weather and wind, the building across the street got its windows washed. Three men, all dresses like Zorro, hung on ropes and squeezed the dirt off the glass wind-breakers that adorned the side of the building. This morning, the sun was dazzling as it reflected off the early morning building.

Why didn’t our building get serviced? Were the men afraid to hang from the side in the wind? Didn’t want to get dressed up like Zorro, and trip up and down a 12-story building? I don’t know. Friday, when they do appear, I’ll ask. How will I ask, I’ll have to practice how to ask without hurting any feelings.

Is it Raining?

Silly question, if you live in Seattle. I have been here since the last days of April. Visiting a friend, well . . . more than a friend.

We’ve decided to ‘give it a try’ . . . living together in his loft on the sixth floor of a building, one-and-one-half-blocks from the Pike Street Market. I’m back, downtown, where I’d rather be. After 27 years in San Francisco, then a major move to Orange County to be with my daughter in the ‘burbs,’ now, the moans of sirens at 3am and honking cars are music to my ears.

I was born in Seattle. Official War Baby. Lived here for 11 months, then parents divorced and I ended up in Southern California. New dad, two baby brothers. I met my Seattle friend in fifth grade. We were not pals, but were aware of each other. He moved in different circles. I was into music and talking; he was into being cool. In the tenth grade, he gave a party. I don’t know why he invited me, [he doesn’t remember] but it had an Hawaiian theme. I was in line to get my lei, when he reached out, grabbed me, and planted a juicy kiss on my lips.

“You are not the prince,” I said to myself. Later, when I told my mother [I have no idea why I told her this], that he was too short for me.

“Don’t worry. He’ll grow,” she announced.

He grew, in my heart. We had separate lives, married other people, dropped LSD and roamed Griffith Park while at USC, yet nothing ever went further than that.

He kissed me again just before Thanksgiving, in 2021. A walk on the beach. According to him, it was electric.

“He’s tall enough now,” I would add, to tell my mother who has left the planet.

My Time

I will fall asleep at 4:32, on the afternoon of Sunday, November 7.

First, I must transport back 1,195 years into one of my past lives. I was a Scarlet Macaw. A small girl’s captive in a Mayan village long before the Spanish brought smallpox and Catholicism to Pueblo adobe dwellers. My memory returns to my avian existence each year soon after I hear the announcement: “This Sunday at 2am, we all will get back the hour that was snatched early in March.”

So, I return 1,195 years, back to my cage. I watch my capturer weave a tapestry from ferns she had cut earlier that morning. She finishes, then raises them above her head. She reaches my cage, then slowly drops the green curtain. As the last shards of light dim to nothing, my eyes droop and I lose contact with the day.

It’s 4:35 in the afternoon. This proclivity for falling asleep each afternoon, continues for 13 days, until my body clock returns to normal. And I stop getting sleepy as the sun sees the west as a way out of the day.

I don’t like getting that hour back. It makes no sense. I blame the Founding Fathers. Bennie Franklin to be exact. It’s 1783. We visit Mr. Franklin’s bedchamber in Paris. It’s 6am and he stirs awake by sunlight creeping past the damask curtains. The night before he’d dined with a family who spent most of the meal complaining that although rich, not rich enough, they were forced to spend hard-earned coins on candles and whale oil to save off the darkness that dropped after the sun dropped behind Norte Dame.

Bennie has an idea. ”I looked at my watch, which goes very well, and found that it was but six o’clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early. I looked into the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for sun rising on that day. I looked forward, too, and found sun was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June; and that at no time in the year he retarded his rising so long as till eight o’clock.”

Ben realized that time could not be lost, forgotten, had, spent, or outed. It could be saved – by hand. The sun, and all mankind, however, could be tamed simply by moving the hour hand on a watch. Thus began the Saving of Daylight, one of the cleverest propaganda campaigns in history. He then applied this theory to the Post Office.

“That Book. How’s it coming?

I think I’m never going to finish the thing. A simple story about making dill pickles in Pasadena in the 1950s has turned into a major tome. Tome, enough to fill five shelves of post-World-War-II history, in the ‘good old days’ when we had to stay home from school because the SMOG was too thick.

Have you ever asked for, and received, a recipe from a friend or family member, only to find that an important ingredient was missing? This is what the story is about. My brothers and I were asked to leave the kitchen, after shaving our knuckles off removing the prickles from cukes, while our grandmother and mother finished prepping the cukes with the “Secret Recipe.”

They promised to give us the ‘secret’ before they died. This didn’t happen. A sudden heart attack took Eunice and my mother had a massive stroke, several years later. And took the secret with her.

This is the story of finding, seeking and trying to get a pickle produced that had the same “SIZZLE” of long-ago dill pickles.

