Sunburnt Circumstance
Not quite a poem, not quite an essay, not quite anything really.
I spent the sliver of a morning that belonged to me, wearing wool, wondering how many weeks until we can pick the plums from the tree. I thought about this dry warm morning as I was sitting in it. I could shed some wool and cotton comes from trees and there is no more coffee for me to drink.
I was losing time, but circumstance is a funny thing, especially after the fact when you realize that some cities are pretty, others are trashy, some are romantic, and maybe there are sexy ones, but those are not here and maybe not even there (where ever there is). Eventually, time will be on my side and Thursday is Jake’s birthday. I need to bake him a cake and I should call someone I have not seen in a while (which means most likely that I have not talked to them in a while, but nowadays you can talk, but not see–what if you can hear evil, but not see it? Is that just a secret someone spilled or is it like my upstairs ghost neighbors that I can hear but I never see?).
My skin is still pink from the Saturday sun. The other night while I was sleeping I pictured planes and going to Hawaii, but somehow I was in Berkeley at the same time. At one point I was wading in water and saw a fish. It was long and graceful and multicolored and I asked if we should eat it, we determined it was too pretty to eat. It made me think of a David Byrne line “I want to kill and kiss you too/You belong to everyone that meets you/Everyone’s in love with you.”
In the process of me getting sunburned on a Saturday, I started a new book called In Orbit by Wright Morris. When I opened it I thought about Desiree because someone dated a blank page 12/17/78 in blue ink and she works with cool old, I guess they are actually called, good used books. I read my books with a pen (it used to be pencil, but then I lost it). I like to underline the things I like because I like to remember where and what it is that I like. I was at Black Sand Beach thinking about December seventeenth nineteen seventy eight. I really like the date, December seventeenth, because that is when my sister got engaged (the year however was 2022, and we all knew it was happening (the four letter one knee life altering question that is), and when she called my mother to relay the news, my mother and I were in a mall parking lot in Mission Viejo, CA while my sister was happily teary eyed on Balboa Island on Diamond Street). There was an urge with my black inked pen to date 6/15/24, but I flipped the page instead and underlined the words “preferably frayed” because I like the way they look next to each other (as well as how it reads).
After the whole ordeal of overdosing on vitamin D, swimming in the cool water, splitting my view between the Point Bonita Lighthouse and Sutro Tower I trudged back towards my car. It was hot and I was wearing loafers and kelly green Bermuda shorts. I really like driving my car throughout the Marin Headlands because the roads are mostly bare and perfectly windy. The bends bend and the curves are blind making the views spectacular! The windows down, sunroof open and salty eucalyptus air whipped around me. “Beast of Burden” was on and the song has and will always feel like honey to me. It is a golden song and my left arm stuck out the window while my hand surfed the tufts of wind and I was probably only going thirty miles per hour. I was gilded and grinning and my skin sun kissed.
The sunshine lasts longer up here and I wondered if the gold rush had something to do with that. It was just before nine pm on Saturday and I was strolling through the Castro. The sky was pink and a trolley car was parked, and I saw a bay window full of disco balls. I stopped to photograph it and a black woman with great energy asked me,
“Isn’t that amazing?”
(it is)
“I always stop to look at it, you see those flowers, the man Todd that lives there, he makes them. A few weeks ago he invited me in and sent me home with a kit to make the flowers myself and my own notebook. He just inspires me and he is a doctor, can you believe that?”
I do believe it. Not because I saw it, but because this Todd character who is a doctor with a bay window full of disco balls inspired this woman who drives the vintage trolley cars, and I found the whole thing so funny (I guess it is circumstance again) that I took a photo and needed to write something down about it.
The day is coming to an end and I am still wearing wool and tomorrow is Wednesday and I am stuck thinking about this coming Saturday and how it will be spent.
