Cultivation

Still the plants need water. Early spring hits Los Angeles and dries out the soil. Through winter: dormancy; then with the heat the promise of renewed growth. I’d been neglecting them, and could see in the slight browning leaves signs of parchedness.

Some for five, six years I’ve cared. They argue plants have no feelings, but tending them I’ve found a common language with mine. I can intuit when they need light, when they need water, when something is wrong. I know, too, that the vibrations in the room, my emotional register, the music I play, the mood of the dog, all the things that build the energy of life impact them too.

I’d like to own property. I’d like to plant a tree. I’d like to watch it grow. I’d like to lie on my death bed and look out at the tree ten, twenty, thirty feet in the air and know that it was there because of me, and that I sustained it, and that after my passing it continued. There’s a sense of the future in planting a tree. I’d like to cultivate the future.

Around the world moments of despair send a numbing shockwave and seem to pause time. History bends and suddenly there is a before and there is an after. And still the plants need water.

Routine

Nightly digestive walks at dusk: establishment of a routine. It’s good for them, dogs, to have things to anticipate. The regularity of it (timing, route) provides a sense of security. They are creatures of habit.

From the apartments and the houses, dining room light filters out into the indigo sky with echoes of voices, a clatter of plates, the laughter from a friend. In the evening, life erupts from the otherwise sleepy buildings.

On the route, we pass other dogs, eager to greet him, but mine in his haughtiness rejects signs of friendship.

Gasoline

A neighbor buys, restores, and resells classic cars and trucks, routinely cycling between different models that sit on our block for days at a time. The latest, a ‘77 Chevy Bonanza, sat outside the apartment three days when a passing couple noticed the street beneath coated in gasoline.

Within thirty minutes, the smell permeated the apartment. I had been cooking and thought I sprung a gas leak on the stove. Before I had a chance to call, a fire truck pulled up outside, and five men inspected the truck. Deeming it insignificant, they shoveled sand beneath the tank to soak up the oil. When the owner came by the next day, he commented on the dirt, but did not attempt to start the truck.

Space Heater

A businessman in his middle fifties crossed Washington in the rain. It came down steadily, and had done so for several days. The lack of umbrella in his hand was not from lack of foresight. The trek through the rain was curious; the streets in Los Angeles were prone to flooding, and, certainly, there had been standing water in the roads for days. As he approached the curb to return to the sidewalk from the road, he misjudged the distance, then stepped his loafer into one standing puddle along the side of the road. The rainwater cascaded over the edge of the shoe, into its fleshy interior, surely soaking his socks and insoles. The businessman—but, really, it was impossible to tell whether he was of the founder ilk or the middle-management caste—ascended the stairs along the side of the building, just a few feet from the road. He almost survived the walk. As his shoes squished beneath his weight on each step, he daydreamed of getting to his office, removing his socks and shoes, and placing his feet as close to his space heater as possible. Perhaps he would rest his socks along the machine, watch as they steamed and smoked. That way they would dry before he had to make the return trek home. He would have to brainstorm ways to dry out the shoes.

Orange flesh

Spiral recurrences: a life repeating, no—growing, changing, stepping up or down. Every moment is an opportunity for new beginnings. Mandarin orange peeled when the thumb presses into the bottom and breaks flesh. Eight even pieces, torn apart. Canine teeth pierce the membrane and juice comes spilling out. Always you can find a way to say, Now.

Balance

Starling tiptoes across a telephone wire—squirrel rests along a metal fence—owl hoots into the night as the Santa Ana winds roll through the canyon, ruffling the leaves on the pines—housecat races across the road, dodging an oncoming car, slinking through the break in a wooden fence—sedans run stop signs in the night—skunks peer wearily from the drain that runs to the ocean, no dumping sign painted on the asphalt beside it—trash cans with duct-taped damage overflow into the road—everywhere I looked I saw reminders of a tightrope knife’s edge between two things and found myself, somehow, in a doorway—

A.A.A. #5

When she was assigned the patient, the nurse was told: “This is a stubborn, brutal old bastard. Abdominal aortic aneurysm, and he pulled through out of pure spite.” 

Because of the numerous complications of his condition, W. had been assigned 24/7 at-home nurse care. An oxygen tank to roll around with him. Home hemodialysis six of the week’s seven days. A new wheelchair. And quarterly emptyings of the tube that now stuck out of the flesh of his stomach. It was always disorienting to the nurse to look at these tubes, see them flush with the skin, know how close the inside of this man was to her.

Looking around the home, at the ash trays and piles of newspapers, at the old mail and the computer from 1995 loading to-the-minute stock numbers, at the TV in the corner blaring Fox News, she wondered about the nature of human endurance and perseverance. To crawl to hell and back for what—for this? 

