Post No. 997 - Equinox

 

“Your belief in yourself must be greater than everyone else’s disbelief in you.” August Wilson

The equinox passes. I didn’t know the significance of the day until M, a man who reads books and watches videos on his phone on the patio at the Market, told me. M’s a tall man with a large frame, sunburned skin and close-cropped gray hair, who has lived on Hitchcock avenue out of the camper shell of his red Toyota pickup for several months. M uses the bathroom in the store, fills many water bottles at the filling station, and buys items from the hot bar now and again, all without troubling a soul. M is obviously resourceful having survived being unhoused so long. It can’t be easy or comfortable, particularly for a man in his 70s. M’s got a weathered look about him, but he’s never dirty. One day he complimented me on what he called my “work signature,” telling me it’s obvious when I’m on duty because the men’s bathroom is always clean. As to why he’s here I gathered that he’d blown the engine of the Toyota and was waiting for money to get it fixed. He moves between Bend, Oregon, Boulder, Colorado and Santa Barbara. I don’t think I’d be a very kind or rational and patient soul if I lived like M. 

Running errands this morning with a runny nose and a dull headache. Not feeling 100%. Passed my first stop like it wasn’t there because my mind was elsewhere. I had to drive three blocks out of my way and double back. My debit card failed twice and to pay the bill I had to draw money from an ATM. Service charge for this privilege of $3.50. Drove down the road to BevMo and spent several minutes wandering around in search of tonic water. When did BevMo start selling groceries and sundries? Checked out a selection of bourbons. My debit card worked fine at the checkout. 

Feels like I have a late-summer cold. When I get home I drink a cup of herbal tea for cold/flu symptoms. 

Lately I’ve spent more time reading than I have writing. Finished a fine biography of James Baldwin by David Leeming, and am deep into a biography of August Wilson, the playwright who shook Broadway with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Fences.” The usual periodicals, New York Review of Books, the Nation, The New Yorker. 

The Baldwin bio gave me some new insight and understanding about a man I consider a prophet. I also read True North by Jim Harrison for the third or fourth time, with renewed appreciation for Harrison’s perceptive observations about the human condition, particularly greed. I’m just getting into The Rolling Thunder Logbook by Sam Shepard. The way Shepard strung words together is under-appreciated; there’s music in his writing -- and also an edginess. I’ve read a lot of his considerable oeuvre.  

My daughter is discovering the rigors, deadline pressure and sleep-deprivation of a packed senior year at an arts university. She had to memorize long monologues in four different classes, and then, along with the memorization, make the characters’ speech carry weight. The actor’s art, in other words. But otherwise she’s doing well, with a cozy room in a decent apartment, a circle of friends, acquaintances and classmates. We talk to her several times each day. I worry about her less than I did last year when she struggled with homesickness and the shock of moving from Santa Barbara to Philadelphia. 

If only my football team, Chelsea, was faring as well as my family. But no, the boys are struggling to jell and after five league matches have scored five goals and won five points. By contrast, Manchester City have fifteen points. About a dozen Chelsea players are out injured, including Reece James, Moises Caicedo, Christopher Nkunku, and Wesley Fofana. It’s all very dismal and looking like a repeat of 2022’s futility and failure. The club’s new owners have spent an enormous amount of money on players, many of them young, but in football money doesn’t always lead to results; the money has to be spent in the right way. My sense remains that Chelsea is a collection of parts rather than a cohesive unit and that there’s no short term fix. This means Chelsea supporters are in for another long season. The glory of the recent past fades quickly.