If I finish the book, I might get to leave the earth. Maybe, I don’t want to take off?

We threw some organic . . .

. . . soil, rotting in the bin I had made for all things organic but had started to smell. Bad. Really bad. Over the fence into the bottom the hill behind the house. Three weeks later, we had a ladder that cascaded up toward the top of the hill, then disappeared into some small fog, that didn’t smell good either.

In fact, it smelled as if a dead opossum had stepped in some day-old horse manure, then keeled over a pressed duck, left behind by a band of gypsies. {why are Gypsies always come in bands? A band of what? Rubber bands, bandages?] Needs more work, here! 

I wish I could say that it was an easy JUMP up on the first rung, then magically being lifted to then top rung, but that was not the way it went at all. Not at all. Before I started up, I thought I needed supplies. Lunch. Water. Candy for whatever was waiting up at the top.

If there were a top. 

to be continued

Ikea bans plastic.

I was returning from an LAX trip, when I remembered the plastic bags I ordered from Ikea had stopped arriving. I had purchased them six months ago after another stop in the north of Costa Mesa [a difficult place to visit at 4pm on Sunday].
I went to the usual place, Kitchen Accessories, aisle and they were missing, an entire shelf was empty. It took some time to seek out a fellow human in a Yield-Yellow shirt, but at last I did.
“I am looking for the trash bags I place in my wastepaper basket that was part of my kitchen remodel a couple of years ago. I usually get them online, but that stopped, so I am here, in person, to seek them.”
He looked at me [I had been on the road for three hours, one trip to LAX and another to a local hotel, getting lost the entire time] and I might have guessed it had been a long day for him, too. “We don’t offer plastic bags anymore. We are trying to cut down on the use of plastic.”
I looked around, and the acres and acres of plastic wares, just in the Accessories, department.
“You are kidding?”
He hesitated long enough for me to guess, that this was not funny. Or the joke was lost on him. I decided to repeat Albert Brooks [Put together the coffin] joke ” . . . how long it took his pallbearers to put together the coffin.”
That didn’t work, either.
I had to ask three people the way out, envisioning that I would die there, on a Sunday night, looking for trash bags.
I must figure out how not to have trash. Thanks to Ikea.

To The Wedding . . . with Groom

Sometimes, Saturdays in June my car fills up with wedding people. Mostly, guests — who are always late — or bachelor-night girls seeking places of ill repute. In my day, we tiptoed into Chippendales, which I thought had gone out of business, but it appears in Las Vegas. My UBER  doesn’t go that far, but I would if someone asked for a ride, just before taking that final single ride.
So, on an ordinary Saturday, I got a ‘ping’ that announced I had a ride waiting, but it would take 21 minutes to get there. I must have been the only UBER driver out that day. I drove all the way through San Clemente, took a short-cut on La Pata and ended up in a nice housing development on the edge of Lake Elsinore.

There were two men, plus a son. They all carried boxes, hanging clothes, and briefcases.
“We’re going to get married,” the man who slid into the shotgun seat.
“All of you?”
“Oh, no, just the guy in the back.”
The ‘guy in the back and his son nodded. I asked, “Would you like to stop anywhere, just one more single event?”
“No, I think I’m ready for this.”
We then headed back across San Clemente, up into Talega, to a house, where a throng of family were waiting.
“Don’t forget anything,” I offered. “If you do, I could always go back to your house and pick up what you’ve left behind.”
“We’ve got everything we need. If we don’t need it anyway.”
I wished them good luck and took off.
It looked like it was going to rain.

But, it didn’t.

 

Chickens Like Vanilla Milkshakes

Occasionally I try delivering food, otherwise known as “Uber Eats”.

It’s a good way to make money running up and down the hills of San Clemente and if I have a little time to Uber before taking on any other of my numerous ‘odds jobs.’

On a hump day, I got a call to go to McDonald’s in Dana Point. The order wasn’t ready when I got there, so I stood around and watched a stream of others drive up, pull in and order stuff I have not partook in for a few years in my effort not to outdistance my weight scale.

Finally, the server, Olivia, said my order was ready. She then produced six Large Vanilla Milkshakes. I asked for a paper holder, and Olivia, clever as she was and probably is to this day, cut one cardboard holder in half.

Then, it was an adventure getting six blocks to my destination, a Pollo Loco next to Costco in San Juan Capistrano. The order stipulated that I wait for someone to fetch. Out comes Roberta, who took all six milkshakes inside, within my carry case, promising to bring back the bag. She did. As she put it through my window, I said “This is the strange delivery for today.”

“Pollo Loco chickens love McDonald’s milkshakes,” she replied.

Now, I know. Never a day without learning new facts!

 

Then, it

to get to the Milkbar!