She hears a buzz; he’s calling her. She pushes the thoughts to the side. The beauty of life cannot be described, she reminds herself. We each must fight for our own solaces and keep them alive. She thought: Who am I to judge an old man? One day, I, too, will be old, and what will I do then? 

A.A.A. #4

The morning of the second day, W. had regressed. Or, rather, the procedures in order to alleviate the initial arterial rupture had led to further complications: fluid in his lungs, acute kidney failure that required a dialysis machine, a gastrointestinal bleed the doctors could not locate. It seemed to the nurses like systematic organ failure.

M., his wife, couldn’t bear to wait around for him to die. When she walked in that morning, she was excited to tell him about the stock market—it had gone up one thousand points the day before. Through his oxygen mask, he offered her a smile at this news. Seeing him there, hooked up to machines, feeling pity and a queasy sickness in her stomach she couldn’t locate or name, she turned away from him and toward her eldest daughter. “Take me home,” she told her. “Let him rest.”

Really, she anticipated the satisfaction lighting a fresh cigarette would bring her. As the smoke tickled her throat, she imagined the queasy feeling in her would dissipate, and the world would feel calm again for at least a moment.

A.A.A. #3

W.’s wife and A.E., his middle daughter, arrived early the morning after the surgery. They had been there the night before at the memorial hospital. The nurses wheeled W. down the hallway, ruptured artery sputtering, and then urged them to say their goodbyes. She coughed up the words to her father, choking on them as they came from her throat; her childhood had been one of difficulty. She kissed his hand, then held it as long as she could, until the nurses wheeled him too far away and he slipped from her grasp.

When she walked into his hospital room the next morning, she thought he was dead. It was difficult to see him as alive with shut eyes and sallow skin. When he awoke, he begged for water. It was not dehydration—he was hooked up to an I.V. with fluids—but post-surgery his mouth had dried out, and his stomach had been emptied. The nurse handed her a sponge the size of a quarter. “Dip this in, and squeeze out droplets into his mouth.” She did so, and watched as three drops of water fell onto his parched tongue. He begged her for more, and she quietly dipped the sponge and gave him three more drops against the nurse’s wishes. He choked on the drops of water, struggling to swallow them. 

She remembered the chief surgeon warning her that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. If he survived the first 24 to 48 hours, he would likely make it. Even then, survivors of the surgery only had a life expectancy of two years. W. begged her for more water, and she could not give it to him. That’s it, she thought as he coughed up the few droplets of water. Only 48 hours more.

A.A.A. #2

D., a paramedic and W.’s grandson, met him at the hospital while he was halfway through the surgery. He had heard the name of the condition, and knew that it was likely his grandfather would die in the night. He spoke with the nurses, and they lamented the situation W. found himself in. A heavy smoker. Stomach cancer. Poor diet. D. had known these qualities of his grandfather, and had little hope that he would make a recovery. When the chief surgeon of the hospital had finished the surgery, he approached D. and said three words: “It’s a miracle.”

D. thought of W.’s parents—two people who immigrated to the U.S. and lived difficult lives. His father had lived to 100. His mother died a week shy of it. There was a strand of DNA in their lineage that strived for life. He thought, too, of W.’s wife, a lifelong smoker with zero damage to her lungs. How bizarre, he thought, to live against all the rules. Perhaps there were other things that encouraged a prolonged life. There was little time to consider the ramifications of this discovery; he had several phone calls to make.

A.A.A. #1

In the afternoon, W. collapsed. An ambulance swiftly carried him to the nearest memorial hospital. First it was low blood pressure, then it was an aortic aneurysm in the stomach. The blood in his body rushed to his stomach, leaving it distended. The ruptured aorta spurted the blood from the cardiovascular system, leaving him gray-skinned and light-headed. After receiving medication for the pain and regaining consciousness, the emergency room doctor gave him his ultimatum. There was nobody else in the room.

“Listen,” he started. “There’s no two ways to say it. You have two options here. I can give you enough morphine to let you pass quietly in the night. Or we can transfer you to a hospital thirty minutes north. They can attempt a risky surgery, but there’s a very high mortality rate. Over 90%. You likely won’t make it. But you have to decide now, there isn’t much time.”

Still lightheaded from the day, and numbed from the medication, W. responded with muscle memory: “There’s only one option. Give me the surgery.”

Clouds

Thoughts like clouds pass through my mind: amorphous, mutable, transforming into shapes, distinguishable for seconds then evaporated; darkness enveloping, intruding; dark rainclouds with horrible droplets—learning to let them pass, observe the shape, acknowledge the thought. Only something you experience.