Right?

 

Heard on Haight Street

“Hey, can you give me a dime so I can buy a new jacket? Mine doesn’t fit.”

“Can I come home with you and take a bath at your house? I really need a shower.”

“Can you give me some money for beer?”

“Spare some change so I can get something to eat?” (from a woman eating a slice of pizza)

“Spare some change for a hysterectomy?” (what?)

“Can you give me a dollar for a breast reduction?” (from a homeless man wearing a large set of fake plastic boobs)

Everyone on Haight Street seems to need something. And they also seem to need to be in your face about it. As my roommate and I sat on our stoop last night, we watched a man exit the laundromat across the street and bellow to the neighborhood at large, “ANYBODY GOT CHANGE FOR A TEN?”

“Dude, if you’re asking me for a favor, you might want to at least cross the street and ask me in person,” my roommate observed.

“Either of you ladies have a cigarette?” a passing stranger said at that very moment.

Maybe it’s a natural reaction, or maybe I’m just callous and self-centered, but after the like 15th request of the day, I start fantasizing about what I would ask for, if I made the jump of articulating my needs on a hand-written cardboard sign for people on the street to evaluate.

I need a job. A decent start.

I won’t lie; I need money for beer. An oldie but goodie.

Chronic, debilitating hip and shoulder pain — spare some change for Vicodin? Wordy.

I need insurance. Booo-rrinng; who doesn’t?

Spare some change to fix my broken heart?

That one I’ll probably have to take care of myself.

 

I ain’t got no plan . . .

At last, this has become the kind of blog that reprints song lyrics. It was inevitable, really.

This song has been stuck in my head for the past few weeks, for reasons I assume are obvious.

Ice age heat wave, can’t complain.
If the world’s at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan.
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand.
I move on to another day, to a whole new town with a whole new way.
Went to the porch to have a thought.
Got to the door and again, I couldn’t stop.
You don’t know where and you don’t know when.
But you still got your words and you got your friends.
Walk along to another day, work a little harder, work another way.

Well uh-uh baby I ain’t got no plan.
We’ll float on maybe would you understand?
Gonna float on maybe would you understand?
Well I’ll float on maybe would you understand?

The days get shorter and the nights get cold.
I like the autumn but this place is getting old.
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast.
It might not be a lot but I feel like I’m making the most.
The days get longer and the nights smell green.
I guess it’s not surprising but it’s spring and I should leave.

I like songs about drifters, books about the same.
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane.
Walked on off to another spot.
I still haven’t got anywhere that I want.
Did I want love? Did I need to know?
Why does it always feel like I’m caught in an undertow?

The moths beat themselves to death against the lights.
Adding their breeze to the summer nights.
Outside, water like air was great.
I didn’t know what I had that day.
Walk a little farther to another plan.
You said that you did, but you didn’t understand.

I know that starting over is not what life’s all about.
But my thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud.

 

E noho ra, Aotearoa

.

I have never been to Cape Reinga, the northwesternmost point at the top of New Zealand. Maori legends say it is the last departure point for spirits on their homeward journey to Hawaiiki, and the home of an ancient pohutukawa tree that aids the spirits in their exit from this world.

I have loved this story since the first time I heard it. It goes like this:

And now the spirit is on his last journey, northwards along the coastline towards the farthest point of all the land, on his way to join the ancestors in distant Hawaiki. At the stream called Kauaeparaoa he comes ashore, shivering. Not far to go now: first across this narrow neck of land to Spirits Bay, then round the clifftops to Te Reinga, the leaping place of ghosts.

At last, the mist around Te Reinga parts and he sees it: the sacred pohutukawa called Akakitereinga. He must clamber down its roots until he stands on that ledge down there. As the ocean swirls around the ledge, it sweeps across those big fronds of seaweed. And there is the hole! Sadly, the spirit dives in. The seaweed sways back to cover him, and he disappears.

At Manawatawi the spirit resurfaces. For one last time he looks back — back to Te Reinga, back to the land, back to the loved ones he has left behind. Then he turns northwards, and is gone. *

Goodbye, New Zealand.  It is time for me to go.

*from The Cross-Leased Chardonnay Cellphone Paradise

 

T Minus 50 Days

So last week I (and by “I” I mean “Maurice”) purchased my ticket back to the US. One way, of course. I leave/arrive on August 28th.

I can do no better than the immortal words of Jessie Spano in describing how I feel about all this:

(Not really a surprise where that went, eh?)

I need a project to distract myself from this much-anticipated but still very frightening Major Life Change. Usually my project of choice is vaccuuming. But we don’t have a vaccuum, and even if we did, it makes no visible difference to our 1967 original garishly-patterned/violently colored carpet. So I have decided to read War and Peace instead. If I read just 30 pages a day (easy!), I can still return it to the library before heading off to the airport.

So here’s my report on Day 2 of the War and Peace project. There’s been a party and a drunken incident. Someone rich may or may not be about to kick it. Pyotr Nikolaitch = Pierre (I think?). No! Pyotr Kirillovitch = Pierre. Prince Vassily’s last name is Kuragin, and he is the father of the debauched Anatole ( I’m positive!) My favorite line so far, only because I have seen so many people behave exactly like this, is : “Boris, with an evident sense of having discharged an onerous duty, having extricated himself from an awkward position, and put somebody else into one became perfectly pleasant again.”

Updates forthcoming.